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ive been scorned by spondoolies and i have 10 antminers (1 s5 and 9 s3) now. with my budget im either stuck at getting two s4's (not having to buy a psu) for roughly 1300 for 4th or spend 1700 on an s7. going the s5 route, your spending roughly 400 on the miner plus another 80ish on a server psu and that lands you at 3.4ish th

 my situation is a little different, i do truly have free electric i just dont want to abuse it. i had a sp30 running and sold it my bill is used to the <3000 watts running.

with an s4, i could potentially use the leftover to buy more btc as well.

if you have other ideas, im wide open.

Hmm an interesting one. I would look to the future when you will need to want to make the most Hash for your available power and go for an S7 or an Avalon6 dependant on your preference.

Rich

Being in a similar situation as you, i set a smallish # of AMP(@120v sadly) i'm willing to put toward mining and after having maxed it with small miners, i'm left having to offline some miners to online  new one, so in this case i would save up for a S7.

If you have plenty of room on your electric grid, i would go for S5's at 300$ish + shipping, i prefer them over S4 for modding down the noise and better efficiency, also easy to overclock stable. (You can change the fans for the S4 but its annoying to "extract" and then open up, then merge the long wires with the new fans.)

The S5's are also a good middle ground between efficiency and hashrate density.

At the moment i'm torn between S5, S5+ single "cube" and S7. It will depend on the deals i can get.

I am lucky my miner area has 100 amp which has always worked for me.  I have an additional 200 amp for house where I can put some if I ever run that much.  But so far 100 amp has always been enough for me.

I can say the S5+ was one the greatest least talked about miners.  I love mine and would not trade it. But with one batch limited it is less sellers so not as much competition on price.

the choice is easy , with free electricity the efficient does not matter anymore, instead what it matter is the initial investment, to speed up the roi

also i would avoid buying too many miners, like you had in the past(9 s3) they waste plenty of space, the s5+ instead seems out of your budget

Do you live in an apartment? if so then noise will be an issue and you can forget the S4/S5/S7.

Either more S2/S3 or get an Avalon 4.1/6

I'd wait a couple months or so, see what BW.com prices the B-Eleven at, and what Innosilicon does with their A3.

Waiting could be the solution here. The price is increasing and so is the hash. Difficulty is sky rocketing, so to need the most power efficietn miner. Both SP/Bitmain miners won't be the most efficient miners in a few months time. So you could only benefit a few months of their efficiency.

Also the next batch S7 is shipped after christmas, so you will get in in january at the soonest.

There is not really enough for us to know in a couple of months it will be out.  And even if it is who knows date public sales start.

They sold a TON of cloud hashing which we can assume will be first to get machines.  I expect others to come after that.  And we also have not seen chips, or prototype so timeline really is hard to say.

 Not always true, it depends a lot on HOW MUCH free electricity you have available.

15 PH of cloud hashing, at 3 TH per machine, works out to 5000 machines - yeah, that might take a little while to fill. If they do it as the 10TH mentioned option, it's only 1500 machines - probably can fill that in a month or less if they get enough chips out of the foundry.

 Mostly I'm waiting to see what the A3 ends up looking like in a machine, at this point.

If your electricity price is high, you can buy some S7. If it is lower, then buy some S5. S7 is more efficient than S5, but it is more expensive.

well he clearly said lower than 3k watt, so he can have a lower income with more wattage needed because he want those inefficent machine, but he would save a very good amount of money on the investment

anyway we are talking about a tiny profit here, so it does not mater much

The benefit if having free electricity is not tiny. It amounts to a huge chunk of your mining payouts.

It depends on the amount.   I would argue 100 amp of cheap electricity beats out a few thousand watts of free electricity.

Most free electricity is very limited.  So you really will not be mining a ton of unit's with free.

I agree with you but having free electricity increases the ROI time frame by a considerable amount.

Yes having some free electricity would be very nice. Not just the ROI, but just knowing that whatever equipment you are running old or new, it will be making some money without the need to do the maths.  :)


Rich

 you may be better off with s5.  Just consider resale value too - what will an s5 be worth after halving ?  s7 ?   

No one knows this it will depend on difficulty and BTC price.  If btc goes up... value of miners go up.

We will know it's worth more then a S3.   And less than a S7.  But as far as exact amount we wont know that.

I would go with the S7 over the S5. Price is good at the moment for a batch 8 and if the difficulty keeps on the way it is, even if we hold $440 an S5 on 5c electricity will barely be making money after the Halving.

Rich

I would agree that new miners will have better resell value.  Which can be important.   Most miners like me I think mine with it till it is not as profitable, then sell to someone with lower or free electricity  Most miners have multiple owners I think in their life.

Only other thing is with free if you get a deal on old it can be better.  Depends on pay per T/GH if you do get a good deal and can ROI quick old can be good for "free"

The S7 is better than S5 for the short term, or before the 16 nm chip based miners come out. After that, the block halving will make it obsolete.

Having is going to hurt on most of us.  Those with super cheap electricity will make it though it and have a TON of used gear to buy for pretty cheap I'm guessing.   Only thing is look at chips like Bitfury if we can get sub .10 cent chips one day that is a game changer it becomes profitable.

Not bitfury might not sell to little customers.  But I think eventually someone with a decent next get chip will com in for small consumers.  I'm not sure who to guess on it though, to much secrecy to really know.

I think that there will be some incredible deals on S5s soon. Around or just under $200. Give it a few months and I think your best option might be used gear if things keep blowing up and miners keep selling their gear.

Yes but what's the point of an incredible deal on a piece of equipment that only makes money if you have 1 cent electricity?

Rich

By Monday even a free S5 will only be worth turning on if your electricity cost is under 10.5 cents kWh.

A free S7 is only worth turning on if electricity is under 18 cents per kWh.

So even if the miner is already paid for there is little point keeping an S5 if it cannot cover the electrical cost.  So expect to see cheap S5s.

(Note - based on 1 Terrahash generating 5.44 cents USD per hour.)

On paper you are right. The prices of those miners should go down.
But make sure to check out the market place please will sell their miners for prices which will never give you ROi.