CPU mining at home using my 6 years old lappy
*disclaimer: I am not an IT expert in hardware or software. Just an enthusiast. Whatever said and done is by my novice self. Learning from online tutorials and kind friends who are willing to teach. Kindly point out if there are any space for improvement. Thank you!
So as promised, I said I would write on my experience on the pet project through the weekend. I managed to set up my 6 yo Toshiba Satellite 14'' i5-4200U 1.6Ghz with 2GB RAM and nVidia GT740M. I have 4 laptops at home and this one is the one that I was ‘willing’ to spare just in case it crashes. My target was to mine ETN (Electroneum) Current price on coinmarketcap: $0.135661 USD (22/1/18 @ 5pm UTC/GMT +8 hours Kuala Lumpur) It took me sometime experimenting and all. Fortunately for me, there was some help from a friend of mine - Bonus (Yes, his name is really Bonus). Which made my whole endeavor significantly shorter, seeing that I'm not an IT trained person. However, I’m not too bad myself as I often indulge myself in these computer related stuff. So managed to set it up within half an hour.
My first 2 hours + 15 min setting up miner:
The difficult part I think was the part where I had to back up my lappy. Just in case, you know.. That took me some time. Also another part was to cut down on all the other backend processes that are not needed. Mind you, there’re LOTS of it running behind. I was finally able to free much of the load and managed to cut down the CPU usage to bare minimum of <10% without running anything at the front. Why did I do this? Coz to be mining, you want to fully optimize the CPU. Not too high, to let it BBQ there and not too low, as its only CPU mining, its already low. Lower and its not worth doing at all. We need it to be at the sweet spot. LOL.
My Task Manager, you can see the CPU is running at 100%
You can do this with just the task manager. (alt – ctrl – Del ) – Task Manager. Just end process of all the stuff running behind. Those that you think you don’t need like – Bluetooth, Steam, those notifications for Toshiba stuff, wifi (I connected it to LAN) and etc.
After 2 hours and 15 minutes:
I have already set up the whole thing. But I could seem to get it to run. Zzz. After another hour or so of fiddling around, finally found the prob. It was my antivirus and antimalware. YOU NEEDA TURN IT OFF! Total time till fully running: ~3h30min - :sweat
The set up:
- Go to http://www.electroneum.com/
- Click on ‘downloads’ – at the top
- At https://downloads.electroneum.com/ , You will see “Beginner's Pool Mining Software” and “Offline Wallet Generator”.
- Under “Offline Wallet Generator”, click on “Browser Version” to generate your wallet. Then “Let’s Get Started” on the next page.
- After you click “Let’s Get Started”, you will come to a page where you will need to move and wiggle your mouse within the designated box to generate your wallet. Just wiggle around until the ‘blue’ color bar at the bottom is full.
- “Your Electroneum wallet is ready” – just click on “save wallet as PDF” and you are done with the wallet!
- Best practice: Copy and paste the “Public Wallet Address onto Notepad and save it on your desktop or email for easy access later. (note: it has 3 lines, make sure there are no space in between or at the end.)
- REMEMBER TO KEEP YOU WALLET IN A SAFE PLACE!
- Now back to the main download page again, where you see “Beginner's Pool Mining Software” and “Offline Wallet Generator”. a. Click on “Download Windows Miner” i. Now, if you are using Google Chrome, it will automatically block the download, marking it Dangerous. 1. What you need to do is, at the same panel, on the right, you will see a ‘SHOW ALL” or you can go to your downloads at chrome://downloads/ and select “keep dangerous file”. b. Once downloaded, just go through the normal installation – just hit “Next” and “I agree” all the way. It will install within 3 seconds. – Click “Finish”
- Now the fun begins. Post installation, you will find the “ELECTRONEUM” short cut at your Desktop. Start it.
- Copy your wallet’s public address (without space in between or at the end) from 4.c. and paste it at “enter your ETN wallet address”
- Threads: I realized it will auto set the threads while mining – so I set it to 36.
- Pool URL. This is a bit tricky. Took me some time to get the right pool a. Go to “https://github.com/electroneum/electroneum-pool” i. Scroll down a bit a find “Pools Using This Software” 1. Here, you will be able to see all the pool URLs for your mining needs. a. I personally recommend http://etn.proxpool.com and http://etnpool.cylim.com.my ii. You need to start with “stratum+tcp:// “ add pool addresss and :port (for port, if you are using i3 and below, use :3333, i5 and equivalent, use :5555, i7 and above, use :7777) 1. Example: stratum+tcp://etn-pool.proxpool.com:3333 or 2. Example: stratum+tcp://etnpool.cylim.com.my:3333 a. So copy the link and paste it in the “pool URL”
- Keep the rest EMPTY. No need to fill anything, it will auto run.
- Start Mining!
- Few things to take note / consider
- Different pool will give different speeds and hash rates.
- If you have a dedicated graphic card, then you would need to download another miner called – Claymore.
- Up to u to consider whether it’s worth mining or not at CPU mining is quite minimal. But if you are using this is your office, just turn on the pc and let it run the whole day, I don’t think it’s an issue at all. After all, it’s collecting dust at home anyway.
So my miner manage to hit like 45-48 H/s. Which is super slow.. Hahaha. Likely I will get roughly 1.5 ETN/ day. Who knows ETN goes to up one day? But as a pet project, it still feels super satisfying to be able to get it running and to think that my old junk that's collecting dust can still make something!
My next topic: as I was fiddling around researching, I stumbled across many other platforms where you can use you every day CPU to mine at home as well! I am trying a few platforms now. Will talk on it soon. Please don’t forget to upvote!
