S5 are profitable right now if

 1) You already have one, or can pick it up cheap and have fairly cheap electric -or-
 2) *IF* the current Bitcoin price surge lasts more than a few months AND you can pick up a S5 semi-cheap and have semi-cheap electric.

 I don't anticipate the current price surge lasting all that long - but I've got enough existing miners to be happy if I'm wrong.

 Not even as a SHA256 miner if the price/performance is competative, with the Scrypt as a (small) added bonus?

Even with free electricity, it is doubtfull that you will ever achieve RoI on a GPU-based mining rig trying to mine Bitcoin - the GPU will probably die before you get close to RoI.
You'd be a TON better off mining a non-ASIC coin like DASH with that hardware (then sell it for Bitcoin), and you even have a faint chance of achieving RoI with that sort of hardware if you optimise it well for the altcoin you target.


For perspective, your 0.35 Gigahash isn't even on the same planet, much less in the same ballpark, of any recent ASIC machine - as I recall the original Antminer S1 (which is considered obsolete by current standards) runs something like 180 GH, the LAST GENERATION S5 and Spondoolies SP30 units are good for well over 1000 GH.


 Trying to use a GPU-based system to mine ANY coin based on SHA256 (Bitcoin and varients) or Scrypt (Litecoin and varients) is a complete waste, and has been so for years, even as space heaters.

 I suspect Bitmain is working to go straight to full custom on 14/16nm, as KnC and BitFury have already ANNOUNCED 14 or 16nm chips with full-custom level stats.
 IIRC KnC has announced their "Solar" chips are in actual production (though their slow hash growth indicates some major yield issues).
 IIRC BitFury has announced tapeout on their 14nm, but no production yet.

 On the other hand, nobody is selling 14/16nm to end users yet, just to themselves and possibly major farms.

 KnC has been rolling gear for their farm for a while.
 Only Bitfury and probably a very few megafarmers know what BitFury is been doing.
 Bitmain announced 500 more S7s available on Hashnest, that's a pretty fair chunk of hashing alone.
 No clue where Lketc/BW.com are on the B-Eleven.
 SFARDS is way overdue for a second batch of their miners, or a batch of a  "replacement"/"upgraded" design.
 No clue where Innosilicon is on their "leak announced" A3 (or whatever they are calling their next-gen chip).

There are places in Europe with inexpensive electric - generally close to hydropower plants like where KnC located their big farm complex.

 Just isn't a ton of hydropower in most of Europe, which is a shame they have plenty of rivers that COULD be set up for hydropower.

 On the other hand, a lot of those potential sites have a ton of folks LIVING on them, down side of Europe averaging so much more crowded than the US or especially Canada.

 I'm not sure what the potential for inexpensive geothermal power (like Iceland has a fair bit of) is in most of Europe.

802 on the OP capasitor is probably a date code.

Based on the posted info, it appears there might be 3 models specificically planned with option to add one or more additional models later - one at appx. 3TH, one at appx. 5TH, and one at appx. 10TH.

 I speculate (based on the renderings posted info) that this might mean one case used with either 1 hashboard, 2 hashboard, or 3/4 hashboard options (the renderings appear to show space for 3, dunno if they can cram 4 in).


 Doesn't seem likely in this case, Lketc has a good rep for delivering on their claims.
 On the other hand, actual miners have NOT gone on presale, just the hashing.

On currently available miners, 50% jump isn't a lot - especially as fast as diff has been climbing since the S5+ showed up.
Great for those of us that already have working miners, not much help if you don't already have the hardware in place and running as it has very little effect on chance of RoI for those that don't have very cheap electric.

 Bitmain pricing tendancies, and lack of recent S7 availability, doesn't help any.

Avalon could, but why would they?

 I made the assumption that you changed the wires to fix the PWM issue, since you never posted anything about the fans not running at all.

I doubt it will get down to ~200, but I just bet a fair bit that it's going to drop, I'd guess more likely back into the $230-$250 range probably before year end.

 OK, I could have been more detailed (except I couldn't see YOUR connector to see the pinout it was using), but I still claim the win.

 9-)

The 5 pin connector appears to be Dell-specific and might not be wired to work on a standard 4-pin header.

 Check the pinout on the connector.

I'd say that the "MMM" stuff counts as "news out of China".

 9-)

There are actually quite a few "variable 12V" power supplies around, but very few of them are anywhere near Gold efficiency.

 The ability to undervolt this design would make it noticeably more viable long-term, especially after the block reward halfing puts a serious hammer on profitability for ALL miners and renders most of them unprofitable at any electric price greater than "free" - but the only price I've seen linked for it still makes it unviable unless you have VERY VERY cheap electric.

 Speculation on actual numbers though is problematic 'till someone actually TESTS the thing.

 Also, the only quoted price to date has changed to $1400 - which makes this thing even LESS likely to RoI, unless you believe the current surge in Bitcoin pricing is going to turn stable (I do not, having done a bit more digging into that MMM scheme).

I suspect that there will be SOME sales of this machine just because Bitmain availability on S7s has been "sold out" for most or all of the last 2 weeks, and looks likely to stay that way for a bit.

The B-Eleven has not been released yet - it appears to be targeted to be released in December, and all available signs point to it being "real" in the sence that it's being actively worked on by a reputable company and will be "real" and for sale fairly soon.

 Most of the specs seem to be out there except price - current speculation is that the price might be around .87 Bitcoin/TH but there's at least one other post that had the price listed as $500/TH with ZERO reference to where that price came from.

 BW.com is in part owned by Lketc of "Dragon miner" fame, THEY have been around awhile and their equipment has a good reputation for being reliable (but heavy).
 There has been speculation that it will be using the "tapeout announced a few months back" Innosilicon A3 chips, given Lketc's relationship with Innosilicon from the A1 chip days and the similarity of what specs have been announced between the B-Eleven and the A3, but nothing is certain on that front yet AFAIK.

 IMO for any miner to be viable at this point in the .2-.3 watt/TH range, they need to drop the price down to 1BTC OR LESS per TH - as of right now, none of the currently available "new gen" or announced "next gen" miners has a viable chance to achieve RoI if your electric rate is over 3 cents / KWH, and they're all REAL MARGINAL even with 3cent power.

The Sidehack sticks are the only sticks in existance that use a reasonably-current ASIC - they are far superior in pretty much every way to any other stick out there, and oddly enough they're actually cheaper than some folks try to sell their older outdated stuff for.

 DO pay attention to the power need though, they DO greatly exceed USB 3 (much less USB 2) specs for how much the port can supply if you run them anywhere near their maximum capabilities.

I'm pretty sure the recent rise is fueled mostly by the news out of China, coupled with worries about the China "South China Sea" push starting to get some significant push back action and the potential of that escalating.

 Not subject to VAT finding isn't a big deal, though mostly positive - the concensus among most government agencies I've seen rullings out of are in line with Bitcoin being a commodity, that was just more of the same (though it's still early days yet and there's a lot of agencies haven't announced any sort of ruling yet).

 Gemini - *yawn* - no actual news there.

 Bubble in the making? Many past bubbles started out based on real news, then got out of hand as everyone jumped on the bandwagon once it got rolling.

 Blocksize limits issue isn't a "gonng hammer folks hard this year" one, it was looking more likely to be a significant issue 2-3 years down the road. Take the time to fix it right actually makes sense, as long as it's done in the next year or even 2.


 DO NOTICE that the massive transaction volumes have been happening on Chinese exchanges....

Wrong thread, this one is about PACMiC not cloud hash sales.