bitcoin_mining_pc

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Guide

The best Bitcoin mining hardware has evolved dramatically since 2009

At first, miners used their central processing unit (CPU) to mine, but soon this wasn't fast enough and it bogged down the system resources of the host computer. Miners quickly moved on to using the graphical processing unit (GPU) in computer graphics cards because they were able to hash data 50 to 100 times faster and consumed much less power per unit of work.

During the winter of 2011, a new industry sprang up with custom equipment that pushed the performance standards even higher. The first wave of these specialty bitcoin mining devices were easy to use Bitcoin miners were based on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors and attached to computers using a convenient USB connection.

FPGA miners used much less power than CPU's or GPU's and made concentrated mining farms possible for the first time.

Today's modern and best bitcoin mining hardware

Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners have taken over completely. These ASIC machines mine at unprecedented speeds while consuming much less power than FPGA or GPU mining rigs. Several reputable companies have established themselves with excellent products.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are:

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S9

Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Two major factors go into determining the best bitcoin mining hardware: (1) cost and (2) electricity efficiency.

Bitcoin mining is difficult to do profitably but if you try then this Bitcoin miner is probably a good shot.

ASIC Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Application-specific integrated circuit chips (ASICs) are bitcoin mining hardware created solely to solve Bitcoin blocks. They have only minimal requirements for other normal computer applications. Consequently, ASIC Bitcoin mining systems can solve Bitcoin blocks much quicker and use less less electricity or power than older bitcoin mining hardware like CPUs, GPUs or FPGAs.

As Bitcoin mining increases in popularity and the Bitcoin price rises so does the value of ASIC Bitcoin mining hardware. As more Bitcoin mining hardware is deployed to secure the Bitcoin network the Bitcoin difficulty rises. This makes it impossible to profitably compete without a Bitcoin ASIC system. Furthermore, Bitcoin ASIC technology keeps getting faster, more efficient and more productive so it keeps pushing the limits of what makes the best Bitcoin mining hardware.

Some models of Bitcoin miners include Antminer S5, Antminer U3, ASICMiner BE Tube, ASICMiner BE Prisma, Avalon 2, Avalon 3, BTC Garden AM-V1 616 GH/s, VMC PLATINUM 6 MODULE, and USB miners.

AntMiner U2

BPMC Red Fury USB

GekkoScience

Best Bitcoin Cloud Mining Services

For those not interested in operating the actual hardware then they can purchase Bitcoin cloud mining contracts. Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams.

Hashflare Review: Hashflare offers SHA-256 mining contracts and more profitable SHA-256 coins can be mined while automatic payouts are still in BTC. Customers must purchase at least 10 GH/s.

Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced. Zcash mining contracts are also available.

Hashing 24 Review: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.

Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.

Minergate Review: Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Bitcoin.

Hashnest Review: Hashnest is operated by Bitmain, the producer of the Antminer line of Bitcoin miners. HashNest currently has over 600 Antminer S7s for rent. You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website. At the time of writing one Antminer S7's hash rate can be rented for $1,200.

Bitcoin Cloud Mining Review: Currently all Bitcoin Cloud Mining contracts are sold out.

NiceHash Review: NiceHash is unique in that it uses an orderbook to match mining contract buyers and sellers. Check its website for up-to-date prices.

Eobot Review: Start cloud mining Bitcoin with as little as $10. Eobot claims customers can break even in 14 months.

MineOnCloud Review: MineOnCloud currently has about 35 TH/s of mining equipment for rent in the cloud. Some miners available for rent include AntMiner S4s and S5s.

Bitcoin mining pc

MultiMiner is a desktop application for crypto-coin mining and monitoring on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. MultiMiner simplifies switching individual devices (GPUs, ASICs, FPGAs) between crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin. MultiMiner uses the underlying mining engine (BFGMiner) to detect available mining hardware and then presents an intuitive screen for choosing the coins you'd like to mine.

• Screenshots
• All
• Mining
• Settings
• MobileMiner
• Development

End-to-end mining features

MultiMiner was designed from day-one to cater to both new miners and power users. From the Getting Started wizard to MultiMiner Remoting, you can be certain you've found the Bitcoin mining software to fit your needs.

In fact, many of the more advanced features in MultiMiner require no configuration, such as the automatic detection of Network Devices as well as the remote monitoring and control of MultiMiner rigs on your network - both from your PC and your smart-phone.

The New User

• A Getting Started wizard means getting mining quickly
• A familiar, intuitive interface allows users to get up-to-speed
• Automatic updates make keeping MultiMiner and BFGMiner updated simple
• Notifications alert you of profitable coins to consider mining

The Power User

• Configurable strategies for automatically mining currencies
• A built in Stratum Proxy allows you to point other miners at MultiMiner
• Integration with online services means information on available coins is always up-to-date
• Direct access to underlying mining engine arguments and API settings

The Coin Farmer

• Automatically detect, monitor, and control standalone miners on your network (such as those from AntMiner, Avalon, and KnC)
• Remotely monitor, configure and control any MultiMiner rig on your network
• Monitor all of your rigs at a glance on your mobile phone or browser using MobileMiner
• Install updates for MultiMiner and BFGMiner to all miners on your network with one click

It's completely brilliant. I think it's the only viable GUI mining software, and the stats and the API implementation with current pricing and profitability is completely outstanding.

