The main thing with buying an FPGA (or ASIC for that matter) for me would be electricity use. It would have to run at better than 5khash/watt at the very least to get my interest.
Is there any specs for the hash costs for a bitcoin FPGA/ASIC? The memory accesses would presumablyincrease the power consumption for a litecoin system.
Only oversight is WTF do I put the PSU's.....(I'd banked on an ATX actually being able to supply the 3V3 supply, but they all lie about the capability)
Could you not voltage divide the 12v from the ATX and then use a 3v3 regulator? You'd want to divide first because you don't want to drop too much across a regulator or you'll be throwing away a lot of money as heat!
To me this is somewhat of an odd statement. As long as you can mine at a profitable rate of hash/watt I would assume (for me at least) that speed would be the absolute priority. Sure, you can prob build something that is extremely low watt, but what you really want to do is beat difficulty increase by mining FAST @ consistent and profitable hash/watt ratio. Diff is the killer!