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While many miners do not pay for today's electric cost and BTC mining becomes increasingly non-profitable, mining with A2 miners has always been making money and is the smartest mining choice today. Past few years prove that LTC is here to stay & gain traction and it actually has higher chance of running up in percentage than heavy headed BTC. So quit miners that lose money, run the best & most power efficient A2 miners at cost that last to make a profit!

Innosilicon, the owner of A2 Terminator ASIC and the most reputable producer of world renowned 28nm A2 Terminator LTC miners with the best power efficiency in industry, is announcing today that new batch of A2 Farm Boy Miners optimized for large scale mining farm quality is in stock and ready to ship at best price ever. Shipping right away, the Newly made A2 Farm Boy 60MHs LTC Miner (less than 590W per 60M hash LTC) is available at $500 per unit, unit of 3 to start since 3 units share one router running CGmner,  best in power and ideal for large server farms, with 30 days worry free parts warrantee.

Inno A2 miners are NO. 1 shipped (over 50% of the world entire scrypt hash power today are proudly contributed by A2 miners) and No. 1 rated in the market today. Note we will never give you unreal power efficiency number like some of other vendors. Our Power and Performance number is conservative & battle proven. That is why  one should choose the proven market leader instead of believing in some fake power numbers. Do you own test and ask around.  QA by Innosilicon, this batch of 60Mhs units are contract manufactured by previous Zeus manufacturer and can be used to directly replace Zesu if you own one since all non-PCB parts such as PSU, fans, cases, router, heat-sink is pretty much reusable from old Zeus miners. Note that PSU is external just like Zesu and any open market PC power supply (600W or above power supply with PCIe6+2 connector) will do it. The case and heat sink from new machines are reused from Zesu miners but QA qualified and don’t affect the performance. If you own a old Zesu, you can reuse all the parts except PCB as spares. If you want to buy our 110Mhs A2 Power Terminator unit with PSU in the case, the price now is 1K US per Unit.
 
Ship in 1 biz day for all orders! DO not miss this great opportunity to buy A2 Farm Boy in volume at cost and start making money today! In stock and ready to go in one biz day after payment for the limited quantities and To order: please contact us via email account: sales@innosilicon.com, zhangq@innosilicon.com.cn CC: sales@innosilicon.com.cn with your expected volume and shipment location info, we will feedback you with the payment instruction, order confirmation and shipment date/tracking number. Shipping and handling is extra and user will be encouraged to arrange its own pickup/shipping or being charged based on DHL rate if shipping is handled by Innosilicon. You can also contact our technical support via Skype: inno.miner for tracking and further questions.

I have 3 coming and will post un-boxing and real world specs when they arrive..... cant wait!!

I've been chatting with daveolake a bit about these, so a couple of other things worth pointing out:

As the main post mentions, there is no PSU included, but the nice thing is that this can be run off whatever PSU you want - or run a couple off of one of the IBM 2880w server PSU's.  They're selling them in sets of 3, and including a WR703N router that they've got running some custom firmware, so that's what is effectively replacing the Pi.  Each one of these routers can run 3 of these Farm Boy's via USB (I'm assuming there must be a USB hub also, since the WR703N only has 1 USB port).  One nice thing about the WR703N is that it has WiFi in it, so for people who maybe want to hook it up wirelessly, that might be an option - I've played with them in the past using DD-WRT, and they're cool little boxes.

It looks like you could mount a standard ATX PSU in the case if you wanted - the Zeus looks like it was configured that way - the fans are also configured to exhaust out what typically would be the front of the case, which is interesting.

Beyond those notes, not really much more to add... daveolake has a set inbound, so I'll be interested to hear his first-hand experience with them.

Yes usb hub included

I sent them an e-mail about this set of miners yesterday. Still nothing.


So the hashrate of the whole set will be about 180 Mh/s?

 is not a set of three
it's just an example of use wr 703n controller for Mining

pre-order or purchase upon?

Are you an Innosilicon representative?  :-\

Hi Folks, thanks for sharing. Just to add to our post and answer some of the questions here:

1. This A2 Farm Boy batch is optimized for small, medium to large scale mining farm deployment and we hired Zesu contract manufacturer to make it compatible with old Zesu miners so that all the obsolete Zesu parts wont sit there gather dust and instead can be re-cycled. The world is crowded with waste and why not lower customer cost by reusing some old miner parts like fan, case, heatsink, router, hub etc? All the mining Hash PCB electronics are brand new A2 though.

