Bitcoin Forum

According to this:
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/bfl-forum-miscellaneous/437-asic-update-26-november-2012-a.html

Each single has 8 I think so that means 100,000 chips are 750THash/sec

So difficulty would jump by a factor of 30 to about 100million.

This means a single will earn you about $114 a month after the diff drop on a single (and cost you about $5-$10 in power).


Everyone agree with my maths?

They're not going to actually have sold 750TH/s by the end of the year.

750TH/s is 12,500 Singles. At $1300 per unit, that's $16million USD in preorders. I don't think they have that many preorders, but I could be wrong.

They're going to get 100,000 chips in 2 waves, the first of those waves being stated previously as being ~20,000 chips. This will cover the first batch, which puts us right at about 150TH/s. That's about a 5-6x difficulty compared to where we are now.

Eventually we will get to 750TH/s, but not for another few months, at the earliest.

Also, shouldn't the title be "BFL is expecting 100,000 chips..." ? Of course the chips are plural, but BFL is singular, is it not?

I think they will sell 100k chips by the end of 2013.  After the first generation products ship, they will drop prices 2-10x and sell more units throughout the year.  The marginal cost of producing an ASIC chip is extremely low.

Really. After they sell the first batch, how much extra would it cost them to 51% the network? $500k? less than that? Can they 51% the network for the price of a new Honda? Might be interesting to take bitcoin for a test drive.

We've been through this before but again it makes no sense whatsoever to attempt a 51% since if they are caught doing that, it would crash the Bitcoin market. In that situation they would be doing much worse than they are if they play nice.

They have actually commented on this many times and said that it's in the best interest of Bitcoin to do it this way. I call BS on that though, it's in the best interest of them to do it this way. It just happens to be good for everyone else as well.

I dont believe it

That's the wrong question, because if BFL can make ASICs, others can too.  And BFL isn't really making anything, third party manufactuers in China are.  Their ASIC design isn't safe, and they know it, even if it was unique, which it isn't.  The ASIC market is really a race to get the first batch to market, each new offering is going to limit the profitablility of all previous offerings, and thus the value of it's own offering.  That's what real competition is supposed to do, it's just in an extra fast cycle in Bitcoin.

Once they ship 750TH/s, they'd need the equivalent of 500 Minirig SCs to 51% the network. Considering that just the power supply used in the Minirig SC costs $450, I would imagine they would have a hard time launching a 51% attack on the network for $500k.

They'd also need a datacenter that could supply them 7.5MW.

And this argument also applies to any other attacker.  There is not scenario that ASICs could be bad for Bitcoin at large.  The door is closing for a serious 51% attack even for an attacker with nation-state resources.

Small correction: 750kW not 7.5MW. Still large and expensive, but not impossible. Certainly uninteresting I would imagine, both for expense and logistical issues.

More practical might be hiding 50TH/sec (or whatever number) of their own within the network.

You are assuming they will sell $15 million dollars worth of equipment. Highly doubtful in my opinion. But it doesn't matter. Competing with customers is still the wise move.

Why ship the chips out of China? It is a waste of money. The attack doesn't need to be conducted from NYC real estate.

You can rent an internet cafe capable of supporting 60 computers in China for less than US$300 a month. (e.g. http://cq.ganji.com/fang6/400435890x.htm (http://cq.ganji.com/fang6/400435890x.htm))

At 350 W per computer minumum that is 21 kW. Now rent 40 such cafes. (probably just better to focus on really big ones) We are up to US$12000 a month.

What about electricity? Say it is US$0.10 cents a kWH. Then for 750 kW, that is $75 per hour or US$54000 per month. Here we are getting expensive. However, I think you could get away with just attacking for 24 hours and then managing your load so that you regulate on any asshole who tries to mine. So it is probably more reasonable to think of 2 days of electrcity per month or US$3600.

We also need say 5 employees to keep stuff running 24/7. I'd say that each will run about US$1 an hour per body. That is another US$3600 per month.

So our total variable costs so far are 3600+3600+12000=$19200 per month. It is the price of a Honda. We just need the hardware.

If it works, the revenue per month is up to US$1 million. You are trying to convince me that the managers of the company are braindead. Sonny, extradited from Italy, multimillion dollar scammer, an idiot. I don't think so.

