It's a terrible time to be buying RAM but it's also not going to get much better in the future, prices of ram (new) have doubled in the last month it's crazy! Flippin AI eating up all the supply.
Melting power connectors are scary man... It's one reason I will never ever ever buy a GPU with the new HPPCIe cables..
I had a gander into mining Monero before but quickly found out that CPU/GPU mining anything really is only viable if your energy is free or extremely cheap. Here in the UK it's flat out impossible to profit without solar. I doubt even with more modern hardware helps much.
I do have some solar and the premiums I made this week alone on selling RIOT blockchain options contracts on the stock market have way more than covered this month's power bill, so this is basically an extra way I get paid and how I go from fiat to crypto without KYC, lol. Fresh minted coins, lol. Y'all's power is certainly more expensive as well. I am not about the 'profit' with mining, but more building out my freedom money infrastructure.
That's pretty much my thought process with my hive witness over the years, The server it's on at one point was costing my £80 a month at the peak of the energy crisis in the UK, now it's about £50~ for the longest time it was always running at a loss, was profiting for a bit and now with the current price it's at a loss again.
But I just think of it as that money spent on power just becomes HIVE. Easier than dealing with getting fiat into the crypto sphere, and also there's the long game of witness rankings to play.
There are a few coins I'd love to do stuff in 'just because' Like Gridcoin with it rewards citizen research via BOINC. Monero perhaps cause privacy etc. though I still haven't really look deeply into it.
But can't justify the increased energy usage for what I get. It's an exceptional loss with gridcoin considering it's a 1.5mil MC coin, great project, actively developed just no exchanges and heavily under the radar.
I've been in Monero since I started crypto in 2018. It's more what I feel bitcoin was supposed to be. I thought about a Hive witness, but with the shape things are in these days, I'll do better mining XMR without having to e-beg for votes.