^^ Exactly.
BTC mining is VERY relevant. Why on earth would someone think otherwise? If it was not relevant, no one would be mining and then diff would be far far lower than it is (and folks would then start flocking to it).

Can anyone still mine BTC? No. The entry bar is set pretty high as in many parts of the world cost of electricity is too high, temps are to high, ROI time expectations are unreasonable, etc. That said, as long as your operations cost is less than mining income and you are in it for the long game, then MINE ON!

Yes and No. Yes, what matters is the efficiency of any given "node size", that in turn strongly depends on how good the chip designers are at laying out the circuits inside of the chip.

No, the point is that for many years now the term "node size" says nothing about ANY specific physical dimensions inside of a chip. It is now just a number that Marketing uses to say one manufacturing technology (node) has gate features that are smaller or larger than another technology (node). Problem is, gate size is just 1 part of the design and shrinking that (more) is increasingly becoming less important compared to say design of the metal layers.

When done correctly smaller does equal less power for same speed or more speed for same power. The 'gotcha' comes from 'done correctly'. There are many many ways to screw up chip design. As said in opening post - Canaan proved that with their then bleeding-edge 7nm A921 miner whose efficiency was nearly the same as the A8xx series that have 3rd generation 16nm chips.


Well sorta maybe is? https://blokforge.com/product/canaan-avalon-1166-68-th-s-bitcoin-miner-w-psu-february-2020-batch/. Says it still uses 16nm chips

The word you are looking for is "power circuits" or "circuitry".

Key word in the USPS voting patent is blockchain. That does not mean it has anything to do with the BTC blockchain and no doubt will be using a privately ran network chain that is contracted by the government. As such, it has zero bearing on BTC value and usage.

Ja, both Canaan and MicroBt have really pushed 16nm node (transistor 'gate size') performance to its probable maximum. As I said, my guess is that they did it by using smaller/thinner metal layers made economically possible by the advances needed for the lower nodes.

As insiders have known for many years now, a chips' node size has become a pointless and erroneous measure of what the dimensions inside of a chip actually are and not-so-useful in defining what the chip performance can be.

Looks like a new definition is in the works to better reflect actual progress being made. ref https://read.nxtbook.com/ieee/spectrum/spectrum_na_august_2020/the_node_is_nonsense.html

My take on it is that companies like MicroBt and Canaan made the right choice by staying at 16nm for so long and relying on the fact that the Market forces driving the quest for lower 'node size' for things like memory, CPU's, GPU's etc as well as mining chips are at the same time benefiting the higher nodes. How?

Easy - use for example the '16nm node' that MicroBt and Canaan used for their respective M10/M20 and A10xx series miners. My guess is that TSMC applied lower-node metal interconnect tech to the now much cheaper 16nm node. Smaller/thinner metalization interconnect layers means lower switching losses improving efficiency while still using the larger (and cheaper, fully mature) 16nm gate size. It keeps the long ago paid for 16nm foundries busy while providing decent performance chips at far lower cost than cutting edge chips like BM's 7nm and now their bleeding-edge 5nm node size...

AFAIK the M30x from MicroBT use what, 12nm 8nm chips? I know Canaan is still smarting from the 7nm A921 debacle: They and/or Samsung rather blew it on that chip so even now their latest A1066 is still a brick of 16nm chips sourced from TSMC.

Edit: Earlier this year Canaan mentioned an A1166 but not sure what 'node size' it is/was supposed to be. They've been mighty quiet about it ever since.
Edit edit: The A11's specs say it has 342 of their A3205 16nm ASIC

Age is irrelevant.
Hell, considering how many folks of all ages seem to mistakenly think that all cryptocoins are "Bitcoin" (They aren't. Only BTC is BTC, all others are altcoins) this is more of a general education issue.

Well there *is* a limit to what is allowed as section 179 relief is strictly for small business. Total allowed for 2020 is $3,630,000 in equipment purchases. And yes, import taxes are deductible. AFAIK for business purchases they always have been.

In the US, 100% of mining gear and any other equipment for a business can be deducted. ref https://www.section179.org/section_179_deduction/

I propose that you learn that not all crypto coins are Bitcoin so you post where it belongs.

When using copy/paste you have to be careful and make sure there are no whitespaces that got copied as well as the text, they are usually at the end of the text you pasted. Most miners and pools do not like a whitespace and treat it as an invalid character so will not connect.

As others have already said here only Bitcoin is Bitcoin and yes there are already many 'fakes' such as BCH, BSV and others that are wannabe kings of crypto and are using "Bitcoin" as part of their name despite the fact that they are ALTCOINS that have nothing to do with BTC proper.Bull. Just as with most altcoins, those coins are made for only 2 reasons: self-serving greed & hubris. Greed in that before being released to the public the creators massively pre-mine the coins to get a nice stockpile and then hubris kicks in as they try to convince others that their coin is somehow better than BTC so their stockpile of pre-mined crap coins are actually worth something.

