Well, keep us posted on your hardware list and what you decide to do. When I was putting my wishlist together, a member offered (I didn't ask, of course) me 3 hard drives he had lying around, saving me the cost. I have some extra stuff I don't need at the moment, and it's only fair if I pass the kind act on.
So what type of miner were you looking to get anyways?
I'm torn between a scrypt miner at about 1.9-2.5 MH, scrypt mining, I could easily get into alot of altcoins, and get into the booms quickly by mining bulk. For example if I would of had one a month ago, could of gotten alot of dogecoin and sold when it peaked.
Or a 200GH bitcoin miner, but I'm so convinced that difficulty is rising so quickly by the time I would be able to get it running (about a month from now if I work really hard to gather funds) It would be usless and not able to profit.
Or am I just being stupid? Do I have to spend 20k just to have a chance at mining?
Nah, I don't think you have to spend 20k to realize some gain with mining. But it's definitely too late to jump onto the bitcoin bandwagon, but lots of people fare well mining and trading alt coins. 2.5MH is still relatively low, but depending on what you mine and whether you decide actively trade, the potential to realize some gain isn't far fetched.
So I take it you haven't actually purchased any mining equipment yet?
Nope, been saving since January, I had enough at one point, but I kept pushing to save more for a better rig, then I lost a decent sum of it.
Oh well.....
So I'm asking probing questions about your potential mining equipment for a reason. There are some of us who may not feel comfortable donating coins, don't need your services, or whatever - but we may have some extra equipment lying around that we'd be willing to give away for offer at a lower cost. You never know... you say you used to mine, surely have some left over hardware, right?
It was just to learn the commands, I was using my macbook's GPU on a linux dis, so I don't really have anything to offer but some cash, or BTC if you so wish. The macbook wouldn't do well, I got about 10 satoshis, 1 dogecoin, and 10 USD-E coins out of it. 10kh isn't much to work with but I know how to setup rigs now.
If I could get something useful/profitable for 1500$-2000$ I would be so greatful you have no clue.
I'm fairly good with electronics, I was thinking I might just build my own rig.
I don't think I would have to solder anything right? Just ribbon connections? and ports and such,
I just fixed my girlfriends broken lcd screen, that was easy in my book.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 w/ Boost (Go for about 360$ each, I could just buy two of those, and try to mine with a lower KH, when I make more money buy more GPUs?
Lepa G1600-MA 1600 Watt power supply
Axiomtek FAB-113 8x PCIe PICMG backplane
Commell FS-A72 Single Board Computer PICMG 1.3
Intel Celeron E1200 Dual-Core 1.6 Ghz CPU
2 GB DDR3 SDRAM