Nah, Crazy good deals are Chelan, Douglass, and Grant county PUCs in Washington - 2 of them under 3 cents KWH standard rates, the other under 5.

 Innosilicon - A3 is possibly the chip going into the BW/ Lketc /Bitbank B-Eleven.
                  A4 is Scrypt

 Looks like the Alcheminer folks are working on a next-gen chip too, but that's Scrypt only not SHA256.

I thought Sidehack was shipping out assembled sticks, not parts to be assembled.

 Learn something new every day I guess.

My easy rule of thumb is to remember that a common 1500 watt space heater generates a bit over 5000 BTU.

 For the record, 4 of my 5 S5s eat a hair over 600 watts "at the wall" with Seasonic X-1250 power supplies (during testing these were loaded up to a little LESS than 50% full capasity, so should have been a little over 90% efficient), as measured by my Brand wattmeter, at stock 350Mhz clock - the other one was 580 watts, but that one also underhashes consistantly by 10% or so at stock clock.

 I've seen a lot of reviews that show the S5 eating MORE than the "official" 590 watts at stock clock, commonly with the EVGA 1300 G2 "gold" PS.

 I honestly do NOT think that the 590 watt rating is a valid one, given how many S5's I've seen or have seen reported to be eating more power.
 I suspect the 590 watts was actually measured by Bitmain using their 1600 watt PS (which is Platinum rated or very close to that level).

Odd, last time I had looked at the news most of Europe had either not decided what Bitcoin was, or that it IS a commodity not subject to VAT.

 The "not subject to VAT" part was the big announcement, and might help some.

 The surge though seems to have been mostly fueled by that BTCC "we now take cash/cash equivilent payments again" announcement, posibly aided a bit by the MMM Ponzi scheme and the Chinese economic issues.

Gridseed has been TOTALLY UNPROFITABLE as a SHA256 miner for a long time now. They were close to that point when first released.

 They can be profitable if you have fairly low electric cost as a Litecoin (Scrypt) miner, but they're getting marginal even there unless your electric is well under 8 cents/KWH or so.

The "blades" never were designed for SHA256 mining, they don't have the power capability OR the cooling and WILL FRY FAST if you try.

 The "orbs" were designed to dual-mine but the power circuitry was marginal for that.



 The "Compaq" stick does not have a European maker but they do have a European reseller.

Most likely, there will be a runup starting about a month before the halfing.
I'm guessing it will go up 60-70%, then drift back down a couple months after the halfing to about 50% more than 2 months before the halfing.

 At that point, anything older than the "current generation" will have become unprofitable even with VERY CHEAP electric and a lot of hashpower will start dropping out - but I suspect there will be plenty of "current generation" hashpower on line by then, so the diff likely won't drop much if at all from the 2-months-before point to the 2-months-after point.

 I DO expect to see a very short-term diff drop after the halfing, then close to stagnation for a while - kind of like the first half of this year but more so.


 If the current price surge lasts longer than I think, and the runup gets BitCoin pricing above $600 or so, the halfing won't have much effect at all as older-gen units will still be profitable (barely). The diff probably WILL still flatten out though, and eventually folks with higher electric costs will go unprofitable and shut down older gear.

I doubt that a V4 contract will achieve 9% ROI - my calcs come in at less than 7%, with some significant potential they won't pay off fully due to the halfing rendering their nominal S7 unprofitable before they pay off in full.

Solar is still quite expen$ive compared to most common alternatives, when you factor in the TOTAL cost.

 Also, it's not as "green" as some folks claim - MAKING the panels generates some quite nasty industrial waste, and eats quite a bit of power (mostly NOT green power).


 Wind power has the same issues, but is a bit less expensive at this time if you live in an area with fairly high average wind speeds.


 BOTH need some form of power backup, be it battery-backed or grid tie or some of both.



 About the only way to achieve RoI on any current miners is to have VERY LOW COST electric.


 AFAIK most major farms OWN their property, not lease it. On the other hand, it's sometimes cheaper to lease long-term.

 It also doesn't take much staff to run a large farm - IIRC MegaBigPower had a total staff of 10 for their large Washington farm.

 And check that the wiring is actually rated for it - MOST commonly-used wiring is insulated to 600 volts which is plenty, but I have seen rare cases of 300v insulation WHICH IS NOT SAFE FOR 220V AC.

 A "nominal" 220V AC line will often see RMS voltages around 240V, which gives a peak voltage exceeding 330V - and that's assuming NO spikes at all.

