Avalon is a brand, not a company.
 TSMC does not manufacture miners, they only manufacture chips.

I never had a significant issue with the S5, but my sample size was small.
I've seen quite a few folks with medium-sized S9 deployments talk about 20-30% failure rates (sometimes "one board fail" is counted as a miner fail by them though, even though it's actually a PARTIAL fail).
I've not seen ANY folks with more than a few Avalon miners talk about that kind of failure rate - normally they talk about 5% or less (and again, ONE board failure = miner failure to those folks).

 I suspect HBM2 production still isn't ramping up enough to support as much Vega production as AMD would prefer.

 I have ZERO doubt that the AMD current shortage/price jumps are mining-related - and same on the Nvidia 1070 (which is seeing AMD cards pushing into it's price area some) and 1070 ti.

 Oddly enough there doesn't seem to be any shortage on 1060 cards - though pricing seems to have going up some.

 I haven't looked at any of the X-algorithm coins since Darkcoin was still GPU mineable, to any significant degree.

It can depend to a degree on the power supply - EVGA power supplies in particular don't DO "dual 8 pin" capable power cables, just 8+6.
I should have phrased that "can be a nightmare" not "is a nightmare".

Since I aim for "efficient" mining, I find the higher cost of pretty much all dual-8-pin cards to be not worthwhile as they do NOT hash any better at "efficient" settings.

They DO tend to hash better if you are pushing them, as they generally have better cooling that allows the "boost" clock to go higher at high TDP power settings.

There are very few Corsair PS models I will even look at - most of them are junk - but a FEW are well made, like the Seasonic-built AX series (which your cables seem to be from, that's the SAME style cable I see on some of my Seasonic X-series PS that the AX was based on).


The ASUS Turbo isn't quiet - but it's not a lot worse than many other cards.
It DOES get quieter and cool a lot better if you can remove the mounting bracket - as do most blower-type cards.

 For a specific example, price out the EVGA G2 1600 vs a pair of EVGA G2 850 models - over $100 savings DESPITE the 850's selling at a LARGE premium any more when you can find them at all.
 Server supplies CAN be a cheaper option - but most don't directly support ATX motherboards at all, don't forget to factor in the cost of something like a PICO if you plan to run the MB AND the GPUs from one.

It never hurts to use TOO BIG of a wire, except where cost is a factor.

 Runs cooler, less IIR losses (though usually not a BIG difference on those factors for only going "one step" bigger).

Actually, it's not - since most standard 15 amp residential circuits have a "duplex" outlet that is sized just about PERFECTLY to handle a pair of 850 watt supplies - and will run a little cooler due to lower "contact IIR losses" than with one single BIG supply.

Save $100-$200 on using 2 supplies at the cost of using both sides of a duplex outlet - which is REALLY the more wasteful?


 BTW - do you EVER make a comment in a post that is NOT rude and insulting?

1080 ti is higher hashrate, but it's best EFFICIENCY does not match the 1070 ti best efficiency.
It's fairly close though, and some folks prefer the rig density of the 1080 ti.

 ALL of my last GPU purchases though have been 1070 ti cards (except for one VEGA) - though I might get one more 1080 ti at some point to fill out one rig I have specifically configured for those cards.

 It seems to work on the LINUX version - I only have one Windows machine using EBWF and haven't bothered taking the time to check on a single-card gaming rig....

 Swap the cable.
 Trivial to troubleshoot if it's the cable that way.

 Good call on that riser, it's OBVIOUSLY messed up.
 Cap didn't get installed correctly and/or failed.


 The other one I can't say for sure - but it kinda looks like C13 should be there, and not sure if the 2 resistors under the right end of the PCI-E bus connector are needed if you are powering for MOLEX or not (the other regulator "missing" parts are probably for +5VDC supply and not needed with a MOLEX since the PS supplies +5VDC on a MOLEX connector).


 Is the bottom of it "bulged out" so that it CAN'T seat? If so, don't even THINK about trying it - it shorted out or something at some point and seems to be leaking as well.

 Everything I bought that far back ROIed months ago.

 I'd go with the "prices JUMPED 2-3x in late December and it took time for miners to decide the prices were going to hang around long enough to be WORTH building more rigs for" theory.

 The mining theory though doesn't account for the shortage and pricing on the 1080 and 1080 ti - SOME of the pricing on those is probably "ram price jump" but the SHORTAGE of cards I don't think can be blamed on memory pricing.
 1070 ti is a special case - card didn't exist during the previous runup, but between me and Voskcoin and others picking up the theme it's gotten quite popular for EFFICIENT mining.


 Newegg got some of the MSI Blower model 1070 ti cards in - limit 1 though - at a SANE price.
 Mine is on order - I wanted to try some of the other "single-8pin" cards anyway, though I'd have prefered the ASUS blower card as my next "try it out" card - as I'm still not 100% sure the MSI uses a ball-bearing blower.
 Their OTHER cards are ball bearing though, so I'm willing to risk it ONCE.
 Transaction went through without issue - I'm inclined to think my issue with the previous transaction was due to the "holiday Bitcoin backlog" + crazy-high transaction fee caused some sort of issue.

