If you are doing it for the fun factor, you could try NiceHash, which is always easy to set up, or you could give Etherum a try. Since it is so popular right now, there are a lot of guides you can read to get started 
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I've not read this whole thread, but I'm sure the lessons of any mining/commodity or business boom (which you should've learned in history class) apply to cryptocurrencies too:
- The only way to win as a miner/business is to get in early
or - The real winners are the businesses that follow the miners
@Goblin knew about #1.
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If you're doing it for fun and to get your feet wet nicehash is a good system that automatically switches you between like 8 different algorithms and pays you whichever one is the most valuable for you and your Hardware at a time if you're on a GTX 1080 most of the time lbry is the most valuable thing in my opinion
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Always nice to find coins that have gone up 3000% that you forgot about in your local wallets.
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Story of the mining life for the winners.
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Thanks for the suggestions @Azulath @KuramaKitsune NiceHash seems like a good place to start.
This guide was pretty helpful in getting it all set up.
So, as far as efficiency goes, how important are the rest of the components in the computer? (Obviously the correct wattage PSU with good efficiency rating helps.)
But does it matter that I'm running the 1080 off of an i7 2600?
Essentially you want to strap a rocket to some tricycle training wheels all of the graphics cards are going to be doing all of the work and the rest of the system literally just has to be crappy enough to support your operating system of choice
Naturally of course you're going to want to have a power supply capable of powering everything generally speaking an SSD for your operating system is good because you skip out on the system RAM and you just supplement it with virtual memory in excess of 16 GB
Although personally I still put 16GB of physical memory into my motherboards
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What the rest of your system doesn't matter as long as it has enough ram, pci-e slots for your GPU.
As far as pci-e lane count and version it doesn't really matter, I see no slowdown between pci-e 3.0 x16 and pci-e 2.0 x1.
You also might want to undervolt your GPU and find the sweetspot frequency, usually you can undervolt a lot when you're mining when compared to things like gaming.
SSDs are also nice for viritual memory, though might wear your SSD down over time, not much of a worry if it's a large drive or a nice MLC drive.
High efficiency PSUs that are reliable are also nice to have due to obvious reasons.
So I stopped into my local Microcenter yesterday to have a look at the GPU situation with my own eyes. They were indeed wiped out of AMD cards more powerful than a 560.
I was surprised they still had a reasonable stock of Nvidia cards in just about every type after what I'd heard that even those were becoming hard to find. The prices have crept up a bit from a few months ago however. A card I paid $450 for new months ago is now $520.
I had to do a double take when I saw the price tags...
$499 each for one 1070.
$599 each for two.
$10000 each for three+. 
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You can, but you really shouldn't. Hobyists should really be on nicehash or similar, so they just mine what's most profitable. That's the point of this thread.
A brief summary of my experience with mining:
I'd heard about Bitcoin early on (2010ish) often described as an alternative currency used by people wanting to buy illegal things on the internet. It wasn't until 2014 that I got curious enough to try mining after reading an article about Darkcoin on Tom's Hardware. I did it for a few months, but after that, I'd read that the mining costs for most of the major digital currencies outweighed the payout, so I abandoned it. Fast forward a couple of years when Darkcoin was now Dash. I attempted to download the new wallet software, when I came across my old Darkcoin wallet, but I couldn't get it working right, so I left it alone. Fast forward again to this past month when I found that wallet file again and loaded it up, and to my surprise, what was worth ~$4 the last time I'd checked was now worth $175. Also around the same time, one of my friends clued me into the Storj project, and it seemed neat that I could rent out my drive space. Their switch from Counterwallet to Ethereum, along with the current buzz about it, pushed me to try mining again. I already had a GTX 970 that I'd bought for gaming. I was able to snag another pair of 970s for $400, which I thought was a pretty good deal considering the current price hikes. Anyhow, I know there's limited time for it to be remotely viable, but I'm hoping that between my old Dash wallet and my Ethereum mining, I can at least break even on the cards, then sell at least one of them for some additional money.
Hahahaha. Yes.
huuhyuhu
sidenote, hmm
even doge is up a little smidgen
not too bad
id really suggest spending a few bucks and holding onto some micro coins untill after august
not expecting much other than a nice downward price curve tilll august
but popular altcoins to the Bitcoin should get a nice boost as the fork happens aug1
but which altcoin i wonder
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Is it feasible to run both AMD and Nvidia cards on the same system for mining?
Or does it cause any sort of instability?
works fine
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So, assuming your electricity was cheap, would an actively cooled server cabinet be worth it for mining? Also assuming that you got one that was somewhat cheap and pre-owned.
Or, would the power required cost too much and outweigh the benefits? Or, would it even be enough cooling capacity in the first place?
Eth on the way down, BTC itself has lost quite a bit of value.
I'm making $0.30 per day with three 1070s right now. If you're paying more than $0.20/KWh, now's not a good time to mine unless you plan to play the long game and hope that the BTC price goes up again.
Looks like I waited too long to move my BTC to altcoins.
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