However, when they do become unprofitable and are turned off, it is doubtful they will ever see service again
Thats how a feel about my GPU rig in the garage. Who really wants crazy BTC abused GPUs that ran 2-years at 75C and 80% fan that were bought used in the first place?
The rig made me enough money its not really worth my effort to part out 5850 GPUs and Core2Duo CPUs for 0.5 BTC/ea. Heck that rig made me 2BTC/day at one point!
i sold my 5830s and 5870s a month or two ago, when they were still going for $100 and $150. kept the 7xxx, just turned them off this morning. i actually would have done it last difficulty increase but i'm lazy... turning them off means i should sell them, and when i'm too lazy to sell them, i feel bad. so the other option is to dismantle them and put them in the storage shed, which requires manual labor, which makes me sad
oh well. i was able to sell all my 5870s as part of a lot on ebay, you could try something like that
for myself personally, i guess i might leave the bitcoind daemon running and maybe p2pool..?? not sure. don't have much interest in bitcoins anymore since i'm no longer generating profit from them. i'll keep the bitcoins i have in my wallet(s), then maybe in a year or two or three, i'll check the price... and they'll probably be worthless, but they may be worth a lot... right?
(ed: err, I'll probably stay somewhat informed, watching ASIC prices. if it ever becomes profitable to purchase some, then i'll start mining again. right now they're throwing money into the wind)
