As You asked for suggestion of good altcoins to mine there are few:
1: Lisk
2: Waves
3: Etharium
4: Litecoin
as a newbie I sugesst you to start with staking. staking is also a farm of mining you can earn some interest daily or weekly or may be monthly by staking a coin in your wallet. you need to buy some coins and open the wallet and keep it open.
some good alt for staking:
1: Crypto Bullion (CBX)
2: CryptoJack (CJ)
cryptojack is a brand new coin and it is also very cheap. so you can easily buy some coins to stake in your wallet.
Thank you geopolisch
Taking that into consideration, what hardware do you suggest? I want something that will allow me mine different currencies (If I decide to switch between them)