Trying to set up my PC to mine ZCash (Newbie)

Dear friends,
I’m new to all this and I’m trying to start mining on a Linux Ubuntu PC. Here’s the hardware configuration:

CPU: Intel Pentium G2030 3GHZ, 2 core
Motherboard: ASUS P8H61-MLXR2.0
RAM: 4 GB
HD: 74.53 GB

  • First, I followed the steps found here: Debian binary packages
  • Then I followed the instructions in the user guide under “Configuration” and “Enable CPU mining”

I didn’t proceed with running it, yet.

I understand that mining in a pool can be more profitable that mining alone. So I would like to join a pool. I randomly came to flypool and I read that I should “Choose your mining server” (I’m in Europe) but it’s not quite clear to me how to do that.

If I ever get to actually start mining zcash, I’d like to connect it to my poloniex account so that any gains are moved directly there.

So, here are a couple of newbie questions:

  1. Should I choose to mine in a pool, and if yes, which one would be better for a newbie miner?
  2. How much zcash should I expect to make per month? (a rough estimation)
  3. How do I set it that produced zcash goes directly to my poloniex account?

Thanks! :slight_smile:

what is your GPU ? your cpu can’t mine zcash .
you need descent GPU. and based on your GPU nvidia or ati each has its own miner .

But I thought we are talking about CPU mining (like the user guide suggests: “Enabling CPU mining”)
:confused:

The motherboard has its own onboard graphics card which is damaged. Therefore, I have mounted on the motherboard this card:
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA G72 [GeForce 7300 GS] bus-ID: 01:00.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.19.3 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1280x1024@60.02hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV46
GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 17.0.7 Direct Rendering: Yes

Have a look through this thread to perhaps gain a better understanding:

Thanks. That helped, up to a point.

I read in that post: “There are quite a few pools for zcash. Unfortunately, there are only a few that are profitable.” and I think that anyone who reads that tends to ask “well, which are the profitable ones, then?”

For the rest, I am still not sure whether my hardware is suitable for making some profit mining ZCash (btw, i have no electricity costs) or whether I should try some other coin (Monero?).

:confused:

your CPU will get you less than 4 sol
that means if you run it 24/7 for one year . you will earn less than 0.025 zcash
equals 15USD .
enough to change the cpu fan , that’s assuming you didn’t fry the CPU during that year .

on the other hand using it for other currency, you need to do your search .

my recommendation , get a GPU.

gtx 1050 makes around 150 sol . that will earn you around 0.07 zcash per month , which is around 45 USD at current prices and difficulty .

I see.

So, eventually, in a time when money kind of doubles in exchanges, it might be better to buy some crypto and turn it back to euro, after 2 or 3 months, instead of spending it to buy a GPU, right?

That NVIDIA G72 GeForce 7300 GS is no good at all?

Thanks, dbfusion. Your reply has been helpful to me.

those are the hashrates expected from various hardware

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ZCash_mining_GPU_Comparison

The reason no pools are listed is because you’re welcome to use whichever pool you want. If you want to know which is the most profitable for you, than you’ll need to do the legwork and research that or try different pools. There are at least a few places online that will list all zcash mining pools and their stats.

As for the rest of your post, I think the answer to your question was in the link I posted. CPU mining is not profitable. For zcash specifically, it’s been around a year if not a bit more since it was profitable. You mention in a post after this that you think buying crypto and selling it later is more profitable and I would agree with you. Of course, that seems to the more profitable road for you. Others have invested in hardware instead. It’s entirely up to you which road you choose :slight_smile: