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We all have different opinions regarding cryptocurrency mining. Some love it, while others are not so enthusiastic about it. But there are some things most of us can agree on. One of them is the fact that mining cryptocurrency on a laptop is a terrible idea.
The act of mining cryptocurrency is best left to either desktop computers or purpose-built mining rigs. Here, we'll discuss exactly why you shouldn't ever buy or use a laptop for mining.
1. Mining on a Laptop Is Not Profitable
Firstly, one of the main deal-breakers towards mining on laptops stems from the simple fact that laptop GPUs are typically weaker and more costly than their desktop variants. There's a reason you can get a gaming laptop just fine while most GPUs seem to be still out-of-stock these days — miners aren't looking at laptops, and there's a reason for that.
Sure, we have both Ampere and RDNA 2 GPUs available for laptops, and they're fantastic for gaming. But when it comes to actual horsepower, a laptop Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is roughly as fast as a desktop RTX 3060 Ti in both benchmarks and proper mining performance (hash rate).
This poses a problem where you'll take several months to even see something close to a return-on-investment in most cases. A laptop equipped with an RTX 3080 Ti will set you back around $3,000-$3,500. If it mines just as good as an RTX 3070, you can expect it to earn $2 a day, $60 a month, or $720 a year as per the Ethereum network's difficulty as of this writing.
You'll take five years to even get your money back on your investment. That's with good thermals, which you don't have—your laptop probably doesn't have enough cooling capability to move heat out efficiently, and your computer will constantly be thermal-throttling to keep up. And we haven't even factored in electricity—add electricity costs from having a laptop on a charger drawing power from your wall 24/7, and your earnings go even thinner.
You could better spend the money on a proper mining rig or just a desktop computer. GPUs are still hard to come by, but if you're going to mine, you're probably even better off buying GPUs from scalpers than using a gaming laptop.
2. Laptops Are Not Made for Mining
Then, we have the fact that laptops are not intended for mining and thus, shouldn't be used for it. And this is not just a manufacturer's recommendation, but rather, the way laptops are designed makes it a horrible idea.
First, let's look at why desktop GPUs can generally mine cryptocurrency:
Desktop computers, especially mid-tower and full-tower ones, have plenty of space inside for components to breathe. And that space is essential. Cryptocurrency mining is a computationally-intense activity that can fire up your entire GPU, crunching through numbers to verify transactions and putting out a lot of heat in the process.
Desktop GPUs are equipped with active cooling—fans or water cooling—that can help them dissipate the heat they put out. And the computer case has a lot of internal space and robust intake/exhaust fans to help heat find its way out of the computer.
Laptops do, too. But they're not equipped to handle the kind of heat mining would put out.
Laptops, even gaming ones, have a way thinner profile, and the space inside is far more constricted. The fans that are equipped inside are also much smaller and weaker. They're enough to handle daily operations, and gaming laptops can even tackle some games without breaking a sweat. But mining is a much more strenuous activity. You need to factor in the fact that mining is usually a 24/7 process, and you're putting a lot of unneeded stress on your laptop.
Not only can you damage your GPU in the long run, but you can also wear out the teeny tiny fans, which can further complicate things. In addition, your device's battery doesn't love heat either. And if your laptop gets really hot, the battery can also wear out. It's a chain of messy events that can make your laptop die much sooner than it otherwise would.
3. The E-Waste Dilemma
We already established that making your laptop mine cryptocurrency can help it meet an early demise, but what happens once it dies? Depending on what you've fried, you may be able to bring it back to life, but most laptops used for mining typically only have one destination—a landfill, where it becomes e-waste.
Once a GPU is ruined because of mining, in most cases, there's no bringing it back to life, meaning it needs to be tossed. The average lifespan of a mining GPU is about half of what it would otherwise last with typical usage, and that's with appropriate thermals. The same thing happens to laptops—if you fry the GPU, depending on the model, a repair might be possible, but in most cases, it's dead and will form part of the growing e-waste statistics.
You can also damage other components, and those could have varying gravity levels, from fixable to straight-up dead. Nonetheless, this means that everything ends up in a landfill sooner than it should.
Please Don't Mine on Your Laptop
The moral of the story is that you shouldn't mine on your laptop under any circ*mstances. You have a huge chance of damaging it, or at least reducing its lifespan, while at the same time not making too much money whatsoever.
You'll be much better off mining through other means. You can build a desktop PC with ample cooling if you want to use just one GPU to get some passive gains. You can also set up a proper mining rig if you're planning to mine Ethereum or buy an ASIC miner if you'd rather mine Bitcoin.
