Bitcoin Forum

I don't have to pay for power, this would be my first mining plan. I know a guy that will sell me 3 for $15 all working. What would I need as a power supply and other miscellaneous stuff? Would this be good for a beginner? I'd like to get started as cheap as possible, would under $100 be possible? Thanks.

The s1 used 400 watts so 1200 watt psu is needed.

unless you pencil mod.

If you go full tilt   You have 500 to 600 gh of hash

Not worth it. You won't make any money. If you have free electricity get at least an S5 so you can have more miners in your place and make more money.

3 working S1's for $15 could actually be a good deal, chance is real that you can make some profit by re-selling them to a collector... At $5/piece that shouldn't be to hard.

nice idea :D selling to the collector

Definitely what altcoinhosting2 said - you shouldn't have any problems making at least double what you paid for - $15 is pretty cheap for an S1 (are you paying fifteen bucks for each, or all three??!!)

& what do you mean by "I'd like to get started as cheap as possible, would under $100 be possible?"

It's obviously possible, all you gotta do is spend $15 apparently...............

That's really cheap considering that's a price for the 3 Antminer S1's. The cheapest I've seen is $28 at the moment so definitely a good buy (considering they really do work as you mentioned earlier). How about it's shipping, have you put that into consideration (in case your from another country to the guy selling you)? If your asking if under $100 would be possible to kick start a mining, yes that's possible but the profit is really minimal (and that's with your free electricity that you got).

You laugh but it has happened on some miners.  Look at block erupters people collect them and some even try to get every color.   So they go for way more then they are worth.

So we have seen some collecting of miners.   If I ran across 3 S1's for 15 dollars total... I would probley go for it and worst I set them on shelf.  For 15 dollars... I don't think you can go wrong.

Bitmain made like hundreds of thousands of those S1's, they will never be collectors items.

And they very well might not I can see how there is a lot more collectors of stick miners, then bigger machines it seems.  But I guess it depends on his mining setup.  For me if truly 5 dollars each I would pay that just to put in mining area as a decoration of sorts as I have a decent amount of room.

But I can see what you mean if someone is counting on it and holding it to sell as a collectors item in a few years likely they will be disappointed.   But a decoration or even a project/parts for project 5 dollars each seem like a steal unless they really have dropped this low in value and I just did not see it.

And if never use them I still think there are 5 dollars worth of parts within them.   And also make a decent thing on a mining area spot as decoration.   I can't say for sure how much they are worth in part's but 5 dollars seems like heat sinks might be worth that in some cases.

I hope OP bought them after reading thread.

of course you can do something with them if your not paying for power purchase ;)

I loved my S1s in the winter. I used either no fan or a 100% silent fan, undervolted, underclocked, 1W/GHs fully quiet heater that pay its own electricity.

I forgot to check this post! @notlist3d I have bought the miners now (ended up getting 3 for $10!!!). But I am still not sure what I could get that would power them all. Anyone know of any breakout boards for the big 1200W HP proliant power supplies that could power 3 (dual blade) S1's? I was thinking of getting this: http://holybitcoin.com/product/hp-1200-watt-psu-board-bundle/

I never liked the style of board..

that psu needs 240 volts to do  1200 watts .

if you down clock just a bit those miners can be quiet


if you do the pencil mod  they become very efficient  like  1.1  watts  vs 2 watts

do you  have 240 power?

Sidehack sent me his    new breakout board  for testing  .  it is better made then the ones you asked about.



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1442707.0


I would get one of these and six cables 2 per unit.


I would look for the pencil mod thread.

I did  430gh at 540 watts  with 3 s-1's

vs 600 gh at 1200 watts over clock

vs 540gh at 1080 watts  stock settings.

How do I get one of those? Also I have 120v not 240.

It doesnt do super good on 120v. Just to be clear, it does not do 1200w on 120V.

Okay, would a DPS-800GBA work good enough for 2-3 Antminer S1's (dual blade)?

