Thanks for the insight... I think i will just stick with Dash for the 1 mini i currently have.  I will contact "bittawn" and see what he is selling mini's for.  Word has it that Baikal will be pushing out another batch in mid_April but I have to get direct confirmation on that or any of the details... like adjusted price, pre-order locking etc.

Citronik... where are you seeing those Mini's available for under $500?  I've been searching the past week and the lowest I've seen them is around $700.

On another somewhat related note, i just ran a whattomine query for the algo's that the mini supports and MonetaryUnit (MUE) under Quark algo is showing as almost 40% more profitable to mine currently than even Dash.  Not sure I will switch over yet but seems to be at least worth looking into.

 I have to say, the last 28 hours have been very interesting in the crypto world.  When the news hit about the SEC rejection yesterday, I checked my crypto tracking app and see all the coins I hold down 20%+, with the exception of ETH that was only down about 6%. Still, it's daunting to see 25% of your value drop instantly like that. But, what has happened since then has been nothing short of amazing!  I am still only a few months into this scene and learning as i go, but to see that huge drop and now only a day later, to actually be up about 7-8% overall is really something!  Personally, I think this a great sign of resiliency for not only BTC, but for most of the alt coins out there as well. In fact, at least at this point, most alts are doing better vs BTC, but even to see BTC back around $1200 is pretty dang good in my eyes after that rejection by the SEC.

I was particularly impressed by ETH, which as luck would have it, is my 2nd highest holding next to BTC.  I have actually been only accumulating it via mining in preparation for holding a decent chunk when ETH eventually goes POS, but I certainly didn't expect 1) it to be the least affected of pretty much any major alt after the SEC decision and 2) it to now be pushing $22 per coin.  Only time will tell what will happen with BTC and alts in the long-run, but this big bounce-back certainly at least seems to be a very good sign... especially since it was almost consensus that the last 2-3 week's gains were mostly based on hope that the SEC would approve the BTC ETF!

lol yeah... and the ironic thing is that even though i only have 1 Baikal Mini mining Dash, I will probably own more $ worth of Dash in less than 1 month than I accumulated in almost 6 months of mining Burst! Granted, I need to fix my Burst operation as there are some issues with my 20TB of plots overlapping, which hurts my returns, but still... just hate to see NO burst coming in in a week... even though it's really only pennies lol.

So, I noticed a couple days ago that my Burstcoin balance was not increasing for around 3-4 days. In checking it again today, I find that I have not recieved any burstcoing into my online wallet in about 6 days now. before that, was averaging maybe 500-600/day. Now today, I cannot log into the online wallet, nor can I access either the burst-coin.us or burstcoin.biz sites.

Does anyone know what is going on here? Was there an attack on the burstcoin network that has shut everything down or what?  This seems really strange to me so looking for someone who might know what is going on.

yeah, i would agree with that if I were over-leveraged in x11 gear and it would be a good time to auto-ROI some extra x11 miners for sure with prices approaching 3x now.  Unfortunately, I am under-leveraged in x11 gear, which is why I've been searching for a decent deal on another Mini, but it's not likely to happen at this point... unless of course Baikal has another production batch ready soon.  But, even if that happens, it wold stand to reason that they would raise their prices above the current $300.  Bottom line is that the cheapest one I can find available right now is $700 lol!  I might be willing to pay like a $100 premium, but certainly not going to pay a $400 premium lol.  If i was even thinking about paying close to that much, I would just opt for the $2,300 Giant... although those will probably be gone soon too if not already after this most recent spike in Dash.

Wow! That is a dang impressive Baikal set-up!!!  Im definately aware of their quad model as I've inquired with Baikal about it as well but of course, since Mini's are out of stock and it is indeed just 4 mini's, the quads aren't available either  I would probably be able to pull the trigger if I could get a quad at their regular price of $1,200, but I just cant do twice that for the Giant.  The secondary market is crazy right now... most places out of stock and those selling like on ebay or other market places are now approaching close to 3x the original $300 tag for a mini.  

Look at this auction on ebay... 31 bids already at $625 with 2 hours left. And, his reserve isn't even met yet lol. Usually putting a high reserve on an item is the kiss of death but not in this case. Curious to see how high this goes cuz even with Dash over $70 now, the ROI is too long if you have to pay $800 for a $300 unit.  Sure, maybe Dash will go above $100 but Im no willing to take that bet right now.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272580009473?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Out of curiosity, do you know about how much premium (as a %) you are getting by selling x11 hash through NiceHash over the past couple of weeks?  Personally, I want to try to accumulate a bit of Dash with my puny little 1 Mini setup, but of that premium is high enough, I could still just buy Dash with the BTC I earned if switching to NiceHash.

