A friend of mine wants me to help him get a bunch of antminers going. I told him I didn't think it'd make enough BTC to be worth the effort, but he's hard headed and wants to do it anyhow if he can get the parts cheaply enough on ebay.
He wants to use one of these 49 port hubs because it has a 24 pin connector for power, so power should be no problem:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/49-Port-Powered-USB-2-0-Hub-Bitcoin-Litecoin-Erupter-Mining-Miner-/111330856924?pt=US_USB_Cables_Hubs_Adapters&hash=item19ebd60fdcThen he wants to fill it with Antminer U2s. His goal is 100 Ghash, so a bunch of 2.0 Ghash U2's very slightly overclocked, should do it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BITMAIN-ANTMINER-U2-1-6-4-0Gh-s-ASIC-Bitcoin-Miner-APAC-Sole-Agency-17-/321383618460?pt=UK_Computing_Other_Computing_Networking&hash=item4ad3f4d79cHe figures if we lowball the sellers we should be able to do it all for under $400, all in. I have power supplies we can use to power the 49 port hub, and an old Dell laptop to run the miner program, as well as a 12 inch fan to cool them.
My question is, is this good parts selection and worth the trouble? I know 100 Ghash ain't much in today's BTC mining, but he wants to just turn them on and let them run, and eventually hope to collect a few BTC out of them for profit.
Should we, or not worth the hassle? I have always been very anti-ASIC, but since BitCoin has already been ruined by ASIC miners, I figure we don't have much to lose on it.