The day after ASIC hits, what to do with the hardware?

[fgervais]

Greets,

Not sure where to post the question, so here it goes. So after ASIC hits full force and GPU mining becomes obsolete, apart from selling your hardware what can you do with it?

I run a decent sized cluster for school purposes at home and I will not be pulling it down after the paradigm shift. Last year I plugged in a bunch of GPUs in the racks to monetize the downtime on the cluster and mining has provided me a nice source of pocket money to run and build it.

I'll be renting some boxes to host VMs for school mates next semester, but a) I doubt I'll be running at capacity, and b) I'd rather keep prices low to allow any of my colleagues access to tools to help them out. I'm looking into various possibilities to rent out processing capacity as well, but contract work of the sorts is a bit too random and sparse to dent my costs.

So, is there something out there that allows for a passive source of revenue in exchange of my boxes?

If relevant, most of them run on a i5 2500k, lots of RAM, SSDs and piles of 5xxx GPUs on board.

Thanks in advance!

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[SaintFlow]

render a record 3d mandelbrot video
perhaps even 4d by changing colourcoding

post on youtube, monetize by adds.


Crazy? crazy!

[50BTC.com]

You can make some kind of render farm. If you set a low price it may be possible to find many customers.

[vom]

For GPUs: oclHashcat

http://hashcat.net/oclhashcat-plus/

HAX0R TO THE MAX0R

[Stephen Gornick]

There are alt currencies that won't be affected by ASIC.   I've no idea what the profitability level is, but if you have paid-for GPUs and phenomenally inexpensive electricity (or free), then mining a scrypt-based crypto currency wouldn't be all that radical of a shift.

But with the Bitcoin difficulty rising thanks to new capacity from FPGAs coming online, the day may come that GPUs are no longer good for bitcoin mining even before the ASICs ship.  Fortunately the incease in the exchange rate has more than exceeded the rise in difficulty, but it could be that difficulty will rise even faster going forward.

 - http://blockchain.info/charts/miners-operating-profit-margin

[joesdc]

Sell it to others who want to do bitcoin mining on a much smaller and much much less profitable scale.

[Gabi]

Use it for science

http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/

[fgervais]

There are alt currencies that won't be affected by ASIC.   I've no idea what the profitability level is, but if you have paid-for GPUs and phenomenally inexpensive electricity (or free), then mining a scrypt-based crypto currency wouldn't be all that radical of a shift.

But with the Bitcoin difficulty rising thanks to new capacity from FPGAs coming online, the day may come that GPUs are no longer good for bitcoin mining even before the ASICs ship.  Fortunately the incease in the exchange rate has more than exceeded the rise in difficulty, but it could be that difficulty will rise even faster going forward.

 - http://blockchain.info/charts/miners-operating-profit-margin

I'm looking at those, and will definitively be doing a serious evaluation when the market reshapes with GPU exile. I do confess having major trouble deciding on which to consider, or to pull the trigger at all.

At least at 5.4¢, my electricity will allow me to hold out far into the fall of GPU mining. Hell, I might even hold out a while more over cost just because I find exchanges that much of a pain...

Sell it to others who want to do bitcoin mining on a much smaller and much much less profitable scale.

aka just dumping them on eBay.

I like my rig, I'll piece it out if it comes to it, but I'd rather keep it around.

Use it for science

http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/

In previous years I would have done it, at least during downtimes, but with a student strike decimating my possible work period between semesters, I need to milk every resource possible. I've even been speeding through online surveys late at night...

 (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Didn't know about this particular project, bookmarking it!

[Jumbalya]

Give them to the poor.

[bushstar]

Right now I'm getting more Bitcoins from mining Litecoin and trading them on btc-e. When ASIC hits I'm guessing everyone will move to LTC as currently there does not seem to be any other viable altcoin.

[zvs]

buy them for really cheap, then resell a few months later

[thebaron]

I think it's safe to say they'll miss their target release date. Happens with this sort of custom stuff, bugs in the finished product...stuff like that. Wouldn't surprise me if it didn't come out till early 2013. Don't start worrying yet. Meanwhile, mine as much as you can...

[Tittiez]

Sell your worn out overused gpu's on ebay to kids that want to play COD at MAAAX GWAFICS

[MicroCashMike]

The gamer market isn't going anywhere, plenty of buyers.

[ilovethebtc]

donate the equipment to Goodwill

[vagina]

Mine litecoins