Yeah, the 1 small Mini I have is great and the company has excellent customer service. Unfortunately, they are now out of Minis and only were able to offer my a Giant for like $2,300. The ROI on those is actually slightly more time overall than the mini's because even though they provide 6x the hash-rate at less than 6x the wattage, they cost about much as 7 mini's.  It's still probably worth it if Dash stays around where it's been the last few weeks, but I just can't afford to drop $2,400 on it now since I just built my 3rd mining rig.  Hopefully, they will have mini's available again soon because I refuse to make some re-seller rich by paying 2x or more retail for them.

Yup... and speaking of gear... I've got 3 of the 4 MSI's a bought from Phil up and running in rig#3 super smoothly. Will get #4 plugged in tomorrow and will then be up to 3 full rigs with 16 GPUs!  All the MSI 470s i got from Phil are in great condition. Highly recommend buying from him whenever he is selling something!

Just wanted to report back on the Baikal Mini Miner that I have had almost 1 week now.  This little thing really rocks!  It was BY FAR the easiest mining-related equipment to set up and get running that I've ever had! Literally... just plug in the power and LAN cable, log in to its web interface and amend the already listed pools for your user names, and BAM, you're good to go!

Since that initial config, I have not had to do anything with it for a week!  Only check my returns, which in fact, have been very close to what the calculators say... about .05 to .06 Dash per day. Just got my first payout of .25 Dash yesterday and went to my exchange wallet with no issues.  So, as things are now, that equates to about 2 Dash per month, which at current prices would ROI this thing in about 100 days.  I would totally be down to get at least 1 more of these but now Baikal is out of stock and the secondary market prices are simply ridiculous... most are at least 2x the $300 retail price!

Yeah, I bought about .12 @ about $1,175.  Part of me wants to buy more around that price point but the looming ETF decision seems more and more likely to be pushed out even further and not really sure what that would do to prices.  I've also heard that while they are expected to "decide" on Saturday, the decision won't be released until Monday, which could make for a very interesting weekend of speculation, given that there will probably be multiple unconfirmed "leaks".

Really tough to know what to do but i will probably get in for maybe another .25 or so.  To me, there just seems to be more upwards potential than down but that's just my opinion.

thanks to all for the riser suggestions. I couldn't wait for a shipment from China or ebay at this point... not patient enough with 4 GPUs sitting in a box needing to get onto my rig lol.  So, I ordered 4 from the Amazon seller someone suggested and 4 more from the other one I found that at least looked like the ones Phil sent (the Molex version).  But, I will probably get that 6-pack or PCI from the seller Phil mentioned. Since risers are probably the #1 problem item on these rigs, I think it's a good plan to have a handful on-hand in case they are needed.

On another note, for those of you dual mining ETH + anything but DCR at present, take a look at what DCR is doing today! It's up 50% to just over $3.50 a coin!  So now, it is by far the most profitable 2nd coin to mine with ETH.  Just an FYI for those that might still be doing Pasc or Lib or Sia.

It's the risers, stupid!  (props to those of you who are old enough to get that one lol)

Well, Phil saved me on this one even though he hasn't replied here lol!  I got the 4 470's I bought from him and tried one as the 2nd GPU... no dice... still same issue as described above.  So, steaming a bit, I proceed to change around all of the PSU cables and even re-installed the Crimson drivers... still nothing!  To make matters worse, somewhere along the line, the 1st GPU that had been working fine 24 hours stopped, and I couldn't even get my rig to boot up!

Finally, as a last-ditch effort before pulling what little hair I have left out, I decide to try 1 of the 2 risers that Phil threw in as a nice bonus. First I try GPU#1 and bam! Lights up fine, rig boots fine. Install GPU#2 with Phil's 2nd riser and bam!  Lights up and after boot, both GPUs recognized and now churning ETH + DCR just fine!

So, firstly... a BIG thank you to Phil as without those risers you included, I would have had a sleepless night tonight for sure!

Secondly, I am baffled at how ALL of these risers can be bad. I got 5 from Amazon seller XRP, whom I have ordered most of my previous risers from and all have worked fine.  However, this new batch has a red PCIe slot, not black or blue like the previous ones, so they are clearly from a different batch and apparently, it's a horrible one.  I have tried all or parts of 4 of the 5 and apparently they were what were causing all of my problems. I haven't opened the 5th one but what's the point because even if it worked initially, I would have zero confidence of its long-term capabilities, since the 1 worked for 24 hours then crapped out.

So... now I need to find a reliable supplier of USB powered risers so that I can get the remaining 4 GPUs up and running ASAP.

Can anyone make a recommendation here?  Ideally, it would be a US-based seller that offers expedited shipping but I would be willing to sacrifice a few days for more reliability if necessary.

edit: actually just found these on Amazon from Sintech. They are a bit more expensive but have better reviews and actually look very similar to the ones Phil sent me.  Anyone ordered from these guys?