 Newegg also had ONE Sapphire Nitro design (570 I think) in stock at under $300 - didn't notice the limit though offhand - and one other RX card around $300, Powercolor IIRC.
 Rest were ALL $389 and up.

 At the time AMD and Nvidia made their forecast, they made sense - coin prices had been flat for months, demand was dropping down to near "pre-surge" levels.
 Then their forecasts got borked by ANOTHER unexpected price jump....

 I was doing some wide reading today, trying to figure Volta - and as of right now I'm starting to think the first "consumer" Volta GPU(s) might get announced in late March at that Nvidia "confrence" they have annually - been a few years since they introduced a new line at that, but the timeing seems to fit a LOT of other indicators.
 I wouldn't bet on immediate availability though - probably depends on how fast Samsung, Micron, and "whoever else" gets GDDR 6 production ramped up.
 I DO expect the "consumer" cards to be GDDR 6 not HDM2 though.

That Sentry PDU has a basic 30 amp capacity rating, so the 24 amps would be the "continuous" safe rating.

 NEVER calculate wattage at 240/120 volts - it is VERY VERY RARE that you will see that high of a voltage at an outlet, in fact I have NEVER seen it get that high (my current location is the current record holder, it gets up to 238.5/119.3 or so sometimes on short-term spikes).

 Many areas in the US only deliver 223/111.5 VAC ballpark at the outlet, and the NOMINAL is only 234/117 VAC for the US electrical system as a whole - and that's not factoring in brownouts in some areas.

 Calculate wattage at 220/110 is MUCH safer.

Small payouts (0.01 BTC) are on hold right now due to the crazy-high transaction fees on Bitcoin transfers.

 I don't know when Nicehash plans to resume them - they've not said and I suspect it depends on when the Bitcoin network has transaction fees drop back down to something REASONABLE after this holiday season backlog starts getting cleared up.

You are making a bad assumption - the assumption that there will be no fork when Proof of Stake is implemented.

 Forks don't always result in "new coins" - Bitcoin has had a FEW forks in it's lifetime to fix issues, most of which did NOT involve "new coins" being spawned off.

 That is an issue with the drivers for the Vega, not the motherboard - EVERYONE has been having issues getting more than about 4 Vega cards working on one rig, and I've NEVER seen a "working on more than 6 reliably" report.

 With that said, the weird no-reason-for-it limitation to 13 "non-mining cards" has never been explained by ASUS, and there is NO sensible reason for it.


 They've also never specified if anything OTHER THAN the P106 mining cards count as "mining cards" or WHY they have the restriction in the BIOS or what the BIOS is looking for when it imposes that senseless restriction.

Seasonic no longer makes that "Platinum" series, it was the higher-efficiency version of their bigger "X-series" gold supplies.

They've moved to making their new "Focus" and "Prime" line instead.

 I'm not sure if EVGA is still making the G2/P2/T2 line power supplies, availability has gotten spotty enough I think they may have stopped - but might have put them back INTO production at least for a short while due to high demand.


 I'm fairly certain that HP contracts out it's power supply manufacturing, probably to Delta.

 Coolermaster V series is Seasonic built, but those weird power connections on the PS end and the junk "fancy name sleeve bearing" design make them a line to avoid IMO - mostly for the fan though.


 You'll find that using 2 smaller supplies is a LOT more cost effective than using one "big" supply on a multi-GPU rig.

 A pair of good 850 watt supplies costs a TON less than any 1600 watt, much less the 1700 watt monsters.

None of these cards match 1080 ti performance, or even CLOSE.

 Of the 3 listed, the 1070 ti will offer the highest performance on MOST algorithms (Ethhash it's going to be the SAME as the 1070 SC or FTW, but ETH is a very poor option for most NVidia cards).

 Power usage on the 1070 SC will probably be the lowest, UNLESS you mine for "best efficiency" in which case all 3 cards will probably be using about the same power (depends on the algorithm though).


 There is also the question of "hash/watt", that has been badly thrown out of kilter in the last 24 hours with the HUGE price rise on AMD cards starting to drive 1070 models back into 1070 ti pricing.

For mining usage, you will find that the "dual 8-pin" cards like the AORUS 1080 ti line and the EVGA FTW are a NIGHTMARE to provide power to in a multi-GPU setup.

 8 + 6 cards like the EVGA SC and ASUS Turbo models are MUCH easier to deploy in quantity - and when used at EFFICIENT mining settings work just as well as the higher-end cards.

 The higher-end cards WILL offer a little higher hashrate when you PUSH them past 200 watts (80% on most 1080 ti models) TDP, but not by all that much and the efficiency drops very quickly past about 175 watts.

Article is clueless about NVidia cards in mining - appears to be basing their info on pre-2016 mining at best.

 NVidia may also be costing THEMSELVES a lot with this - they're not the only option for GPU usage in a datacenter after all.

 On the other hand, a lot of datacenters may just choose to ignore this EULA change, especially EXISTING ones.