Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I'm a bit rusty about mining, I used to mine with GPU and I still do it with altcoins today, I just wanted to know "where are we now" in Bitcoin mining:

- what are the best ASIC machines out there? Details?
- is ASIC development still big like or it's stalling?
- when new ASIC will be released? Details?

I want to start a new project and I need as much informations as I can. Sorry but I haven't much time at the moment to search the forum and find all the answers, hope you understand. Any help is appreciated, just update me guys. Thank you.

Save time for new topic browse the forum ;)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156770.0

Depends what miner you want and what operation you are planning to run.
The S5 is relatively high-grade, 1000+ GH/s and produces a bit of heat, the S5+ is the shit, produces quite a bit of heat and does an insane amount of Gh/s per unit. I have an S5+ between me legs right now, it's my personal heater!

IMO right now it's best to wait - we're just starting a "generation transition" and ALL of the older generation stuff is getting very iffy on RoI, especially with the Bitcoin Block Reward halving due probably next July (possibly late June if hashrates shoot up too much) unless you have very cheap electric or can get a used unit VERY inexpen$ively.

 SFards (Gridseed merged with WiiBox to form this company) recently released their SF100 dual miner (SHA256 + Scrypt) unit, but it's WAY overpriced even from SFards directly, and the availability has been "very small number of one batch sold, a few distributers got a very few and jacked the price to insane levels". It's got better efficiency than anything that came before, but not good ENOUGH to have a reasonable chance at RoI.

 Bitmain has announced their next-gen chip the BM1385, anticipation is that they'll have a S7 miner unit out "soon" (I'm guessing before end of September, but could be longer) in the 2.3TH/s at ballpark 550Watts concensus estimate of it's probably performance. Price is just as "up in the air" along with the release date, but educated guesses seem to be centering around the 3.5-4.5 BTC ballpark. Most folks feel that Bitmain already has the unit in production, and has been replacing their farm/Hashnest S5 units with new S7s.

 Lketc has announced a 5 TH at either 1KW or 1.3KW (depending on which GH/watt spec you believe), no other solid information though the concensus is that it will probably be using the "we've taped out" Innosilicon A3 chips and likely available by December.

 No announcement on it other than a comment that "chips have taped out" but it seems likely that Innosilicon will also release their own miners, A3-based for SHA256 and A4-based for Scrypt. They've been very light on info though, but that's nothing new for them before they actually have working chips/hardware in hand.

 Spoondolies got bought out or merged into some other company, no clue if they're going to be selling to end-users any more.

 KnC has pulled out of retail sales - not like their units were all that reliable anyway, no big loss there.

 Bitfury seems to have pulled entirely out of retail, and are talking about some silly "mining lightbulb" concept.

 Avalon - just released a mini miner based on their oldish "4" chip, but it's way overpriced and based on tech that's already a bit outdated. No clue if they're working on a next-gen chip at all, much less what and when.

 Alcheminer (OEM for the MAT and at least one other company) had a 256MH/s rated "Alcheminer", but they've sold out on those and no clue if they plan to do any other cryptomining design. Unit was similar in efficiency to the Innosilicon A2 based units, but quite a bit smaller in size than the 90/110 "Terminator" units.


 There WAS a group working on an X11 (+ X13 and X15 I think? can't remember on those two offhand) chip, but they had to halt development due to lack of fundage. They said they were going to look at other financing options, but no word on if they were successfull at that and it's been months.


 I might be missing something, but IIRC pretty much everyone else that's done ASIC for cryptomining in the past is history.

Was exciting news.

They were CleverHash.

Website: http://cleverhash.com/
Forums: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=826541.0

Thank you guys, considering what you said I think it's really best to wait for now.

Having just recrunched the numbers on the S7, I'm also in "wait" mode - I can't RoI the damned thing under any likely circumstances, even with 6.7 cent electric (and it was looking VERY iffy at 5 cent electric for those in low-cost electric areas and even IF they get theirs by the earliest ship date Bitmain has mentioned).

