Thanks Brandon, I have been looking at scrypt mining also, and am just using this as an excuse to spend more time in my office with my computers and toys. I don't really expect to make any real money from this or at least turn a measurable profit. I do have an abundance of PSU's laying around in the 750-1200watt range.
I will look more into the Asicminer Cube, and the S1.
The only other ones I have looked at have been the Blockerupter blades. But those still seem a bit high per Ghash.
I do appreciate all of that info, I have basically just left my Jalapeno running on another pool for a pretty long time and am just now getting the time to start reading and planning for a bigger mining rig. It is some time off but I would like to hit 500-700 Ghash within the next month or so.
3 Antminers would currently be the only way to go if you're hoping to get above 500GHs without breaking the bank. I don't think you could even buy secondhand gear for less money.
ASICMiner may soon have some exciting new miners. But this is a game where waiting is deadly to your income. If I was just getting into mining now I might just start with the first wave of Gridseed Scrypt ASIC miners and skip Bitcoin mining altogether.
I've been mining since sep 2011, just with a few tours overseas, I left my GPU's and a BFL block running idle for most of my mining time. I do agree that to someone just starting, scrypt would be the way to go, but for me I don't honestly care about turning a profit on this, its purely a hobby for me. I am now getting into migrating to new hardware, and yes I am really out of touch on it all.
The only thing I do when I sell coins is put it back into this. Long story short, I just dumped a large portion of coins I have made since I started(first time ever selling) and have $7868 to spend on hardware and would like to know which way to go. It looks like the Antminer S1 is the best choice right now unless there is another secret powerhouse out there?
I think antminers are the best bang for your buck at the moment.
Like anything else, though, your bang will decrease as time goes by with increasing difficulty.