When you say "excluding the USB Erupter", do you mean that there is an ASIC that's actually available and in stock? If so, where to get it (I'm in the UK).
Thanks
He's referencing the small USB stick which has an ASIC chip on it. There's a group buy on this forum where a guy (Sonic something is his name) has them for .32BTC right now, which is cheaper than anywhere else. They're fun.
Thanks for the reply. What do you currently use / hash at (if you don't mind me asking)?
Unless my maths is screwed, at the current difficulty level / energy costs (0.2$ per kwatt) etc any ASIC based system (>1GH/s) seems profitable ($30month)? Or am I missing something blatantly obvious?
If you had potentially $2000 to spend what would you opt for and expect GH/s wise and BTC/month wise?
I've got 7950's mining FTC/LTC right now, and am always exploring other currencies for fun. The 7950 isn't too expensive compared to the hash rate in return. It's Scrypt vs BTC's SHA, so it's a bit different game. I've got my 7950 config putting out 625KH stable with 63C* and 0 errors across millions of rounds. I've had it past 650 before but it wasn't stable.
I also have some of the ASICMINER sticks, they're just kindof fun to have, and they hash about 1-10% more than advertised.
I'm in these currencies for the long haul. We shall see how it goes.
Regarding BTC: Keep in mind, difficulty and network hash rate are going to constantly rise over time. So what makes X return now, won't make the same return down the road. AS someone else said on this forum somewhere, unless your equipment returns half of its investment cost within the first month, it likely won't break even ever.
Example: If you got a 25GH unit for $2k, and it arrived by September and it ran with 100% uptime for the whole month of September, presuming difficulty was 50M when you started running and the rise is 43% each time, you'd never break even. If you had 25GH for $1000 then you'd break even.
Check out mining.thegenesisblock.com to see estimation math over the course of time to help you out.
As for me, I'm one of the crazies who's hedging bets with KNC Miner. My reasoning is, like I said above, if you really want to ensure an even breakpoint, you want as much hashing power as you can get the first month, so I'm going to go big with a few of their units. They have a 100GH unit for $2500 I believe, which would (at current guesstimations) break even and make some money.
But there's no guarantees in life.