In my opinion there is bad news & bad news. The bad news is that things are not good at the moment for home miners. Bitmain is the only game in town and their latest releases, although good, are expensive and very unlikely to ROI with the way difficulty is increasing and with halving coming up fast. The other bad news is that the more time that passes the worse things are going to get.  :(

Rich

I think home mining will be profitable again only if Bitcoin price will skyrocket, am I wrong? :)

If you have very cheap electricity, home mining is fairly profitable. If you have high electricity cost (around 0.1/kWh). It's going to be hard, with the S7 being so expensive.

Right now it's all about that electricity price.  If you have a good price profit is still in sight.  Most places is a long ROI.

The game is changing from day's of quick ROI.   If BTC would skyrocket it would not hurt.  But would also raise miner prices with it likely.

I think more profitable trading than mining. I am sorry  if i am wrong  ;D

It all depends there is no one size fit's all on most profitable.  To many variables to make one case best for all.

And there is lots of kinds of trading.  That is pretty vague.

Your answer is generic. Low experienced traders tend to lose money instead of making them, moreover we have many types of trading, like many types of mining. Homemade rigs are long gone, it's almost impossible to make ROI with Bitcoin volatility and increasing difficulty.
My advice: if you are a "home miner", try something else. If you are determined to open a new farm, do your maths carefully, you could waste a lot of money.

I agree, but:

It's not all about the BTCBTCBTC!  :P

If you can utilize the heat, home mining isn't that bad!
Beats a http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/8123-lyf16L._SL1500_.jpg anyday!  ;)

Part of it is about what you enjoy.  For example mining is a passion for me.  I truly enjoy it.  So I will keep on doing it.

I can see why not everyone does it.  But for many it works.

When it comes to passion you don't care how much you spend right? :D

Yes and no.  I care overall as I don't want to lose a fortune on it.   If you did it wrong you could lose a lot and it would not make much sense.   

But will I always be mining... most likely yes.   I see it as a fun hobby, hobby's cost money.  So if I made a mistake I can chalk it up to that and not feel so bad.   But I do try to always ROI.  That is part of the fun.

Home mining is dead. Deal with it!

Maybe for you, but that's just not the truth. People that have cheap electricity are and will still do wonderfully with S5's. And probably the S7 when the price comes down to Earth.

with legit cloud like hashnet everyone can do profit , the problem is the very long roi, which is also true if you work with your own hardware

i mean the long roi put you kind off, because with the instability of bitcoin, you never know how it will end in 5-7-11 months...

 Home mining is only dead in places with non-cheap electricity, or for folks that insist on actually making money at it.

 The only big change is that the classification of "non-cheap" has gotten somewhat narrower in the last year.

Absolutely correct, but your returns are much faster, your risk much lower, when your expenses to keep them running is less than half the hosting fee of Hashnest or such. (Typically 0.08$/kWh i believe?)

Bitmain already launched their new equipment. Bitmain and its dependent Hashsnest, are the most reliable mining hardware company in the industry!

 The very sad part for home miners is that 10 cent electric is NOT "high", it's actually a bit lower than average - at least in the USA.

It's not high from one American's perspective, but it's pretty high from a global perspective. Basically the biggest competitor is China, so that has to be the standard. Its hard to say exactly how much they pay because its heavily subsidized but it's probably a few cents, 3 or so cents per kWh or something like that. At this point i'm just scrapping/guessing from multiple unclear reports.

But that would make the 0.1/kWh of "American's not high", actually "Very High" from a global BTC mining perspective.

This seem like a pretty fair educatedish guess when you consider also here you can get electricity at 0.02-0.05/kWh.

We can only guess on the mega mining data centers.   It for sure is a lot less then 10 cents.  But they put in a ton of money in most cases to follow the cheap electricity.

I hope at some point a company opens up hosting in a place where under 5 cents is normal.  One that is built for hobby miners to send equipment to.   But I think that will be looked into more after having. 