2. A2 Farm Boy (60Mhs per unit, 3 to reach 180 Mhs) dont come with power supply for several reasons: 1. We scale our miner design with commonly available power supply. All computer power supply with standard PCIe connector can be acquired used easily at low cost since 600W to 700W is very common. 2. It saves your dollars for international shipping cost   3. Added reliability. We know PSU nowadays are very reliable but in case one PSU breaks down, it won't affect mining that much since it is easily swappable. You can also re-use PSU for something else when you quit mining. In case you need to buy miners with PSU, you can also order our 110Mhs A2 Power Terminators

3. As daily LTC coins reduced by half, we are making reasonable number of A2 miners during the next couple of months just to replace all obsolete hashing contribution from Zesu and KNC alike. The end goal is to maintain & promote healthy LTC ecosystem with slightly higher overall difficulty yet people who mining with A2 miners can make a long lasting profit.

4. Our official A2 miners are selling at cost in a slow and steady rate thus highly unlikely to drop price significantly in the future. This low price will discourage and deny future competition to swamp the market with large number of new miners so it does good for the faithful LTC mining individuals. BTC competition has obviously gone too far that average small mining farms are not in the game anymore.

5. We will support you in software and hardware if you use our A2 miners. Just contact us in skype: inno.miner and our representatives will serve you. All purchase is worry free and Innosilicon is going to protect its reputation

Good news is that LTC is not dying. In the last 3 years, LTC proves itself and quiet down skepticisms, as volatility develops, it is flourishing with potential huge energy to move much higher. In fact, our experience has always been that LTC mining fares better than over-crowded and over-centralized BTC mining. Innosilicon is determined to support the faithful individual LTC mining with a slow growing, decentralized yet profitable miner deployment scheme. Innosilicon A2 is the last one standing in the LTC ASIC market and we are obligated to support future needs yet avoid another BTC like mad gold rush. Therefore we are not in a rush to make tons of miners to damage the eco-system. Customers, large or small, can only acquire so many miners from us in a healthy and steady fashion in any given month. We believe this is good for the industry and good for you. Stock lasts till it is gone and let's wait for the next batch. Number limited.  Thank you for your understanding.

We also do some mining and hold onto most of our coins. We believe the LTC future is bright and we are steadily making more ASIC investment in a controlled fashion. Together let's make our LTC mining a more enjoyable and profitable adventure.

All miners are in stock and can ship out in 1 biz day after payment confirmation. Stock lasts till it is gone but this new batch is just made available.

whether there is a warranty for this item? how long the guarantee to support?

have you a small unit? that 60 Mhs is too much for me :(

They used to - the A2 Mini, pretty cool little device, about the size of an S5 and I think it did around 30MH/s.  They tend to be harder to find - the people who have them tend not to sell them.

Ya I got one and will never part with it...works great. picked it up used for 350 Canadian .. was a nice score.... found out about these ones because I emailed last week to see if they had any more of those sitting on a shelf. sadly no. got three of these ones coming and will do a unboxing write up when they arrive. 

Ukraine send?

Yes, we send miners all over the world using DHL or any your perferred shipping method, sine we got rid of PSU, the overall weight of unit of 3 is quite managable. A2 Mini are all sold out and 60Mhs Farmboy is more powerful :)

So you are saying that the A2 110Mh/s Terminator units are $1k USD?  What is shipping on these to the US?

I can vouch for that statement (hardware part). They care about their customers and want to make sure you are happy. At least that has been my personal experience. Please take into consideration the language barrier when corresponding.

Bitcoin can pay?

if you can send this to the world, including countries thailand?

I shoot an email to Innosilicon but no avail, pls. acknowledge.

Thanks for your inquries. To answer all,

1. It could happen that one of your mail was regarded as spam by mailbox filter in rare case, if that happens, sorry,  so it is important that you send to all 3 email addresses as indicated in our original announcement just to be sure mail is received. For that rare situation, one of our 2 mailbox will likely to pick it up. Pls make sure you send in 2nd times also if you saw no reply. thanks

2. Paying by bitcoin is fine and our representative will get back to you on the conversion amount. Wiring is our 1st preference since we have to pay factory in real time.

