Bitcoin Mining
Ever since I wrote that article about bitcoins, a fair number of readers have been asking about mining and general investment into bitcoins. We’re putting together a new article. We hope to review some bitcoin gear in the coming months.
In the meantime, we’d like to impart our experience with mining. If we get enough questions on what that means we’ll make a post for that. Hopefully everyone knows what a bitcoin is and what mining is all about by now.
- You can mine using a consumer grade PC.
- The CPU, unlike what you might think, isn’t well suited for mining. The GPU is. So… you’ll need something like an NVidia 1070, 1080 or 1080Ti or the AMD equivalent to get any hope of being profitable.
- Use an SSD drive (for power savings). A 128GB should go fine.
- Your power costs will determine profitability. If you live where power is expensive, make sure you factor it in. Many people spend thousands of dollars to find they only break even after a year (or two). Ouch.
- Whatever you get, make sure you disable power saving features, keep the BIOS, firmware and drivers up to date.