MBP is easy to guess - they're one of 2 rates, depending on if their actual mining location is in Chelan county or in Douglass county. US rates are (usually, and IIRC by law) PUBLIC - and neither of those counties are likely to negotiate a "lower" rate with a small company like MBP (for perspective, Alcoa has an ALUMINUM SMELTING plant in the area, THAT is a "big" power consumer).


 I do agree that most of the "big farms" have been located in cheap power areas - though that "sale" in another thread by a certain Polish farm with at least some association with MBP indicates that at least one early farm didn't chase the cheap power well enough.

Personally I believe there's going to be some more Acic companies coming out next year.  It seems like there were a ton then they all went bankrupt now they're coming back.

If new or old companies come back, Bitmain will just swat them down like they did last time with the S5. If you were hooked in at that time, you'll remember S5 being rushed, lower quality than S3's and sold to undercut all competitors. Then later on, they more or less fixed it and brought back the ability to down volt. But err yeah.

Bitmain has such a bit chunk that i'm pretty sure they will make sure to swat down any competitors that try to sell to the public.

Am I missing something or no new hardware showed up? :-\

Did you miss Antminer S7 batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6? 4-4.8TH/s@ 1000-1200w, Also the Avalon6 at 3~ths 0.3J/GH. And the Spoondoolies SP50 that are 110TH/s units.

And the B-Eleven - https://www.bw.com/pool/miner  14nm miner there... so I'm hoping good things but we don't know much yet as far as final products.

There is a LOT of new gear hitting the street's and data centers right now.  And with jump in price a lot of old gear got some extra life.

How legit are these guys....do they go under a different name in english and/or thru a 'distributor' ?

not like I'm gonna buy any ...but buying any new miners scrypt/sha-256 of any kind for mining is kinda like 'fantasy sports' for me now...I run the numbers and watch ..but don't play :)

They are funded by LK Group Limited who are a Miner manufacturer with a good History and CHBTC a large Chinese Exchange, so yes they are Legit. However we are yet to see a product so have the usual Timescale risk.

Rich

well it does say in the thread ASIC MINING...(this is scrypt miner ..but hey any ASIC miner is as rare as unicorn baby teeth so here is the link to the thread and info below)


The company is LEGIT has shipped stuff in the past (barely) the firmware sucks on these original units but on www.litecointalk.org (http://www.litecointalk.org) there is a thread on a guy who has made 'very significant improvements' to the firmware...so point anyone with these and the old firmware there.

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=27370.msg288269#msg288269 (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=27370.msg288269#msg288269) this was a major project to improve the 1st run oe alcheminer original units (256mh) .he was sucessful as was the Titan firmware I mention below in passing. Good guys. Anyway scroll thru that thread see what you MAY be getting into equipment/mnfg wise.

On a side note for 3rd party firmware and hardware mods...this also goes for KNC Titan 350mh firmware also see thread under this..this firmware also rocks with addons etc ..there is also info Swedish ASIC miner thread on Titan (scrypt) and Neptune (Sha-256) hardware improvement mods FYI. Just as an aside as long as I drifted to 3rd party firmware mods beyond the mnfg support on such.

Swedish Asic Miner Thread above firmware and hardware mods  (both Neptune sha-256 and Titan's scrypt miners) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.0)

the main Alcheminer site is below ..shows its first run units they are common on Ebay as of right now FYI.

https://www.alcheminer.com/en/ (https://www.alcheminer.com/en/)   Alcheminer main site


Below is the Alcheminer II thread on here announcement info


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1234027.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1234027.0) Alcehminer II Announcement

info below from above thread



he brief spec is as below.
Scrypt 2 chip:
*Hash rate: 2Mash/s
*Power consumption on the wall: 3~4J(1.5J~2J/MHash)
*TSMC 28HPC tech node
*Full custom design
*The value may change in the real product

Miner:
AlchemistII-128
*Hash rate: 128Mash/s
*Power consumption: 280W(on the wall)
*2 hash boards
*Built in control board
*Plug n play
*Support BFGMINER update
*Traget reseller price: $1299
*6 month warranty

