Plan on a stand-alone miner. The only folks that ever announced PCI-E based in-computer miners turned out nothing or stuff that's junk.
 IMO probably go with Spondoolies SP20 unit(s) if you can find them cheap enough, since noise is probably a factor.

 You don't need a real fast net connection to mine with, mining is low-bandwidth, but it does need to be fairly reliable and low-latency works better.

 That's not mining, that's barely even being a "lottery" player.

$/GH is also important, not just J/GH

 If you have 10% better J/GH but your $/GH is ten times higher, you have a product that won't do well in the market and will probably never reach positive RoI.

 Reliability is also important, and in the 14/16nm generation will become a LOT more important as a long-term factor.

Big mine operatior and builders aren't likely to hang out here.

Sad joke, make you pay for a miner that's ALREADY OUTDATED as "compensation" - assuming they actually go through with this pathetic joke of a "compensation offer" for past failure to perform.

 I'm very happy I never bothered with this company.

Need at least 3, since Avalon doesn't seem interested in actually competing.

 BW.com/Lketc probably January sometime.

 and a few days later, *pop*

 I don't expect the bear phase to last past about mid-April to early-May timeframe though, not sure I'd call it the "halfing bubble" as I expect prices to stay a fair bit higer AFTER the halfing but there will be some bubble effect.


 The CURRENT bubble is more accurately the "Chineese exchanges start taking fiat currency again" bubble.



 On the positive side, the bubble is helping a fair bit to make up for the higher diff increases than I was expecting, and might give my current miners a faint chance at achieving a positive RoI.

 Because there was never any REAL support at the $400+ level, just a short-term bump due to the Chineese exchanges suddenly being able to take Fiat currency again and a massive influx of "new money" as a result.

 I'm more than a little supprised the price is still as HIGH as it is.


 I still expect to see $300 again sometime, though I'm starting to wonder if it'll take 2-3 more months.

 Was that a production board, or a prototype?


 Most modern ATX-type power supplies are capable of running on 110 OR 220 volts, some need a switch to do that some DON'T.

Most A2 (and most A1 units before them) have run without issues for years.
Probably the most reliable gear on the market at this point.

SP20 has an option to turn the voltages down, but the web interface for that is flaky and it doesn't work real reliably.

 Mine will hit 818 MH/s using 370 Watts at .59 volts, it wasn't reliable at any lower voltage.


 Probably best to find a way to shut it down during those horrible 4 hours of insane power pricing, as they kick your AVERAGE power cost up to 9c/KWH.

 There never was a 12 chip design, though the software apparently has the option to support up to 12 chips per hashboard.
 The original 88Mh design used 8 chips per hashboard, the 110Mh "Mega" design used 10.

 Seasonic X1250 Gold (or the X1200 Platinum) power supplies are a VERY GOOD FIT for A2 Mega units, plenty of power to run them at 1200 Mhz with good efficiency and the cables and fan hole match the case quite well.

 The original no-markings black PS seems to be either a 1000 or 1100 watt unit, and tends to be very marginally rated at best.
 Also seems to be about Silver efficiency, NOT Gold, in actual usage.
 I HIGHLY recommend replaceing the things in any Mega unit even if you're not overclocking/"Turbo" mode at all, and DEFINITELY if you plan to clock higher than 1000 Mhz.

A2 Terminators are commonly available, and tend to be good reliable Scrypt miners.

 Litecoin might be more centralised than Bitcoin, but it's price and difficulty have also been a LOT more stable since the Litecoin block reward halfing.



 The days of "get your investment on short time" are LONG gone for any cryptocoin.

I would bet that BitMain is working on a 14/16nm full custom chip design (they as much as SAID so in the S7 introduction).

 Unless they show up with it in the next 3 months, I doubt there will be an S7+
 If there IS an S7+, I expect it to be appx. 14TH at appx. 3300 watts (another "triple" unit).

 I suspect the next Bitmain machine will be S7 form factor or very close, but using the next gen chips, called the S9.
 They need to do something about the reliability of their "glue the heat sinks on" methodology though.


 BitFury has to achieve decent yields to get any significant advantage on their new chips - and they've got other folks that have announced similar-performance chips in production or "soon".
 It also appears that Bitfury wants to do those stupid "lightbulbs" as their "consumer-grade" mining gear - I don't see enough of a market for those things to matter.
 They might be able to compete with existing "smart" lightbulbs, but that's a TINY market compared to lightbulbs in general and will be tiny for the forseeable future.


 I don't see SFARDS/Gridseed getting to that generation soon, and when they do *IF THEY DO* their chip will be handicapped by their stupid insistance on "dual mining" design.
 They also seem to have an ongoing issue with crap board-level design when they try to put miners together.
 I don't see SFARDS ever being a significant player in the mining space again.


 Avalon seems to have made the VERY BAD decision to wait to even start development on that generation - which might be the final straw that kills them.

110 is the norm for the supplies in the A2 models.
Most will accept 220 also though.

 Car voltage varies a fair bit - and tends to be closer to 14v DC not 12VDC when the battery is charging.

 Some miners might be able to handle that, some might not.


 There ARE ATX-type power supplies built for a 12VDC input, dunno if any are Gold or better efficiency.

SHA256 altcoins are rarely worth mining for themselves, the very low value and relative difficulty of getting them traded into something usefull usually more than makes up for the ease of mining them.

 non-SHA256 altcoins vary - LiteCoin and DASH have been viable alternatives with noticeably more stability over the last half year vs. BitCoin, though it looks like the SCRYPT altcoin mining ecosystem is a few months away from it's first major shakeup since the Litecoin halfing (and possibly it's biggest shakeup since the GC3355 was introduced).
 DASH is profitable to mine with a well-tuned GPU rig, though the ROI timeframe makes it somewhat iffy if your vid cards will last long enough to make RoI.

With current miners, home mining for a profit is pretty much dead unless you have crazy cheap electric.

 **HOWEVER**

 The 14/16nm full custom miner generation should be enough more efficient, and will STAY the "most efficient" long enough, that home mining should become viable again for many folks and we might even enter what will turn out to be the REAL golden age (or at least the silver age) of home mining around mid-2016.
 Having 3+ YEARS to turn a positive ROI on a miner is something that we've never seen before (with a few exceptions involving free or VERY VERY VERY cheap electric).


 Even the big farms with very very cheap electric are going to take a noticeable hit from the halfing - but the odds are good that most of those farm are already upgrading or have already upgraded their gear to newer efficient gear that will still be profitable after the halfing.

 You pay in gas usage for the electric usage of any miner you installed this way - which is VERY inefficient overall.
 Probably a complete waste of money, unless you're doing it for bragging rights or some such.

Try removing and resetting the other connectors.
Otherwise, looking like it might be a Rockerbox chip gone bad.