What about GPU mining ETH and others via something like nicehash? Is this a reasonably safe bet (relative to just buying the coins outright)? I'm mostly looking at it as a means of building a new workstation and have it pay for itself over the course of a year or so while I'm not using it.
Unless you are situated next to a hydro electric power station that provides very cheap electricity stay away from this. you will build a rig then as the difficulty goes up you'll watch all your profit eaten away by electricity costs.
Yeah, I was sort of concerned about what 20xx Nvidia cards could end up doing to the difficulty. I'm really only considering it because I'd also use those cards for other things.
A year? the ROI for that would be like 5 years - you over-estimate the profits currently. It was profitable back in March far more than it is now - the gold rush with mining is over.
Sure, but how much crypto currency are you going to get out of it from a pool? if you get 8.1 cents per hour, well that's not exactly that exciting.
I've been a miner for years, and I'd recommend you take a look at your expectation of profit, it is profitable still, but get ready to be disappointed.
If you're going to use the video card anyways, mining will easily cover the electricity cost of mining in most areas, and can be a decent way to cover part of the cost of the card.
That said, I wouldn't buy video cards specifically for mining unless you have access to very cheap (or free) electricity.
