ok, was doing some math. From a short-term (6 months), doesn't it make more sense to just use the S1s? At the current prices, I can't use that much electricity difference to justify the price difference. Am I missing something? Also with the Dragon and others under the $3,000 price tag, it seems a little over priced even for Bitmain. Just trying to figure out what I might be missing.
Math is fun!
Basic breakdown is that neither unit will ROI, even with free power, at the current diff growth and exchange rate. The difference is an S2 = ~6xS1's, although an S2 uses approx half the power of 6 S1's. Technically speaking you'll get closer to breaking even with an S1, but it would basically require free power plus selling the unit before September/2014 when the cost to operate is much greater than the generated BTC.
In finance terms, it is more affordable to spend the same cash equivalent on BTC directly since it will guarantee a return instantly as opposed to either S1 or S2 which will never ROI and eventually hit the point where you pay more to operate the unit than you receive monthly. Plus then you don't deal with shipping, potential hardware defects, the RMA process, power / heat / maintenance, etc.
Bitmain is basically selling to suckers at this point. Good on anyone who has mythical math that makes this hardware worthwhile anymore. I wouldn't hold my breath on an S3, I was able to get a Gridseed shipped from Hong Kong before I could get Bitmain to reply to an email.
