its getting there - $2200 before coupon would be nice though if the S2 is going to have anywhere near the sales of the S1!

right now, a rough estimate shows that:

S1: 0.5BTC, can mine about 1.0BTC total in ~3 months, using about $250 in power.

SP10: ~12BTC, can mine about 16BTC in ~7 months, using about $1500 in power

at BTC= $500 the respective profits are negligible, about breakeven (0%) and ~1BTC (6%) respectively.
at BTC = $2000 the respective profits are 0.375BTC (75%) and 3.25BTC (30%) respectively.

If you are bullish on BTC prices, then the Antminer S1 has a tremendous capability to bring in a profit, similar to when the first asics came out but GPUs were still profitable.

The price the S2 is at is too high - Bitmain is focused on bringing it down to reasonable prices 1 day at a time, just like when they jumped the S1 price down from 0.8BTC to 0.6BTC to catch up to the difficulty trends.

The S2 has 10x the chips and 5.5x the speed of an S1, but still costsa about 11x the price of an S1.   That makes it less appealing as a purchase

not via the UI, no. I just wasn't sure if this could still do that

hard to say - what power supply are you using?

most likely its not the antminer's fault. look it over for any scortch marks of broken capacitors, but its most likely something wrong with the PSU

can this make group changes such as modify the frequency or pool info of all miners at once?

4 PCIe connectors = 12x GND wires and 12x 12V wires

theres a really weird mix of advice in this thread, a lot of it coming from people with less than 5 antminers.

I currently run 17 antminers (and have run/sold several more on top of that). Here is my advice.

1) go with 208V power. If you are industrial you likely have 600V mains, and 208V is the most common transformer output. Its also about 3-5% more efficient than 120V.
2) use L6-30 outlets and find some PDUs (power distribution units) that match it. This gives ~4.98kW of power per outlet (after the 20% safety threshold) and is a common style that is cheap to find and install
3) get a few 48-port network switches that are 10/100 outputs. Most of these are build with a gigabit trunk so they can all daisy chain while providing plenty of good connections.
4) forget the secondary fans. Its an extra cost, wastes time to install, and is totally unnecessary in the setup you are going for.

5) you NEED the ability to ventilate the heat directly outside. a closed building requires much more air conditioning and thus even more power usage.
5b) use a hot/cold aisle design. 2 rows of shelves, exhaust from both pinted inwards, with strong fans pushing all the heat out the aforementioned ventilation to outside.
5c) you will still need a lot of AC to keep things cool, probably about 15% of the ASIC power draw if you can vent to outdoors, 30% otherwise.

6) go with DPS-2000 power supplies. These are the most effective use of space and time for getting the massive 12V amperage you will need. Alternatively, the DPS-800 can put out 1000W on a 208V input. (gigampz.com has some nice, but slightly pricy, breakout boards to make using this PSU easy)
6b) soldering fat wires to a PSU is a huge pain. either follow a method that requires minimal soldering, or invest in a proper 120W+ soldering gun that is at least $40. anything cheaper will burn up with extended use.
6c) I sell custom 16awg PCIe cables with tinned ends. They are thick wires and can handle more than enough current (beware 18awg labelled stuff from china). see my sig if you are interested in getting some - they work well if you splice a few onto thicker 10 or 12 awg wires for use with the DPS-2000.
6ci) PCIe connectors will make life easy if something needs swapping. the screw terminals are impossible to access if you stack miners or have them side by side.

7) stack the miners on thier sides,with bottoms facing the bottoms of those in the neighbouring stack. (see picture).  This will allow you to pack miners in with good density and contain the airflow across the units nicely.





Yes, the SP10 is smaller and more efficient. But it costs almost twice the $/GH. If you are bullish on BTC prices rising the S1 is by far the best option. (if you feel that in 6 months from now we will still be <$500, then by all means go for the more efficient hardware). The S1 is a solid unit with nice 120mm fans, and if you have the space and power for them they are my #1 pick.    You can always undervolt them (takes about 5-10 min per machine to do) to get <1.3w/GH when the time comes  (about 2 months by my estimate if $/BTC doesn't jump up first)

so which should I mine now using my R9 270x rig?  Are any of these more profitable than scrypt right now, or does scrypt still have another month or more in it before the ASICs destroy GPU mining?

I read that X11 runs significantly cooler due to the algorithms and the demand placed on the GPU/ram

vertcoin has one of the best non-scrypt/SHA market caps, but i dont know much more than that about it.

