It's tricky finding a reliable pool so you can "set it and forget it" for sure.

It's an adventure:

* First you need parts to build a system (and if you're ordering from Newegg good luck getting your "overnight" order in <5 business days).
* Then you need to setup the software (hint: latest Ubuntu combined with latest Catalyst drivers is a world of frustration).
* Then tune cgminer (which took me a few days between other obligations) which is somehow not a copy-paste job.
* Then you spend a couple weeks fighting unreliable or hacked pools until you find something that works for you.

And reliability matters a lot if you're using the most common PPLNS payout pools since every round you're not mining at 100% sets you back.

I'd definitely recommend Proportional pools like middlecoin. The fees are higher (~+3% over PPLNS typically), but getting paid for 96% of your shares on something reliable is definitely preferable to 99% or even 100% of your shares, minus previous-round penalties (up to 20% or more?) on something unreliable.

Anyways, here's what I've done with the three R290's I bought back in December: http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/report...

Thought peeps might be curious seeing it in concrete terms, and middlecoin's charts are the best IMO. Simple, everything you need, and nothing you don't.

Once I switched to middlecoin (with multipool as a backup) I've earned almost 0.5BTC in 2.5 weeks. And (very) surprisingly, I don't seem to be suffering all that much due to rising difficulty (the brunt of that hit a week or two before I had everything going I guess).

This doesn't include the balance I carry at multipool BTW, which I don't bother to do much with (Cryptsy: meh).

Still, I'm planning to sell the system for what I paid for it (~$1800) tonight. It's made me some money, and that's nice, but wondering when the right time to sell (because of rising difficulty) is weighs on you a bit. And I figured if I can get my money back, well, it's been nice, but yeah, best get out while the gettin' is good. Especially with the possibility of ASICs hitting in a few months (even if they aren't faster, if their hashes-per-watt figures lure in even bigger miners, that's going to hurt).

It's crazy to see cards I paid $409/each for (R290) go for up to 30% over what I paid a month or two before. I've never seen that happen in 20 years of messing with computers. I mean hell, I've never even got more than maybe 20 to 30% back of my initial purchase back on a PC before.

Aside: That's one reason I love Macs so much since switching ~7 years ago: I can upgrade to the latest iPad every year for $100 out of pocket, and even a 3 or 4 year old laptop like my two MacBook Air's will easily retain 50 to 60% of their value. Which makes the whole financial/cost arguments against Macs pretty bogus (and believe me, I used it often enough myself as a PC fan in a past life), but I've definitely spent far less in TCO on my Macs than I did on my PCs. You just have to bite the bullet and get over the buy-in hump. Used Macs hold their value even better though. You might easily find a decent deal on a used Mac, use it for a year, then sell it for more than you bought it for. I did with my first (G3 I think) Mac Mini.