ASIC Mining (cgminer, bfgminer, also some custom software that ships with various ASIC's)Ĭurrently the most efficient method is to use ASIC miners as with the difficulty always increasing, it becomes harder and harder to gain returns on lower spec hardware.There are several options for Mining Bitcoins some of these are no longer profitable, but for the sake of being thorough here they are in order of efficiency lowest to highest: In your specific case, you have no ASICs or FPGAs, so you will earn less than a penny of Bitcoin. What is a good mining pool/payout model for infrequent mining?.What is a Mining Pool, what is it good for?.You can now see your progress at the pool's website. So select device you want to mine with (probably your FPGA/ASIC), enter the pool URL (if you don't know what it is, check the FAQ/help section of your pool's website) and your username/password.
It has a simple interface, a drop down menu with a list of pre-configured pools and it is not difficult to setup.Īfter you install the miner, you need to point it towards your pool. You can then try others, according to your needs. If you just want to try things out, choose one of the most popular pools like Deepbit or BTC Guild.
The main differences between them are the payout models and the fees. The stickies in this bitcointalk section have links for the top 10 pools. So the first thing to do is to sign up at a bitcoin pool. Unless you have a lot of computing power (several ASICs), you should probably mine at a pool. There are two options: solo mining or pool mining. How much Bitcoin will I mine right now with hardware X?īefore you go through all this work, it is important to know what to expect from your hardware.