AlchemistII-512
*Hash rate: 512Mash/s
*Power consumption: 1150W(on the wall)
*8 hash boards
*Built in control board
*Plug n play
*Support BFGMINER update
*Traget reseller price: $4950
*6 month warranty



he brief spec is as below.
Scrypt 2 chip:
*Hash rate: 2Mash/s
*Power consumption on the wall: 3~4J(1.5J~2J/MHash)
*TSMC 28HPC tech node
*Full custom design
*The value may change in the real product

Miner:
AlchemistII-128
*Hash rate: 128Mash/s
*Power consumption: 280W(on the wall)
*2 hash boards
*Built in control board
*Plug n play
*Support BFGMINER update
*Traget reseller price: $1299
*6 month warranty

AlchemistII-512
*Hash rate: 512Mash/s
*Power consumption: 1150W(on the wall)
*8 hash boards
*Built in control board
*Plug n play
*Support BFGMINER update
*Traget reseller price: $4950
*6 month warranty


 But these units ARE NOT GOING TO BE OUT IN 6 MONTHS..man I hope their unbridled optimism is true for crypto...sheesh i can run my 2 350mh Titans at 1250 watts EACH... just fine with that pack in 6 MONTHS till shipping..thus I doubt it will work..but hey....I too dream unicorn/rainbow/and fairy dust dreams :)

OP: Feel free to remove this post if you MEANT only Bitcoin ASIC HARDWARE (but considering most gets punted to btc anyway) :)

No game-changing ASIC out yet? :(

What do you mean. The existing mining setup already work well and if anything super efficient came out, it would take no time at all for it to become the norm and no game changing would really be done.

It always depend on what your electricity cost is. That wont change.

Some people tend to say comments like that.  It has no basis, they always want the next best thing.   Compare last gen to this gen... it's a pretty big difference on efficiency.

But yes you can look into future and say "It's going to be better then!" or something like that.  And it's true, but it seems to me people who say like what hugs do are the type that just never buy new gear.  They will always justify it with there will be better.

As a miner I always want some gear running.  It would be a lot easier to sit on sideline and say it will be better next gen and let my coins set there doing nothing.  But I choose to try to expand my amount coins.

What is everyones thoughts on purchasing a antminer s7 in the next month or 2, With the halving would it be worth it, Do you think during the halving they might come out with an even better miner and s7 price will fall alot? I currently have a S5, But I was planning on selling it and purchasing a s7 in a month or 2

what is your elec? my elec is 13c kwh so its a no go.

From what I understand bitfury has a 100 million dollar data hall coming on line with their newest chips. Spondoolies SP50 110 TH units are coming but going to go to Data Hall first and not sure if/when any will be public. Avalon data hall of course with the units you crave will add to difficulty rise and of course no one knows wtf is going on with KNC in that they make 16nm chips for own use now and as likely gonna make another data hall etc

and it seems to me most of this stuff will hit the network more or less at the same time (some are on time ...some late some more then late) but the timelines look rough difficulty wise) :(

so my no way

when the elephants get out on the dance floor because they decided to 'polka' its best for us mice dancing to clear the dance floor

the only thing worth mining maybe is a used titan if you can find one with an 11 month roi with elec and that may not sound great..but would even at that be a rare 'unicorn' sighting indeed..they are priced so high on ebay they will never ROI even at cheap elec

anyway get a moon lander 1mh usb scrypt stick for 32 bucks each 5 bucks shipping and/or a sidehack usb 8gh btc mining stickstick for 25 bucks and 6 bucks shipping up to 3 to a box for your NO ROI toys....at least you can have fun w/o losing your shirt..

anyway how i look at it :)

I got 8 cents / kw electricity, My s5 is current getting 50/month over electricity costs, average. luckily I got it for a good price so even when I sell it i'll get my money back if not more for the miner. Was thinking if I got a S7, used it for 4-5 months. then resell for money back possibly.

