Bitcoin Forum

Im looking to buy sha256 miner asic. Just to try it and help the bitcoin network. So wonder what should i be lloking for? Have a feeling main thing novadays is a power effectivness. So what asic today have the best hash to power ratio?

I would think either a Bitmain S5 or a Spondoolies

Exactly.  8)

I wouldn't even consider buying a miner from another company but Bitmain or Spondoolies at the moment.  Maybe Asicminer, once they prove that they can build a unit that doesn't Erupt into flames.

What about Avalon 4.1? Looks to be a good miner also.

I think that it is too noisy and not worth the money

Currently Bitmain and Spondoolies.
"Tomorrow" (i.e. soon) likely ASICMiner and BitFury

Easy to tell who reads the reviews!!

Trends

Not as efficient as either the SPTech or Bitmain products.

Spondoolies Tech
Bitmaintech

of course if you want wholesale

Bitfury

Avoid the rest.

These companies will provide you the best options and prices especially if you have a larger order.

If you a just want a single miner to play with get something used that isn't overly efficient as you wouldn't able to make or recoup the costs really.

If you are not looking at Ph/s then you are not really in the game at this point and you'd be better off supporting the "network" by BUYING BTC and using it.

KNC just announced that they are in tapeout phase with their 16nm mining chips, but that of course is going to their farm and cloud mining. (don't buy from knc)

I would advise you to wait for the 16nm and in the meantime buy bitcoin on its dips..

Ok miner from a bad company. Avoid Avalon at all costs.

TSMC will produce 16nm chip in 3Q2015
How KNC will get 16nm chip before?

Intel Core M-5Y10a for example is 14nm technology and shipped last year. Also I think a SHA-chip
is much easier to get to tape out than a gpu/cpu, so it would not be too surprising to see
an ASIC of any kind of a given node size before a cpu/gpu.

The thing is that TSMC in 2014 said that they will have 16nm in 1Q2015. After that KNC and Cointerra said that they will have 16nm chip also in 1Q2015. TSMC delay producing to 3Q2015, Cointerra bankrupt, about 50 customers have lawsuit against KNC.. So should we believe them?

From WIKI:
Tape-out
In electronics design, tape-out or tapeout is the final result of the design cycle for integrated circuits or printed circuit boards, the point at which the artwork for the photomask of a circuit is sent for manufacture

What does it mean? Will KNC have 16nm next month?

Probably in like 4-6 months until operational hardware.

It means that they have reached tape-out stage, reaching that stage has no bearing on how long it takes from tape-out to reach full production, minimum is probably around 3-6 months. But if they have to wait for foundry could be much longer.

Thank you, now it's clear. So next power improvement will on 28nm chip by BitFury, ASICMiner or Spondoolies. We'll see who will the first, more effective and whether overtake Bitmain with upgrade S2 (0.4W/Ghs if we may believe them). Likely AM or BitFury will produce earlier than Spondoolies.

Spondoolies is already starting to gear up their 3rd-gen stuff; I'm not sure if it's just planning stages or if they have a solid footing on the chip design yet. Those guys are pretty good at getting things done quickly, given they've went from cold to cycling through two generations in about a year. Spondoolies is no longer manufacturing the SP20. If you get one, it'll be from a third-party reseller. I think about the only thing they have still in stock is the SP31.

The Avalon 4.1 is a bit overpriced, but by no means is it loud - certainly not compared to the stock-configuration SP20 and S5. The 4.1 if I'm remembering right has an option to self-optimize, wherein you can set the clock frequency and it'll automatically undervolt itself to the lowest stable voltage (and therefore total power draw) but I could be remembering wrong. I do believe the Avalon4 can operate at the same W/GH points as the S5 and SP20 (but not at the same $/GH). Avalon is taking a lot of flak from screwovers in the past, but as far as I know the company is basically the same name applied to an entirely different management set from previous generations of hardware (and dickery).

Bitmain's S5, and very likely the S2 Upgrade and S6, are string-topology miners which means increased efficiency comes from not losing power in a low-voltage high-current conversion. One principal problem with this topology is lack of regulation. A PSU operating at higher than 12V will cause increased power consumption at frequency setpoints, while a lower voltage could cause instability. There is no ability to undervolt these miners with hardware or software settings (without external apparatus or special PSUs) so the flexibility and futureproofing of them is reduced over standard VRM designs.

ASICMiner's BE300 chips should be funneling in from the factory any time, unless the schedule Friedcat implied some months ago has not been followed. They promise to be the most efficient chips in active deployment (with the exception of BitFury hardware, though I'm not sure if they have their super amazing new stuff in hand yet), with W/GH about half what we see in S5 and SP20 machines. Retail-available miners based around them are still a couple months out, for sure.

Used Antminer S2 + upgrade kit. 0,4W/GHs
https://bitmaintech.com/product.htm

Thanks for the informative post.

It does seem to line up with what I've managed to gather...
As I recall, I believe ASICMiner's new BE300 chips are going to be 28 nm.

Do you (or any knowledgeable forum member) know if Spondoolies new gear is going to be on a new (smaller) process, or have any other kind of improvement, or might point me to where I might find out more info related to this (I tried their website/blog, no dice)?

I'm told they're shooting for a similar package and power levels, initial gen3 boards using a similar design topology as the gen2 boards. I do not, however, know anything about the process size or expected power efficiency.

Cool, thanks for the lowdown.

Is it noisy? Couse im goin to keep it in my room.

S5 I would say is not quiet.  I would not want in room with me.  :o