Have you been wanting to get your feet wet with mining but don't know how to start?
We've all been there. Follow me as I take you down this deep rabbit hole. I will burst through common myths and misconceptions, also make sure you are on the right track and teach you how to know which coin you should actually be mining. Future Guides will be focused on other areas of mining, more guides incoming soon!

We start it off today with something most people can find intriguing:

Can we still mine with CPU?

What about Older GPUs, can we still mine with those ?

The short answer to both of these questions is, undoubtedly, yes.

As we have seen time and time again in the world of Crypto-Currency, one day a coin can be worth next to nothing; then a few days later and that very same coin could be worth a LOT. Exponentially more. We have seen this happen time and time again. This is the main reason I do not discourage people who want to try CPU mining or want to "get their feet wet" by trying out mining on older GPU's first.

If you are mining the right coin and you save it until the right time, you can make a profit by mining on older hardware. You can also rent your hardware out to get higher gains. More on that later. Hater's always gonna hate! Don't worry about them!

The same people that will tell you to turn off your miners are the same people trying to keep the entire world from joining them in the mining scene because they see how magical and mystical it truly is and want to keep it all for themselves. Fuggers. Not cool.

New coins are coming out all the time and a lot of them are mine able. The biggest favor you can do yourself is not listen to the haters and do the research yourself, you will be surprised

I want to encourage users who are interested to TRY OUT mining and see if it's right for them, especially before spending any money on mining hardware.

Personally, I could not be more addicted to mining. I have ASIC, GPU and I also even mine on CPU. If for some reason you have free power, then you definitely need to be mining. The Crypto-Currency networks can always use more miners for sustainability and growth. Always.

Yes, I do still mine on CPU. CPUs ;)

There are methods which I will discuss in further articles to throttle CPU mining so that you can do it on almost any computer without even noticing. For instance, any computer in your house can be mining while idle, but when you use it -- you won't even notice since the mining will throttle down as your activity increased.

The first step for mining with any specific piece of hardware is finding out first what software you need. Every program is designed for different hardware types. Check out these two below that are good for ALL HARDWARE TYPES and finding out which software you need.

These are a few ways I know of to get started mining very easily (with only a few mouse clicks)

MINERGATE has simple software that is very easy to use and will auto switch algorithms based on the most profitable coins to mine at that specific time. This is very useful and very helpful for new people trying to get into the mining scene. I personally use MINERGATE for all of my CPU mining. I would recommend mining Bytecoins if you are going to be mining with CPU. You can also mine Monero or others. They have some of the largest altcoin pools in the world and are highly respected.

Click here to get started on Minergate

NICEHASH also has a simple to use miner that is very good for benchmarking to see what algorithm is best for your hardware. You can run a test to see which algorithm will be the most profitable for you, and you can even mine directly within the software(to be paid in BTC).

It's a very simple way for people to get started mining with almost no background knowledge needed. I like the Nicehash miner a lot, but I only use it for benchmarking.

Click here to get Nicehash miner

Those two miners will mine with most (even older) video cards and CPUs. If your hardware is not detected, you may need to upgrade or downgrade the drivers, depending on what you have. If your hardware is still not detected, you may need to use an older program like SGminer or CCminer to use your hardware, which I will write an entire article on that aspect very soon.

THINGS TO REMEMBER:

1. Don't listen to the haters, mining has always been profitable, no matter what. Follow your intuition.
2. Most Altcoins you mine can be exchanged into Bitcoins, so don't try to mine Bitcoins with some crappy hardware-- instead; mine Altcoins and exchange them for Bitcoins. Or hold onto the altcoins until they are worth more. You will make loads more.
3. Get started on MINERGATE and NICEHASH at first so you understand the concept and can start quickly.
4. While mining, ALWAYS monitor your temperatures. I never let my CPU or GPU's get over 70C. Above 70C is too hot, IMHO. There is debate on this, and you can do what you want.
5. Keep an eye on what Algorithm and Coin, also what settings that MINERGATE Miner and Nicehash miner are using. Write them down, that way you can use them yourself with other mining programs to get the highest profitability. With other programs you will be able to tweak more settings and fine-tune your miner in ways that the simple GUI miners won't let you.
6. My two recommendation algorithms to mine CPU are Cryptonight and GROESTL, Cryptonight is more profitable. I mine Bytecoins.

There you have it folks, the simple start no matter what you have. I hope you become as addicted to mining as I am, for the sake of all cryptos! Thanks for reading my first Mining Guide. Keep an eye out for my next one,