Thinking about getting into mining on a small scale

dgingeri

dgingeri

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 5, 2004
Messages
2,830
I have a bit of hardware I have laying around not being used, and I've been thinking about getting it set up to do some crypto mining on a small scale. Only one has a halfway decent GPU, but they have decent processing power. I was using them for VM hosts for self training, but I think I've learned as much as I can for now in that area. I was wondering what you think of what I could do with these:

Pentium G3220 & Geforce GT730 (old HTPC, ran Netflix and Hulu until I replaced it with FireTV a year ago)
Core i7 4930k & Geforce G210 (old VMWare host for VPC training)
Core i7 4790k using integrated GPU (old MB and proc)
Ryzen 7 1700X & Geforce 8400GS (Hyper-V host for MCSE training)

I also have an old Core i5 2500k for my storage server, but I could potentially set up a VM to run 2 cores for low level mining, since the processor doesn't get much use serving out files and iscsi.

That's a total of 22 possible CPU cores doing mining. Could that pay enough for the power to run them at $0.11 per kWh?
 
I just started Saturday. My r7 1700@ 3.7 is only getting 1.70/day (50% usage) and my gtx 1070 is getting about $4-5 per day on nicehash.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: yowen
like this
dgingeri said:
Yeah, I don't have any spares of those. The GT730 is only a 35W GPU, and has 384 cuda cores. That could do a little something, couldn't it?
Click to expand...

Doesn't take much to download nicehash and to give it a whirl. But i doubt it'll be worth it, but at least you'd learn a bit about mining.

My 1050 TI has 768 Cuda cores and it nets roughly $35 - 40 / month, at an electric rate of 14 cents/kwh.
 
Last edited:
yowen said:
Doesn't take much to download nicehash and to give it a whirl. But i doubt it'll be worth it, but at least you'd learn a bit about mining.

My 1050 TI has 768 Cuda cores and it nets roughly $35 - 40 / month, at an electric rate of 14 cents/kwh.
Click to expand...

Takes a bit more than you might think. None of these machines are running Windows, nor do they have licenses. I'll have to install a Linux distro first.
 
Oh, I also have an AMD A4 5300 system. It sips power at barely over 25W for the whole system, including a 64GB SSD and 4GB of memory, but has a GPU built into the CPU. I used it for my router with pfsense for a while. It might be worth running, right?
 
dgingeri,

Did you look at the links I provided? If you ask a question - you should look at the clear answer provided...

a 730GT is probably about like a 650TI (closest GPU in the dropdown) A 650TI makes $.70 a month after electricity costs at .11 kw/h

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/NVIDIA-GTX-650-Ti?e=0.11&currency=USD


The AMD A4 5300 CPU you have would lose money.
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/AMD-CPU-A6-5400K?e=0.11&currency=USD


Your gear is just too old...


-----------


Now that Ryzen, as I mentioned - it'll make you a wee bit. about $50 a month at current rates.

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/amd-cpu-ryzen-7-1700x-400ghz?e=0.11&currency=USD
 
You would make more selling the hardware and buying something newer like a 1050TI. Most of what you have probably won't even run with today's mining software.
 
Archaea said:
dgingeri,

Did you look at the links I provided? If you ask a question - you should look at the clear answer provided...

a 730GT is probably about like a 650TI (closest GPU in the dropdown) A 650TI makes $.70 a month after electricity costs at .11 kw/h

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/NVIDIA-GTX-650-Ti?e=0.11&currency=USD


The AMD A4 5300 CPU you have would lose money.
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/AMD-CPU-A6-5400K?e=0.11&currency=USD


Your gear is just too old...


-----------


Now that Ryzen, as I mentioned - it'll make you a wee bit. about $50 a month at current rates.

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/amd-cpu-ryzen-7-1700x-400ghz?e=0.11&currency=USD
Click to expand...

Yeah, I looked and could not find anything relevant other than the Ryzen numbers. I did, however, find some numbers just a moment ago on the 650Ti, GT730, and the AMD A4.

First, I found this: https://cryptomining24.net/gpu-table-with-hashrate/ According to it, The GT730 can get about 1Mh/s in Ethereum, at a measly 23W max power draw, if it could work. Unfortunately, with my card being a 1GB card, it won't work with Ethereum. However, comparatively to the 650Ti as you provided, it does about half the calculation rate at only 1/3 the power draw. So, it would be a bit more profitable than the 650Ti. If it would work. I have discovered a bit downside to the hardware I have that kills the whole thing: not enough video memory. None of the GPUs I have would be able to fit the data files into memory, and therefore will fail at all this.

The A4 5300, though, is about half the power draw of the A6 5400k while being only about 1/3 slower, mostly due to the high clock rates of the A6 requiring higher voltages.

In any case, I'll start with the Ryzen, and get a GPU to go with it when I can. Right now would be idiotic to buy a GPU due to the recent price increases. Lots of people apparently got video cards with their Christmas gift cards to use for mining. Those prices will likely stay high for the next couple months, as people get tax returns and buy more GPUs for mining. I'm getting a nice $2000 return this year, but I wouldn't buy a GPU with it at the prices right now.
 
Try unified XMR-Stak, mine ETN or SUMO. I would suggest Fairpool.

Your GT730 might add 70hashes, about same as one Ryzen core.
Not my benchmark, since I don't own a GT730 to confirm or deny.
https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak/issues/289

I do own a Ryzen7, and not difficult to squeeze 600H/S out of it with
the stock heatsink.

I don't think you will earn anything significant, but might just pay for
electricity consumed by the experiment. Free heat in the winter.
My Core2Quad, i3, and Ryzen7 together bring in an extra $80/mo.
40H/S+120H/S+600H/S
 
Last edited:
Those old rigs just need some modern gpus; if you can get some for a good price is the challenge today.
 
Stick a couple cheapish video cards in the Ryzen system.. GTX 1050's, or 1060 3gb if you can get your hands on them. 6gb's are not worth asking price right now but a $300 3gb will still ROI in short enough time
 
So is Nicehash the easiest way do some casual mining? My second PC I just built has a 7700 and a GTX 1060 6gb that I could run almost 24/7 and my main PC could run probably 16 hours a day with a 4670k at 4.2 and a GTX 1070. Rate is 10.65c/hr.

Other than watching a few videos I'm not versed in mining.
 
Design1stcode2nd said:
So is Nicehash the easiest way do some casual mining? My second PC I just built has a 7700 and a GTX 1060 6gb that I could run almost 24/7 and my main PC could run probably 16 hours a day with a 4670k at 4.2 and a GTX 1070. Rate is 10.65c/hr.

Other than watching a few videos I'm not versed in mining.
Click to expand...
easiest yes... but they are scamming bastards that you can't put any faith in. Pull the funds out to coinbase as often as you can.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top