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I would like to start mining Ether, but my GPU isn't the greatest and I don't really want to spend the money on a dedicated rig. Is mining from my CPU (in a Linux environment) still worth the Ether? Or will I not be able to keep up?

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Some numbers - running ethminer on my CPU gives me a hashrate of 0.248 megahashes per second (MH/s). For comparison, each of my over-clocked AMD R9 390X GPUs gives me a hashrate of about 31.58 MH/s. My GPU gives me 127x the hashrate of my CPU. It is a lowish end CPU AMD FX(tm)-6350 6 core processor and with motherboard + CPU + disk drive + fans consumes about 200 Watts, or 4.8 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day.

Plugging these numbers into https://etherscan.io/ether-mining-calculator gives me an expected earning of ~ 0.004790 ETH (USD 0.06) per day or 0.033536 ETH (USD 0.39) per week. My cost of electricity @ ~ USD .17 per kWh is USD 0.816 per day which is 13.6x the value of the ETH earned.

Compare the above to my 2 x R9 390X GPUs mining rig. Hashrate is ~ 62.8 MH/s. Again from the mining calculator, my expected earning is 1.210311 ETH (USD 14.16) per day or 8.4722 (USD 99.12) per week. Mining rig consumes ~ 700 watts. This is equal to 700 x 24 = 16,800 watt-hours per day, or 16.8 kWh. 16.8 kWh x USD .17 per kWh = USD 2.85 per day in electricity.

Just remember that the cost of your GPUs may possibly not be recouped by the time that the Ethereum network switches from proof of work to proof of stake when GPU mining will be obsolete.

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I don't believe it's worth it. I believe the CPU is a few hundred times slower than most GPUs.

I mined a few hundred ether in the beginning, but it quickly became cheaper to just buy the ether.

I think you will be better off just buying the ether rather than spending money on electricity not to mention the extra strain on your computer hardware.

If you know the power usage and hash rate of your system you can easily calculate if it is worth it.

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    If the price goes up, which it did, you're quids in !
    – user7642
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 13:12
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    wish I started mining in those days when you earned a few "hundreds" of them
    – asgs
    Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 6:32
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As other's have mentioned, mining Ether with a CPU would not be efficient - GPUs can hash an order of magnitude faster.

However, CPU mining is still viable on the Ethereum Morden testnet!

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Depends what you understand by "worth". If all you want is a tiny amount of ether (<1.0) to run some basic contracts, then it might work.

But you should consider comparing your CPU hash rate with your GPU hash rate.

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    Haha tiny amount 1 eth :) - 2016
    – EralpB
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 15:12
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    How times have changed :P
    – Unencoded
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 22:02

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