<p>I read some reviews and would like to try my hand at this Bitcoin thing.</p>

<p>I see that costly, dedicated hardware is the way to go. I have a dual XEON E5420 (<a href="http://goo.gl/Frco5X" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/Frco5X</a>), 8Gb DDRII RAM sitting on a Intel S5000VSA motherboard. I have a 15K 146Gb SAS Drive available to load an OS.</p>

<ol>
<li>Would I just waste effort and electricity getting this up and running.</li>
<li>What would the best OS be to load to maximize CPU power for mining the hashes?</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-07T09:18:44.280Z
Sorry, "costly, dedicated hardware" doesn't refer to nice CPUs, but to [ASIC](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asic)s. The latter are computer chips which can exclusively do mining. CPU mining has not been profitable for more than four years.
Murch
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-11-07T09:24:38.277Z
related: [Is CPU mining even worth it?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/59/5406), [How much Bitcoin will I mine right now with hardware X?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/118/5406), [When did the ASIC mining era begin?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/40944/5406)
Murch
<mining-hardware>
Getting started
Jaco Smit
# Getting started

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-11-07)

I read some reviews and would like to try my hand at this Bitcoin thing.

I see that costly, dedicated hardware is the way to go. I have a dual XEON E5420 (<http://goo.gl/Frco5X>), 8Gb DDRII RAM sitting on a Intel S5000VSA motherboard. I have a 15K 146Gb SAS Drive available to load an OS.

1. Would I just waste effort and electricity getting this up and running.
2. What would the best OS be to load to maximize CPU power for mining the hashes?

**Tags:** mining-hardware

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Sorry, "costly, dedicated hardware" doesn't refer to nice CPUs, but to [ASIC](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asic)s. The latter are computer chips which can exclusively do mining. CPU mining has not been profitable for more than four years.  
> **username_1**: related: [Is CPU mining even worth it?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/59/5406), [How much Bitcoin will I mine right now with hardware X?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/118/5406), [When did the ASIC mining era begin?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/40944/5406)  

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## 0 answers

