If you are interested in cryptocurrencies and want to start mining alt coins you can do so without breaking the bank. Most all the coverage on mining focuses on high-end desktop discrete graphics cards since they turn the most profit. The only problem is that most all those cards are sold out and happen to be in such high demand that pricing is out of this world. The good news is that you can start mining on lower-end graphics cards fairly easily and without taking out a second mortgage or selling off body parts. You won’t make much a day, but the blockchain transactions that you help process will earn you something and that is better than nothing. It’s also a great opportunity for someone that has never owned a PC before to learn how to put one together and then use it as a money printing machine thanks to the alt coin market.

Today we are going to focus on the cards just below the mining sweet spot and that would be the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and the AMD Radeon RX560/550 series cards. These cards are the models right below the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 and AMD Radeon RX 570, which are highly coveted by miners. A quick look on Amazon discovered that the AMD Radeon RX 560 4GB graphics card can be found starting at $187.00 plus shipping and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB can be picked up for $202.85 shipped. When the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti first came out in 2016 it was priced at $139, so even these lower-end models have not been entirely immune to the mining craze.