MultiMiner downloads

MultiMiner requires an installation of Mono to run on both Mac OS X and Linux, and requires an installation of Xquartz on Mac OS X. The only pre-requisite on Windows is version 3.5 of the .NET Framework.

Click Here to download the latest version of MultiMiner.

Releases for MultiMiner are available both as installers and zip files and are made available regularly on the GitHub Releases Page for MultiMiner.

Click Here for more details instructions for installing MultiMiner on Mac OS X and Linux.

Depending on your OS and the mining devices you plan on using you will need one or more of the following drivers / kernel extensions installed:

Source Code

Click Here to view and download the current source code at the official GitHub repo.

As an Open Source project, the source code for MultiMiner is publicly available and regularly updated. Scroll down to find out how you can help contribute to MultiMiner development.

Contribute

Contribute to MultiMiner development

MultiMiner is an Open Source project with a permissive MIT license. Whether helping with features, bugs, or documentation, forking and contributing to MultiMiner is always welcome and encouraged.

The source code for MultiMiner is publicly available and regularly updated. You can download and compile the source code for MultiMiner using any of the following free tools:

MultiMiner source code

The source code for MultiMiner is structured in such a way that makes it easy to use and re-use for other projects.

The source on GitHub also includes a simple example that illustrates the basic functionality such as mining and monitoring mining progress.

Curious about cryptocurrency? Here’s how to build a simple mining rig.

More about mining

The right mining hardware is just part of the story. If you're serious about mining Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, check out our guide to what you need to know cryptocurrency mining.

Cryptocurrency mining has driven up GPU prices and is hurting gamers. But if you're dead set on spelunking into the cryptocurrency mines, you might as well know what you're getting into.

To be clear, we don't encourage this. But if you really want to start mining Bitcoin or Ethereum or another cryptocurrency, don't be too intimidated: if you've built a rig before, putting together a cryptocurrency mining PC is an easy weekend project that will let you learn how blockchain technology works, the limits of at-home hashing, and the real costs involved, some of which are hidden.

You should also be aware of the risks. Cryptocurrency is volatile, and there's no guarantee you'll make back the money you spend on your hardware as quickly as you expect. You could even lose it altogether. And keep in mind that every GPU sent into the mines is one more that could have spent its life pushing pixels in PUBG.

Financial philosophy aside, the hardware part of the bitcoin equation is simple. Despite their well-earned reputation for gobbling up GPUs, the rest of a mining rig’s layout is very lean. You won’t need a high-powered CPU, fancy motherboard, exotic DRAM, or even the Windows OS to bring it all together. In fact, other than a few odds and ends, you may already have most of the parts sitting in a garage or closet—leftovers from previous gaming rig upgrades. Here’s a quick overview of what you need, and why.

Firm foundations

A simple frame is all you need to house your mining rig, so wait for a sale or try DIY before spending hundreds of dollars on a 21st century pan and pickaxe.

Mining rigs start with a rudimentary open-frame enclosure for the motherboard and other components. While many prebuilt configurations exist, they can cost more than proper gaming cases since, in a long running tradition, suppliers often charge a premium on mining hardware.

Fortunately, there are frequently plenty of options on sale for under $100, and you can always make one from simple hardware store parts as the designs aren’t complicated. Ingenious crypto miners have used everything from nailed wooden planks to milk crates with good results.

The main point of the open-air frame is ventilation and space for the GPUs. With many rigs sporting a packed stable of full-sized graphics cards, it’s wise to ensure they can all breathe and run freely. It’s also much simpler to evaluate faulty fans, replace burned-out cards, clear dust, and perform other basic maintenance with the components in easy reach. The downsides are noise and exposure, so a separate, dry, well-ventilated room is recommended. The fan roar and exposed components don’t play well with others.

Motherboard

Flexibility and stable operation are the top considerations for mining motherboards, rather than all-out performance, since the goal is attaching as many GPUs as possible. Most recent gaming motherboards from top-tier manufacturers like Asus, MSI, or Gigabyte will suffice here, although check the documentation to see how many graphics cards the hardware can handle. Keep in mind that some BIOS adjustments will be required to maximize stability with more than a couple of cards.

While a hand-me-down gaming motherboard should be sufficient for a starter rig, serious enthusiasts use boards made for mining, such as this Asus B250 Mining Expert that supports a crazy 19 GPUs. MSRP is $150, but it's selling for $230 right now.

ASRock's H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard supports up to 13 graphics cards and is a good start for those that want to start dabbling in mining. It's going for $230, which says 30% off but the original MSRP was $140.

More serious cryptocurrency hobbyists use dedicated mining motherboards that have pre-tweaked BIOS settings and the ability to connect over a dozen GPUs. These aren’t particularly pricey parts either, at least in theory, with many coming in at around $100, so they are worth consideration if you already gave your old gaming board to a friend. But supply and demand issues are a recurring theme with mining rigs, and the boards that support more than six GPUs are often out of stock or seriously overpriced.

If you’ve been wondering how it’s even possible to cram that many GPUs into a motherboard, the trick is a piece of inexpensive hardware called a PCIe 1x to 16x riser card. This adapter allows bulky high-performance GPUs to attach to the motherboard’s slots via a cable rather than being plugged directly into the slot. Unlike gaming, cryptocurrency mining doesn’t require a high-bandwidth connection between the video card and the rest of the system, so any type of PCIe slot works just fine, including tiny 1x connectors—and they can be PCIe 1.x, 2.0, or 3.0 slots.

This is how you get half a dozen (or more) double-slot sized GPUs to fit on one motherboard. They come in 6-packs for around $50.

Virtually any reasonably modern multicore CPU will suffice in the center seat of a mining rig, along with a modest 4-8 GBs of DRAM. Don’t overclock or push exotic memory configurations, as the gains aren't be worth the stability risks. Celerons, single-stick memory configurations, and other money saving shortcuts are all fine here. This is a perfect place to use items off the spare parts shelf.

Dust off that dual-core Celeron, puny Pentium, or Ivy Bridge antique. They all work just fine in a mining rig. A Skylake Celeron can be had for a cheap $46 on Amazon.

There's a small corollary here, and it's that CPU mining of certain algorithms is still potentially profitable. The CryptoNight algorithm used in coins like Monero is the only real option these days, but you can mine about $1 per day from a Ryzen 7 processor—though it was as high as $3 back in January. You're probably better off buying another graphics card rather than worrying about CPU mining potential.

Graphics card

Right now, the best new GPUs for mining are all the high-end parts from AMD and Nvidia. At the original MSRPs, AMD’s Vega 56 and Nvidia's GTX 1070 would be good picks, and everything from the GTX 1060 and RX 570 and up is viable, but the situation is more complicated than it sounds.

AMD’s Vega 56 would be a great choice for crypto mining, if only you could find it for the original target price of $400. Right now they're expensive though. But check this listing to make sure.

With price gouging running rampant, the best bet may be special six pack deals, or alternatives such as old R290X/R390X cards that you might already have handy or can get for reasonable prices from a trusted source. Although power hungry, these older cards still provide good mining performance and are less subject to predatory cost increases, so they aren’t a bad option for people in areas with lower electricity rates. Be wary of second-hand cards formerly used in mining rigs however, as the stress shortens the lifespan of the hardware considerably.

Power supply

One area requiring investment is the power supply. Typical multi-GPU cryptocurrency setups require plenty of juice, more than even a high-end gaming system, and these PSUs will cost you. A gold rated power supply is minimum, since mining rigs run at constant high loads, and depending on what GPUs you're running (and how many of them), you'll want at least a 1000W output, if not more. High-end models from Seasonic, EVGA, and Corsair are all good choices.

Since you’ll need at least 1000W of quality power, a good PSU, or even a pair of them, is required. This Corsair HX1200i has the capacity for several high-end graphics cards.

If you need more power, EVGA's SuperNOVA 1600 goes to the max and is certified 80+ Gold for high efficiency. You'll need all the efficiency you can get.

For bigger rigs or miners on a budget, multiple power supplies can be connected to a single motherboard using a dual PSU 24 pin adaptor cable, a $5-10 part that allows both power supplies to be controlled by a single motherboard. This permits less expensive or already owned lower-wattage PSUs to be paired for a starter rig, or high-end PSUs to be paired for dozen GPU mining monsters.

Something else to keep in mind with power use is your power circuit. Most US homes come with 15A circuit breakers, which means a single circuit will top out at around 1725W. If you're thinking about setting up multiple mining rigs, you'll need to keep them on separate breakers.

RAM and storage

Good news: you may be paying a premium for a graphics card and a high capacity power supply, but you can cheap out a bit when it comes to your system memory and storage. We generally recommend at least 8GB for a PC running modern Windows, but you can get by with 4GB if you're really looking to save.

Likewise, the speed of your OS drive isn't important for mining. If you have an old hard drive or spare SSD around, that'll do the job just fine. If you're picking up a fresh part, grab a small SSD on the cheap. It'll make the system easier to use, and you don't need much storage space to keep your mining operation running.

The cheapest single DDR4 4GB DIMM we found goes for $47 on Amazon, which would have been even lower if memory prices weren't high this year.

Newegg has a single Patriot Memory 4GB DDR module for very slightly cheaper at $46. You only really need 4GB as there's not much going on in the memory-use front.

The best prebuilt Bitcoin mining rig

Building your own cryptocurrency mining rig is no harder than building any other custom PC. It's a great way to learn the inner workings of the hardware, and save some money over a prebuilt system (outrageous graphics card prices notwithstanding). But if you really don't have the time to build your own mining rig, buying prebuilt is always an option.

But should you buy a prebuilt desktop PC, or a dedicated mining rig with multiple graphics cards? Thanks to the cryptocurrency boom, the latter cost thousands of dollars on Ebay, both used and new. Buying used could net you heavily worn graphics cards with diminished lifespans. Either way, it's a huge investment if you're just getting started with mining.

For a more traditional prebuilt system, you'll be stuck with a maximum of two GPUs by default, and even prebuilts have been hit by the current GPU shortages. Interestingly, one of the best deals right now is an Alienware Aurora with dual GTX 1080 Ti GPUs for $2,550 (lesser GPUs are also available). That's an extreme gaming PC, but for mining purposes, the two GPUs on their own would cost around $2,000 right now, so why not pay an extra $100 to get a top-tier CPU and 16GB RAM (worth $400, incidentally)? And if the mining thing doesn't work out, you've still got a bodacious gaming PC.

Wrapping up

Along with a little software, that’s all it takes. But is at-home mining worth it? The answer isn’t always so simple, and is frequently situation dependent. Do you have cheap power rates? Hardware laying around? Friends with spare video cards? For the cryptocurrency curious who can say yes to these or other similar considerations, it may be worth giving mining a try. You’ll get a first-row seat to the spectacle and whether you make money or not, you can become an expert about bitcoin and blockchains. With crypto heists, market bubbles, and price crashes always in the news, that’s knowledge worth having, even if the only person asking is your uncle.

