Bitcoin Forum

Lets say that I wanted to start up a small (1-2 GHs) FPGA farm soon. What is the best/economical way to do this? Which FPGA system should I use? I know the BFL units are excellent performers for the price point but I wouldn't be able to start mining with them anytime soon, probably 2+ month wait time. Icarus is discontinued so I can't use those. It looks like the dual X6500 cards are sold out at cablesaurus. So is my only option to go with the ztex board? They seem to be the highest price for least MHs from what I can tell. Are there any other boards I am missing or possibly another supplier?

Besides the boards, what would you suggest for the system to manage them? Should I look for a used netbook and run BAMT or some flavor of Linux on it? Or should I build a traditional system (where the PSU could possibly poswer the FPGA units too)?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Go BFL.  They are catching up on shipments now.  On the 10th through the 12th of this month they shipped 3 weeks worth of orders from January, maybe more.

BFL does look to be the best bang for your buck. It's just the wait time (around 3 months now) that I don't think I can handle. I still would like to start using FPGAs though and the idea of building my own setup adds to the fun. The Ztex seems to be very expensive for the MHs (unless I'm missing something) so I don't want to use those. I'd be willing to pay 1BTC to anyone who can come up with the best way to start off a ~2GHs farm. The plan would need to also include a way to manage the farm, ie. netbook or some sort of low power system where its power supply could power the farm too.

Have you seen this wait list?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67887.msg814507#msg814507

Granted it is rather large, I have faith in BFL that they're catching up and they'll start meeting their 6 - 8 week delivery window....some day.

Maybe go half and half? That way you have a little start or look to buy a BFL unit from someone that already has one on hand...no wait!

ordered single on the 9th of January...still waiting...any month now...

You should have it by now. They are now shipping 1/27 orders. I just received my 1/27 order yesterday.
Contact them by email.

Did you place another order at a later date also?

2Ghash is hardly a farm nowadays, people get that with gaming desktop PCs.

2GH/s is a bit high to be defined as a gaming desktop pc even nowadays, unless your definition of a gaming pc must includes 3 x 5970's or 7970's cards in x-fire(for the games) to get those results :p. My gaming/desktop pc only gets 750~760mh/s on a single 5970 :p

If you're going to be purchasing any amount of x6500s that qualifies as a bulk order, just get in contact with them. Sales@fpgamining.com

I would really recommend them if you want to get mining soon. Or wait for that sweet 4x spartan-6 board! (Not anytime soon) :P

Yes, please contact us if you're interested! We offer bulk pricing discounts for as few as 5 boards, which would get you 2 GH/s. Thanks!

saw this in another threat here in the FPGA section... http://btcfpga.com (http://btcfpga.com) they have a 4X spartan board(800mh/s) for $1069.99 4 week guarantee or they take $100 off the price. So I guess it's not quite "not anytime soon" :p

I haven't seen any proof of it actually working well yet... so I'd recommend them to give me some more insight :)

*January 2010

Don't forget,some of these FPGA's are a bit involved to set up (software for mining) & some don't have any warranty :P

BFL is the better bang for the buck though  ;D

800 mh/s for $1000+ is still 15 months or more for ROI ::)

800 mh/s for $600+ is 6-7 months ROI + wait time =9 months :P

Good luck  8)

Setting up mining software is very straightforward, just make sure they PWR_on is grounded on your PSU, and not connected to PWR_ok ;)