I'm not going to suggest moving to China.
 California electric rates though DO tend to be excessively high, if you plan to get serious about mining at some point you ARE going to need to move somewhere with lower rates - like Central Washington State.

 Best bet is to see if PG&E has a "time of day" rate modifier, pretty much any other way to get lower rates involves "interruptable" stuff you DO NOT WANT as a miner.

Select "OS" as "other".

 That's where it's at.

 Tossup for second - the A4+ has been reviewed and has started shipping, and the L21 is a tossup with the L3+

 Scrypt has a lot more resistance to new miners popping up - there were a lot more "l3+ unit equivilents" mining scrypt prior to Bitmain entering the scrypt market by a LOT than there were "D3 unit equivilents" mining X11.
 Scrypt after all had already had 2 full "generations" of ASIC made and sold for it prior to the L3, while X11 barely had ONE and that not a real big one.
 It says a lot that my A2 farm is still MORE profitable right now despite all the new hashrate that has deployed this year than it was a year ago at this time - X11 can't say that or even come close to saying that after Bitmain SWAMPED the market with D3 units (plus everyone else that tossed in quite a few more second-gen X11 miners).

 ehs has listed "preorders" on their page intermittantly - folks have mentioned ordering from them at least a couple times I vaguely remember.

 2 1070
 0 1070 ti
 0 1080
 1 and perhaps 2 1080 ti models in stock (can't tell for sure on the "members exclusive one".

 That's ALL that EVGA had in stock on their web page just now.

 3 or 4 models TOTAL across all 4 types of GPU out of 49 models they have in that range.

Nvidia is going with GDDR6 on at least some of their cards, per Samsung.

 I would anticipate the Volta generation seeing a 10% or slightly higher list price to start with, at least in part due to the current very high memory prices.

 Performance - based on the Titan V, I'd estimate 25% higher performance on algorithms that are NOT "memory hard" at about the same power point as current Pascal cards.

 I doubt they are going to be designed for "lower power" than the card each model is going to replace, but instead are going to target "higher performance for the same power budget".

 AMD has 2 new "generations" in the works - but both are refreshes, a "second" refresh for the Polaris lineup and a refresh for the Vega lineup.
 The rumours so far seem to be that the Polaris next refresh will show up LATE this year, the Vega refresh sometime next year at the soonest.
 The Pascal update will probably go to GDDR6 NOT to HBM (I've seen at least one comment out of a memory maker somewhere about that) while the Vega lineup like the Fury cards it replaced will stick with HBM.

 I would bet AGAINST Nvidia skipping the Volta genearation for consumer cards - they're already a bit overdue based on their normal timing for a Pascal replacement, a March-to-May timeframe Volta consumer card lineup would keep them fairly close while pushing their current competative advantage vs AMD.

 Combination - they try to run the chip too close to it's "lowest voltage" and the variations cause them issues - which their design QC hasn't gotten a good handle on.
 They also have a very poor design on their airflow management.
 They are too happy with their "way compact extreme heat density" design, and would probably have a lot fewer issues if they went to a larger chassis to mount everything in, with GOOD airflow management design - something closer to the old Dragon miners or the Innosilicon A2.

 I can't speak to the physical QC of the S9 as I've never owned one - but I've NEVER been fond of "glue-on heatsinks" in ANYTHING ELSE I've suffered through that had those things.

Zotac 1070 ti mini should get close to 500 or a hair over at 70% TDP (124 watts), and they should be able to stay fairly cool at that power level - same as the EVGA SC 1070 ti but will run a couple of degrees warmer due to the inferior cooling setup.

Based on the issues with the first few S9 batches, and the existence of the T9, the primary issue they seem to be having is "chip to chip variation" is VERY WIDE on 14/16nm node processes when one is trying to push the chip as hard as Bitmain is doing.

 Based on the issues they had with the S7, they may also be trying to push the thermal density more than they should be.

Ampere is the next generation AFTER Volta - I would not anticipate seeing THOSE cards 'till late 2019 or possibly early 2020.

You don't mount DIRECTLY to the aluminum as such, you use spacers - both MB and riser cards have "isolated" mounting holes so you can get away with using brass or steel spacers.

Iron is close on conductivity to aluminum.
Both are somewhat inferior to copper silver and gold but ALL of them are "conductors" and conduct electricity well.

 Many high-tension power lines back in the past used an iron core with copper electroplated to that core.
 Today the core is usually aluminum due to it being lighter while still being stronger than copper.


 Riser cards ARE fairly standardized - that's why you see so many folks offering the "same version" risers.
 I have no clue who originates the design for each version.

litecoinpool "merge mines" several coins, then uses those funds to enable a NEGATIVE fee.

 Not sure if that's what you're asking for though?

Announced but not actually for sale quite yet, AFAIK.

Because the MB itself, the CPU, the RAM, and such still need power.

 It looks like the 2'nd and 3'd power supply slots on this MB are entirely used for "add2PSU" type functionality, NOT to power anything except POSSIBLY the group associated "1x" PCI-E slots when used for non-riser cards.

Funny part - on MooWrapper, I'm pumping out about 30% more than the #2 position - which is the first Gridcoinpool entry (they have 3 at this point).
If I were my own team, I'd be in the #2 position as a team - and that "Team Gridcoin" lead would drop by almost half.


 The recent increase in GRC $ pricing seems to be part of the "wide increase in almost all altcoin" pricing the past month.
 Pretty much ALL of the "major" altcoins at least tripled for a bit, then fell back some this past week to about 2.5ish times their price a month ago - and Bitcoin followed a similar pattern but didn't quite triple at it's peak.

ehsminer has been popping up in threads for a while now - and quickly getting marked as a scam every time they do.

 Nope - AFAIK Nicehash does not offer a LINUX version of their auto-switcher part at all.

The really ODD part is that it's NVIDIA cards that are in really short supply now, AMD cards have had the pricing jump the last week but they're still AVAILABLE, Nvidia cards 1070 and up are not only price rise some but availability VERY short.

 It's not just Newegg - EVGA themselves had very few "available" cards in the 1070 and up range when I checked this afternoon, NONE of the 1070 ti models except the Hybrid, 2 or 3 each on the 1070 1080 and 1080 ti.

I don't have the 1080 ti model, but I have their 1080 and 1070 ti models.

 If you run a 1080 ti Zotac Mini at efficient settings - around 150-175 watts - they should have adaquate but not great cooling.
 I would NOT try to push one past 200 watts for mining - the 1080 models have a 180 watt TDP and cooling was marginal at THAT power level.


 The issue is mostly that they have a small heatsink compared to bigger models, which limits how much heat they CAN dump at a given "temperature rise" point.


 If you run them at 150 watts, a 750 watt supply should be enough for 3 of them + MB/RAM/CPU/et cetera.
 You PROBABLY could run them as high as 170-180 watts with a 750, but you would be pushing a bit there.

litecoinpool.org

I rate that as "probability zero" on announcement at CES.

 I'm not anticipating seeing an announcement on Volta consumer cards prior to Nvidia's annual "confrence" think in March, and won't be shocked if they don't announce 'till April-May timeframe.


 AFAIK they haven't announced a new GPU at CES in at least a decade.