Yes all of you are right and i am wrong  ;D

With smilie I'm guessing your joking.   I have done very well mining, it can make ROI and pay off long term.  Is it for everyone ... no.  But for some including myself yes it is.

Your general idea about trading being more then mining has no basis behind it.  You could have more or loss and have less.  And say you really are that good you are making money most of time on it you can mine and trade.... that is what I do.

that's good, with the s7 you can have even more profit, and i would not selle the s7 early or even after a while, because with that earning you can roi before the halving, i would sell it only if needed and you can't reach roi

 Yes, but the cost is so high on the miners you have to have very cheap electric to have any chance at RoI on it.

 So far.

Do you think the latest blocks spike is related to new ASIC machines coming out in the near future? https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

Some gear will not make it to most consumers.  Look at bitfury you need to have a LARGE investment to get any gear there.  I don't know exact amount but it's very sizable.

No group buy or other things will ever reach bitfury.   So some new miners... but we will not have access as home/hobby miners to all.

note assumption below is if you home mined new equip...would be better off getting scrypt machines (if they exist in future) and convert ltc to btc direct or hold ltc and move
when the ratio is around 0.01 ltc to btc as has been in the past (what I do) ...as to a new asic sha-256 miner i think the current bitfury/bitmain/knc data halls etc are gonna
all come out at the same  time and bury each other in difficulty over the moon rise..just saying ...so using this thread to point out what  i know of 'supposed' scrypt NEW asic miners per say... :)


this is the point the scrypt miners SUPPOSEDLY coming out is at...for both Innsilicon and Alcheminer...(links below) the plug is ...give us large millions of dollars in IPO money
and we will fill up your scrypt data farm with machines at cost..ie newbie IPO money pre-order method ..taken from newbie home miner pre-order play book

https://www.alcheminer.com/alcheminer-scrypt-ii-project/ (https://www.alcheminer.com/alcheminer-scrypt-ii-project/) Alcheminer II IPO plug for such....bitcointalk thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1234027.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1234027.0)

http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/11.html (http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/11.html) there same idea as above IPO plug for $$$ ..below bitcointalk thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1251930.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1251930.0)

so as you can see from the above links....IF they got the $$$ NOW it likely (with the usual 1-2 month delays) probably be at least 5-6 months till such hit the data halls
and at best 2 months after that before they went out to the w)orld in some manner beyond the data halls (alcheminer price of like for 512mh 1150watts 4950 usd in 6 months frigging LTC and/or scrypt coins better pop large for that to be pulled off...

my 2 knc titans..if i take one titan at 350mh 1250 watts and it has ROI'd (or you can buy one complete on ebay NOW for $3250 usd a 2nd batch titan 400mh it was)..anyway
my used titans can compete just fine in 6 months with these guys ..again ROI'd so I hope they are correct in their gamble ..price has to go up for LTC etc for these machines
to work ...or even exist imho ....even in data hall mode..in 5 months..or it is just a unicorn pipe dream.....unless they get some major newbie IPO $$$ which I find questionable?

anyway.....but again for what you can get a working scrypt miner now for the current say price of 3.50 usd LTC price NOW I just don't see these as getting built at 4.50 buck LTC maybe ...but below that nope...again unless all got a 'memo' that btc and ltc is gonna pop and the data hall equiv and hopefully side order machines above can make sense to build.

anyway hope I'm wrong ..I'd be sitting pretty if you could ROI with these new units in 6 months with the 2 Titans that have ROI'd already even at my 13.7c next summer
electric prices :) I mean I really really want them to come out because they are correct and they can make money on such with a data hall etc and/or indv machines....I would
be sooooooo friggging happy :)

but it looks/smells/and has all the tell tale signs of 'unicorn poop' so don't think it is very frigging likely...(so want a unicorn/rainbow/fairy dust happy ending to the above) :)

Bumping this to keep the discussion alive :)

This should help an X11 miner supposedly (first 50 sold out) shipping out this week I guess (or so told in email)