If he takes the s-1's and downclocks plus undervolts via the pencil mod  the  hp1200 would be very good for him.

If I recall he is a zero cost deal for power.

Would a DPS1200 work for all three without underclocking and/or undervolting?

Not on 120v. But you *really* should downvolt them. The GH/s loss is minimal vs massive efficiency gain.

Is it easy? Is the downvolting just via this "pencil mod" I've been hearing about? And I have free power so does it even matter? Also if not 3 could I just power 2 with a DPS1200? Thanks.

If your electrical outlet is over 208v, without any pencil mod, you can power up 3 S1 or 3 S3. 

If your electrical outlet is at 100-120v, you can power up 2 units.  if electricity is free, let the PSU be as is! 

But with my 120v socket wouldn't I be able to run 3 undervolted antminers on that single DPS1200? Compared to just two normal ones?

Depending on how far you undervolt them, you can run half a dozen on the DPS1200 on 120V. I had at one time 14 undervolted S1 running off a single 2KW PSU.

Okay good to know, current plan is to undervolt the S1's so I can run 3 off one DPS1200 at 120v. That's 300W each, do you have any idea what resistance I'd need for that?

it is really easy and I will find a link

just shoot for 140gh per machine at 180 watts per machine

so 420gh total at 540 watts


all info is here :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=526060.0

This is awesome thank you. Nice to have the chart.

my first try I did with out meters two lite pressure stokes of a number 2 pencil  on the proper resisters.

do not press hard.

If you want to read the results of my work on S1 undervolting, details can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857967.0

Probably not as n00b-friendly a writeup but fairly technically extensive and gives numbers down to below 1W/GH board-level if you want to take it that far. With free power there's no real reason to unless you can't deal with the heat output.

His benefit to do a bit of under volt underclock is more about noise and heat control.

Max setting is 600gh at 1200 watts.
Stock setting is 540gh at 1080  watts

If I was running the s-1 with a hps1200 psu using a 120 line

I would shoot for 600 watts.

The psu would not strain.

The under volt and down clock could be for 450 gh 600 watts.

He could run a fourth one if he can find one cheap.

He can set fans lower.

600 watts vs 1200 watts

That second 600 watts op you gains from 450 gh to 600 gh.

He could try solo mining BTC. OR PPC

Btc block is hard to do with 450gh but a PPC block worth 30$ is a lot easier to do.

(if you care about altcoins)

Well my reasoning is 3 Antminer S1's = ~360W*3 = 1080W, and the PSU on 120v could only give me 1000W, so if I just pencil mod one of the three I should be able to power all of them with only one PSU and only ~40GH/s loss. Also heat should not be a problem even if I didn't undervolt, I'm going to have 2 fans on each rig. Also thank you very much for the writeup, I will be reading about this.

yes  but  the mod  tends to make the sweet spot for the miners to be 130 gh to 160 gh

so 390 to 480gh    with  watts dropping from 1080 to    500-600   is more likely what you will get.

but heck since your cost was 10 bucks

400gh will earn 35 bucks before the ½ ing
450gh will earn 38 bucks before the ½ ing
500gh will earn 41 bucks before the ½ ing
550gh will earn 44 bucks before the ½ ing

Is that if I mod all three? Sorry its a little confusing to read. I was planning on only modding one.

I see you're still struggling with this. You should undervolt all of them, if only to a point where you only lose 10GH/s each. The efficiency will be much better, you wont overload your PSU and there will be less noise.

Yeah it's kind of overwhelming, it's my first time doing anything besides a USB Block Erupter. Thanks for the advice, I will see if I can undervolt just little enough to lose like 10 GH/s each.

Thanks everyone :D

Just a heads up to how i run my S1's now. At some point, when you have better miners. You only turn them on when you have spare power or need heat (I disabled all heating here). If you undervolt them far enough, you can use them as on-demand heater with no fans = 0 noise (depending on the PSU i guess).

Good to know, I'll probably turn them into heaters (like you said) or just sell them on eBay when I get a better miner.