Crypto Mining

[JJimenez650]

is antminer S9 or asic hardware pretty much the only viable option for profit mining these day's?

for a custom built rig does CPU matter (# of cores) or would focusing on GPU be best?

 

[herrbischoff]

Given that no current miner software supports GPU mining any more and CPU mining is a futile undertaking, the answer is very likely: yes, without access to expensive, high-hashrate ASIC hardware you will probably spend more money on the custom rig and power costs than you will ever make in return. Even with sophisticated hardware capable of 14 TH/s and above, considering all costs involved, you will need about a year to break even. If you're in it for the profit, you're better off buying and selling Bitcoin, etc. on a speculative basis than trying to mine your own.

 

[ronaldlees]

is antminer S9 or asic hardware pretty much the only viable option for profit mining these day's?

for a custom built rig does CPU matter (# of cores) or would focusing on GPU be best?

Welcome to the forum jjimenez650!

I gave up on CPU and GPU mining quite a while ago, but a raft of newish coins are taylored to the CPU (punishing the GPU with very high memory requirements, preloads, and complicated algorithms). I think monero and bytecoin have biases towards the CPU, and people have reported success using CPUs to mine them. OTOH, I think that there's a cloud over CPU mining due to botnets, or at least a perception.

The newer coins are speculative, because the face values are generally pretty low (it varies).

As someone on one of the coin forums mentioned, as soon as something gets profitable enough, the ASICs will be manufactured for it. So, eventually the CPU-favoring coins will probably have that issue, putting the little guys out again.