Our advice is to not invest more than you can afford to lose, and don't get caught thinking about breaking even and making a profit in just a few months. Realistically, right now the price gouging on graphics cards means you're looking at a best-case result of around seven months, assuming nothing goes haywire. If crypto prices drop further, it could take much longer to break even—and of course there's the possibility of another bubble. But if you already have most of the parts handy, you could give it a shot. Just stop buying up all our gaming GPUs, please.

Beginner’s Guide to Mining Bitcoins

Last updated on May 18th, 2018 at 03:08 pm

One of the biggest problems I ran into when I was looking to start mining Bitcoin for investment and profit was most of the sites were written for the advanced user. I am not a professional coder, I have no experience with Ubuntu, Linux and minimal experience with Mac. So, this is for the individual or group that wants to get started the easy way.

1. Get a Bitcoin mining rig

Bitcoin mining is a very competitive niche to get into. As more and more miners come on board with the latest mining hardware the difficulty to mine increases each day. Before even starting out with Bitcoin mining you need to do your due diligence. This means you need to find out if Bitcoin mining is even profitable for you.

The best way to do this is through the use of a Bitcoin mining calculator. Just enter the data of the Bitcoin miner you are planning on buying and see how long it will take you to break even or make a profit. However, I can tell you from the get go that if you don’t have a few hundred dollars to spare you probably won’t be able to mine any Bitcoins.

Once you’ve finished with your calculations it’s time to get your miner. Make sure to go over our different Bitcoin mining hardware reviews to understand which miner is best for you. Today, the Antminer S9 is the newest and most powerful miner.

Select miner

AntMiner S9

Antminer R4

Antminer T9

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S5

Antrouter R1

As a side note it’s important to state that in the past it was possible to mine Bitcoins with your computer or with a graphics card (also known as GPU mining). Today however, the mining niche has become so competitive that you’ll need to use ASIC miners – special computers built strictly for mining Bitcoins.

2. Get a Bitcoin wallet

First thing you need to do is get a “Bitcoin Wallet“. Because Bitcoin is an internet based currency, you need a place to keep your Bitcoins. Once you have a wallet make sure to get your wallet address. It will be a long sequence of letters and numbers. Each wallet has a different way to get the public Bitcoin address but most wallets are pretty straight forward about it. Notice that you’ll need your PUBLIC bitcoin address and not your PRIVATE KEY (which is like a password for your wallet).

If you’re using a self hosted wallet (i.e. you downloaded a program to your computer and are not using an internet based service) there’s one additional very important step. Make sure you have a copy of the wallet.dat file on a thumb drive and print a copy out and keep it in a safe location. You can view a tutorial on how to create a secure wallet here. The reason is that if you computer crashes and you do not have a copy of your wallet.dat file, you will lose all of your Bitcoins. They won’t go to someone else, they will disappear forever. It is like burning cash.

3. Find a mining pool

Now that you have a wallet you are probably roaring to go, but if you actually want to make Bitcoin (money), you probably need to join a mining pool. A mining pool is a group of Bitcoin miners that combines their computing power to make more Bitcoins. The reason you shouldn’t go it alone is that Bitcoins are awarded in blocks, usually 12.5 at a time, and unless you get extremely lucky, you will not be getting any of those coins.

In a pool, you are given smaller and easier algorithms to solve and all of your combined work will make you more likely to solve the bigger algorithm and earn Bitcoins that are spread out throughout the pool based on your contribution. Basically, you will make a more consistent amount of Bitcoins and will be more likely to receive a good return on your investment.

When choosing which mining pool to join you will need to ask several questions:

• What is the reward method? – Proportional/Pay Per Share/Score Based/PPLNS
• What fee they charge for mining and withdrawal of funds?
• How frequently they find a block (means how frequently I get rewarded)?
• How easy it is to withdraw funds?
• What kind of stats they provide?
• How stable is the pool?

To answer most of these questions you can use our best Bitcoin mining pools review or this excellent post from BitcoinTalk. You can also find a complete comparison of mining pools inside the Bitcoin wiki. For the purpose of demonstration I will use Slush’s Pool when mining for Bitcoins. Once you are signed up with a pool you will get a username and password for that specific pool which we will use later on.

Follow the link to go to their site and click the “Sign up here” link at the top of their site and follow their step by step instructions. After you have your account set up, you will need to add a “Worker”. Basically, for every miner that you have running, you will need to have a worker ID so the pool can keep track of your contributions.

4. Get a mining program for your computer

Now that you’ve got the basics covered we’re almost ready to mine. You will need a mining client to run on your computer to that you will be able to control and monitor your mining rig. Depending on what mining rig you got you will need to find the right software. Many mining pools have their own software but some don’t. You can find a list of Bitcoin mining software here.

I’m using a mac so I will use a program called MacMiner. The most popular program I’ve found for a PC are BFGMiner and 50Miner . If you want to compare different mining software you can do this here.

5. Start mining

OK, so hopefully now everything is ready to go. Connect you miner to a power outlet and fire it up. Make sure to connect it also to your computer (usually via USB) and open up your mining software. The first thing you’ll need to do is to enter your mining pool, username and password.