$2,098 x11 dash miner....300 bucks I think the shipping was...90 day warranty (ouch)

anyway here is the link if you want to lurk........not sure what these 50 units are gonna do to the x11 coins like dash for difficulty

but hey you said asic here in the thread so something to watch :)

http://www.dualminer.com/iBeLink-DM384M-Dash-Miner_p_36.html (http://www.dualminer.com/iBeLink-DM384M-Dash-Miner_p_36.html)

ie currently sold out and a waiting list...to rich for my home miner blood at 14c kwh electric don't ya know


http://www.dualminer.com/assets/images/DM384Mfrontview.jpg


http://cryptomining-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ibelink-dm384m-x11-asic-miner.jpg



anyway for what it is worth to watch........MIGHT .....er...maybe ....ROI if you were in the first 50 but this is gonna play hell with x11 coin difficulties imho

later

Hey,

2000 dollars is lot of money... Is this machine optimized at mining dash?

I have been looking if theres are ETH/LTC/DASH/DOGE optimized miner...

I newer reach that point so i have money to invest on mining hardware

(9e/day + food) -Weekends off ,YES!

I don't know ..the problem is if a bunch of these are on a data hall ..plus the 50 supposedly sold and soon to be in the world etc etc

when the Titan Scrypt miners had a firmware mod to mine Scrypt-N they made good profit for a week but destroyed all scrypt N coins in that week

ie scrypt n coins were worthless now...no one mines them imho

enough asic's hit this x11 coins and difficulty blows up it could be the same

I don't know how likely this is on x11 don't follow it much..but the first thing that comes to mind....

also using this calculator below and again the above 'everyone and his brother' maybe firing up the x11 data hall say or the 50 plus above miners (if they really exist)

not to mention a whole 90 day warranty ..I get the below on ROI on the equip w/o electric....ie you are eating the electric costs.

The below link is for the x11 coin DASH....again remember everyone else and his brother is gonna hit this...if true at least 50 folk ahead of you or more on the waiting list

http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/dash-mining-calculator (http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/dash-mining-calculator)


using there optimistic (varies they say +/- 10%) of

384mh at 715 watts and at say 10c kwh I get the below and 2,098 bucks plus 300 bucks shipping total to your door (if you got it today) of $2,398.00 even.

Monthly    Dash Coins 140.99676107    BTC 1st month 1.75617670    Total mined  usd $721.96    elec costs $51.48  pool fees $0.00    profit after electric $670.48 1st month


from seeing this stuff in the asic btc and ltc world....with the dump on difficulty....I'd assume by the time you got one now you could cut say ..optimistically the above by 1/3

so say 400 a month.....with that in mind...maybe you could recoup your investment with electric and such ...and hope for a price rise in say 7 months probably more imho

but hey its a toy...people by dumber stuff ...i'm one of them......but the 90 day warranty gives me pause...a pre-order..they could be 2 months late.....the unknown effect

on difficulty...well unless you are looking at Texas 5c electric or maybe Oregon 3c kwh electric.....You'd probably be better off just buying x11 coin..that way if the

difficulty does upend the apple cart you can at least sell that and get out.....

anyway thats how i see it ..but I'm often wrong (ethereum non buy on my part ... due to no balls at 0.95c per ether...comes to mind) :(

anyway my 2 satoshi's worth

but hey for asic porn will be interesting to watch anyway :)

I'm looking at the current and new Alcheminer chips for profit. The usb miner and blade is commonly forgotten, but theyre super cheap (50$ usb) and profit quickly due to efficiency. Scrypt is the future for home miners, and even now gridseed orbs will profit if fans are removed. SHA256 will die a slow death with datacenters competing at the end, and home miners will have to move to scrypt or a smaller platform to restart with the mining process.
Bitmain is starting to fall behind slowly, and I expect for them to not be a big competitor to bigger companies anymore as companies like bitmain develop generations-ahead chips that rek the current gen chips. Bitmain will also die a slow, horrible death and soon all current gen sha256 asics will only be privately owned.