 Not in the USA.
 Aluminum wire OTHER THAN for the downlead into your panel is no longer accepted for inside residential OR commercial wiring by the NEC - that changed ballpark 20 years ago.
 DO NOT USE ALUMINUM FOR NEW INSIDE WIRING.

 Most local codes follow the NEC, so "most codes" do NOT treat 12 AWG Aluminum as the same as 14 AWG copper any more.

 If you have an older home (usually a mobile home) that still has aluminum wiring, be VERY VERY cautious about it, it was NOT generally derated ENOUGH for safety when the ambient temperatures got high.

 14 AWG copper is spec for a 15 amp circuit - 12 is spec for a 20 Amp, and NEC specs tend to be quite conservative.

 There is NO NEED to downclock a Batch 6 S7 to run on any standard 15 amp circuit, unless you are using a power supply with efficiency a lot worse than BRONZE level.


 I do tend to overkill on my own "add wiring" setups and use 12AWG on 15 amp circuits - but that's mostly 'cause it's usually only a very little more than 14 AKA cheap insurance, and it saves a hair on voltage loss.


 200 amp service has been common for most homes for some years now.
 The only things I've seen with 100 amp service in semi-recent years have been mobile homes, and even THOSE are starting to go 150 amp on some of the higher quality ones (or ones with electric heat), or places that had electric put in decades ago.

Batch 6 WILL be worse efficiency, as they're running it at a higher voltage. My best guess is more like 0.3W/GH vs the 0.25 spec on the earlier batches.

An S5 eats appx. 600 watts (at the wall including PS losses for a 90% appx. efficiency PS).

 That works out to appx. 2000 BTU.


 The fan in them is specced at appx. 200cfm.


 BTU and CFM are not related specifications.

There are adapters that allow for power from the PS while maintaining the tach/PWM control of the fan.
Alternatively, it's not hard to wire up your own, if you know what you're doing.

1437 watts on a standard US 15 Amp circuit is OK.
NEC specs are quite conservative, it's perfectly reasonable to expect 100% power draw to be safe, though less is a little safer....

 "12Amp" limit is excessive for a standard residential outlet on a standard 15 amp circuit.


 What I don't understand is why BitMain went to as much of an extreme on their "S7 correction" design, IMO they should have dropped to 16/string not 15 and kept the efficiency higher while kicking the reliability up to something decent.

 I also don't understand why they didn't go to 2 ports/board, unless they are deliberately leaving LOTS of space for large overclocking.

 Seems to have been a short-term phenominon, probably fueled by that BTCC taking payments directly announcement.
 Price has slid quite a bit already since the peak, and seems to have settled into a steady drop mode (I'm guessing it won't go all the way back down to $230 but I wouldn't bet against $250 by year end).

 If you already have gear, this was a very nice "help achieve RoI and even some actual profit" situation - but it's not looking like anything more than a short-term bump and NOT enough to make it likely you will achieve RoI on anything currently available if you buy now and you DON'T have very cheap electric.

 10% diff increase would be a LOT MORE than 5% profit loss - more like 20-25% given how much of the profit would already be going to electric.

 Also, the S7 current batch isn't shipping for a bit over a month.


 Even an S7 will go unprofitable BEFORE the halfing at that electric rate, unless bitcoin price increases very close to as fast as the diff does (other than the recent Chinese-fueled surge, which is now fading away, I don't see any significant probability of Bitcoin price rising AT ALL much before the halfing).

There is NOTHING out there capable of having any real chance of achieving RoI on a 27 cent/KWH electric rate.
There aren't many miners that will even achieve a short-term profit AT ALL at that high of an electric rate.

Basically, the current price surge (which I don't anticipate lasting long) will probably fuel more folks getting into (or back into) mining, causing the diff to increase faster for a while.

 Short term, more profits and better chance to RoI our existing gear for those of us that were already mining, long term looking like a negative once the surge drops back some but the diff increases already happened.


 I don't think Bitcoin price will drop back to the $230 range - but I do think it will drop back under $300 and likely back to around $250ish range before the end of the year, there just isn't any major structural or long-term news reason for the big surge only short-term stuff.

BlockC was at $1300 originally - which was already quite a bit too high to give a reasonable chance at RoI for folks that don't have VERY VERY cheap electric.

 The current pricing is just crazy.

 IMO wait for the Lketc/BW.com B-Eleven to hopefully ignite some REAL price competition.