Thanks a lot for the pointers gentlemen.

Cool thank you !

240 Gh/s for the board is awesome.

This looks good. Keep us posted.

So all orders ordered from Jan 1st, 2014 will be shipped around 1st of May...

Wow, difficulty gonna be 5 billion by then....

I wish you all the best with your group buy, but I cannot support Butterfly Lab, given their track history with shipping.

My stuff was 5 months late, and I was one of the lucky ones. Others were not so fortunate.

Please realize that they will ship late, and you will be very frustrated, and your customers in this group buy will be very frustrated, and some will take out their frustration on you.

Caveat emptor (latin for buyer beware).

+1, what Kendog said.

After a little fiddling, you will be very happy.

Oh God, not this again.

...

Here you go. http://bitcoinwisdom.com/

bitcoinwisdom

The best ASIC miner that will give you the best return on the investment is the one that is mining on your desk right now, or lands on your doorstep in a few days.

Forget pre-orders from any company that has not done tape-out yet.

It it's not hashing right now (or within a few days), you're already losing money on the deal.

Why wait when you could be hashing? Any 55nm or 65 nm miner will be good until 17 billion and change difficulty. You don't need 28 nm technology to make money, right now.

I'm with the above poster.

What's your power supply rated for, and how many PCIE cables does it have? It could be a power problem.

If you're running really close, or using crappy molex to PCIE adapters, it may be you just don't have enough juice.

I'm running 2x 7950 powered by a Corsair CX 750 W (non-gold,non bronze), and it seems to do just fine, stable for weeks.

I used to run only one 7950 on a Corsair CX550, and occasionaly, it would freeze. I don't think that was a great power supply.

That's pretty awesome retro stuff right there.

Nice !

+1

Now that's a good way to keep a marriage going.

Next, if BTC keeps gaining in popularity, you can stick a credit card with BTC in her ass, and send her out shopping, FTW.

The problem in looking at the question of "Should one buy mining equipment or just buy and hold BTC?" is the same type of question that stock market analysts try to ponder, and the same question fortunetellers try to answer.

The answer is, whatever works better for you (at least, in my opinion).

If you like to buy and hold, and not have to worry about running mining gear, great!

If you like to tinker with mining gear, great!

It's the same thing as in the stock market. Some people like to be hands-on, and run their own investments, do the research, buy the stock, etc. That's great for them.

Other people just dump money into a few mutual funds, and look at their statement twice a year. Great ! Whatever works for them.

Nobody could tell 3 years ago that BTC would hit $1200/BTC. Nobody could tell it would go back down to $700 and go back up again. If they could, they would not be on these forums. They would be on their private yacht with 5 gorgeous women, too busy to get on the forum.

Heh.

Not really. If you think of it in terms of Zimbabwean dollars, everybody has made ROI !

 

I don't look at it that way. The cards were also used for gaming type stuff, and I turned $500 into $1500, using my BTC hobby. Not many hobbies you can do that with.

I would have bought the cards anyway, is my point. LTC and Bitcoin is just a fun hobby, I don't think of it as "OMG, I have to have ROI" or " I cuda, shuda, wuouda bought BTC at $2/btc, and sold it at $1000/BTC".

That's just a way to give yourself headaches.

Yeah, I do not believe that extremely overclocking the 7950's produces enough hash power to warrant the power draw either.

If I overclock mine to 1050, computer + 2 cards will draw about 690 W.

Drop them down to stock 925, back down to 550 W, measured in real-time with an APC power backup digital display. The difference is about 75 Kh/s, for 140 W. Not worth it.

Temps when overclocked go to 86 C for one card, 77 for the other. Without overclocking, they are both at 75 C.

Totally ridiculous.

Nope, I have definitely NOT made the money back.

But, I have been enjoying the tinkering, keeping the miners going, learning a lot, communicating with some knowledgeable people here.

But, I did get the wife on board when I told her to go do her Christmas shopping with computer generated cash. That was a mistake. LOL. 

Heh, we should start a club.

HAASHAHOLICS ANONYMOUS !

HAAA !!  

But, I really know where you are coming from.

Started getting into BTC in May, got some graphics cards, got some block erupters way back in the day (even one on ebay for an insane amount of money, it's still hashing).

Then went into a group buy and went overboard on units, group buy got all messed up, eventually got all my K16 units (that was a pain). In the meantime, my Jalepenos arrived from BFL (another fucked up situation there), but not before I got some hashing stuff on E-bay (which was a good decision, actually, hashpower in hand, relatively early in the difficulty numbers game).

BTC went to $1000 so that was nice. Helped ROI a great deal.

Now, I had some BTC lying around still, and recently got my first Antminer on January 2nd from Christmas group buy. It is hashing nicely. I'm getting my hashing kicks now re-using the old graphics cards for LTC. That is fun.

Ebay is nice, but it was a royal pain to sell some of my older units, ship them, deal with paypal (one buyer refunded), and but, it helped put funds back in the old wallet.

I hear your pain. My advice. Let it build up to 3 BTC or so, mine for month or two, wait for some developments. Don't go crazy buying stuff like I did. It is fun, but it is a pain in the butt sometimes too. I'm running out of power in my "authorized hashing rooms" by the wife. LOL.

My standard policy now is not to do preorders, at all, ever. I don't care how good the numbers sound, or what the price per gh is. If it does not ship when my money clears and not on my doorstep in 3-4 days, I'm not buying it. End of story.

It depends on what you mean by ROI, and when you expect ROI.

I'll give you a few facts, from a personal standpoint.

I got into BTC in May, total noob at it. Many people helped me on these nice forums, so I will help you, hopefully.

I decided I would buy a 7950 and a 7850 (this was middle of May, 2013). That was ~$500 bones in graphics cards (not including another computer, but I needed one anyway, so that doesn't count). Those graphics cards started hashing at about 1.6 million difficulty, and mined all summer long, for about 1.5 BTC.

Needless to say, when BTC hit about 700 in october-ish, that BTC was put to very good use.

So, ROI factor was 2x. Those graphics cards are still mining LTC right now, at a pure profit.

I'm not boasting in anyway. In fact, I wish I had gotten into BTC much earlier.

My point is, do not worry about ROI. Learn about BTC, get the miners going, learn to run them, overclock them, build some rigs, have a little fun !!! Fight the current fiat monetary system while at it ! Rejoice in rebellion ! That reminds me, I gotta send CKOlivas a donation finally....be right back.

If you constantly worry about making your money back, you might as well piss away 5k and get a Scottrade account and start gambling in the stock market. But of course, you will be supporting a corrupt and evil economic system, not digital monetary freedom.