Bitcoin price nearly in free fall for a while tonight:

$187.55!!!

Lots of thinking to do at this price for a whole lot of miners.

Looks like Phillip got his wish. As I type this BTCquote shows:

$180.35!!!

Everybody update your ROI spreadsheets.

From my "CPU Thermal Pasting" days, I thought the whole idea was to use the stuff VERY sparingly, even more so than the very small "new blobs" shown. In the CPU days it almost seemed like an art form to get the amount "just right", certainly nothing like what was done at the factory.

Thanks for the discussion on Power Supplies, and the Newegg link. My only comment is that it might be worth considering a larger more capable supply, in anticipation a future mining device. It seems that many folks purchased a "way over the top" PSU in the past, and just continue to use it when they upgrade to a newer mining device. It looks now like the PSU is the "long term" part of mining, while the specific ASIC gadget has a much shorter "life span" in terms of how long it stay connected to your purchased PSU.

Thanks again.

I am curious though. If these are in a server room, why tinker with the fans at all? Is there a noise concern in the room? I thought the issue with the S5 fan was strictly noise related.

Anything in English? Are the pictures supposed to convey all your thoughts on this?

I would suggest that the first thing to do is by hearing protectors.

So somebody develops the "Uber Quantum Bitcoin Mining Gadget". It's 100x the speed of anything we have today, and uses 1/10 the power. The owners of this magical device light it off. Assuming the normal difficulty adjustment rules apply, a few periods later difficulty has literally "skyrocketed" (not just the usual hyperbole).

What did it cost? What happens next? Most all the existing mining hardware has been rendered obsolete, and people literally turn off gear and scrap. They can't just sell it, since there are no buyers.

Sounds like we have just one "centralized" mining entity, doesn't it?

I would also be willing to bet that a "speculator" is expecting Bitcoin to go above $290. If they thought it was capped at $290, there wouldn't be much point in speculating, would there?

[quote author=notlist3d link=topic=909473.msg10083862#msg10083862 date=1420745957

The thing about the "big" companies and big data centers is they have cheap electricity (for the most part).   Their profitable period will be more then a lot of individuals simply because of electricity price.

I agree with philipma1957 that they go pretty quick once not profitable.  They will try to sell off old stock get what money they can, and then put in new equipment.   They don't run for a loss. They might not get it done in a day but in a matter of weeks.  I know of one that the electricity was two high for Dragons at a data center, and they trucked it all to a place with much cheaper costs.  Been a while but took around a week to get it all done and set up. (This was a while back at this point I doubt they would move again but be unplugged and sold.
[/quote]

My point is that in virtually all cases mentioned above, the "Data Center" (or Philip) then SELL the mining device to someone else. The person (or company) that bought it then fires it right up again, after the shipping delay. So while the device moved, it didn't actually leave the network. Maybe the purchaser didn't make a good choice, but they didn't buy it with the intent of scrapping it when it arrived. So while S3's will be leaving various places, in most cases, they come back to life somewhere else. The total network hash rate didn't change because they left a big mining company. This "rotation" of gear doesn't do one whit to reduce, or even slow down, the rise in difficulty. The hash rate continued to grow.

The only time it changes is when those folks still running a Jalapeno, or BL Single, or whatever turn it off and leave it off (or scrap/destroy it).

What else got turned off as a result of the electrical work? Any chance that the DHCP server got messed up in some way, and the SP20's now have a conflicting IP address with something else? Depending on how difficult it is to power off other stuff and your DHCP server, you might might be able to narrow the problem by getting it down to only the DNCH box and the SP20's. I know that IP conflicts can be a real bitch to debug.

Another idea. Remove the config from the DHCP server that tries to assign them a specific IP address. Hard reboot the SP20's, and see if they won't get some IP address that is on your network. In other words don't try and make them the way you want right out of the box. Instead, see if you can't get them back on your network and visible agqain. You might also want to try all this rebooting and such with just 1 SP20 for debugging purposes. Add the 2nd one once you get one visible and kinda working.

Best of luck.

While this may sound pedantic, I don't think that this is a Ponzi scheme at all. I think it's more like outright fraud, where you you sell something that doesn't exist, or that you don't own. Kinda like when I tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge a few years back.

I thinks Charles Ponzi would take great offense, from his grave, at this being called a Ponzi scheme.

Apparently when Bitmain revised the initial posting for the S5 for 9V feature, they also struck another part regarding the 1 fan cooling solution, though they didn't fix the entire posting. One part still extolls the virtue of a single fan that keeps the miner "cool and quiet". I think everybody agree the 1 fan keeps it cool, though by most accounts it's quite loud in doing so.

Anybody know if there is a revision to the fans on the S5?

One more point to add. Nobody that i is currently mining today thinks that Bitcoin will remain at $290 forever. If they did, they would get what they could and exit the Bitcoin space, including selling the coins they currently hold.

Bitcoin as a currency/commodity fails if it never climbs above $290.

At the risk of being flippant, this is the "Speculation Group" after all.

Using any one of the "profit calculators", current Bitcoin price and difficulty levelgenerally yields "long to infinite time to recover cost". Low electricity cost and and efficient mining makes it possible in individual cases.

I think there is a pretty long latency from when a miner stops being "economically viable" to when it is actually taken off the network, and not returned later because it was sold. A sale from "Big Mining Company" to "Home Miner #2967" doesn't do anything but inject a short term drop, since "Home Miner #2967"  will mine with the device for a while. Even if he made a poor choice, nobody buys a miner in order to not run it when it arrives (excluding BFL pre-order victims).

I'll bet it actually takes months, before a device leaves the network, and is scrapped. Certainly way longer than a difficulty jump or two and a few more spasms in the price of Bitcoin.

My bet is that the bean counters will put the kibosh on the check they would need to send to the Fab even if they did try to tape out. The Fab will want cash up from them I expect. Wasn't it HashFast that got a bunch a chips back, just as they declared bankruptcy?

Just a cautionary note on "free electricity". Somebody, somewhere is paying for the electricity that you use. Maybe it's included in your rent. Maybe it's at your parents house. What you may find is that there are limits to the amount of "free electricity" that you can actually use, though it's not obvious at this point. If it's included your rental, that's great, until you use "too much". You might well find that your lease has a "reasonable" clause associated with electricity usage. You might also find that where you are running your miner(s) has limits on the actual wiring and such. It wouldn't be hard to buy some much gear that you can't run it without popping breakers or causing other electrical problems.

Just something for you to consider about "free electricity".

I have 3 of those kind of miners, and haven't had a problem yet. I don't know what causes a capacitor to "pop" after several months of operation. I was building a power supply many years ago, and installed an electrolytic capacitor backwards, and that did "explode" within the first few seconds after I turned it on. Obviously yours has been fine for months.

So what you mean when you say "it exploded" is that one of the visible capacitors exploded. This isn't completely unheard for for any type of device. This was for an original 32GH R-box.