I must have gotten the wrong specs for the S3.  It's fixed now with the correct values.

Good idea! I can calculate the expected earnings from each rig and include it with the list. I'll see if I can put that on the list today or tomorrow.
As for links to buy the rigs and the average cost of the rig, they change almost on a daily basis. It would be too difficult to keep the prices accurate.

Good suggestions though!

Update: The expected earnings from each rig is now part of the list. It shows the expected BTC and USD per day.  As the difficulty changes and the exchange rates change, the list will update itself.

I compiled a list of mining rigs specifications so that people can determine what's the best rig for them in terms of electrical usage and hash rate.

The list is here: http://www.bitcoineval.com/hardware.php
 
If I missed something, please let me know and I will add it to the list.

Cheers.

Thank you VERY much for the helpful tutorial. During the summer months when the temperature is high, I like to lower the hash rate slightly. Combining that with undervolt method makes my rigs run much cooler.  All of my rigs are running at ~130GH/s with each drawing ~170 watts at the wall.

Cheers!

Ahh, so he split the Antminer into two pieces and attached those huge fans. I like it!  
I might try that too! It would be easier to mount each blade separately on, say, a wood board that way.

Since the heat sink runs the entire length of each blade, it seems that heat would be trapped between the fins if the unit was positioned horizontally. The fan is needed to help blow air through the entire length of the blade. But if the unit was positioned vertically, maybe a fan wouldn't be needed since the hot air would rise naturally through the vertical fins.

Every picture of an Antminer S1 I've ever seen has the unit oriented horizontally, where the fan blows air from the front through the blades and out the back.

I'm thinking that if it was oriented vertically, the hot air off the blades would rise naturally. The fan blowing cool air from below would be even more effective as it pushes the hot air out the top.
I haven't done this yet myself because I don't have a wire/mesh platform to put the unit on so that the fan's intake wouldn't be blocked. I'm also thinking about building some kind of a mount rack (probably wood) so I can attach the Antminer vertically to the rack. I might take apart a small bookshelf to make a wooden rack.

Any thoughts or comments on this?

Having a highly prestigious university such as MIT speak about bitcoins is very significant in terms of the worldview. This is reason why I suspect that the value of bitcoins increased 25% within the last three weeks.

Anyone from just about anywhere in the world probably has heard of MIT.

I've sold about 50% of my coins and holding the rest... And stilling mining.

Excellent article! I under-volted my S1 following your directions. Although I do have a volt meter, I found it very difficult to get proper measurements because the resistors are so tiny. In the end I just rubbed some pencil graphite from any pencil (not HB). So I have no idea what the resistance is or the voltage at the two locations.
Then I looked at the status screen and everything looked ok. Look at the average GH/s & HW on the screen shot. And it's pulling 201-watts at the wall.

Thank you for the coupons. I see them in my account.

I was going to order one S1 on Friday when my 0.5 BTC  becomes available from my bank transfer. But this morning I saw that the minimum quantity is now 2 units. I won't be able to order it unless I add more bitcoins to my account, and that'll take another 5 business days.  ARRGGGHH!!!

Hi Kendog77,

If you end up giving coupons away, I could use one for an S1.  I'm still new at this, so i still have to wait 2 more days for Coinbase to complete transfer from my bank to bitcoins. They say it takes 5 business days. When the transfer is complete, that's when I will be buying an S1.
My user ID on bitmaintech.com is jwcastle.
I certainly appreciate your generosity if you can send 1 coupon to me.

I might buy an S2 later on, but that won't be for at least a month from now.

Cheers,
jwcastle

There's been numerous heated discussions comparing solar power and grid power.
One thing that I have never seen being discussed is using solar panels without batteries, and mining only during sunlight, and not grid tied. 

Ideally, everything would work great when there is full sunlight and the solar panels are producing electricity at full capacity.

The part that I don't know is what might happen in the morning or evening when the sun is low in the sky and the solar panels are only generating a fraction of its capacity. 

Just for argument's sake, let's say the mining rig is an Antminer S1 drawing 300-watts of power at 12VDC and two 12V 300-watt solar panels providing 600-watts of power during peak sunlight.

My question is, what will happen in the morning and evening when the solar panels are only producing, say, 100-watts of power? Will the Antminer S1 work at a much lower hash rate? Or could it be damaged due to insufficient power? What if during the day, dark clouds came rolling in and the power fluctuates between 50-watts and 400-watts?

Is there some kind of pre-built device or protection circuit that can regulate the power to at least 300-watts? I suppose a small battery can be added just to normalize fluctuations so that the regulator won't cycle the power too frequently.

If your computer is on anyway, why not?  The little USB stick is doing all the work so it's not slowing your computer down while it's doing its thing.

If you get lucky, good for you! If not, nothing lost really...

JWC

Yes, i realize that difficulty will rise and whatever current calculations will not be valid when that happens.
However, I think it is still a good starting estimate.  When I go solar, I'm hoping that the electricity usage of whatever system I'll have then won't even matter.

I would suggest using the lowest power PC you can find just to run the client software (e.g. BFGminer or CGminer). I am using a Gateway laptop that's been set to the lowest power setting in Windows and it uses approx 8 Watts of power according to my Kill-a-Watt meter. But I have two USB hubs attached to 12 AntMiner U2's running at a total of 24GH/s. The total power for the entire system is under 40 Watts. 
Any desktop PC is likely to use at least 80 Watts and CPU mining will produce less than 100MH/s (that's 240x SLOWER than my system running at 40 Watts).

I started mining bitcoins not too long ago and I realized that I should have done a little bit more research before I jumped in.
I was excited to get started so I bought a BFL 10GH/s unit off ebay for what seemed like a great price. But it wasn't till later that I figured out the this BFL miner consumed way too much electricity for the GH/s it produced. In effect, it cancelled out the profits.
I ended up writing a simple php script to evaluate how much profit I should expect given the hardware specs. Now I have a dozen AntMiner U2's and a new BFL 60GH/s miner.  Even though the U2s are more efficient, I am still making a decent profit with the BFL 60GH/s.
The php script was originally for my own use, but I figured a lot of newbies probably could benefit from it as well. I was a newbie and I still consider myself new as I'm learning new things everyday. I could have saved a couple of hundred dollars had I bought the right kind of miner hardware.
For those who are just getting started, I suggest getting a Kill-A-Watt meter to find out how much power your system is using. And also the specs on whatever miner hardware you plan on using. Then plug in the numbers into the php script that I made on my new site: www.bitcoineval.com

My next project is to put the entire mining system on solar power. To be continued...

Cheers!
JWC