Is it better to mine scrypt still with my GPUs until the ASICs truly flood the market, or should I already be switching to X11 or scrypt-n?

are any of these alternative algorithms more profitable than scrypt for GPU mining right now?  my daily scrypt profits on a 2MH/s rig are dwindling and will be less than power costs before long

The SP10 looks like a better product (compact, high-end, well-designed, efficient), but the price is too high to make anything more than a slight profit at current BTC prices. The 1.25U size makes this a clear choice for datacenters where space is limited and costly.

The S2 ships a week earlier and presumably will undergo a significant pricecut once bitmain ships out all of the May 8th batch. (probably to $2100 or so before coupon). The unit I have arrived in one peice and works great. Its not overly loud (big 140mm fans make a whoosh rather than a screeching whizz like the little 60mm stuff in the SP10) and the 4U size is managable for home mining or bitcoin mining facilities that have plently of room.

IMO the S1 is still the champion. It can be hardware-modded down to efficiency levels similar to the S2 and still be cheaper (albeit bigger).


If bitcoin prices go up (as most of us expect if we are buying hardware that looks barely-profitable at current prices) then the S1 will still be the clear winner. We would swing back to the side of mining where the hashrate is more important than low energy usage.

it costs 0.5BTC.  It will mine about 1BTC.  It will use about $250 worth of electricity in that timeframe.
at current $500 prices that is (1BTC - 0.5BTC)*$450 - $200  = ~$50 profit which is pretty minimal
but if we try at $1000/BTC:    (1BTC - 0.5BTC)*$1000 - $200  = ~$300 profit which is significant, basically a 60% ROI


better yet - what we need is the antminer S1.5:
1.45TH / 2.6kW
3U size for rackmount (approx size of a 3wide x 2deep antminer rack)
no PSU(s) included
16 Antminer S1 blades, with slightly shorter heatsinks and undervolted from 1.1V to 1.0V so that the max speed is about 180Gh overclocked but the efficiency is improved
singular controller
~3.75BTC

outdoor radiator does not make sense unless you wanted an obscene water cooling solution that combines all the units in a DIY system rather than a proven corsair system. The way he is doing it is *mostly* right.

this AC being down is a rediculous excuse, true or not. No hardware has been added in over a week, and the hashrate is only 80TH when it was supposed to be 170TH as of 6 days ago.  There is no way he will get past 120TH even with the third AC

figured. The machines are too complex to run in a series anyways for multiple issues. Its a complex device, not just an LED or basic circuit. Additionally the first unit would experience massive amperage through its wires and likelyt burn out

bullsh*t. big miners will be taxed. The little guy can run a few kW of equipment without being taxed as a bitcoin business - so the hashrate will always be able to distribute.

even in GPU days there were people with warehouses and attics crammed full of GPUs

20+ antminers and never a single bad chip. I had a regulator die and cause chips to not power (bitmain did an RMA) and recently had one arrive with a loose capacitor (see prior post). Never a dead chip and I dont know if anyone has reported that happening.

the x's dont mean much - whats important is the chips it actually detects and this is not always the same as the number of x/o marked chips. A software reboot should fix the problem when a hardware reboot doesn't

not easily or efficiently.

I almost snagged a similar 2500W supply at a recycling place then at the last second saw that 99% of its power came as 48V and the rest was like 0.5A of 5V and 0.02A of 12V

thats the most unlikely thing.

1) reboot the unit. sometimes a reboot reads all the chips properly while using the PSU to power on/off causes initial voltage jumps and takes a second to charge all the capacitors.
2) check for anything damaged - primarily the capacitors.

Its usually power related. I had a unit arrive on friday with a capacitor snapped off and when booting via PSU on/off it registers most of the chips as 'x' and/or marks them dead/missing.  However, a reboot via the webUI causes the system to initiate will all 32 chips on that board working normally

question: the payout currently waiting is 0.3BTC (0.33BTC return).  There is 0.376BTC in the game address, shouldnt this be paid out to #35 and #36?

A 1200W psu can get 1050-1100GH from the unit. Clocking anything higher would require pencil modding of 40 resitors per S2 unit.

IMO - the S1 is still the king. about $1.15/GH when overclocked, and can underclock to ~160GH/300W without voltage modification, and probably as low as 110GH/120W if heavily underclocked during the summer months. Only issue is space requirements and the power/cooling requirements when running them at 2w/GH initially.