Once this is configured you’ll basically start mining for Bitcoins. You will actually start collections shares which represent your part of the work in finding the next block. According to the pool you’ve chosen you will be paid for your share of coins – just make sure that you enter your address in the required fields when signing up to the pool. Here’s a full video of me mining in action:

Conclusion – perhaps it’s better just to buy the coins?

To conclude this article here’s something to consider. Perhaps it would be more profitable for you to just buy Bitcoins with the money you plan to spend on Bitcoin mining. Many times just buying the coins will yield a higher ROI (return on investment) than mining. If you want to dig into this a bit deeper here’s a post about exactly that.

I'm about to write a bunch of really weird words in a row, but I need you to hang in there. We'll get through this together. Are you ready?

ASRock has just released a new motherboard series designed specifically to mine for Bitcoins. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time PC hardware has been built with Bitcoins in mind. Actually, these are the first PC components built to, theoretically, make you money.

Let's back up a little bit. Bitcoins are the internet-based, peer-to-peer currency, as explained in the video above. At about 0:30 in the video, the narrator mentions Bitcoin mining in passing, but it deserves a little more attention. The miner is an application that solves math problems to generate coins, but in order to curb inflation and stabilize this decentralized currency, every time a Bitcoin is created, the algorithms needed to make the next one get a little more complex. After years of this process and over $400 million worth of Bitcoins now floating through the electronic ether, the algorithms are getting brutal enough to make a gaming rig groan as it chews through them.

Enter: the ASRock Pro BTC-series motherboards. These babies sport enough room for six graphics cards (GPUs are the mining tool of choice) and some extra power connectors to light up all that hardware. There's no price listed yet, but considering the rates of return some early Bitcoin adopters have seen, it could be a worth investment for those interested. On the other hand, Bitcoin is prone to wild price fluctuations , so maybe it's best not to joke around with money you can't afford to spare.

Still, all that aside, you can keep your flying cars and laser beams; I'm living in a future where computers solve math problems to make money. After we sort out the Holodeck, I'm pretty much set as far as technology goes.

Bitcoin mining pc

Can i do mining with a normal PC?

I don't have too many expectations. Maybe 0,1 in one week?

No, not possible. You will effectively compete against all computational resources on Earth, that are now cracking this nut. If I can estimate, a humble home PC will produce around 1 - 100 MH/s, based on CPU or GPU mining stats. This range covers different CPUs and single-GPU computers. You can compare hash rate with the profit estimate using this calculator. Based on the hash-rate, your electricity bill will much out-weight any profit from mining.

To achieve a 0,1 BTC/week you'd have to invest in a pretty expensive, power-hungry ASIC box that can produce tens of GH/sec, subject to ever-increasing complexity.

TechRadar pro

Best mining PC 2018: the best desktop PCs for mining Bitcoin, Ethereum and more

Buy a ready-made mining rig

Amid the mining of blocks and chains currently keeping PC components alive, you’re best off to refrain from building your own computer for the time being, so if you're keen on getting into mining, you'll want to check out our list of the best mining PCs that you can buy right now.

Because the demand for the best mining GPUs is so high, it means getting your hands on a graphics card can be difficult - and expensive. This has led to a rather bizarre situation where it's actually cheaper to buy a whole new PC for mining, rather than a single graphics card!

Also, if you're not interested in fiddling around with wires and components, it means you can get a ready-made desktop PC that can start mining cryptocurrency as quickly as possible.

So, here are the best mining PCs you can buy in 2018.

The best mining PCs 2018

1. Alienware Area 51 Threadripper Edition

Top-notch power comes at a cost

CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X | Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 – 1080 Ti | RAM: 8GB – 32GB | Storage: 2TB HDD – 1TB SSD; 2TB HDD

2. Origin Millennium

Two GPUs for improved mining performance

CPU: Intel Core i3-7350K – i7-6950X | Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 480 – 2 x Nvidia Titan X | RAM: 16GB DDR4 (2,400MHz) – 64GB DDR4 (2,800MHz) | Storage: 1TB HDD – 8TB HDD; 4TB SSD

If you don't mind spending (a lot) of money, then the Origin Millennium PC is a worthy choice for the ultimate mining PC. This is because you can deck it out with some seriously impressive components, such as two EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition graphics cards and the Intel Broadwell-E Core i7-6950X processor, which gives you an excellent base for mining with. If you're canny with your mining and cryptocurrency choice, you could even end up making a decent profit after paying off the cost of this beast.

Read the full review: Origin Millennium

• This product is only available in the US at the time of writing. UK and Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Overclockers 8Pack Asteroid.

3. Dell XPS Tower Special Edition

Don’t be fooled, this mainstream machine is a gaming PC at heart

CPU: : Intel Core i5 – Core i7 | Graphics: : AMD Radeon RX 580 – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 | RAM: 8GB – 16GB | Storage: 256GB SSD; 1TB HDD – 512GB SSD; 2TB HDD

How to Set Up a Bitcoin Miner

Last updated: 26th November 2013

There are three main categories of bitcoin mining hardware, each more expensive and more powerful than the last. This guide to setting up a bitcoin miner explains each of them, and talks about how to make them work.

By this stage, you will understand how bitcoin works, and what mining means. But we need to get from theory to practice. How can you set up a bitcoin mining hardware and start generating some digital cash? The first thing you're going to need to do is decide on your hardware, and there are two main things to think about when choosing it:

This is the number of calculations that your hardware can perform every second as it tries to crack the mathematical problem we described in our mining section. Hash rates are measured in megahashes, gigahashes, and terahashes per second (MH/sec, GH/sec, and TH/sec. The higher your hash rate (compared to the current average hash rate), the more likely you are to solve a transaction block. The bitcoin wiki's mining hardware comparison page is a good place to go for rough information on hash rates for different hardware.

