The PC in question is a 2018 build: a six-core CPU, 16 GB of RAM, a mid-range GPU that was unremarkable when it was new and is firmly mid-tier today. It is the kind of computer many people still have under their desk. Here is what running it as a Malairte miner for thirty days looked like.

The setup

Stock clocks on the CPU, power limit on the GPU set to 75% of stock. Miner running as a background process, low priority, started automatically at login. The PC was used normally during the day for office work and light gaming. Mining paused automatically during a 90-minute video call each weekday but otherwise ran continuously.

What hashrate looked like

The CPU contributed a steady kilohash-per-second range. The GPU did substantially more. Combined, the rig sat in the middle of the pack on the pool dashboard - well behind the top contributors with multi-GPU rigs, well ahead of the smallest laptop miners.

Power and heat

Measured at the wall: about 220W under mining load, dropping to around 80W when paused. The room (a small home office) ran two to three degrees warmer than usual. In winter this was a quiet bonus; in summer it would have been a problem. The fans were audible but not distracting.

What the wallet looked like at the end of the month

The accumulated MLRT was modest. Enough to feel real, not enough to retire on. Subtract the electricity at standard residential rates and the rig was operating at a small net positive. The author treats the surplus as bonus rather than income.

What surprised the author

  • How little the mining affected day-to-day use once the priority was set correctly.
  • How resilient the miner was - it reconnected automatically after every network blip, every power-saving event, every overnight router reboot.
  • How much variation there was in payouts between weeks. Network difficulty rose noticeably during the month and the daily MLRT count tracked that change.

What the author would do differently

Cap the GPU power further. The last 10% of hashrate was responsible for most of the noise and heat. Drop it to 60% and the rig becomes nearly silent for only a small payout reduction.

The takeaway

You do not need new hardware to mine Malairte. A capable old PC, configured thoughtfully, contributes to the network and accumulates MLRT without disrupting normal use. That is the entire point of a CPU/GPU coin.