I am a Chinese miner. I have been mining one year and a half since the latter half of 2012. At first I mined BTC and then LTC. For now it has become more difficult to mine and the mining capability on the whole internet has increased, this half year I have been mining Scrypt LTC and Scrypt Altcoins, including FTC, Blackcoin, Doge, AUR etc. I have invested more than 100,000 RMB yuan in addition to the cost of devices and electric, and have earned some money. There is no need for me to describe too much about the hard life of a miner.

Recently more and more chip mining devices have appeared on the market, which makes my GPU devices earn little and little, so I may change my devices as well. Just now I sold some sets of GPU miners in a QQ chatting group. There are still some idle devices here, if anyone need please PM me. You can use them as PC or for mining Altcoins.

In order to learn more information about LTC mining devices, I have checked a lot of websites, including the review articles on GPU hardware websites. Data showed below is the information of main GPU miners and ASIC miners. I sorted this out for myself to study as well as provide newcomers as reference. Please note the mining capability, consumption etc. indicated are LTC data, BTC miners please ignore them.



Note: The picture above shows the current main GPU devices and ASIC LTC devices. As only 6 graphic cards can be inserted on the motherboard at most now, the table showed above takes GPU devices, in which 6 graphic cards were inserted, as a standard, and makes them compare with each other. The electric charge was calculated on the basis of 0.5 yuan/kilowatt, the Beijing residents standard. If there are any differences on the cost, please calculate by yourself.



Data showed above referred to the review on www.pcpop.com.

At first I wanted to compare GPU devices with ASIC LTC devices separately, however the LTC devices in stock I can find on the market are Gridseed’s 5-chip mini USB devices and G-Blade. Others like Silver Fish and Zeus are all selling future goods. On one hand, there is no reliable news about them, on the other hand when the future devices come out, the difficulty of mining and profit will be profoundly different with that in current days. In order not to mislead miners, I did not make a comparison between them independently.

According to the mining difficulty and value of LTC, we have to regard consumption and electric charge as important elements when choose devices. A device with its whole mining capability over 3M will cost 10~20 RMB yuan every day, if the electric charge is 0.5 yuan/kilowatt. As far as I know, in many metropolises the electric charge can be over 1 yuan/kilowatt, which makes the cost of electric higher. It seems that mining has entered an era of ‘Electric Charge Battle’, no wonder some time ago a guy in our chatting group said he would like to invest in a small power station to save cost.

But a ASIC device with same mining capability costs much little. A set of Gridseed 5-chip mini USB miner, with the mining capability of 3000K, costs 0.84 RMB yuan/per day. A G-Blade, with the mining capability of 6000K, costs 1.2 RMB yuan/per day. Compared with the GPU devices, these costs can even be ignored.

However, can we decide to buy which kind of miner only by the consumption? Of course not. We also need to consider the cost of device itself. To view from the unit cost of mining capability, the cheapest GPU mining device will cost more than 4000 RMB yuan/M, a Gridseed 5-chip device costs 2260 RMB yuan/M, and a G-Blade costs 1733 RMB yuan/M. Therefore on the basis of same mining capability, where the higher the general electric charge is, the more advantages of ASIC devices will show. I myself would like to change into ASIC LTC devices as well.

Consider from the consumption of mining capability/per unit (W/M) and the investment of mining capability/per unit (yuan/M), ASIC devices are much better than that of GPU devices. These costs may be more important for miners to refer to.

Of course, for larger-scale deployment, other necessary things to consider are the heat-dissipation problem, size of mining field, house rent etc. Besides, some miners regard how to deal with the depreciated devices as very important, as they may think the GPU miners can be sold as PC accessories after used while ASIC miners cannot. On this topic different miners have different ideas.

All above are my personal views. Hope we can have a discussion together.

我是一名来自中国的矿工，从偶然接触挖矿的2012年下半年开始，已经有一年半时间了，刚开始挖比特币后来转到莱特币。随着全网算力和挖矿难度的增加，最近半年一直在挖scrypt算法的莱特币和一些山寨币，包括羽毛币黑币狗币极光币等。算下来除去设备电费等总计10好几万的投入，一年多下来也赚了点钱。但是作为矿工的辛苦，真的是如鱼饮水，冷暖自知。

最近看着各种芯片矿机纷纷上市，我那一堆显卡矿机越来越收益惨淡，准备换了。刚刚在Q群出手了几套显卡矿机，还有几套闲置的显卡矿机，需要的朋友可以站内信联系我一下，自己当电脑用或者挖挖山寨币还是可以的。

为详细了解各类莱特币矿机的情况，我翻了很多矿机网站包括显卡硬件网站的测评文章和帖子，以下是了解到的目前主流的显卡矿机和ASIC矿机的情况，整理出来自己学习一下，也给新手矿工们作为参考。下面表格中的算力，功耗等都是挖莱特币的情况，比特币矿工们请无视。。。



注：以上是目前主流显卡矿机及ASIC现货莱特币矿机，由于市面上的主板最多只能插6块显卡，所以以上表格中显卡矿机以单台矿机插满6块显卡为标准，对各种莱特币挖矿设备进行比较。另外电费计算按北京居民消费用电0.5元/度计算,如电费有差异可自行折算。



    以上是参考的泡泡网测评资料

原本想把ASIC莱特币矿机和显卡矿机分开比较，无奈现在市面上能找到的现货莱特币矿机也就Gridseed菊花矿机和Gridseed刀片矿机了，其他的神鱼，宙斯矿机都是期货，一是没有可靠的资料，二是期货出来之后，挖矿难度和收益和现在天壤之别，为避免误导大家，所以就没有单独拿出来比较。

根据目前莱特币的币值和挖矿难度来看，不得不把功耗和电费作为选择矿机的重要依据。总算力在3M以上的矿机，按每度电0.5元计算，显卡矿机每天至少也得十几二十元钱，据我所知，不少大城市的电费都在1元以上每度，电费支出会更高。看来现在挖矿已经进入拼电费时代了，怪不得前段时间看群里某个土豪说要入股小型发电站以节省电费成本。

而专门的ASIC莱特币矿机看起来，同等算力的情况下，功耗会低出很多，一组Gridseed菊花矿机，算力3000K，每天电费为0.84元。刀片矿机，6000K总算力，每天电费为1.2元，跟显卡矿机比起来，电费成本几乎可以忽略不计了。

那是不是只考虑功耗就可以决定买什么样的矿机呢？当然不是，至少我们还得算算矿机本身的成本吧。从单位算力成本来看，最便宜的显卡矿机每M算力投资也在4000元人民币以上，Gridseed菊花ASIC矿机成本为2260元，Gridseed刀片矿机成本在1733元。这样算来，同等算力的情况下，电费成本越高的地区，ASIC莱特币矿机相较于显卡矿机优势会更加明显，我个人也更倾向于更换成ASIC莱特币矿机。

从单位算力功耗指标（W/K算力），和单位算力投入指标（元/K算力）看，ASIC矿机远远超出显卡矿机。这两个指标可能对于矿友们更具实际参考意义。

当然，如果是大规模部署矿机的话，还得考虑矿机散热情况，同等算力下所需的矿场面积，房租等因素。另外，有的矿友会特别看重矿机折旧后的处理情况，觉得显卡矿机用完之后还可以当成电脑配件卖掉，ASIC矿机就什么也不是，关于这一点，智者见智。

以上个人看法，欢迎大家一起讨论。