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.
You 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.
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.
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.
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?
Do you see now why this does not make sense?
It doesn't
have to make sense. Not a lot in this world does.