The good old boom and bust - it's been going on since 2011.  If you didn't already have cards up and mining by end of January it's probably too late.  Looking at eBay you can see the 7970s have already been cleared out.

I was lucky enough to sell my 6870/7870/7950/7970/280X for a pretty penny the last few months on Amazon and bought BTC when it was about 1/2 what it is now.

Unless you have insane $0.01 KWH China power I wouldn't start up a new GPU farm.  No harm in using any GPUs you have laying around but the 380 and 380X are essentially the same card as was released in 2012 just with more RAM and about 25% more energy efficient - but the price has held.

I'll keep my cash liquid to pick up some cheap GPUs in about 6 months

BTW, BTC difficulty 4 years ago was about 1/10,000th what it currently is at - 5 magnitudes difference - back when each measly 6870 of mine was making about 0.25BTC/day

This reminds me of the guy selling the card that mined the last halving block (yes, it was before the time of ASIC).

Now somebody will be selling off their S3 or SP20 for that honor lol.

Semiconductors will be hitting an area of limited gains shortly and the same with mining technology.  It may not be worth to spend the 2 hours of labor swapping out a unit to put in a new unit for minimal energy savings and possibly new downtime.

Don't let the secret out of the bag.  Many still think they can make a fortune buying miners and putting them next to their blenders.

22.7

I see another batch hitting the "street" before this round is over and pushing it up a bit more.

BURST will always have the inherent issues that it can be overtaken easily with a 51% attack since it's not as disseminated. One of the reasons for the reasons for the race to ASIC was for security (which oddly now seems more threatening).

You've been here a month and haven't bothered to read about dedicated miners?  Click on Mining, then Mining Hardware and read one of Dogie's threads

TO answer you Q, you get essentially nothing from a PC/Mac at present.

It's actually a jacuzzi.

Seriously though most "people" as in individuals are mining in pools since they have almost no chance of solo mining effectively.  Those who are able to solo mine are typically big boys who make their own "pool" or even sell off hash.

Everything what?  The conversation so far has been nonsensical.

UPS is fine for computing. It is impractical in most cases for dedicated miners.  Money would be better spent on relocating to a reliable & cheaper power source.

Mining is easier than it has ever been - we have machines built specifically to mine!

Making a profit is becoming unobtainable.

What it doesn't convey is that gold was never the largest mining operation at any time (there was always some other metal that was more important).

The bitcoin network is the largest network on Earth presently.

Reminds me of the days when the first Avalons came out and people with massive card farms like myself were getting pushed aside by people with a few ASICs 

Do you mean what happens when mining or sending a transaction?

if mining, then nothing happens.  You just won't be solving anything and won't have a chance of finding a block until you continue mining again.

If you mean that you were sending a transaction - then if the transaction hit the network then it's already done.  Once it gets picked up it will most likely get confirmed whether your machine is on or off since the coins are not on your machine but rather tracked in the network.

I said recoup a little bit - not the whole thing

I think I may have been partially responsible for one of the older transformers blowing out coming from the main trunk - happened about 3 years ago when I was all card mining.  It was so eerily quiet

I think the time to make a profit before the 1/2ing has passed.  You're better trying to grab a miner after the prices adjust themselves afterwards.  Gives you time to hunt for a deal on an exchange

I don't think anybody can mine profitably at present with $0.25/kwh  .  I am paying $4k/month to lease an office that I use less than 50% of the business days, just trying to recoup a little bit of the rent with the "free" electricity while supporting the network.

I think he/she was referring to past manufacturers (see title of thread). It seems even in the 4 you listed the opinions have swayed very far.  Avalon was loved until Yifu cheated everybody.  KNC was loved after their first/second batch and then went to hated.

Well even the reselling window to informed buyers will start dwindling as we get closer to halving. There's always the option to sell to somebody less knowledgeable and the karma that comes with creative advertising 

So BFL is not coming out with a 100,000TH/s miner then?  And they told me that I would get it SOON - I think 2 weeks was their estimate.

I have had a few miners die during the power-up phase.  That was from a cold start.  That's why I suggest that he leave them in an idle state where they're only drawing like 50W to run the fans and keep the OS active and plug the cable back in when the cheap rates go online.