Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on October 30, 2013, 07:33:09 PM

IIRC the power converters on Bitfury board are about $12 that is in bulk (i.e. 1000+ units). Just the power regulators are $12 for 40 GH/s. = $30 per TH/s just for one non ASIC component. Avalon board level BOM is open source (very similar to ASCIMiner who is very hush hush about components) and runs ~$10 per board (excluding ASICs, PCB and assembly). That's $50 per TH/s for just minor components (crystal, resistors, capacitors, connectors, etc).

Yeah, and those are fair and honest comparisons per TH when asicminer needs 1200x more chips per TH than Hashfast. Im sure that has no impact on cost per TH whatsoever.

SO instead of pointless comparisons per TH with incomparable hardware, lets compare a 300GH Monarch to high end GPU's. High end GPU's have same form factor, similar powerdraw, similar cooling requirements, much more complex PCBs (14+ layers), loads of connectors, IO and non core functionality (DVI, HDMI, DP, PCIe, audio, Crossfire, etc..). This table is from Mercury research:

Take a look at the 6970. Eliminate the GPU and GDDR, and whats left is a BOM of $47 excl the asic (but including a load of stuff you dont need). But you think production cost of a monarch would be, how much exactly?

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You say quality power isn't important

Please dont twist my words. Obviously efficiency is crucial. WHats far less important is reliability. Downtime of a KnC miner now in its first weeks is a huge deal. Not so much of a deal next year when your miners earn only marginally more than they cost in electricity, on a bad day it might even save you money

. But I never said PSU's are not important, I said they wouldnt be included. THere is no PSU with a monarch, nor is there one with KnC. SHould miners calculate those costs? Of course. WIll they ? Very dubious, particularly people like me and assume you who still have piles of unused PSU's. And even if the cost has to be included, its shouldnt be written off in 1 or even 2 years. Those PSU's last much longer and have decent resale value, thats why in the cost calculation, they dont matter so much.

One last point about alibaba being so inaccurate; here you can buy a full ATX case, retail, 1 unit for 12 pound:
http://www.dabs.com/products/best-value-oem-717-midi-tower-with-hd-audio--no-psu--black-7XT4.html?src=3
Its not even the cheapest, I picked one that even looks decent. But you think $6-8 in large volumes is laughable and your $60 closer to the truth?