Guide
Mining on a gaming PC: what an idle NVIDIA GPU earns
Updated August 2026 · honest numbers, sunk compute only
A gaming PC spends most of the day doing nothing. If it's already powered on, a modern NVIDIA card and a decent CPU can earn a little crypto in that idle time — not a business, but real "pays for a bit of its own power" money. Pasiv is a one-button, non-custodial way to do it on Windows (and macOS/Linux): install, paste a payout address, press start. The pool pays your address directly; Pasiv never holds your coins.
Read this first, because most sites won't say it: if your PC isn't already on, or your electricity is expensive, don't do this — you'll spend more on power than you earn. The whole idea is sunk compute: a machine that's running anyway. Pasiv shows the estimated $/day before you start, so you can decide with the real number, not a fantasy.
What mines what
- Your NVIDIA GPU mines Ravencoin (KawPow) or Pearl — pick per card. It needs a Turing-generation card or newer (RTX 20-series and up); Ravencoin wants ≥6 GB of VRAM, Pearl runs from 3 GB. AMD isn't supported yet (the bundled miner lists it, but we only ship what we've verified on real hardware).
- Your CPU mines Monero (or Zephyr/Salvium) on RandomX at the same time — so the whole machine earns, not just the graphics card. An opt-in Auto mode keeps the CPU on whichever of those pays most.
Roughly what to expect
Honest framing beats a made-up table, so here's the one card we've measured end-to-end and the way to get your own number:
| Card | Coin | Measured | Ballpark $/day (GPU) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 4060 | Ravencoin (KawPow) | ~15.8 MH/s | cents |
| RTX 4060 | Ergo (Autolykos2) | ~70 MH/s | ~$0.10 |
| Your card | live | detected | shown in-app |
Measured on our own lab rig; $/day moves with coin price, network difficulty, and your power cost. A bigger card (a 4070/4080/4090) earns proportionally more, but it's the same order of magnitude — cents to low dollars a day, not a rig's income. The app computes your card's live estimate the moment it detects it; the calculator lets you check before you download.
The Windows part nobody warns you about
Windows treats miners as suspicious by policy, and we'd rather you hear it from us than get spooked mid-install:
- SmartScreen shows a one-time "unknown publisher" prompt because the app isn't code-signed yet — click More info → Run anyway. It's a reputation flag on a new app, not something Pasiv does.
- Smart App Control (on by default on new Windows 11) can block the GPU miner by reputation. There's genuinely no way to sign or allowlist around it — the app detects it and says so rather than silently doing nothing. CPU mining is unaffected.
- Pasiv will never tell you to add antivirus exclusions for the whole system; at most it asks once, opt-in, to allow the one GPU-miner file.
Frequently asked questions
Is mining on a gaming PC actually worth it?
Only as sunk compute. If the PC is already on and your power is cheap, an idle NVIDIA GPU plus the CPU can earn cents to a low dollar a day — enough to offset some of the power it's already using. If you'd be turning the machine on to mine, or paying high electricity rates, you'll lose money. Pasiv shows the estimate before you start so you can judge it.
Will mining damage my GPU or shorten its life?
Mining is a sustained load like a long gaming session or a render — heat and fan wear are the real factors, not some special "mining damage." Keep the case cool and it's a normal heavy workload. Pasiv also has a governor that eases off under thermal pressure, and you can stop it any time.
Can I mine and game at the same time?
You can, but you shouldn't want to — the miner and the game would fight over the GPU and both would stutter. The point is the idle time: mine when you're not gaming. Stop it from the tray with one click before you launch a game (or just pause it).
Does it hold my coins or need an account?
No to both. You paste your own wallet address and the mining pool pays it directly — Pasiv has no wallet, no balance, and never asks for a key. There's no signup. The only cost is a 4% time-sliced fee on Monero (other coins are currently fee-free), logged in the app next to a public fee address you can check on its pool.
Windows · macOS · Linux · no account · stop any time