3. Shipping cost varies based on DHL rate, we have a shipping volume discount from them. But DHL does change their shipping charge day by day and we do have to call in for every different deal. A2 terminator has PSU and is heavier. For USA & Canada, DHL 3 to 5 day shipping, I would say around $200, for Russia or eastern European countries, maybe $280 , western European countries cheaper. But don't count my words for exact shipping cost, its just ball park number, I just wanna give you some ideas. For Farmboy, it is lighter and cheaper to ship for sure.

4. For support, our guys/girls are not native speakers but they are toastmaster members, reasonablely fluent, honest, patient and well educated. For parts or replacement, pls email  Chloe at zhangq@innosilicon.com.cn. We have record of buyers and will serve those who bought our official miners. Other source of A2 miners if not QAed and registered by inno, you need gain support from them.

5. We only have limited supply of A2 Terminators 110Mhs now, we will not make more of them since margin is so thin and it is very hard to swap PSU for different region and maintain. In the near future, A2 Farmboy is probably the main stay unless you have strong opinions otherwise.

Thanks all and enjoy,

I believe godaddy is blocked by china. If you host your email domain with godaddy that may explain why you might not get a response.

The thing about the Farm Boys (which is kinda funny to say, considering I'm from Indiana) is that, even if they are 40% lighter and shipping is 40% cheaper due to the power supply not shipping with it, and even if the power supplies are 40% cheaper, which is a big assumption on my part, they still wouldn't be more profitable than the A2 Terminators because they're still less efficient, presumably because there are more fans running relative to the hashing speeds.

In case anyone wants to check my math on that...

Terminators:
830watts => 110 MH => 7.55 w/MH

Farm Boys (set of three):
1,770watts => 180 MH => 9.83 w/MH

So, at least for me, it doesn't make any sense to go with Farm Boys over Terminators, and I'd much rather just have a Terminator that ships without the power supply.

By all means, adjust the margin if you need to, but selling me a less efficient machine makes no sense in the long run.


P.S. It'd be nice if they were all easily rack-mountable ;-)

Hmm - interesting.  So the fans use that much wattage?

One would think the noise would be soo much louder?

The A2 Terminators make noise -- but the Zeusminers are loud.

Yep - according to the OP, they use 590W each unit.

All the more reason to host em, IMHO ...unless you're only running one or two, maybe.

Guys, correction, All official A2 production machines from Inno have similar power efficiency though, at the wall conservatively (newly updated)

A2 Terminator 88Mhs version consumes around 830W,        Price: 820 US, one to start, PSU included
A2 Terminator 110Mhs version consumes  around 1050W    Price: 1K US, one to start, PSU included
A2 Farmboy 60Mhs version consumes  around 590W           Price: 0.5K US, 3 to start, PSU not included, if u need PSU, we can quote you, why buy it internationally?

Fans consume so little power comparing to hashing that we don't have to count them :)

So there is no real power difference. Note just like Intel CPU varying from chip to chip, A2 ASIC also vary from batch to batch so power can go up and down 10% depending on which corner the ASIC landed in.  Our ASIC fab will call that normal process corner variation.

Is that Clear?

I have received an email already and they offer a good discount in set of 5, I only wish to buy 1 just for a trial and hope they would allow to sell 1 miner, either of the 2 (88 mh/s or 110 mh/s)

Hi Inno_Asic,

Those 3 miners that you mentioned, can you please state the price here in the forum.
Only if it is possible?

He has the price posted after each one; $500, $820 and $1k respectively.

Pls read our above post again. Our plan is to empty our stock on A2 Terminators now and only make Farmboys in the future. Terminators are too heavy and too expensive to support. Everytime we receive a PSU maintainence email, we will scratch our head, J! Better leave PSU outside in the future. Lot of computer store and internet sites to buy them cheap and locally. Used power supply tends to be very cheap and they are easy to obtain used! All in all, it is you call.