Maybe they won't 51% attack. Instead they can just earn US$500,000 per month and keep their complete control of the network secret to avoid panic. That might be a smart move. No one will know the difference. You idiots will just think that people massively overinvested in hardware and celebrate how "secure" the network has become. It will demonstrate that people are willing to mine at a loss. LOL.

This ends badly.

I can't read chinese so I had to use google translate. That says 40 computers not 60. I don't see why it would require 350Watts per computer for an Internet cafe, seems mildly unreasonable, as it is not necessarily designed to be a 3d gaming cafe. I would expect less capacity than the 14kW (close to 120A on 120V, not sure what China uses, but that is a huge breaker box for a single store) that your 350W calculation provides. That is usually for Industrial applications, not commercial property. 40 computers averaging 180W would be closer to 7.2kW (somewhat more reasonable 60A load). Assuming you could find > 100 locations with similar capacities for the same price (I'm no China expert) that's closer to $30,000 / month in cost for space. $54000 in Electricity cost seems reasonable for 750kW, however that is with 0 cooling costs, for 750kW of heat. Probably don't want to just leave your doors open all day and night with some fans on (especially come August when it's ~90F). Assuming that there is already Industrial cooling installed (very unlikely, need more machine costs there), I'm not a cooling expert but google suggests 1TON AC for every 3.5kW of cooling, or for 750kW ~220TON units of AC. 2.5ton of central cooling googles out to about 2520kwh / month, so we're at 221760kwh for cooling, or another $22,176 a month, and we haven't even included that power draw on our infrastructure (increasing the spread requirements).
I'm guessing that you would require more than 5 local yokels to administer to > 100 sites, but I'm not going to bother estimating that.

Without any logistical issues, we're at rent + asic cost + cooling cost = $30,000 + $54,000 + $20,000 =  >$100,000 / month to run 750THash/sec.

Another note to keep in mind:


China is struggling to meet Electrical Capacity nationwide, doubly so in the "Industrial Park" areas such as Chongqing (your listing), this does not make for a bastion of reliability for a fairly extensive mining operation, especially when you are utilizing cut-rate commercial sites putting huge loads on the local infrastructure.

So, again, not a trivial matter, but yes, assuming that they have some sort of connections in China (and ignoring that cost), ignoring the fact that the PCBs and other parts need to be shipped to China (they have stated that those are not MFGd there), ignoring the costs of all parts of the chips, ignoring the costs to have the parts assembled, ignoring the costs of the chips, ignoring the cost to retrofit their cutrate buildings rentals to handle a huge constant electrical load + cooling, ignoring the infrastructural problems in China, assuming no one minds your constant heavy usage for minimal pay, assuming cheap efficient labor keeping mining going at all times, assuming the network does not grow beyond 750THash of "legitimate" miners, ignoring the hassle of translating massive quantities of BTC into usable operating capital, etc., then yes, it certainly is possible to run a very hefty and profitable large scale mining operation.

More likely they would just set up shop not in the bargain basement street shops, but in some tech development zone in large warehouses with existing power and cooling infrastructures. The cost would be higher, but it would be less ridiculous a proposition.

It is and has been a concern, but it is not inevitable. There are lots of costs and headaches involved, and requires a belief in bitcoin itself, rather than selling on the belief of bitcoin, which may or may not be evident in a scammer who sees greenbacks, not digital bits.

My bad, I was doing it in my head and must have been biased by a previous response to someone claiming that ASICMINER could just print out a couple petahash/s for cheap. That one was almost 10MW.

You wouldn't even have to do it in China, if you think they would make enough equipment to actually try over a weekend to 51% the network. You could probably just cut a deal with someone that operates a large industrial facility to use it over the Christmas weekend or something. Still, what would that get you? A 51% attack doesn't let you just take all the coins. I find it hard to believe that they would be able to pull off any double spends large enough to justify the cost of the operation.

On the flip side, there is absolutely no incentive for BFL to mine on any hardware until they get to the point where there's product sitting on the shelf. For now and for the foreseeable future, they can sell the hardware and make more than self mining anyway.

My gut feelings would have to agree. Think of ASIC companies as if they were selling pickaxes to mine gold during the Gold Rush. :p

It's a Britishism...in their usage, either "is" or "are" is correct.

Why would you double-spend? It is idiotic. Double-spending would be profoundly disruptive and would not yield that much money. It is also pretty clearly illegal.

