The fun is in watching your PROFITS roll in while laughing at folks spending tons of money on a miner they're going to LOSE money on if they don't have very cheap electric?

 AKA the fun of WINNING?

 9-)

I just thought of something.

 Is this Bitmain's response to the BitFury "Mining Light Bulb"?

 Makes a LOT more sense in that sort of ... model ....

Keeping other details under NDA isn't uncommon, but prices are NOT normally an NDA type piece of information.


 As far as those speculating on a "SP40" or similar - as I recall SPT has already said it's not happening, they've shifted to making miners for their own datacenters and large customers (or words to that effect).

 They had plenty of money from when they were still operating (in part) as Gridseed.

 I'm hoping that they have FINALLY realised that crap board designs cost them a TON even if/when the chip works well, and decided to yank the existing design to redo it - the very small amount of feedback I've seen on the first batch units from folks that bought them imply some really POOR board-level design work, right down there with the crap design on the early Orbs and the "blades" and very bad reliability as a result.

 Not on the PACMIC contracts.
 Possibly on some of the non-PACMIC cloud stuff, Hashnest IS in the process of shutting down some of their older gear/contracts due to unprofitability but I never messed with that side of Hashnest.

 Was, to be picky - now it's a brand selling other folks PSU under it's own name.

 Used to be arguably the best ATX-type PSUs on the market, with a wide range on "how cool or how quiet" you wanted your PSU to be, but they ended up selling out some years back and I think the brand has been bounced around a couple times since then.

Forcing it to solo mine on antpool makes this device completely unacceptable.
Limiting the USB port to usage as a charger or for U3s only makes the port pretty much worthless.
I personally have zero use for WiFi, others might find that usefull.

 Mostly, I'm just trying to figure out what market this thing is supposed to be for - from what I can see it seems just as worthless and flawed, abet at a much lower price, as that stupid thing 21 just released.

2200 yuan listed on that preorder site, but dunno if that's supposed to be the FULL price or if it's just a down payment.

 If it's 2200 yuan TOTAL price, that IS a "ignite price war" very good price - and my SCAMSENSE explodes.

 At the recent rate of Bitcoin difficulty increases, your 50% will be seen in EARLY 2016. I'd guess mid-Febuary give or take a month - WELL before the halfing.

 I DO estimate the S5 will probably stay profitable before the halfing - but you better have it largely paid off already, or have gotten it recently VERY VERY cheap, if you ever expect to RoI it and your electric is more than 5 cents/KWH.

 *ROFLMAOSC*

 AFAIK isn't a clould provider As Far As I Know.

 Hashnest is Bitmain's cloud mining branch, it seems legit from everything I've seen and their PACMIC contracts work, just have to crunch the numbers and understand that there is ALWAYS a risk.

 PC Power and Cooling, if I was reading the OP post correctly

I might try that starting the S3 at enough of an undervolt/underclock to get it down to 200 watts, then SLOWLY bring it up faster.

Hashnest PACMIC v3 contracts.

 IMO ignore anything else for cloud-related stuff.

current (but inactive on sales) link
https://www.bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020150915040859863u4Bgg9SX069F

$29 + shipping (on the CURRENT page link) for what it is IMO is badly overpriced.

 Even if you get a major break on shipping on a bulk buy, still a waste.

 Note that I don't have or use any form of wireless networking, never have never intend to, this thing might be worth more to someone that does.


 The $5ish price seems to have been specifically for internal beta-testing buyers, but even at THAT price it doesn't seem worthwhile to me.


 The actual "kiss of death" for me was the part about being FORCED to use the Antpool "solo" pool. That's just RUDE.


 The current link DOES indicate that the Antrouter can be used to run several U3s - so the USB port appears to be a connection, not just for charging.

At this point, with no hardware miner on the market that has a resonable expectation of achieving RoI for folks with an electric cost over 5 cents/KWH (and even the S7 is VERY iffy at that electric cost), I'd either wait a few months for competition to hopefully knock pricing down to something viable, or invest in PACMIC v3 contracts.

 I would NOT invest in v3 contracts past about the first of April next year, or after a v4 version appears, however - the halfing is likely to make the v3 contracts go into "unprofitable, shutdown" mode around mid-July timeframe and you really want to have any v3 contracts fully paid out by then.

Issues with these claims.

 1) Why would Avalon skip a model 5?
 2) Why would this show up on some "preorder" site and not on Avalon's own site?
 3) Why does the picture look IDENTICAL to an Avalon 4/4.1 unit?


 MY SCAMSENSE IS SCREAMING.


 BTW, tranlated page link for those of us that don't read Chinese
 https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://shop.cnbite.com/product-190.html



This unit, IF IT ACTUALLY EXISTS, doesn't appear to be aimed at the S7 - and the "logic" of basing your name for a unit on a competition product makes ZERO sense anyway.
This unit, IF IT ACTUALLY EXISTS, appears to be aimed at where most folks EXPECTED the S7 to show up at, or even a pre-empt of a potential S9.

 In any event, the naming of the XBox 360 had NOTHING to do with the nameing of any Playstation - nor did the really dumb naming of the Xbox One.

 Depends on a few factors.

 PRIMARY one for most is how much electric you can devote to mining.
 You also have to factor in noise tolerance or ability to put the miners in a room/garage/whatever where the noise won't matter.

One other MAJOR factor to keep in mind - bitcoin reward halfing, probably in July 2016 - THAT is likely to kill any profitability on units prior to the S7 for almost everyone (free electric folks and *MABEY* super-cheap electric folks might still eek out a TINY profit for a while on S5 and SP20 generation units, but even that is starting to look VERY iffy).

 Sometimes, when you CAN get a volume break, you can save a little on cost through bulk buys.
 I doubt it would be make the difference between making RoI and not though, unless someone was right on the edge already.


 I did say that amount invested has "pretty much", no "no" effect on profitability after all.
 At most it's a very minor consideration compared to the other 3 - and is largely covered by my criteria 3 when it comes to the bulk purchace aspect anyway.

How about a string board, 22 chips ballpark?

 It WOULD be nice if Spondoolies would put out a real spec sheet on the part, but I suppose the actual need for such would depend on them being willing to sell the chips at a reasonable price in reasonable quantities.