So, Novak and I are working on a proof-of-concept device which we think has potential. It'd be a U3-style "Pod" miner sporting 8x BM1384, which puts it at 8 times the hashrate of a Compac or approximately one eighth of an S5. The pod would have fully adjustable (in software) voltage and frequency, meaning it could be cranked up to full power or undervolted to a quiet 0.28W/GH (approximately). Power comes in through either a 12V brick or a 6-pin PCIe (both jacks would be standard). USB connection to a controller, just like any other pod. Instead of a custom heatsink there'd be screw holes to mount a standard CPU cooler, which I could probably source cheaply if you didn't already have one laying around. Cooler fan speed would be automatic and thermostatic.

Here's the thing. I talked to some of my cronies a few weeks ago about an idea like this and, at the estimated cost of materials and such, I was told it wouldn't sell. Not efficient enough, $/GH wasn't there, stuff like that.

So, what if we recycle?

We're cooking up a design that actually reuses some common components from previous-generation hashing boards. We've got boxes of this crap laying around, and the parts are still good, so why not? They're basically free, just take a bit of work to pull and clean up. And in order to get more parts in, we could trade miners for last year's boards that contain the parts.

The most important components, the hashing chips themselves, really can only come from S5 or S5+ boards. I know a lot of people probably have failed S5 boards, so in order to get some of that hashrate back would you be willing to trade a dead S5 board for an 8-chip pod?

Some additional components can be found in common power circuits like on BTCGarden AMV1/AMV2 blades, ASICMiner Tubes and to a lesser extent on the boards common to Rockminer BE200 gear, as well as AntMiner S1 and S2 boards. As the power parts don't represent near as much expense as the hashing chips would, a quota of these parts would cover half the cost of a miner, so you'd get one miner for your old boards and $25.

I'd only need the boards. Heatsinks and whatever else can be recycled or reused locally. Honestly, shipping speed doesn't matter to me either (though your miner might not go out until I have your trade boards in hand) so that can be pretty cheap.

And if you don't have boards to trade, or we have so many boards already that I have to suspend trading and sell for cash only, the price is still going to be substantially lower than it would have been otherwise.

The miners would, obviously, be built from used parts. But as with everything else we've ever built and sold, they'd be tested before shipping and go with a full warranty. If it breaks and not because you played football with it or tried to push it to 400MHz with one of those baby i3 coolers, it's probably covered by warranty.

Once I've pulled the parts I need, all the excess board will be taken in for proper recycling/reclamation rather than hauled to a landfill.

So, show of hands. How many people would get in on a program like this? I'll be honest, I just thought of it a couple days ago and we just talked it over today and I just 20 minutes ago got some semblance of a prototype approximately working with hacked-up chunks of other miners, so it's very much a plan in progress. It won't go very far without community support, so, community, how much do you support this?