LukeJr 51%'d coiled coin for example. He did not double-spend. He merely mined 100% of the block reward and imposed larger fees on txns. That is potentially quite profitable. Once you have exhausted your opportunities to sell equipment, there is no reason not to do this. It is also not clearly illegal. At most it violates antitrust law, but good luck getting someone to prosecute.

The worst case scenario is if a new ASICs gets announced that is better than what BFL can offer. This would mean that BFL wouldn't have any reason to care about their reputation as a mining equipment vendor. In this case, assuming rationality, a 51% attack is guaranteed.

In this case, I'd say that BFL can do it as long as they can maintain it.  Good luck with that.

Right and afterwards they just mine like regular guys. Is there some way they lose from this?

I can see one, if they mine with those produts before they sell them, then they will drive up the difficulty in the meantime, and reduce their market value.  I don't know which path is more profitable, but if you are in the business of manufacturing pickaxes it's generally counterproductive to stake the gold claims yourslef.

And Luke-Jr intentionally killed CLC. How is that more profitable than selling hardware?

Luke-Jr was a vandal. Companies seek profit.

It is not either/or. You would do both. Only suckers fail to take advantage.

If you are bold, tax users and expropriate miners.
If you are timid, simply expropriate miners openly.
If you are really timid, just create lots of hardware and mine. This is secret expropriation. How would we know that they only sold 10k out of 100k chips?

I think I'd go for really timid.

So nobody disagreed with my maths (only grammer - although I think it is Butterfly Labs - if that makes a difference)!

In that case I conclude that BFL and/or competitors will ship $16m of ASIC hardware at current prices, twice as much if/when they half the price etc.. till the point where we get to the Electicity Cost being significant (1billion difficulty).

Assuming price holds up at $12.

That is a nice bit of business...

No, this is wrong. You sell $x million of pick-axes at a 10-fold markup over marginal cost. Then you spend x/10 to expropriate all of your customers. Total profit 1.8x
versus playing it straight for a profit of 0.9x

I don't know about you but given an opportunity to double my money with negligible risk, i usually go for it. Maybe they can't do math though.

You make a few large assumptions there. The biggest is that after they spend x/10 (probably more, since you'd want to have more than 51% if you were to attempt this) the value of bitcoin will not drastically change. Given the immature state of the bitcoin ecosystem, there's no reason to believe that if BFL took control of the network and rejected blocks of all other miners that the price wouldn't tank.

The price would crash to near nothingness if they were caught of even having over 50%, regardless of if they actually hamper others or not. This is mainly why nobody with an ounce of sanity would actually do it if they want to be profitable.

Satoshi knew all of this by the way. The model is fairly resistant if you think about direct profit motive. It doesn't count if someone is out there to simply destroy Bitcoin but that isn't easy or cheap to pull off either, and the idea of cryptocurrencies is going nowhere regardless. Bitcoin and others like it can adapt and will adapt if necessary.

I'm actually surprised how utterly clueless cunicula is on this particular subject. He is supposed to be an "economist" yet he is thinking in an extremely simplistic way, in a way that simply doesn't apply. I think he is just desperate to push proof of stake down our throats.

I would like to add that I'm not necessarily against having a proof of stake element in a cryptocurrency but I don't think that it's very relevant right now. Also it has more to do with the issue of block rewards and transaction fees than anything else.

Perhaps. That is the greedy assumption. They could always keep control of 51% secret. This would give them 1.4x profit instead of 0.8x. Almost double. Still a network under 51% control. But no one would know.

Rergarding the other comment. They will already have 0.9x in the bank as USD. I am suggesting that they risk another 0.1x to get revenue of 0.5x. If they get caught, worst case they lose 0.1x. If they do npt get caught they gain 0.4x. Is the probability of detecting them higher than 80%? If not, the wise business decision is to go for it. (note this is based on accepting your claim that value drops to 0 if they are detected. I don't believe that, but it doesn't really matter.)

I didn't claim it would drop to 0, but I think it would get pretty close. Even if they only maintained 40% or 50%, it would still be a massive red flag to anyone not only that one entity has such a large percentage of the network, but that they're also the (most likely) far and away largest provider of mining equipment.

Regardless, your assertion that it is worth gambling 0.1x to gain 0.4x is very shortsighted, as it ignores future earnings. BFL has an apparently not insignificant investment in infrastructure and training as well as brand recognition. They've spoken at length about the desire to make this a long term business and bring out new generations of hardware. They would essentially be throwing that away since eventually such a scheme would come out.

Where would the massive red flag come from? How do you know they aren't mining right now?

