In the interests of transparency, here's a list of companies I've contacted for quotes so far:
- Sunstone Circuits
- RelianceCM
- Westak
- Colin Fitzgerald
- Cascade Systems Technology (Still out. I dropped the ball and just today picked it up again.)
- Hi-Tek Electronics
- SMT NW (Still out. No reply since 8 days ago, so I'm counting them out for now.)
- PCB Unlimited
- Screaming Circuits
- Bright Manufacturing
- PJRC.com
- ESP Seattle (Still out. No reply since 7 days ago, so I'm counting them out for now.)
- Two or three California plants that only had contact forms on their websites. (They never emailed me, so I wasn't able to find any records in my inbox.)

I also had someone from Dorkbot offer to beat whatever price I could find online if I paid half the price of a pick and place machine. I'll be following up with them later, but for now I'm going with Tate Technology's quote.

I plan on opening escrow and figuring out batches soon, as I think I've got a good enough feel for how much this is going to cost now.

Well, it wouldn't be in their own best interests. But some people just want to watch the world burn, right? I don't think they are like that, but that's the weak point in Bitcoin and every other system. No matter what system you come up with, someone's going to have the most power, and they could theoretically use that power in such a way that destroys their own power as well as everyone else's. We've got to be vigilant as Bitcoiners and take steps on a case-by-case basis to keep that from happening.

DeepBit did, on a few occasions, own more than 51% of the network. They didn't act in a way that harmed the network, but it was very unsettling for those of us who were paying attention. We managed to get enough people to switch away from them to make sure it stopped happening, but what if we hadn't managed that feat?

At any rate, I hear that Asicminer plans on owning no more than 20% of the network. That's why they've been selling off their blades for a hefty profit. (And I'm sure that hefty profit doesn't bother them much either.) But if they do plan on taking over 51% of the network and then double-spending all over the place, what's our course of action? Switch to another cryptocurrency? Storm their warehouses?

If you read the Klondike thread (or at least just BkkCoins' posts in that thread), it appears that the chips are organized in clusters of 8 and that the worst-case scenario has one chip taking out a cluster of 8. The K64s are little more than four K16s printed on a single PCB and pre-wired together. I understand that there are a couple of components that can be omitted in that particular configuration, but that's basically all they are. Thus the worst-case scenario for chip failure on a K64 also only has a bank of 8 being taken out. (And more realistically, BkkCoins contends that in most scenarios a bad chip would just generate bad hashes, which would get ignored, and the other 7 chips would stay in commission.)

Meh. The plant messed up their quote and forgot to include the price of stencils. At 100 K16 miners, that brings the price up by about $4 to $49 for assembly. It'll take 256 K16s to get to $45 per miner for assembly. At the moment, that brings the price up to $93 per miner.

Also, it occurs to me that we haven't discussed heatsinks. I imagine you might want those included with the miners, right? I'll start looking at prices in order to get a ballpark figure, but from what I've seen on the Klondike thread, I expect that to kick the price up by $3 to $5.

FCTaiChi, could I get the projected price on that spreadsheet image updated...? I asked about four hours after this went up. The price for the K64 should be around $356.

You'd be sending them to me.

Btw, does anyone know how these chips are going to be packaged? I'd assume reels of 10,000, but I haven't seen that confirmed anywhere.

Hey, just so you know, the prices on my miners have been updated as I've received more quotes:
Projected K16 price: ~$89
Projected K64 price: ~$356

Can do. At this point, I suppose I'm fine with you putting the currently projected prices in with a "(tentative)" after them. The price can still change since the design isn't finalized, but I think we're now in a reasonable ballpark of what it'll end up being.

A new quote just came in from a plant in Washington. They're offering assembly for $45.33 on batch sizes of 128 with 3 to 5 day turnaround.  They gave the quote based on a previous revision, which was a bit simpler, so I expect the final price to bump up a little, but that's still a bit better than what Colin was offering for that same revision. (Though the batch size of 128 means I'd need to wait until I have enough chips in hand to create 128 miners at minimum, whereas Colin was willing to work with batch sizes as small as 10. Still, the proximity means in-person pickup would be pretty easy and fast compared to how it would be with Colin.)

