As I said, I get the power and convenience part, but do not forget GPUs and computer equipment will always have some value, you can get 50%-70% back anytime. Especially me, I never buy top of the line GPUs for $600, instead I get $100-$200 GPUs that give me 50% of top of the line, so your math is not really correct for. But that's not the point. The point is I am buying a piece of hardware that is only good for 1 thing, mining. So if difficulty increases, those miners would just become useless, so if we look at risk/reward of getting PC hardware vs these miners, well it just doesn't cut it fore me. I'd rather have 20% additional cost of power with the flexibility to turn off my miners if I need to, knowing I can get 50-70% back for my equipment within next 1-2 years, then investing into something that can have 0 value if things change. All I am saying specialized miners should be able to better compensate for the fact that they are completely useless outside of mining. And current fact that I need to be able to run them for 7 month to get my money back kills this deal for me.
for me as I have pc's running with gpus and I have antminer s-1's running.
I pull heavy duty power 4k which while the house is wired for it. In fact I can do 6k an hour for mining.
One of the joys of living in NJ is you can legally wire you own home. Just pull a permit from the town and have them inspect it when done. So when I purchased my home back in 1992 it was built in 1970 and had aluminum wiring due to a copper shortage from the Vietnam war.
I knew I was going to rewire my house with all copper the day I purchased it. I also know I was putting in 10 gauge and 20 amp plugs. I liked loud music at the time. So my house has 200 amp service with a 40 breaker box. I use 32 of the breakers and have the chance to really run hot gpus from Oct to April. I then downsize by selling off the gpus. this year I am increasing my hash by sell off gpus and replacing with gridseeds.
3 of them = 1050 cost me 600 for 3
1 r9 290x =880 khs got 641 on a sale at the peak price
my cash gain = 41 bucks I had power supplies and cables
my kh gain = 170kh
I now use 30 watts not 240 watts.
I have 8 more gpus
If I offload 4 of them I drop about a k watt If I add 12 more gridseeds I gain kh and lay out almost no cash. This is an easy choice for me.
I would love to see that math.