Using the word 'fake' implies 'counterfeit' and the possibility to (fraudulently) spend it exactly like the real thing. Not the case here. The other coins *are* valid coins in their own right and do have value but they are NOT interchangeable with BTC

All non-BTC coins have their own blockchain, address formats, wallets and most importantly - value. You cannot spend BCH et al to buy something looking for a BTC address for payment. Sometimes a site will blissfully accept you sending the wrong coin to a BTC address but it will NOT register as a valid payment. Even more fun is that the crap coins you sent possibly may never be recovered, partly depends on how nice the site operators are and exactly what crap coin you tried to use.

They differ in their design purpose. A MCB (Molded Case Breaker) is NOT designed to be used as a switch. They are purpose designed strictly for overload protection and to be used for occasionally manually interrupting power for maint/service operations.

btw: yes there are breakers designed to be installed into lighting power distribution/switching panels but they are purpose-designed for frequent switching and are identified & sold as such.

Power disconnect switches, fused or un-fused, are just that - power switches - and are designed for frequent usage as a main disconnect to switch power to equipment on & off. Also most will have provision for LOTO (Lock Out, Tag Out).

When it comes to 'on the fly' splitting of wires I love the WAGO 'Lever-Nuts" that Haggs mentioned a long while ago. They beat the hell outta the twist-on nuts I used to use and are available in 2,3,4,5 and I think 6 wires per block.

I would never use those nylon terminal strips for power distribution - too flimsy and too little material in them to hold up when things go bad. Think of what happens to nylon PCIe connectors when they get burnt - not pretty... Use real barrier strips or terminal blocks that will much better withstand overloads and poor connections.

Just saw the pic. You have a standard outlet box so easiest would be to replace the single NEMA 6-20 with a duplex version like this from McMaster The outlet cover for it is standard duplex, same as a normal 120v 15A outlet. Home Depot and such should also carry the outlet and cover. Yes it is a dual 20A 250v outlet but that rating is TOTAL amps for either a single cord or 20A split between 2 cords.

As always, current ratings should be de-rated to 80% for sustained loads like miners putting you at 16A total load and on par with what the miner pulls.

Query: Did the miner come with any cords? If so, what kind? That outlet ^ mates with either 6-15 or 6-20 plugs.

You can also look for a power cable splitter - 1 male 6L-20 end with 2 female ends that are C15(?) such as Stayonline has

Without knowing what make/model of PSU it is there is no way for folks to give a solid answer.
Check the data sheet/manual for it. All the specs should be in there...
As this hardware deals with mining altcoins and not BTC, have asked the mods to move this to the altcoin mining area where it belongs.

Molex is the manufacturer of the PCIe connectors - not a type of connector.
You are talking about using 6-pin PCIe to 8-pin PCIe cable. Only difference is that the 8-pin have 2 extra return/ground pins. As for safe, depends on their construction & current ratings. Top-quality PCI connectors with gold or silver plated pins along with using 16ga copper wire can handle up to 5A per-pin. Since both types have only 3 power pins that = 15A per connector.

El'cheapo connectors with simple nickle plated or even just brass pins along with thinner and/or aluminum wire top out at 3A max per power pin.

As well as Digikey https://www.digikey.com/

As for voltage ratings, Best Practice is to use semiconductors rated for at least 3x the peak of highest expected line voltage, when cost is a factor I usually will drop that to 2x peak.

Assuming a max rating of 240VAC in, for spec'ing components  I'd use 250v to cover occasional over voltage surges. Since Peak V=1.414*Vin RMS that works out to 353.5 volts peak and actually puts the 600v device at a good moderately conservative rating.

Since yer looking at 841's,you may want to investigate Canaan's Moose - a module that pre-packaged 12 of them with controller, PSU's and 2-plug power in a single easy to connect unit. Even the power input of 365-418VAC 3-phase w/neutral  should fit right in with typical large field operations gensets. Not sure how many of them Canaan sold but chances are there are some out there at a good price...

That said, the Avalons are the best way to go considering you are using flare gas. Look at it this way, would you rather track/control 400 different IP addresses having to set worker name & pool info on all of them? Or, would you rather just deal with 20 841 clusters, each cluster being 20 miners with a single IP address and mining info input?

Accessing a controller will give you stats on all 20 miners attached to it including the option to individually reboot any single one, multiples, or all of them.

Fact is, assuming they just mislabeled the pn on their site the higher voltage one would be better as it will be better at withstanding any spikes on the powerline which is probably why zeus may use them. That said, yes 600v variant is fine, just not as robust against possible voltage spikes.