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I've installed a mining client on My Macbook pro, which was giving almost 1 MHash/s at full capicity. I found on some reddit thread that Mining may affect the hardware i.e. mother board or graphic card and their lifespan.

So my question is what will the mining work do to my laptop's(or pc's) hardware? Will it burn it out? How can I optimize the machine to be Mining friendly?

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    I disagree with the close vote: definitely not a duplicate, he's only concerned with hardware wear, not with how much he will mine.
    – o0'.
    Commented Apr 24, 2013 at 9:11
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    @Lohoris thanks for understanding my problem. I dunno why my question is duplicate of the marked question. I am not concerned about how much bitcoins will I generate(I am jsut experimenting). I am concerned about my machine. Will it just blast off or catch fire or just stop working if I use it for mining.
    – noob
    Commented Apr 24, 2013 at 16:01
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    @proGamer, I can tell you why your question was flagged, it's because people don't/can't read.
    – Richard Żak
    Commented Dec 31, 2013 at 15:46
  • It's marked as duplicate again, for no reason. Dunno why can't people just read.
    – noob
    Commented Mar 4, 2014 at 13:03

4 Answers 4

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I have a 2012 Macbook Pro mining Litecoins (CPU&GPU at a combined 80kHash/s) and a 2011 iMac (71MHash/s on its HD5670) mining BTC. They both run overnight and on weekends, I turn the mining software off over the weekday. Doing this for months now.

So far, there were no overheating problems, but i have an extra cooling stand for the Macbook, which i would recommend.

Still, I expect the hardware to die sooner. The heat management in Apple machines is very delicate because of the case design, and I heard of people waking up to a dead iMac.

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    A caution to everyone: don't get fired from your job because you are mining on company-owned equipment on company-provided electricity.
    – Colin Dean
    Commented Apr 25, 2013 at 20:42
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    I don't want my mac to die sooner, so I guess I'll keep myself away from mining. ;-)
    – noob
    Commented Apr 25, 2013 at 22:00
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    Actually, my boss is fine with it, so I'm lucky. He has a HD7950 running, too ;)
    – RotHorseKid
    Commented Apr 27, 2013 at 15:55
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Laptops aren't made to remove the heat that a GPU running constantly puts out. Heat causes materials to expand and eventually fail, or it causes them to exceed spec and fail.

If you are just getting 1 Mhash/s you probably aren't using the GPU. That still isn't safe on a laptop, but .... what's the point? That's worth like maybe ten cents a month?

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The major reason why hardware ages is constant thermal changes. In other words, going hot->cold->hot->cold. Not really a big problem.

P.S. A back of the envelope calculation shows that you will make 1 cent a day.

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I had a Bitcoin miner running for a few months back in the GPU-mining days and it destroyed my battery. Batteries are very sensitive for heat, so I strongly discourage mining with a battery-holding device. Desktops are OK, though, I guess.

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