As I dive into mining cryptocurrency, I'm starting a series documenting my progress! I'd love your feedback and for you to point out what I could be doing better! But first, some history...
Twice now, I've missed out on the cryptocurrency movement...
Early 2011 I mined a few coins, was fascinated by whole concept, and sadly forgot about it as quickly as I learned about it
In 2012, I moved across the country, and something sparked my interest again, likely Litecoin. I mined quite a few, acquired several Bitcoin, and then... Promptly forgot about it all over again! :( I'm sure some of you share my experiences...
Fast forward to the present, and I'm not missing out on this again!
With the rise of altcoins, I feel the ability for the small miner to hack out a decent amount of coins and turn a profit is here unlike anytime except very early in the history of cryptocurrency!
So I started a few weeks ago with what I had.
A decent PC I do video editing on:
Intel Core i7 4770k overclocked and water cooled
16 GB Ram
MSI GTX 960 2GB
I played around with a few pieces of software, and ran the Minergate client for a week. Bleh. Pathetic amounts of coins. Time to move on to command line miners!
I also realized I would need a more powerful GPU. To my surprise, every recent AMD card was sold out. Everywhere. I couldn't believe it! So after some sifting through Craigslist, I identified a XFX Radeon RX480 for sale. It was clear when he listed it, he didn't know the gold he was holding in his hand based on the price! By the time I texted him however, he had become aware!
A little negotiating and $300 later, I was the proud owner of my first new piece of hardware in my mining empire!
Now to only get an Nvidia card and an AMD card to play nicely in the same system... An hour of tweaking later, and it was done:
Now the miners were up and running, here's what that looks like:
I've decided to mine Monero to start, and started using monerohash.com as my pool. I don't believe I'll stay with the pool long term, likely just long enough to get a payout, then I'll move on to a better pool.
Currently, my rig is producing about 1.4 KH/s:
This translates into about .10 Monero a day, or about $160/mo at current prices. Not bad to recoup my initial investment in my opinion!
My plan is to expand to a dedicated AMD mining rig as I come across components. What do you think? Anything I could do more efficiently? I look forward to your comments and shared experiences in trying to capitalize on this new frontier!