At Soko Mining we build and host GPU Mining Rigs. Although you may like to believe there is some bias here, and sure
there may be, here are some reasonable reasons (I promise we are being reasonable) why GPU Mining can be better than ASICS. Let us know if you agree or disagree!
DISCLAIMER* We mine with both GPU and ASICS miners. More GPU :)
So lets get to it,
Exhibit A
ASIC miners can only mine the coin they are designed for. This can be good if the coin remains profitable to miner, however if the coin loses profitability you are left with a thousand dollar, energy hungry paperweight. We have seen this happen with the Antminer D3 and soon possibly with the Antminer L3. GPU Rigs can mine a variety of coins and even if mining becomes unprofitable you can still repurpose your hardware or resell it.
Exhibit B
ASIC miners are hard to obtain and are marked up substantially by resellers. If you preorder and ASIC miner from the manufacturer you have to wait months for the machine to arrive. This leaves you at risk to change in mining profitability. If you choose to buy from a reseller the price is always marked up based on the profitability of the coin it mines. For example the Antminer S9 costs $1250 from Bitmain but resellers are asking for $3500. GPU Rigs are only at the mercy of the graphics card market which is much more stable and reasonable.
Exhibit C
ASIC miners cannot be run at home. ASIC miners have extremely loud, high CFM fans that simply cannot be tolerated in a residential setting. Heavy soundproofing, cooling, and ventilation is required. This increases your initial investment and impacts your ROI heavily. Also, most ASIC miners come with 220v power supplies that do not run on regular residential 110v. GPU mining is much more home friendly. The noise generated by a GPU rig is minimal, cooling and ventilation is handled by the rig itself, and our GPU miners can be configured to run on either 110v or 220v.
That's all for now folks.
Also sorry for the spam, but we couldn't help but include a picture of our best selling miner, Coin Commander!
