Now that's a helpful website QuestionAuthority thanks, lots of user reviews is just what I need, I spotted some review sites out there but they were clearly ad backed and posting dodgy reviews.
And I'm sure that they're not shills...
everything you need to know is in every post of this thread so far. I'll add 2 things:
profitable miners buy they're own hardware, mine with it, then sell the hardware before it becomes totally worthless.
If I had old hardware that I wanted to squeeze a little more money out of, I'd start a cloud mining company.