Energy consumption

All this computing power chews up electricity, and that costs money. It's worth looking at your hardware's energy consumption in watts, when making your choice. You want to make sure that you don't end up spending all of your money on electricity to mine coins that won't be worth what you paid.

Use these two factors to work out how many hashes you're getting for every watt of electricity that you use. To do this, divide the hash count by the number of watts.

For example, if you have a 500 GH/sec device, and it's taking 400 watts of power, then you're getting 1.25 GH/sec per watt. You can check your power bill or use an electricity price calculator online to find out how much that means in hard cash.

However, there's a caveat here. In some cases, you'll be using your computer to run the mining hardware. Your computer has its own electricity draw on top of the mining hardware, and you'll need to factor that into your calculation.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware

There are three main hardware categories for bitcoin miners: GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs. We'll explore them in depth below.

CPU/GPU Bitcoin Mining

The least powerful category of bitcoin mining hardware is your computer itself. Theoretically, you could use your computer's CPU to mine for bitcoins, but in practice, this is so slow by today's standards that there isn't any point.

You can enhance your bitcoin hash rate by adding graphics hardware to your desktop computer. Graphics cards feature graphical processing units (GPUs). These are designed for heavy mathematical lifting so they can calculate all the complex polygons needed in high-end video games. This makes them particularly good at the SHA hashing mathematics necessary to solve transaction blocks.

You can buy GPUs from two main vendors: ATI and Nvidia. High-end cards can cost hundreds of dollars, but also give you a significant advantage over CPU hashing. For example, an ATI 5970 graphics card can give you over 800 MH/sec compared with a CPU, which will generally give you less than 10 MH/sec.

One of the nice things about GPUs is that they also leave your options open. Unlike other options discussed later, these units can be used with cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. Litecoin, for example, uses a different proof of work algorithm to bitcoin, called Scrypt. This has been optimized to be friendly to CPUs and GPUs, making them a good option for GPU miners who want to switch between different currencies.

GPU mining is largely dead these days. Bitcoin mining difficulty has accelerated so much with the release of ASIC mining power that graphics cards can't compete. If you do want to use them, you'd best equip yourself with a motherboard that can take multiple boards, to save on running separate PSUs for different boards.

FPGA Bitcoin Mining

A Field Programmable Gate Array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured after being built. This enables a mining hardware manufacturer to buy the chips in volume, and then customize them for bitcoin mining before putting them into their own equipment. Because they are customized for mining, they offer performance improvements over CPUs and GPUs. Single-chip FPGAs have been seen operating at around 750 Megahashes/sec, although that's at the high end. It is of course possible to put more than one chip in a box.

ASIC Bitcoin Miners

This is where the action's really at. Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are specifically designed to do just one thing: mine bitcoins at mind-crushing speeds, with relatively low power consumption. Because these chips have to be designed specifically for that task and then fabricated, they are expensive and time-consuming to produce - but the speeds are stunning. At the time of writing, units are selling with speeds anywhere from 5-500 Gigahashes/sec (although actually getting some of them to them to ship has been a problem). Vendors are already promising ASIC devices with far more power, stretching up into the 2 Terahashes/sec range.

In September 2015, 21 released its 'Bitcoin Computer', which houses a mining chip and retails for around $400. It is aimed at developers to build applications with and not those wishing to mine bitcoin for profit.

21's 'Bitcoin Computer', which is aimed at developers and retails for $400.

Calculate mining profitability

Before making your purchase, calculate the projected profitability of your miner, using the excellent mining profitability calculator from The Genesis Block or this one. You can input parameters such as equipment cost, hash rate, power consumption, and the current bitcoin price to see how long it will take to pay back your investment.

One of the other key parameters here is network difficulty. This metric determines how hard it is to solve transaction blocks, and it varies according to the network hash rate. Difficulty is likely to increase substantially as ASIC devices come on the market, so it might be worth increasing this metric in the calculator to see what your return on investment will be like as more people join the game. Use this guide on calculating mining profitability for more information.

Once you have chosen your hardware, you'll need to do several other things:

Download the software

Depending on which equipment you choose, you will need to run software to make use of it. Typically when using GPUs and FPGAs, you will need a host computer running two things: the standard bitcoin client, and the mining software.

Standard bitcoin client

This software connects your computer to the network and enables it to interact with the bitcoin clients, forwarding transactions and keeping track of the block chain. It will take some time for it to download the entire bitcoin block chain so that it can begin. The bitcoin client effectively relays information between your miner and the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin mining software

The bitcoin mining software is what instructs the hardware to do the hard work, passing through transaction blocks for it to solve. There are a variety of these available, depending on your operating system. They are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and others.

You may well need mining software for your ASIC miner, too, although some newer models promise to ship with everything pre-configured, including a bitcoin address, so that all you need to do is plug it in the wall.

One smart developer even produced a mining operating system designed to run on the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost credit card-sized Linux computer designed to consume very small amounts of power. This could be used to power a USB-connected ASIC miner.