Aaah, thanks for clarifying. I'm checking with my miner host to confirm, but I was originally told that my 110MH model was drawing 830W. If the 1050W figure is accurate though (and I assume you'd know this), the numbers would shake out to...

Terminators:
830W => 88MH => 9.43W/MH

Farm Boys:
600W => 60MH => 10W/MH

...which still makes the Terminators more efficient, though barely (and at best, the same). I suppose that's not taking into account the 10% power variance, which I'm hoping you can clarify, actually. Aren't all the ASICs in the same location from board to board? And if not, wouldn't it be smart to figure out what the optimal location is and then just stick with that so that there isn't a 10% variance?

Another factor is the density of the machine. At 4Us, Terminators already weren't very small or dense, but it seems the Farm Boys would be almost half as dense.

Terminators:
110MH/4Us = 27.5MH/U

Farm Boys:
60MH/4Us = 15MH/U

It sounds like this is intentional, but I'm not sure you realize this will very likely make hosting more expensive.

I welcome your feedback.

FWIW, my current host is Toomim Brothers, which I'd say is fairly authoritative on the subject, and their opinion was that "Yes, the A2 Terminators are very heavy. The steel they use for the case is much thicker than necessary, and the aluminum heatsinks are also larger than needed. If they had a better design, they could be a quarter the weight and an eighth the size."

Jonathan also elaborated on the 10% power difference:
"There is a lot of variation in how silicon gets doped during the etching and doping processes of making transistors. As there are two types of transistors on a CMOS silicon chip (n-channel and p-channel MOSFETs, depending on whether the dominant charge carrier is negatively or positively charged), there are two separate dimensions for how much doping a chip can have. More doping results in faster chips that have more leakage current. Less doping results in slower chips with low leakage current, but which might need more voltage. The speed of the N and P MOSFETs can be described as a position on a rectangle, and placement in some of the corners results in worse performance or energy usage than others."

My 3 are on there way... should be here Thursday... will have pics and write up over weekend- or Monday, Tuesday.

Looking forward to it! If you don't mind me asking, which PSU's are you getting for them?

I have some new ones I bought when I had a hashra order, thankfully got all my money back...I'm going to use Evga supernova 750 B2 power supplies. I have 10 on hand.

A2 Terminator 110MHs consumes around 1050W only with older version (longer) boards inside. With PCB version 3 and 4 it consumes aprox. 100W more.
And there is another problem, your PSU inside is usually only 1000W, which is insufficient for frequency 1200MHz (needed for 110MHash)...

My questions:
1/ boards inside are the same as in A2 Terminator 110 ?
2/ boards inside are new or used ?
3/ how many 8 pin PCI-E connectors needed? 4 for each board?

Thanks.

One extension off of this - can you use just 6-pin PCI-e connectors, since the additional 2 pins are just grounds?  Some of my Terminators came from the factory like this (using 6-pin connectors plugged into 8-pin sockets on the blades).

Oh, and also can you use the Raspberry Pi as the computer to run this, instead of the WR703N?  I would prefer it if I could run my custom firmware.  ;)

Can you run one by itself, via a PC? Just thinking if possible to buy 3 and split them up between my friends and I.

got my miners today ...half hr ago will unbox tomorrow. I will update then.

yes please share the dimensions of the miner, i still cant figure out it's only 21cm in length...

It looks like the blades might be vertical instead of horizontal, but it's hard to figure out from the images - if you can, take some good pictures of the inside of the boxes as well.  ;)

Will be as in depth as I can. I should have info going up here in about 12 hr from now  11:15pm my time so should have stuff to post by 11am or so. off to bed talk to ya all tomorrow. post any info your looking for and I will try to answer.

sorry for the delay, my main pc at work died and couldn't do anything from there all day. will get some stuff out here tonight.I will post all my pics soon.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qxobyne4hgtjoi0/AAD6HU5Jkkgjr7XwliRe1bbZa?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qxobyne4hgtjoi0/AAD6HU5Jkkgjr7XwliRe1bbZa?dl=0)
couldn't get the pics to input here... so here's the link. They were packed well. my power supplies went in with no problem, the leads for the power were not needed, they use 4 pci-e power 6 pin. and run mining at 550w. working and mining in a short time.

Great pictures, thanks for taking the time daveolake!

