This post reveals the programs for mining on different hardware.
Developments in the cryptocurrency markets, especially the explosive growth of Bitcoin, have led to the fact that cryptocurrency mining software is of interest to an increasing number of ordinary users.Â
Today, many people want to become owners of such interesting assets. Potential miners are especially attracted by the understanding (maybe not quite right) that there is no need to invest money to mine coins – it is enough to have a PC with the appropriate software installed at hand.
Table of Contents
A Few Words About Mining In General
For those who want to participate in mining bitcoin, litecoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies, there are 2 real ways:
- Use your own equipment for this purpose.
- Use cloud mining.
The second of these ways is much easier. It consists of the fact that the user rents or buys a part of the specialized high-performance equipment, working specifically for coin mining.Â
As a rule, the user buys (rents) the productivity (in GH/s), and the remuneration is calculated in proportion to it.
This solution has many positive aspects:
- Simplicity. All you have to do is register an account and rent (buy out) the power you want. There are no problems with installing and configuring the software, determining the parameters of your own hardware, etc. – All this work is done by the service personnel of the data center, which is used by the mining hosting service provider.
- Minimum cost. Self-mining only seems to be free – in reality, the user has to pay for electricity, spend it on cooling the equipment. In addition, loaded video cards and CPUs rather quickly exhaust their resource and malfunction, which entails the cost of buying new equipment. Cloud mining is not associated with such costs – only a one-time (or regular) payment for the lease of power is made.
- Ease of revenue management. Since the power is rented from solid capacity farms, the profitability of the cloud mining process is a predictable value and depends only on the time of use and the rented portion of the power. At the same time, the process is completely controllable for the user – at any moment he can get rid of part of the equipment or, on the contrary, increase his participation.
Of course, there are also some disadvantages:
- Selling (leasing) the equipment occurs at prices somewhat higher than its real value;
- Various commissions to the hardware owner and similar payments regularly “eat up” part of the income;
- Real cloud services (such as those that have their own connection pool) are few and far between on the Internet. In most cases, such services are offered by fly-by-night companies masquerading as such, which only collect user funds and disappear.
In short, it is up to the user to choose the path. For those who decided to try the option of self-mining, you need software miners.
Mining Software – How To Choose
Choosing the right miner program depends on many conditions. The main ones are:
- The equipment for which the program is designed.
- Supported crypto algorithms.
- The list of cryptocurrencies whose mining can be set up.
- Support for independent mining and pools
- Type of application, etc.
Programs For Mining On Different Hardware
Software for mining cryptocurrencies is divided by the hardware used into the following types:
- Programs for generation on the CPU (CPU miner).
- Software that uses the free resources of the video card (GPU miner).
- Specialized programs that work with high-performance ASIC equipment.
- Universal utilities that allow you to select the PC resources to be used when setting up.
Nowadays, CPU mining can only justify itself when mining newly emerging cryptocurrencies. The fact is that almost all of them pass the beaten path of bitcoin – the first utilities appear to solve the cryptographic task on the CPU, then the software is developed to use the video card resources, and if the coin gets enough popularity – on ASIC equipment.
CPU-based mining requires less energy, but is inferior to other options in terms of performance. That is why at the moment mining on CPUs does not justify itself practically for any of known coins.
Nevertheless, programs for mining on the processor exist and are regularly updated. Some of the best known programs are Claymore CPU, Wolf's CPU Miner and YAM CPU.
Mining on video cards is superior to using CPU resources. However, before attempting to earn a few crypto coins, there are a few important points to understand:
- Integrated video cards that use system memory (e.g. Intel video chips for low-cost solutions) do not allow for mining (and mining software does not practically support such equipment).
- Software for working with AMD and nVidia cards is usually different, although there are universal programs that support all types of cards. Before downloading a program, you should make sure that your particular video card is supported.
- Many programs are sensitive to hardware drivers, so you should use the latest working versions from the hardware manufacturers.
- Hardware characteristics such as the amount of memory, its type and speed, the number of streaming cores, the bus bit do matter. Achieve any acceptable results can be achieved only on high-performance cards.
- Work at full load and cooling. Since mining uses the free resources of the graphics processor, the operation mode of the card is much heavier than normal, respectively, requires a more efficient cooling system. In addition, the service life of the equipment may be considerably reduced. Before you start mining, you should assess whether the profit you get will be able to recoup such expenses.
Most of the most popular cryptocurrency mining programs fall into this category. In this list – the undisputed leader CGMiner, handy GUIMiner, universal (working with cards of both popular manufacturers) Claymore's Dual Miner, NiceHash Miner and many other well-known programs.
INTERESTING POSTS
About the Author:
Daniel Segun is the Founder and CEO of SecureBlitz Cybersecurity Media, with a background in Computer Science and Digital Marketing. When not writing, he's probably busy designing graphics or developing websites.
