Why? Bitmain buys heatsinks by the thousands.
You said heatsinks are cheap, and that there was probably $5 in metal. So find me some; you made no mention of the quantities required to get that price. In business I don't sell retail at my suppliers cost, I mark it up appropriately. So what if BITMAIN can get them for $5 a piece, you and I can't. By your logic BITMAIN should be selling these units at cost with zero profit. That may make sense in your head, but it's not how the real world works.
No I never said that they should sell anything with zero profit. You are saying it makes sense to remove all those parts forcing some unlucky buyer to pay for nonbulk replacements.
Here is prices pretty close to my estimates:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/aluminium-heatsink-bonded-fin-heatsink_622412658.htmlYou are imagining that there will be ~$300 in savings which simply cannot be the case.
I already told you they were arbitrary numbers for sake of making a point. Don't like $300? Fine, pick some other numbers.
You can't use arbitrary/unrealistic numbers to make a point.
There cannot even be half that amount considering bitmain sold complete S1s for $200 and chips make up something like 50% of the production cost.
Oh sure, so you're going to get on my case for arbitrary numbers and then counter with your own arbitrary numbers. Great debate, you should go on tour.
My numbers are based on something at least. Hashratios bulky inefficient miners costs less than $0.8/gh to produce using chips that cost $0.35/gh.
So you are going do remove the heatsink/fan/thermalpaste/case/cables/controlboard and sell your asic boards to someone who will then have to add their own heatsink/fan/thermalpaste/case/cables/controlboard at a greater cost than bitmain would pay?
Yes, I'm going to undo the ribbon cables, fan connector, little tabs that hold the control board on, and the 40 screws holding the board on. Fix up the paste and slap the new ones on. As for what the other guy's going to do? Not my problem, and it really doesn't matter what BITMAIN pays, the end-user is not BITMAIN. You, the other guy, and myself
are not entitled to BITMAIN's pricing structure. As soon as you figure that out it's going to make digesting this a lot easier.
I estimate bitmain would save ~$40 per S3 by recycling S1 parts. (being optimistic. It's probably much less)
ribbon cables: $1
heatsink: $20
fan: $5
40 screws:$5
case: $10
And you would be forcing whoever buys your hardware to pay ~$75 to replace the $40 worth of parts you recycled.
So in this case you could either sell a complete S1 for ~$150 or 2 blades for ~$75 (assuming anyone actually wants to buy and reassemble them)
Whatever discount they give will be equal to or less than the amount your S1's depreciate after removing the parts. If they only discount the production costs(bulk rates) then you would be losing money by going with an upgrade kit. (save $40 but S1's depreciate $75)
It blows my mind that you think every miner is an intelligent rational actor. How many of Asicminer's USB Erupters were sold that will never make their cost back? How about AM Blades and Cubes? How about all of the idiots who are still caught up in the BFL fiasco? Why are people on EBAY paying more for second hand miners then they could buy them for right from the source?
The only people who didn't ROI were those who bought the AM BE usbs. And some people buy on ebay because they accept paypal and are willing to pay a premium for a bit of consumer protection.