Overall an interesting design - the only thing I don't like about it is there is basically almost zero airflow around the non-heatsink sides of those PCB's, just a tiny bit next to the big main heat sink holes.  I imagine it must not be that critical or they probably would have done something about it - how hot does the unit run compared to the 88 or 110's?

Cool that the PSU fits into the box like that, makes for a really convenient form factor...  Do they provide flashing instructions or anything else for the WR703N's?  TBH, I would just toss one of those in each unit, for $10 each from China or even $20 Prime off Amazon, there's no benefit to not having one per box.  Plus then if something happens, it's just one box down not all 3.  And what kind of software is running on it?  Some tweaked version of DD-WRT?  Will they sell you more of them, instead of just the 1 per 3 boxes, and how much do they charge?

From your power picture, it looks like they're working at spec or slightly better than spec, which has been my experience from Innosilicon - nice to have a manufacturer who doesn't promise the world and delivers what they say.

Nice to see they've kicked it up a notch with those fancy stickers... They seriously need to see if they can find a graphic designed - literally ANY graphic designer.  ;)

TBH, I kind of discounted this unit and wasn't super interested, but after seeing it, it definitely looks more promising than I thought.  If you had a WR703N for each one, I think it would be a great solution, even better than the 88's or 110's, which I think are awesome units.

Nice looking miner and seems all parts are snug fit.
Does the USB cable, hub & DDWRT router comes when you buy three farm boy?

Thanks,they run quite cool but are a bit loud. I can't compare as I don't have any 88 or 110's. I didn't have much time today to do much about the software... I will check it out over the weekend. You can ask them about more of the wr703n's Trying to find out those same questions I would have liked a pi with the a2 normal software. but these may be flashible and maybe someone with the skills could flash them with something like the moded latest a2 software.

yes they do

Hello Everyone,

I just discovered this thread and I am excited about getting new more efficient miners.   

This is exactly a Zeus Thunder x3  27Mh/s except with a different PCB, which is awesome for me.  I have 1 gigahash of Zeus Miners - 20 Zeus miners and i do all the maintenance and upkeep myself.  i know this miner like the back of my hand!  And I also have 6 110Mh/s Innosilicon that run MarkAz's image.

i was thinking perhaps we should try to do a group buy of the 110 since they are end of life.  They are truly plug and play, i haven't touched a single one of my six in over a month, and usually alll that ever goes wrong is a corrupt SD card.  i have had them about a year and they have been running continuously since they arrived.  we could ask innosilicon to leave out the PSU for a deeper discount, which it sounds like they would be delighted to do.   Then we can power 2-3 of them on a IBM 2880w server power supply The 2880 has been shown to run consistently, reliably at 3200-3400w, and its Platinum).

If i got the farm boys, the first thing i would do is run new wire from the PSU directly to the terminal on the PCB.  This eliminates that male-female pci-e connector which is a source for heat generation which cuts into your power efficiency.    on the Zeus, they would get very hot and randomly melt because they have 250-300 watts going thru them.  This new farm boy uses less power so that shouldn't be nearly as much of a problem.  Personally i would keep the PSU outside the box simply because it is a nasty environment inside the box and I want to be nice to my PSU's so they will last.

So what do you think of a group buy of the 110Mh/s unit?  Someone also said innosilicon offered a generous discount on 5, i believe...

Also, it looks like the Farm boy uses the same FDTI VCP UART usb interface as the Zeus Miners.   Virtual COM port (VCP) drivers cause the USB device to appear as an additional COM port available to the PC.  So you should be able to connect that usb from the miner directly to your PC OR Raspberry Pi, and with the VCP windows  or linux driver, you can run Dmaxl's cgminer or BFGminer...  exciting!

Very interesting! Someone at Innosilicon spent some time designing a new PCB for that form factor. Once again impressed with Innosilicon.

If only I had more power available I would be looking at some Farm Boys or some more A2 Mega Terminators. The comments from Toomim Brothers on the steel used for the Terminators is accurate. They are built like a tank...unnecessarily so.

I too think they should offer the A2 Mega Terminators without power supplies but due to their overly heavy construction I doubt it would save much on shipping.