If they are assured a permanent monopoly on hardware then I agree that we will be okay.

If not, then building up a huge stockpile of private equipment makes perfect sense. Such a stockpile drives down the returns to mining and discourages entry from competitors.

Help me out here. At current price levels, the yearly BTC reward is maxed at $17M (3600/day*365day*$13). So BFL has to decide:
a) keep >50% of the chips (worth $8M) and earn $8.5M through BTC mining (minus all the overhead)
b) sell them ASAP for $8M.

Why does option a) not make any sense to me?

Actually there is an option c):
c) premine with each chip, keep the most profitable fraction of the mining reward for the chip lifecycle and sell it at full price

Well that $16 million figure is only if they sell all 100,000 chips. if they only sell 20,000 chips like they said the first batch (and the sum of their pre-orders) is, then we're talking about $3.2 million. So that makes your 3 options as follows:

A) Ship $1.6M worth of preorders, and keep $1.6M worth of chips and earn 650,000BTC over 1 year (assuming no other ASICs get added to the market).
B) Ship all $3.2M worth of preorders now.
C) Pre-mine and then ship all $3.2M worth of preorders, and keep a nice bonus in Bitcoins.

Option A doesn't make sense, because 1) it would take them a year to mine all those coins. Selling hardware now gets them money now. And more importantly 2) Bitcoins are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. If the market realizes that >50% of the network is being mined by one source, the faith in Bitcoins vanishes. When no one trusts them anymore, no one wants to buy them, and people holding them want to sell. This makes for an instant market crash, and BFL would be left mining an utterly useless currency. It doesn't matter who they are, but one party controlling >51% of the network would crash the BTC market, regardless of whether they performed a malicious attack or not.

All major ASIC manufacturers have said that C) is not an option, so that only leaves option B). Or people have also been concerned about this one last one:

D) Advertise a fake ASIC and get loads of money from preorders. Disappear, with millions of $ of non-existent sales.

Bit I digress. I'm tired, and my ramblings probably don't make sense. Have fun sifting through all of it. ;)

Since you guys brought it up, try this one on for size:

-Acquire VC funding to produce ASICs, sell "pre-orders" which are really zero-interest loans. Use VC money to begin production of ASICs, use loan money to begin artificially inflating bitcoin price, thereby increasing fervor for bitcoins and increasing pre-sales, which you can use to puff up bitcoin price more, rinse-repeat, stocking up on coins.
-Create "delays" and "improvements" to line extending time until shipment allowing more pre-orders to pile up and more coin collection / market manipulation, allow market to stabilize at new artificial price.
-At final breaking point, when competitors have product ready, and customers begin to balk and ask for refunds in sizable numbers, begin controlled (limited) shipment of product.
-When product reaches first wave of consumers, collect flood of new orders from people finally reassured that ASICs are real.
-Continue limited shipment until new orders begin to slow pace, ramp up "production" (read: shipping) to fill most orders in short span of time.
-Ship most/all orders (to deny returns), unload stockpile of bitcoin at artificially inflated price, crashing bitcoins price (after taking all the top level bids).

Close up shop, move to Aruba, live nice life.

Nothing illegal done, tons of cash made off pre-orders, tons of bitcoins turned into tons of fiat, miners left with worthless hardware they can't return.

How's THAT for a plan? Easier than supposedly running some 51% scheme, and fits nicely with current events (price rose *sharply* right after July '12).

Sounds pretty real ....except for Aruba...maybe other country :))

Sounds like a solid pump&dump scam. So in effect, every pre-order is backed by the equivalent amount of bitcoins :D. But why the heck would they want to flash crash the market?

That only works if BFL was actually holding the bitcoins from preorder sales. They used BitPay to process BTC orders, and shortly after preorders opened BitPay was on the forum trying to sell large chunks of BTC from the BFL sales.

There are only a couple smart ways of managing BFL.

Scam A

1) Sell to consumers.
2) After 1 is finished sell more to yourself.

Scam B

1) Sell to consumers.
2) Lower prices, sell to more consumers.
3) Lower prices, sell to more consumers.
...
n) After (1)-(n-1) are finished, sell more to yourself.

It can only end one way. Scam B is just a longer, long con.

That's why competition is so important. It forces BFL to show their hand eventually.

Indeed. BFL is already under pressure to lower prices.

