Quote from: Eliavres on June 05, 2017, 11:08:43 PM

I'm sort of in the same boat as you fellas, though on a smaller scale. I'm about to buy a new rig for the first time in a decade (hooray), nothing big just a single card setup, though I'd like to use it to try and get back some of the money I'm about to spend.

I can get my hands on one of these models despite the shortage:
Asus RX570 Expedition 4Gb
Asus RX 480 DUAL OC 4Gb
Msi RX 480 ARMOR OC 4Gb

But I'm still not sure about which I should get, admittedly I'm more inclined to the MSI 480 because it seems to be better cooled and, well, since I'll be using it for gaming as well a 480 is still a 480. But I'm afraid of lucking out on the memory lottery, couldn't find any consistent feedback regarding what memory brand those cards use, so any advice would be very much appreciated,

..also I'm afraid of bricking the card while the BIOS..none of those are dual BIOS so there is no backup in case things go wrong. Isn't there any way to test the memory straps without/before flashing them in?

The Expedition card has similar cooling to DUAL OC, and it's horrendous. I'd get the MSI Armor.
At the current rate, it will take you no more than 60 days (at worst) to get your money back from mining, if done 24/7. So you can calculate accordingly how much time it will take depending on how you use it.
Don't be concerned about what memory brand you get. Only after you buy will you know, as the memory vendors are random across 99% of cards.
And lastly don't worry about bricking the card, because you can plug the monitor into the motherboard and use the integrated graphics anytime to restore the stock BIOS. Unfortunately you can't 'test' memory straps, but a simply copy & paste won't cause any issues. If you're doing a Ryzen build which lacks integrated graphics, you may have to rent a random GPU from a local hardware store to restore the bios though.