I'm still considering looking at prices for renting my own equipment, but that's honestly a route I'd like to avoid if possible since I feel I'm much more likely to mess up people's miners than a plant that specializes in assembly is.

With the new quote, that brings the back-of-the-envelope estimated cost per K16 miner to $89. Since the K64 is just four K16s on a single PCB, I think $356 is probably a safe bet on the K64 miner cost, though (as with everything in this thread so far) that's still pretty tentative and assumes we run the K64s in batches of 128. (Probably not a very safe assumption, honestly. I'll get more accurate quotes once Gerbers and a BOM for the K64 has been released.)

I didn't request a quote from them on the K1 (I sent the RFQ before we'd decided to move forward on the K1s) but I'll request one now.

Still waiting on a quote from the plant in Corvallis and a plant in Tigard that was recommended to me yesterday.

Yeah, it looks like I'll be offering the Nano as well. There's been enough interest. I've started looking for quotes on it.

Ah, that's pretty good then. With me, it's probably going to be about $20-$26 for parts, plus $9 for the bare board (if we use Colin's Taipei supplier), which comes out to $104-$110. A bit more expensive than yours. With the volume increase since he made his quote, I expect the price to drop, though I'm not sure how much. He doesn't want to give any more quotes until we've got the finalized PCB design and parts list.


No word on the K1s yet. I've finally got the specs I need to get a quote, though, so I'll contact Colin and see if he's willing to give us just *one* more quote.


True facts. To that end, I won't be opening escrow until we're closer to Avalon's projected shipping date.

Met with the representative from the Corvallis plant today. Nothing new was said. They repeated that they'll get a quote to me at some point. I guess they just wanted to place a face with the name. :-/

There may be some sort of language barrier going on here...


4 * 800 Mh/s = 3.2 Gh/s. I think they might be under the impression that an ASIC miner is simply a multi-gigahash miner...

Which actually makes this sound even more like a scam. If they spent about a year building this thing, shouldn't one of them have caught on to the fact that ASIC is an acronym (just like FPGA) for a completely different technology?

Thanks. I'll take a look at both of your links.


Excellent. Much appreciated!


Both, basically. He wasn't on my radar until BkkCoins brought him up, and then for you to guess his name right off the bat...



Thanks for giving your endorsement, too. It's good to know I'm working with someone who knows his stuff. :-)


Oh man, I didn't realize he was that far away. Will still go with him if I can't find anything nearly as competitive, but dealing with someone so far away is bound to mess with turnaround. :-/


I'll definitely do that. It would be awesome if I could manage working with someone more local than Colin. I'm sure he's a great guy, but I'd really like to do face-to-face pickup to expedite orders getting out, and trying to cross the Canadian border with a trunk full of miners sounds like it could end up being a lot of trouble. :-3

Yup, that's him! How'd you find him?

Thanks for the cautionary tale! Definitely was considering doing a DIY import, but might just leave it to FedEx overnight shipping after reading that.

Also, I've finally gotten in touch with the Canadian BkkCoins was telling me about. He claims he can deliver finished boards within 24 hours or so of receiving all the parts. He also says he can produce the K16s at a rate of 100 per day. His preliminary quote, based on the current board design, is $75 per board for assembly.

He also has a supplier in Taipei who can fabricate the boards for $9 each with 10-12 day turnaround. Given that I can do the same thing domestically for just a little more and with less turnaround, I may do that, or else go with a Canadian fabrication company as well. I'll be looking into prices on that side of the border now that I seem to have found a viable assembly option.


Could you PM me a name? I haven't heard anything about being able to rent equipment/space from any of the companies I've contacted so far. Thanks!


Good call. I'll get in touch with them.


Much appreciated! :-)

They are on the west coast. Silicon Valley, according to their website, so... San Francisco, I guess. They are able to offer such low prices because they have their own manufacturing equipment.

Yes, it seems extremely pricey! I could rent a small pick and place machine, solder stencil applicator, and reflow oven for a month for less than that. I'm looking at the possibility of doing just that right now...

They say that fabricated boards with errors will be replaced with new boards and improperly assembled boards with be reworked for no additional cost.

Hey guys. I'm looking at prices for renting pick-and-place machines and reflow ovens. It's looking like a super-cheap option compared to contracting with a plant. I'm going to look into this option a little more...