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00HZ0M9F2/ref=psdc_464394_t1_B00IMYODGS

Personally, I just built a new rig (my 3rd) based on 6x MSI 470s for about that same $1400 that the OP mentioned. Many good points have been made in this thread about the eventual move to POS for ETH, but there is still some time to make money on ETH mining it... as well as if you can accumulate some for profit after said move.  Furthermore, even if ZEC tanks around that same time (Im not a big fan of ZEC but its death is certainly far from a sure thing), there is indeed still XMR but also probably a decent chance of another few coins coming into decent profitability range for mining.  To me, it seems like a LOT of bad things would all have to line up to making mining mostly not profitable before the end of 2017. Sure, it could happen, but just seems against the odds to me.  And... even if the sky falls, there is indeed the option to sell off GPUs to gamers and minimize losses.

So, I got my 3rd mining rig up and running this weekend. Almost identical to my last build (W10, 6 MSI GPU, BTC Pro2 Mobo) except for a cheaper G3258 CPU (vs 4790k) & 8GB RAM (vs 16).

Initial boot Win7 install and W10 upgrade went well. Copied over all my mining stuff via USB stick from other rigs, including Crimson 16.10.  Just started with 1 new MSI 470 from Amazon. Started up Claymore dual ETH & DCR (both at default intensity) and ran fine for about 15 minutes before I got a weird crash. But, seems like a fluke as after that, it ran for over 2 hours with 1 GPU just fine.

Now the strange thing... after 2 hours running 1 GPU, I shut down and install the 2nd (again, brand new from Amazon). But, when I turn it on, the system doesn't recognize the GPU... not Wattool, GPUz, or Device Manager... even after "scanning for new hardware".  So, over the next few minutes, I swap out risers, USB cables, and try different PCIe x1 slots. Nothing works. The thing i noticed is that the MSI logo on the top of the GPU lit up, but the red lights at the other end never lit up on any of the attempts. This GPU is plugged into the same molex & PCIe PSU cables as GPU#1, so I don't think that's the issue.

Does this seem like a likely dead GPU to anyone?  Or, is there something else I need to check to prove that out before returning it?  Ultimately, I will find out as soon as the 4 used GPUs I bought from Phil arrive today, but would like to know if there is anything relatively easy to check that I haven't tried yet.   

Thanks again for the advice on power supplies. I received my Mini yesterday and while inexplicably, the 7a ones plug didn't fit (will be returning it), the 6a was a good fit and the unit has been churning rock-solid over 21 hours straight.  I did have a problem getting it to mine with Suprnova for some reason... web interface says Suprnova is "dead" even though I over-rode their default username with my own.  But, I set up an account at Coinmine.pl and that's been working perfectly... plus, has half the payout fee of Suprnova so better off there anyway. Still, would like to get the Suprvnova issue fixed as a backup plan, so if anyone has any insight there I would appreciate it.

I have a quick question about CPUs.  Many of you know that I build my first 2 rigs with i7-6800k & i7-4790k CPUs.  In hindsight, this was probably overkill but since I work for Intel, I got both at half price, which was only about $100 more than buying a g32xx series outright from newegg or Amazon.  To my way of thinking anyway, the only real benefit to using these higher end CPUs is that they can mine XMR at a decent rate of about (300-350 Mh/s)... but, this is what I really want to question for the following reason...

For my 3rd rig, I have ordered a G3258 4 Pentium 3.20 GHz 3M Cache 2 Core CPU

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KPRWAZQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I was under the assumption that the only big drawback with this vs an i7 is that I wont really be able to CPU mine XMR since that is dependent on # cores and corresponding MB of cache.

However, is there a chance that this could also negatively impact dual mining with either ETH + DCR or ETH + PASC?  Some of the comments I've seen lately have me a bit worried about this so wanting to get some feedback before building this new rig with that G3258 in it.

Thanks!

Can either of you elaborate on this please?

What does it mean that DCR to Nicehash is 2000% over PPS?  I know that auto-converts to BTC, right?  but surely it can't be converting at 2000% or even 200% profit rate of DCR, can it?

$1 profit per day on 4000 mhz is almost exactly proportionate to my 60 cents ppd on 2200 mhz... so where does that % over PPS come in?

Somewhat expensive???  They have the Mini for $800 CAD, which is well more than DOUBLE the landed cost from Baikal. Not even close to being worth it even with Dash at $45 USD.

I thought the same about DCR being well better than Pasc as a secondary with ETH. In fact, the only reason I even started running Pasc on my 4-card rig was that for some mysterious reason, it stopped being able to run ETH+DCR a bit over a week ago.  However, I just ran the numbers for that machine and they are essentially a wash:

- DCR ($1.91):  2200 h/r at -dcri 40 uses +80w vs ETH solo for me. Calcs to a .59/day profit

- PASC ($.165):  912 h/r at -dcri 17 uses +85w vs ETH solo.  Calcs to a .57/day profit

In addition, I still have not found the max profit point for PASC, but I suspect that I should be able to bump it up a few more notches, which would make it a bit better than PASC at current prices.  So, I guess it really depends on which of the 2 you think has a better long-term, unless you are converting directly to BTC via nicehash, etc.