I am thinking about building a pc strictly as a bitcoin miner. What are the high points are what are the pitfalls in this endeavor?
not particularly, asics well be the only thing even close to being profitable. mining with gpu's will likely use more power than they will make back in bitcoin.
there are other cryptocurrencies that might be profitable however I know nothing about any of this xD.
I figured the power draw would make it particularly hard to make a profit. I am trying to figure out a way for a pc to make some decent money on the side for me.
not but litecoin should be better. cant use asics for litecoin.
I dont think so, the earning potential of a dedicated rig just isn't there plus if you live in the US crypto-currency is considered and asset or some such and is taxed accordingly ( I am not 100% on the regulations though) .
Just like the US taxes everything else...
What spec is needed for a dedicated rig to make a return?
From what I've gathered with the little I looked into it, its become very competitive and not profitable for anyone who does not have a huge advantage (awesome hardware, cheap electricity). Without investing in hardware (free already sitting there not being used), if you could find a free electrical power source, I would imagine that would be a surefire way to generate coin not at a loss. There is Bitcoin Pooled Mining (BPM) to further help in the endeavor, but key IMO is a free power source. If you invested into equipment that could run your computer on the side (harbor freight solar panels, inverter, battery etc) I wonder how many years or decades it would take to pay for itself haha. If your in a rural area, there are cool DIY tutorials to make wind generation with junk yard parts. Oh yeah, don't use work assets, we had an IT guy get fired using company hardware on company power to mine- granted our network is heavily monitored.
To put into perspective just how impossible it is to mine with a PC:
A Radeon HD 7970 averages 770MH/s. (Megahash/s)
The lowest hash rate required to break even on a $2000 investment (not including power cost) within a single update period (roughly 14 days) would be around 86TH/s.
GPU mining stopped being profitable as a buy-in option when the block difficulty crossed about 3,000,000,000. The difficulty is now 120,033,340,651.
Okay, so say instead you go buy a Bitmain AntMiner S7. Great, those are immensely powerful compared to the highest end PC. 4.73TH/s, 1300W of power usage, costs only $952.
If the difficulty stayed right where it is at 120B (which it won't), you would break even in around 210 days. So 7 months give or take. AKA your $952 investment would earn you a wallet stuffing $3.72 a day.
OK so the real answer is which coin will you be using as the ethereum block will produce about $60 per month with a R9 290x. A good goal for home mining has always been offsetting your current electrical bill. Can an investment provide free electricy via crypto coin Mining with elevated home electrical costs? The answer is yes but with the right coin or coins. Please look into multipool.us, as they have profit shifting option. With an Industrial zoning your electrical costs can be reduced to provide more profit per watt usage. And most importantly WHICH COIN provides the best return per block difficulty.
I went with asic miners for bitcoin. With GPU mining its a different story since per GPU you can have different returns per coin and card.