Considering purchasing Avalon chips

[nickha0]

Crosspost from newbie... didn't realize I was so close to breaking out of new user prison when I originally posted this

I'm considering buying 10 Avalon ASICs chips. Each one, according to the seller, has a hash rate of 282 MH/s, for a total of 2.83 GH/s. This is drastically more than my current feeble hash rate, mainly considering that my computer was made for gaming and I haven't optimized it for bitcoin mining, which I've really just started to get in to.

So if someone could explain to me what process I would have to go through upon buying these chips in order to have a functioning mining rig, and whether or not it's worth it, that would be super helpful. Keep in mind I have a very limited knowledge on how to build PC's as my computer was prebuilt, though I have some friends that can help me with setting it up.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

The chips by themselves don't do anything, you'd need to have them assembled to a board. And I am not sure 2.83Gh/s will be worth it once a hell of a lot of people start mining on ASICs. It will be like trying to mine bitcoin with the CPU today.

[solareclipse64236]

where do you buy just 10 chips? the minimum is 10,000 on avalon site

[ragingazn628]

group buy

[Starlightbreaker]

group buy

most of them closed already, yeah?

[Bitsaurus]

Buy the chips in one of the group buys, buy in quantity 10 preferrably
Use escrow for payment
Have person doing group buy ship to a board maker like burnin - he's doing 10 chip boards 80 euro
The board maker will then ship the board and chips to you (assuming you also pay the board maker)

[bitcoiner49er]

2.82 Gh/s on the upcoming ASIC horizon is gonna be on the bottom end I suspect. Yet I am in for 20 chips. I'm hoping for less of an increase than predicted, but as we all know with BTC; we don't know. 

I've seen predictions of 100 - 150 million difficulty by Aug, so plug that into a calculator and see what you get. Power savings will be great, but BTC per day might only be .02?

You would need to place an order today, I would recommend groups of 20 as burnin has quoted a double density board for about 100 Euro (plus the chip cost and shipping).

It all hinges on the date you can get your ASIC mining, the earlier the better. I'm just wanting to stay involved.

[bassclef]

1. Buy Avalon chips in group buy
2. Send chips to one of many builders, or build yourself
3. Profit

In reality it is much more complicated. The lead time for chips is ten weeks, which puts delivery into late June/July assuming no delays for the first orders. In the next month a whole bunch of DIY (or semi-DIY) solutions will be available for those with chips. Those with the know how will have the materials ready to go, or have people lined up to build them quickly. In the grand mining scheme, however, the DIY crowd constitutes a very small group, but it is likely they will be online first, barring any design problems.

Also to be considered are the large-scale ASIC miners, who will have ordered huge amounts of chips but will have larger startup costs and hurdles. As we have seen with Butterfly Labs, running a large operation while meeting expectations can be extraordinarily difficult and expensive. Designing, building and running a large ASIC farm will not be without its own set of challenges. Because of this reality, I believe that correlating difficulty increases with the number of chips sold, especially in a given timeframe, is speculation at best.
 
Also we have difficulty. Yesterday's difficulty increase was less than predicted on the forums, so it's possible future increases could be less as well. The massive ASIC farms mentioned above may not be online until autumn, AND it's reasonable to assume BFL's production will continue through the summer at a slow trickle. Therefore, I think it's reasonable that difficulty will increase, although not by ridiculous amounts until autumn, and even that depends on how many ASIC farms successfully power up on schedule.

Of course I could be totally wrong. But I do think there's a strong case to be made for the DIYer somewhere in here.