4 ms·

So are you saying that someone could mine bitcoins from their day-to-day MacBook Pro and actually see a return on that? Edit: I get that I would need a USB min

So are you saying that someone could mine bitcoins from their day-to-day MacBook Pro and actually see a return on that? Edit: I get that I would need a USB miner. I could pick up a 12 port USB HUB from Amazon and 12 USB Miners for a few hundred dollars of an investment.

finnw 13y ago
Not by itself, but with a USB miner.
wmf 13y ago
As long as you have some mining ASICs attached to it and you can buy the ASICs at cost.
mbreese 13y ago
No. You'd need ~ $500 in upfront costs (12*~$40 + $20 USB hub, plus cooling - unless someone knows where to get USB ASICs cheaper - if so, I want to know!), and you're probably not going to make that back in any reasonable amount of time. There are online calculators to tell you what the time to get a return on your investment is, but ballpark, you'd be looking at 30-50 weeks minimum to get back your money. And that's factoring in running the system for 24 hours, which would put extra wear and tear on your MBP. And by that time, your effective rewards would be less for mining... etc...
- jason_slack 13y ago
  so it would be better to plug in this setup to a CentOS server that I have running all the time anyway which has a faster internet, 32gb ram, etc, etc
  - mbreese 13y ago
    Yes. If you have a setup where the extra cost of power and cooling is negligible, then you would be able to mine effectively for free. But then you still have the issue of buying the mining gear. And you'll probably never mine enough Bitcoins to ever pay back the initial purchase price. You'd be better served to just buy some coins from an exchange. I have a 330Mhash/sec USB ASIC miner running right now on an old netbook, but I'm just doing it for fun. It's been running now for the past 2 weeks, and I've made less than $2. I spent only $20 for my ASIC though, so it's not too bad. A similar miner today would cost $35-$40 on ebay.

finnw 13y ago

Not by itself, but with a USB miner.

wmf 13y ago

As long as you have some mining ASICs attached to it and you can buy the ASICs at cost.

mbreese 13y ago

No. You'd need ~ $500 in upfront costs (12*~$40 + $20 USB hub, plus cooling - unless someone knows where to get USB ASICs cheaper - if so, I want to know!), and you're probably not going to make that back in any reasonable amount of time. There are online calculators to tell you what the time to get a return on your investment is, but ballpark, you'd be looking at 30-50 weeks minimum to get back your money. And that's factoring in running the system for 24 hours, which would put extra wear and tear on your MBP. And by that time, your effective rewards would be less for mining... etc...

jason_slack 13y ago
so it would be better to plug in this setup to a CentOS server that I have running all the time anyway which has a faster internet, 32gb ram, etc, etc
- mbreese 13y ago
  Yes. If you have a setup where the extra cost of power and cooling is negligible, then you would be able to mine effectively for free. But then you still have the issue of buying the mining gear. And you'll probably never mine enough Bitcoins to ever pay back the initial purchase price. You'd be better served to just buy some coins from an exchange. I have a 330Mhash/sec USB ASIC miner running right now on an old netbook, but I'm just doing it for fun. It's been running now for the past 2 weeks, and I've made less than $2. I spent only $20 for my ASIC though, so it's not too bad. A similar miner today would cost $35-$40 on ebay.