Actually it wouldn't work at all if they were paid in Bitcoins. They need FIAT to dump onto the exchanges in order to artificially bump up the market price for the eventual dump.

My way is safer, cheaper, fears no competition, and less time-intensive than Cuniculas method, and far more reasonable from a scammers perspective, so I think in terms of the paranoia awards, the clear winner.

Uhh what pressure is that? bASIC is cheaper and faster, sure, but doesn't come with a PSU, and more than likely uses more power. Avalon is the same price and about the same speed, and while Avalon does not need a host PC, it still uses more power. Reclaimer's 4U rack mount option was 80GH/s, while BFL's is 1.5TH/s. I think they're decently competitive.

A power supply? Come on miners tend to have baskets of these...this miner certainly does. I've seen multiple posts already by people claiming to be BFL customers asking what BFL will do to match BTCFPGA prices/performance.

Umm any PSUs I have lying around are all old and/or inefficient. I'm glad you keep hundreds of dollars worth of PSUs to be able to power all those bASICs, but some of us don't. And yes, that does present an issue.

My setup I've prepared (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg1376515#msg1376515) doesn't include a PC or it's PSU to power 10 or even 1 bASICs. Having to either A) use a really old crappy PSU or B) buy a PSU just for powering one bASIC is just ridiculous. Now if I were gonna buy half a dozen bASICs, then it might be worth it to buy one, but still! That's a $200 "hidden" expense that I just don't want to have to deal with.

How have you determined the power supply costs $200? I have never paid that for a PSU, and that includes the behemoth powering the computer I'm typing this message on(PCP&C 850). If I had paid $200 for a PSU I'd expect to power no less than 5 bASICs with it AND the computer feeding them making the cost for PSUs $40/bASIC...actually less if you're also powering a computer.

BFL products would've been fairly valued IMO if they'd released them in October when they "scheduled shipments". Their customers would've had a ridiculously brief ROI and be profitable already. At this point I believe they're horribly overpriced for a launch against stiff competition in January of 2013.

If you're only planning on using one, why on Earth would you buy a $200 PSU? You can buy an 80+ Gold PSU off Newegg for about $50.

No I would not buy a $200 PSU for one unit. I'd find it quote annoying to have to spend $50 for one unit. In my post, I mentioned a $200 PSU for 6 or so units, not 1.

And yes, it is quite easy to spend $200 on a PSU, esp for a 1kW, 80Plus Gold unit from a good brand. The one Tom has for sale on his site (https://www.bitcoinasic.net/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=54) is $270, but that's 80Plus Platinum, which means you're just about guaranteed 90+% efficiency at all levels.

He also said it would power 10 units. That's $27/bASIC which is very reasonable, so again BFL looks overpriced. You're barking up the wrong tree here. A monster PSU is not required to power a bASIC according to it's developer, a relatively inexpensive unit will do nicely and likely allow for expansion as well.

I'm just saying it's annoying, and probably not something a lot of people are taking into account. I'm not saying it's a game changer, but it's still there.

I don't find it annoying in the least. I find it to be a savvy and geek friendly decision by Tom. I supply the PSU from the company I trust with the capabilities I believe I will require and BFL can keep their multiple questionable PSUs that I have zero input into. Meanwhile each time I plug in additional devices to said PSU I lower my cost basis for the whole setup compared to the competition.

I like Avalon's choice of self contained units even less btw as that means each one will have redundant power consumption components and their associated expenses. Convenient yes, but not efficient.

Competition is not good, here. For the current front runner, it increases the attractiveness of scam A relative to scam B.

I think creativex needs his/her horomone levels checked.He/she is VERY prone to argueing,like most estrogen laden "folks".

I know what you were referring to crazyates,but they'll just run you over with the same ole crap,just give up......

I know BFL's unit will be able to run out of the box when I get it.

While bASIC's folks will be diggin thru ole P.O.S. PSU's & burnin up thier units & demanding a refund when it happens & Tom will say "you should've bought the PSU I offer,sorry,no refund"  :D

I've tried those $50 PSU's,guess what.......I lost more than that replacing mobo's,vid cards & CPU's.I will GLADLY spend $125-200 for a decent PSU  :D

<looks around>

...here I thought this was a discussion board. Silly me. BTW, bite me.

If you don't mind paying $230 more for 12Gh/s less then be my guest...madam.

Haha I realized a simple little fact that changed everything towards the end of out little spat about the PSUs: CreativeX is JUST like me, but on the opposite side. He REFUSES to let anyone else have the last word.

