Raspberry pi 4 vs ASIC miner

[CNCharger]

Some of the best ASIC miners appear to have worse specs than the Raspberry Pi 4. A handful of the best ones have a similar processor to the Pi 4. And ASICs are comprised of single board systems similar to raspberry pi's.

Can you set up multiple pi's to mine something like Litecoin or Ethereum, and how would you set them up to do so?

[pidd]

Most, if not all, ASIC miners will be at least a million times faster than a Pi4.

[CNCharger]

Most, if not all, ASIC miners will be at least a million times faster than a Pi4.

Judging by the specs, though, the Pi 4 is more powerful than most ASIC miners except when it comes to mining chips. Is there a way to add a mining board like attachment to the Pi?
Otherwise, what would be a good cryptocurrency to mine with a Pi4 8GB?

[CNCharger]

The question I should be asking is:
Is there a way to turn a Pi 4 into an ASIC or an effective miner?
Can the Pi4 be overclocked, work with a board of mining chips?

[DougieLawson]

The question [sic] I should be asking is:
Is there a way to turn a Pi 4 into an ASIC or an effective miner?
Can the Pi4 be overclocked, work with a board of mining chips?

No and no.

[blimpyway]

Pi Zero is better - same result, less power consumed

[CNCharger]

Pi Zero is better - same result, less power consumed

How is the pi zero better? Can you elaborate on that?

[RaTTuS]

ther ASIC is what you use to *mine* the thing at the other end takes the results and passes seeds to the ASIC - a Pi0 or even a Pi pico would be fast enough

[CNCharger]

ther ASIC is what you use to *mine* the thing at the other end takes the results and passes seeds to the ASIC - a Pi0 or even a Pi pico would be fast enough

Still not really understanding how this works. Is it a bunch of Pi Zeroes or Picos with a Pi 4 to control them or what is it? I can get a bunch of pi zeroes for about $100. Are they serving as the mining chips or the unit as a whole?

[pidd]

I don't think you understand the problem.

A decent ASIC miner can do in one second what a Pi4 would do in a year.

Even then, there are plenty of ASIC miners that will still lose money, the electricity cost alone costs more than the income from mining.

A slow miner is pointless, you will never generate enough income to achieve the minimum balance of money you are allowed to withdraw, so while the miner has been very busy burning your electricity and creating heat - you will have nothing to show for your effort.

If you want to throw processing power away, I suggest you do something like rosetta@home where you are helping find proteins that neutralise Covid. A Pi4-4Gb running flat out averages around 1200 credits a day. Again this is a miniscule contribution to a massive program but at least it is achieving something for the common good.

[rpdom]

Still not really understanding how this works. Is it a bunch of Pi Zeroes or Picos with a Pi 4 to control them or what is it?

It's any Pi (a Zero will do fine) with one or more ASICs attached to it.

The ASICs have a low spec CPU (that's the spec you're comparing to a PI4B) to manage the system, then a number of ASIC chips that are really, really, good at crunching the specific type of numbers that mining uses. On that specific task they are hundreds of times the power of a Pi 4B.

So you could get some USB ASIC modules and connect them to any Pi. Let the Pi do the controlling (getting the original data and sending the results) and the ASICs do the crunching.

[cleverca22]

A slow miner is pointless, you will never generate enough income to achieve the minimum balance of money you are allowed to withdraw, so while the miner has been very busy burning your electricity and creating heat - you will have nothing to show for your effort.

there is one trick however to saving some costs, in a cold climate, every watt you spend on the miner, is a watt you didnt have to spend on your electric heating system, to keep the house warm

so in effect, your getting useful heating out of it, rather then useless heating, but that only helps during the cold months, and once you pass a certain tipping point, you have too much heat, and your entering waste again (but can effectively turn your heating system off)

[blimpyway]

Pi Zero is better - same result, less power consumed

How is the pi zero better? Can you elaborate on that?

Both Pi4 and Pi Zero dedicated miners will lose more than they earn. The money you spend on Pi and electricity will continuously increase. You'll lose more money with a Pi 4 (investment + energy) than with a Zero.