How to mine Siacoin on a desktop computer

IMPORTANT: This was just an experiment for me. I am NOT recommending mining Siacoin with your home computer unless you are certain that your equipment will make it worthwhile.

You can mine Siacoin using your home computer. However, if you haven't got a powerful graphics card, you will mine only 1 or 2 Siacoins a day. With the right graphics card you can increase this to over 100/per day.

Recently I tried mining Siacoin using a home computer that I don't use much. I have the Acer Aspire XC-105 with an AMD Radeon HD 3300. Not ideal but I just wanted to see if I could actually do it, and then share the steps with you.

You would go through the same steps with a computer more suitable for the Siacoin mining anyway.

You need open the device manager and find out if you have an NVEDIA or AMD graphics card.

(You can open the device manager by going to WIN + R keyboard shortcut and then in the command box type in devmgmt.msc)

1.Click on the downward arrowhead next to Display Apaptors to expand list and check your graphics card type.

Install CUDA if you have NVEDIA. https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads

If you have AMD, download OpenCL https://support.amd.com/en-us/download

1. Update your drivers.

2. Turn off any antivirus software on your computer.

3. Download Marlin Miner from https://github.com/SiaMining/marlin/releases/tag/v1.0.0

4. Unzip Marlin Miner to C:\marlin

5. Open the Command box (Win + R) and type in CMD and press Enter

1. Type in C:\marlin\marlin.exe --selftest

On each line it will say PASS

1. Open Notepad. Go to File > Open > and then type C:\marlin\marlin.bat and click Open.

At this point you will need a Siacoin wallet. You can download the official desktop wallet from http://sia.tech/apps/

However, synconizing the wallet can take days. So, if you want to just get set up quick, you can use an existing wallet address of yours off Bittrex or Poloniex.

1. Change the Siacoin wallet address to your wallet address. (To use the wallet address in Bitrex,within Bittrex, click on Wallet from the top menu, find Siacoin and click on the + icon)

1. Save the changes by going to File > Save and then close the NotePad.

Go to C:\marlin and then double click on marlin.bat

1. Click Run on any security warnings.

You should now start mining your Siacoins. You can check your progress by going to https://siamining.com/addresses/(your wallet address)

Once you have mined 500 Siacoins, they will be sent out to your wallet.

Siacoin is a really good crypto to mine. However, if you are serious about mining Siacoin, I recommend getting a custom built computer with a powerful graphics card and the right power supply and CPU.

Or you can just get yourself the Obelisk for $2100 from https://obelisk.tech/