Join a pool

Now, you're all set up. Good for you. I bet you thought you were going to be mining more bitcoins than the Federal Reserve prints dollars, didn't you? Sadly not. You will stand little chance of success mining bitcoins unless you work with other people. You can find out more about that in our upcoming guide on how to join a mining pool.

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I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount

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I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

chithidio@Yahoo.com

i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.

Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?

Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?

Rahyaftco@yahoo.com

RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means

Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

What is Bitcoin Mining?

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are:

AntRouter R1

Antminer S9

BPMC Red Fury USB

• Overview - Table of Contents
• What is Bitcoin Mining?
• Technical Background
• Bitcoin Mining Hardware
• Bitcoin Mining Software
• Bitcoin Cloud Mining
• Mining Infographic
• What is Proof of Work?
• What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?
• Other Languages

Before we begin.

Before you read further, please understand that most bitcoin users don't mine! But if you do then this Bitcoin miner is probably the best deal. Bitcoin mining for profit is very competitive and volatility in the Bitcoin price makes it difficult to realize monetary gains without also speculating on the price. Mining makes sense if you plan to do it for fun, to learn or to support the security of Bitcoin and do not care if you make a profit. If you have access to large amounts of cheap electricity and the ability to manage a large installation and business, you can mine for a profit.

If you want to get bitcoins based on a fixed amount of mining power, but you don't want to run the actual hardware yourself, you can purchase a mining contract.

Another tool many people like to buy is a Bitcoin debit card which enables people to load a debit card with funds via bitcoins.

What is Bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin mining is a lot like a giant lottery where you compete with your mining hardware with everyone on the network to earn bitcoins. Faster Bitcoin mining hardware is able to attempt more tries per second to win this lottery while the Bitcoin network itself adjusts roughly every two weeks to keep the rate of finding a winning block hash to every ten minutes. In the big picture, Bitcoin mining secures transactions that are recorded in Bitcon's public ledger, the block chain. By conducting a random lottery where electricity and specialized equipment are the price of admission, the cost to disrupt the Bitcoin network scales with the amount of hashing power that is being spent by all mining participants.

Technical Background

During mining, your Bitcoin mining hardware runs a cryptographic hashing function (two rounds of SHA256) on what is called a block header. For each new hash that is tried, the mining software will use a different number as the random element of the block header, this number is called the nonce. Depending on the nonce and what else is in the block the hashing function will yield a hash which looks something like this:

You can look at this hash as a really long number. (It's a hexadecimal number, meaning the letters A-F are the digits 10-15.) To ensure that blocks are found roughly every ten minutes, there is what's called a difficulty target. To create a valid block your miner has to find a hash that is below the difficulty target. So if for example the difficulty target is

any number that starts with a zero would be below the target, e.g.:

If we lower the target to

we now need two zeros in the beginning to be under it:

Because the target is such an unwieldy number with tons of digits, people generally use a simpler number to express the current target. This number is called the mining difficulty. The mining difficulty expresses how much harder the current block is to generate compared to the first block. So a difficulty of 70000 means to generate the current block you have to do 70000 times more work than Satoshi Nakamoto had to do generating the first block. To be fair, back then mining hardware and algorithms were a lot slower and less optimized.

To keep blocks coming roughly every 10 minutes, the difficulty is adjusted using a shared formula every 2016 blocks. The network tries to change it such that 2016 blocks at the current global network processing power take about 14 days. That's why, when the network power rises, the difficulty rises as well.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware

In the beginning, mining with a CPU was the only way to mine bitcoins and was done using the original Satoshi client. In the quest to further secure the network and earn more bitcoins, miners innovated on many fronts and for years now, CPU mining has been relatively futile. You might mine for decades using your laptop without earning a single coin.

About a year and a half after the network started, it was discovered that high end graphics cards were much more efficient at bitcoin mining and the landscape changed. CPU bitcoin mining gave way to the GPU (Graphical Processing Unit). The massively parallel nature of some GPUs allowed for a 50x to 100x increase in bitcoin mining power while using far less power per unit of work.

While any modern GPU can be used to mine, the AMD line of GPU architecture turned out to be far superior to the nVidia architecture for mining bitcoins and the ATI Radeon HD 5870 turned out to be the most cost effective choice at the time.

As with the CPU to GPU transition, the bitcoin mining world progressed up the technology food chain to the Field Programmable Gate Array. With the successful launch of the Butterfly Labs FPGA 'Single', the bitcoin mining hardware landscape gave way to specially manufactured hardware dedicated to mining bitcoins.

While the FPGAs didn't enjoy a 50x - 100x increase in mining speed as was seen with the transition from CPUs to GPUs, they provided a benefit through power efficiency and ease of use. A typical 600 MH/s graphics card consumed upwards of 400w of power, whereas a typical FPGA mining device would provide a hashrate of 826 MH/s at 80w of power.

That 5x improvement allowed the first large bitcoin mining farms to be constructed at an operational profit. The bitcoin mining industry was born.

The bitcoin mining world is now solidly in the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) era. An ASIC is a chip designed specifically to do one thing and one thing only. Unlike FPGAs, an ASIC cannot be repurposed to perform other tasks.

An ASIC designed to mine bitcoins can only mine bitcoins and will only ever mine bitcoins. The inflexibility of an ASIC is offset by the fact that it offers a 100x increase in hashing power while reducing power consumption compared to all the previous technologies.

Unlike all the previous generations of hardware preceding ASIC, ASIC may be the "end of the line" when it comes to disruptive mining technology. CPUs were replaced by GPUs which were in turn replaced by FPGAs which were replaced by ASICs. There is nothing to replace ASICs now or even in the immediate future.