Now I do the same thing. I'll find anything to argue about, just to push people and get them going. I like seeing how firmly people believe in something.

He might do it for different reasons, but he's the same way: he CANNOT give in, no matter how convincing an argument, or how wrong he is. ;D

I dunno 'bout that. You haven't given me anything to cause me to question my beliefs sir. ;) I never considered it an argument, merely a discussion.

Oh and THIS IS TEH LAST WORD!

Cheers.

Ewww,I struck a nerve  :D  It is a discussion board & I'm discussing .....  :P

No,I don't mind paying more for a better,more complete product out of the box,Thanks for asking  ;D  

Maybe less hash's,but I'm sure BFL will do something about that  8)

& no I got the last WORD  :P till you post again  :P

I don't really mean argue in an angry sense. I suppose discussion would be just as descriptive.

I'm glad you're confident in your beliefs that the bASIC is a better product. That means you don't have any BFL orders ahead of me, so I get mine sooner!  ;)  :P ;D


You do bring up a good point, but I hope people like CreativeX are happy with their bASICs, I really do. In the mean time, I plan on enjoying my Singles with their bundled PSUs, nice aesthetic cases, and almost half the power usage. And judging by their superior trade-up program concerning the FPGAs, I expect future upgrades to be much more cost-effective sticking with BFL the whole route. [/fanboy]


I'm sure you'll find something to comment about.  ;) :D ;D 8)

Speaking of FPGA's..has Tom allowed a tradein on his  ???

BFL did for me,I have 60 gh of hashing goodness coming from tradeing my Single in,+ $699.But they actually took my old device back,WOW  :o

& they're going to do the same thing with the gen 1 ASIC devices when the gen 2's come out,just WOW  :o

No idea. I've never owned an FPGA. Going right from GPU to ASIC.

I hope you guys are happy with your BFL products, whenever you get them.

This is a bit off-topic, but I'm a hardware geek so I enjoy discussing. If you burnt a mobo/GPU/CPU on a $50 PSU, you didn't do your homework on the PSU.

Depending on your power needs, the following < $50 PSUs are more than quality enough to deliver what they promise on their label (not for 10 bAsics, but easily 1+):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182199
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371033 (my slightly biased favorite < $50 PSU)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371029
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151090 (kinda pricey but still < $50 and it's qual-i-ty)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182202 (dont ask me why you'd get 430W for the same price as 530W, I don't set prices, but they're both < $50)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151086 (another sweet SS, little redundant but technically a diff unit)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371003 (not a fan of this one, but it does what it says for very little $$$)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151077 (ok last one I promise)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371023 (last one here too)

etc.

There's tons more but you can already see I'm getting slightly redundant, and I'm getting bored. All of those units are < $50 (some < $30), will power 2 or more bAsic devices, have quality builds that you can trust your precious components to, and I think at least half of them are even 80+ or better.

If you don't like computers and fancy gadgetry, that's fine, but let us discuss things honestly shall we?

As for hassle, I certainly agree that it will be stranger and uglier to run asics this way, but it might save you on outlet space. I shrug as we don't really know what anyone will provide in the end.

If you expand your price range a little (or wait for a sale) Newegg also has a nice 300W 80+ gold PSU for $55

Well,I've been there & done that,regardless of any one else's experience's & will not use a "cheap" PSU,at least not for something worth $1300 or more.For a little web browser PC,maybe  ;)

So you just assume that BFL will not use a cheap POS PSU for the units you purchase from them?

Ah, but the difference is that that POS PSU that BFL gives me is covered by BFL under the same warranty as the Single, for the entire duration that the Single is covered. My PSU blows up and destroys my miner? BFL gives me a new one. Good luck trying to convince Tom that he should give $3000+ worth of bASICs cuz your $30 PSU off TigerDirect fried 3 of your miners.

Good call. That's a liability issue. Might be a good idea to ask Tom about this on the btfga forum...

No thanks, BFL is slow, dishonest, and unreliable. You could easily lose the cost of the ASIC unit in lost production while they d1ck you around about replacing it. Nah, I'll choose the PSU that I prefer and just use that and BFL can keep their cheap PSUs to themselves.

We differ on this, and that's fine. You want things simple and cut & dry, and I want maximum flexibility & control.

Build quality is build quality dawg. I don't know what you think you're getting out of a more expensive PSU than you are from a high quality well-reviewed low cost PSU, other than higher Amp capacity.