Thanks for the pics, what was your shipping cost?

dhl 95 each shipping under 300 for all 3. plus dhl charged duty tax ect. was 65 for all. total miner cost plus 365.

Shipping fee through our DHL channel to the US is $193 per 110Mhs unit, and $851 for five units, which are over 70% off. It may fluctuate according to the Fuel Surcharge.

Actually no....whats interesting about this design is that its and EXACT copy of Zeusminer hardware. It uses the same case design, exact same heatsinks, and even the power rails / design on the PCBs are an exact copy from the zeus board designs. If you look closely even the screw holes are in the same position. (this would be interesting for people that have zeus hardware and want to upgrade buy ordering just the blades).

Pretty sure whoever is behind these new machines are whats left of the Zeus miner team (or Zeus Miner was simply a rebrand of early Inso tech).

https://images.weserv.nl/?w=800&url=i.imgur.com/UgnrDIZl.jpg&fnr
https://photos-3.dropbox.com/t/2/AACOJs0EcrurNGL4BNkfL1WHoxkTSw9g_KykpFCnyNB7tA/12/72782734/jpeg/32x32/1/1441396800/0/2/20150828_100536.jpg/CI6n2iIgASACIAMgBCAFIAYgBygH/jqyvMwElw8JK87LE8gsHy9mx3ssY0yHlz46amzn4lls?size=1280x960&size_mode=2

Nevermind...guess I should have read their whole post ;)

It would be interesting to see if they'll open-source the communications part of interfacing with the devices - I can't build a custom CGMiner, so I wouldn't be able to support the miner with my firmware without that I imagine...

This is the CGminer that I use with my Zeus miners.  When you compile it, enable options scrypt and Zeus.  This is an updated version and  has extra-nonce subscription built in.  I bet it works equally well with the farm boys.


https://github.com/dmaxl/cgminer

I doubt that. Even though they share the exact same UART coms the zeus chips and A2 chips on these are completely different. The serial commands needed to prepare the chips and send work to them are most likely not the same.

Im sure there is the source code for the A2's somewhere that could be easily ported over to newer version of CGminer/bfgminer.

вeл дoгoвopы пo пoчтe c Chloe Zhang <zhangq@innosilicon.com.cn>. Ha вoпpoc o cтoимocти пepecылки oднoгo ycтpoйcтвa yжe нeдeлю ждy oтвeтa. Bы тaк мeдлeннo paбoтaeтe?

yep having to run three with a controller is entry barrier to most people!

Nice info  ;D

soo, can i buy just the blades ?  ::)

How do you figure the KNC Titan is obsolete ?

Yours: 60MH, 590w, 1MH/w
Titan: 380MH, 1300w, 3.4MH/w

Titan is significantly better

 KnC Titans were and remain quite a bit more efficient than the A2 - but A2s are a ton better on reliability.
 The Alcheminer (and rebrands like MAT) was a tossup on power efficiency, pretty much even between one of those and an A2 based unit.

 Too bad you don't make A2 boards in a form factor that can replace the boards on the Gridseed "blade" things.

 you dropped a decimal point, both of those MH figures would be per 10 watts, not per watt.
 Titan IS still quite a bit more efficient (when it hasn't died yet).

 Alcheminer figures were around 250 MH for 2500ish watts, I don't remember the exact numbers but they're very close to that same 1 MH per 10 watts figure the A2 manages.


 Personally, I'm waiting for the A4, since tapeout on it was "leak" announced a while back.

Hi all Got an email from Chloe and she said quote " We cannot visit bitcointalk website these days due to the Great Fire Wall of China." If you have questions or inquires, email them direct at one of these -- sales@innosilicon.com  ,  zhangq@innosilicon.com.cn  ,  sales@innosilicon.com.cn  -- probably should cc all. Thanks.

Can one bad module cause my terminator to stop working?  How would I go about testing each module? i'm at a loss, and I think my machine fried due to the room getting to hot.  Any information would be greatly appriciated...thanks in advance.

Update.. Got new software for the mini router from Innosilicon. will be setting it up tonight and see how it works. it needs a usb tool to run it due to size. so a bit of fiddiling to get it working. will try to get some pics up in a day or 2 showing the difference.

 Try unplugging the bad module.