There will be stepwise refinement of the ASIC products and increases in efficiency, but nothing will offer the 50x to 100x increase in hashing power or 7x reduction in power usage that moves from previous technologies offered. This makes power consumption on an ASIC device the single most important factor of any ASIC product, as the expected useful lifetime of an ASIC mining device is longer than the entire history of bitcoin mining.

It is conceivable that an ASIC device purchased today would still be mining in two years if the device is power efficient enough and the cost of electricity does not exceed it's output. Mining profitability is also dictated by the exchange rate, but under all circumstances the more power efficient the mining device, the more profitable it is. If you want to try your luck at bitcoin mining then this Bitcoin miner is probably the best deal.

Bitcoin Mining Software

There are two basic ways to mine: On your own or as part of a Bitcoin mining pool or with Bitcoin cloud mining contracts and be sure to avoid Bitcoin cloud mining scams. Almost all miners choose to mine in a pool because it smooths out the luck inherent in the Bitcoin mining process. Before you join a pool, make sure you have a bitcoin wallet so you have a place to store your bitcoins. Next you will need to join a mining pool and set your miner(s) to connect to that pool. With pool mining, the profit from each block any pool member generates is divided up among the members of the pool according to the amount of hashes they contributed.

How much bandwidth does Bitcoin mining take? If you are using a bitcoin miner for mining with a pool then the amount should be negligible with about 10MB/day. However, what you do need is exceptional connectivity so that you get any updates on the work as fast as possible.

This gives the pool members a more frequent, steady payout (this is called reducing your variance), but your payout(s) can be decreased by whatever fee the pool might charge. Solo mining will give you large, infrequent payouts and pooled mining will give you small, frequent payouts, but both add up to the same amount if you're using a zero fee pool in the long-term.

Bitcoin Cloud Mining

By purchasing Bitcoin cloud mining contracts, investors can earn Bitcoins without dealing with the hassles of mining hardware, software, electricity, bandwidth or other offline issues.

Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services and is to serve merely as a Bitcoin cloud mining comparison. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams.

Hashflare Review: Hashflare offers SHA-256 mining contracts and more profitable SHA-256 coins can be mined while automatic payouts are still in BTC. Customers must purchase at least 10 GH/s.

Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced. Zcash mining contracts are also available.

Hashing 24 Review: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

Bitcoin mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions. This ledger of past transactions is called the block chain as it is a chain of blocks. The block chain serves to confirm transactions to the rest of the network as having taken place.

Bitcoin nodes use the block chain to distinguish legitimate Bitcoin transactions from attempts to re-spend coins that have already been spent elsewhere.

Bitcoin mining is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and difficult so that the number of blocks found each day by miners remains steady. Individual blocks must contain a proof of work to be considered valid. This proof of work is verified by other Bitcoin nodes each time they receive a block. Bitcoin uses the hashcash proof-of-work function.

The primary purpose of mining is to allow Bitcoin nodes to reach a secure, tamper-resistant consensus. Mining is also the mechanism used to introduce Bitcoins into the system: Miners are paid any transaction fees as well as a "subsidy" of newly created coins.

This both serves the purpose of disseminating new coins in a decentralized manner as well as motivating people to provide security for the system.

Bitcoin mining is so called because it resembles the mining of other commodities: it requires exertion and it slowly makes new currency available at a rate that resembles the rate at which commodities like gold are mined from the ground.

What is Proof of Work?

A proof of work is a piece of data which was difficult (costly, time-consuming) to produce so as to satisfy certain requirements. It must be trivial to check whether data satisfies said requirements.

Producing a proof of work can be a random process with low probability, so that a lot of trial and error is required on average before a valid proof of work is generated. Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work.

What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty?

The Computationally-Difficult Problem

Bitcoin mining a block is difficult because the SHA-256 hash of a block's header must be lower than or equal to the target in order for the block to be accepted by the network.

This problem can be simplified for explanation purposes: The hash of a block must start with a certain number of zeros. The probability of calculating a hash that starts with many zeros is very low, therefore many attempts must be made. In order to generate a new hash each round, a nonce is incremented. See Proof of work for more information.

The Bitcoin Network Difficulty Metric

The Bitcoin mining network difficulty is the measure of how difficult it is to find a new block compared to the easiest it can ever be. It is recalculated every 2016 blocks to a value such that the previous 2016 blocks would have been generated in exactly two weeks had everyone been mining at this difficulty. This will yield, on average, one block every ten minutes.

As more miners join, the rate of block creation will go up. As the rate of block generation goes up, the difficulty rises to compensate which will push the rate of block creation back down. Any blocks released by malicious miners that do not meet the required difficulty target will simply be rejected by everyone on the network and thus will be worthless.

The Block Reward

When a block is discovered, the discoverer may award themselves a certain number of bitcoins, which is agreed-upon by everyone in the network. Currently this bounty is 25 bitcoins; this value will halve every 210,000 blocks. See Controlled Currency Supply or use a bitcoin mining calculator.

Additionally, the miner is awarded the fees paid by users sending transactions. The fee is an incentive for the miner to include the transaction in their block. In the future, as the number of new bitcoins miners are allowed to create in each block dwindles, the fees will make up a much more important percentage of mining income.

Blitzboom and the guys from #bitcoin-dev for their help with writing the guide!