We went from $140 to $1163 in a two month period late in 2013.

It's only early 2014 and we are retesting some of these numbers.

Strange things are always going on with Bitcoin. It's a disruptive technology.

People are trying to put a square peg (bitcoin) into a round hole (traditional methods for handling money), and they are getting burned in the process.

I'm not mining Litecoins, I use to. The guide from the site I sent you says Litecoin mining rig, but it can be used for any script coin. I'm minig Dogecoin.

Like you, my goal is to acquire a crypto-coin before it gets big. I don't know if Dogecoin will get huge, but from when I started to now, it's gotten bigger. I started mining in December when it first came out.

The calculations you did are correct for Litecoin, but remember, you can actually end up with LESS coins than than if the Difficulty increases.  Back in the summer of 2013 I wanted to build my farm, but got discouraged after reading several blogs. The mining Difficulty was increasing and Litecoin was around $1.50 to $2.  so mining (like in your calculations) wasn't profitable at all. Because of the mining Difficulty level, my electricity was costing more than I was earning in coins (no 3x return ROI). Well I didn't build the farm in time and as you might know, Litecoin went from around $2 to almost $50.  Had I eaten the cost of electricity and just mined and stocked the Litecoins away, I'd have gotten much more than 3x ROI.

So we're facing a similar situation again. If you chose to mine Litecoin, you know that based on your calculations, you might at best break even within a year if you're lucky and the mining Difficulty doesn't increase to put you completely in the negative category in terms of profit beyond the year. So you have to decide if you believe enough in Litecoin or any coin to eat the cost of the hardware and electricity in the hopes that Litecoin or any coin you mine, increases enough in the near future to give you that 3x ROI.

I am currently on the plus side right now with Dogecoin. I'm not 3x ROI, but I'm doing okay.  If Dogecoin goes mainstream and some of the projects that are being worked on takeoff, then my ROI will be much much more than 3x.

Give this Reddit ( /r/dogecoin )site a quick look, they are much more welcoming and share lots of info. BitcoinTalk.org isn't very friendly.
 

My GPU farm has 30 rigs but they don't have 6 R9 280x. Instead, they only have 3 280x each (MSI 280X cards)  Each card cost me about $380 - Microcenter store (that's the biggest expense per rig).  The price for the other parts are approximate estimates, the CPU $30, Motherboard $120, Memory $50, Power Supply Unit $250 and milk crate (case) $5. So each rig costs approximately $1600. If you add another 3 R9 280x that's another $1140 -- so a rig with 6 R9 280x would be about $2740.

Each one of my rigs gives me from 1800 to 2000 KH/s and pulls about 1000 watts (maybe a little less).

I hope this helps. It can be done, don't believe otherwise.

Good Luck.

Edit:

If you add another 3 280x cards, you'll need a different type of Motherboard than the one recommended by www.cryptobadger.com and it will cost more.  Additionally, you'll need another Power Supply Unit, so you have to add that cost also. So the rig you want will cost more than $2740, maybe more like $3100.

I will politely disagree. You can learn how to build a rig and set the configs without much technical knowledge. I know because I hadn't a clue about this stuff but after reading a few how-to guides and then reading this blog and others, I successfully set up my first Litecoin rig back in April. Several months later, I've got my own little GPU farm.

If you are not technically inclined then I would recommend trading instead of mining.

First, it's Litecoin not Letcoin.

Second, will you have the electrical capacity to achieve 1 to 2 Terahash for a scrypt coin using GPU's since there aren't any ASIC's out there for scrypt coins that are any better than a GPU.

Third, if you're using GPU's to achieve 1 to 2 Terahas you're going to have a heat issue as well.

So maybe you wait until a viable ASIC is available to mine scrypt coins.

But if you're really interested in moving forward NOW, then maybe you can carry out what I've always wanted to, but lacked the space and finances to achieve.

Here's the idea:

Use metal shipping containers --- set them up with the necessary electrical wiring and essential cooling mechanisms. Do it so that you can just up and move the containers when needed; all you have to do is plug them in to your electrical source.  Once you have that one container set up, then just repeat and stack.

There are plenty of sites out there that will give you instructions on how to build an GPU mining rig. The site I used to learn how to make a GPU rig is www.cryptobadger.com  

Good Luck and make it happen.

By the way, 1 TH/s would get you about $6-7M in coins a day.

For $1,000 a day, you only need around 150 MH/s you can accomplish this right now with around 30 mining rigs each with 6 R9 280X cards. That would probably set you back around $100k (assuming you can get several bulk discounts).

You want to spend 300 dimes on a custom ASIC solution and don't know who friedcat is?

yikes.

If you're looking to develop your own ASIC it's going to run into the single digit Millions for your first run.  If it were me, I'd get in touch with Friedcat to see about getting the comms protocol and datasheet for their upcoming 40nm chip and get to designing an implementation.

Christ. That's crazy. I hope your investments pay off well for you.

getting an ASIC produced is not rocket science, and the basic SHA256 algorithm is available - but there is some big start up costs - and you need to optimize it .. the key is how fast the foundry can turn out chips based on the current schedule

Perhaps Highbitcoin.com is a company to order from. Their first batch is already sold out, but if you're willing to wait to June, you can get 24 TH by ordering six Callistos ($10K each).

If you want that amount of hashing power NOW from a cloud mining service like cloudhashing.com, it will set you back between $300k and 400k -- but you'll have to negotiate your own deal.