You're free to throw your money away as you like, but this is just not a sensible argument that price = component death. Not all PSUs are created equal. You can spend a lot and still blow up your system. This isn't personal opinion, I chose units that have professional reviews and known manufacturers of high quality supplies.

As I said, if you've blown up systems, it's because you didn't do your homework.

I've built & shipped 20 gameing rigs around the country & about 50 for friends & customers around my hometown.So I've done my "homework" many times over ;)

If your ok with using cheap low quality crap,be my guest  :D

I'll be getting cables from Cablez & using my overpriced,very stable,$180 PSU to power my 6 devices.With no fear of frying them  :D

Best of luck to you  ;)

I gave you a list of ~10 PSUs, can you find any kind of information from a reputable source on any of them as to being "low quality crap"? My guess is you didn't even look at any of them before talking your mess about all the magical gaming rigs you've built.

The Earthwatts won an Editors Choice Award from Anandtech (hardware review site), 3 are SeaSonics a leader in the field, the Rosewill Green Series earned a hardware secret Gold level award, the NeoEco has a long history of outstanding quality and performance, etc.

Seems like you clearly didn't even bother to take one look at what you were responding to, so it seems that one of us has done their homework, and I'll leave it to posterity to eek out which of us it is.

Best of luck to your friends you built rigs for, hope they didn't get some $150 Thermaltake Black Widow PSUs. since you seem to feel that price makes quality (this is one of the most wretched line of PSUs).

Lol I give you a very valid point about an advantage BFL has over their competitors, and you dismiss it because of a separate, totally unrelated disadvantage they have. I don't know how company morality has anything to do with PSU build quality and warranty status?

I have made it clear that I think BFL is the better product. However, that does not mean they are better IN EVERY WAY. I still concede that the bASIC has some very nice perks going for it, mainly that crazy price/performance ratio! However, you can't even give BFL one tiny nod of approval that hey have something that BTCASIC doesn't?

The idea that a $50 PSU is unreliable and will blow up your computer is ridiculous. I could see your point if you were talking about a $50 800W Diablotek, but lower power Seasonics hardly fall into that category.

Well it's only 775W for $62, so it still should be good, right? I mean, 7-8 bASICs will work, right?  :D  8) ;)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817822015

You were correct,I did not look at them,sorry  :-[

I assumed you were talking about smaller PSU's & I was correct.

Most of those have pretty good reviews,but they are too small for my needs.I prefer to use 800 watt-1000 watters in my rigs to future proof them for later possible upgrades & I like at least a 200+watt buffer,they last longer & run cooler.

I have had extremly good luck with these :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121037

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121026

Only 1 was RMA'd out of 35 used so far & Kingwin's RMA service was fast & easy  ;)

A warranty is plainly no better than the company issuing it. I have no clue as to the quality of BFL's chosen PSUs...that's the problem.

The only thing I like about BFL's product line is that it's estimated to use less power/Gh. Since they lied about power consumption with their FPGA products, I simply don't trust information coming from them. I certainly don't believe their entire ASIC product line from the modest Jalepeno to the Minirig SC will use precisely 1w/Gh, that's ridiculous. I'm surprised that so few here seem to hold BFL accountable for their countless deceptions, but they can vote with their FRNs/BTCs and I'll vote with mine.

Well, we seem to have slipped away from the original conversation a bit, which I worried about. These are not PSUs for ultra-gaming or GPU-miner rigs. This conversation started out by crazyates assertion that the choice for BTCFPGA customers would be either dishing out $200 or blowing their bAsics to kingdom-come, and an agreement that any $50 PSU would be worthless. I simply wanted to step in and clarify that in fact for the smaller consumer, running 2-3 bASICs, that you could indeed find a $50 PSU capable of handling the (potential) power requirements without any serious risk of melting your expensive investment. You could (and should) go for a slightly higher level PSU, but it isn't a lost cause without.

I am a man who believes in the right tool for the right job, and as such if I need 300Watts I won't buy an 800W PSU, but when I have some crazy tri-fire setup and need 800Watts I certainly would not recommend a 300W PSU. The kingwin lazer is a decent enough PSU for that environment. I personally probably wouldn't use it for my bASICs (had I any), but I'm a bit of a snob.

I still contend that running a PSU for bASICs will be something of a hassle, but it's not a huge sticking point, especially cost-wise.