Hardware options for mining LTC

[PurpleDog]

Antminer L3 seems to be out of stock.

a) When is there going to be available again?

b) What other powerful miners for Litecoin are there out there?

I'd like to mine LTC. What are the best hardware options?

thnx

[Undefined31415]

Antminer L3 seems to be out of stock.

a) When is there going to be available again?

b) What other powerful miners for Litecoin are there out there?

I'd like to mine LTC. What are the best hardware options?

thnx

Since I don't know how much experience you've had with mining, sorry if I include too much information that you already know.

Assuming you're mining for profit, directly GPU mining LTC isn't really a practical option, even with free/nearly free electricity. Although, there are multipool options that pay in LTC or you could mine ZEC/ETH/other and convert it manually.

Since you say you want to mine LTC, the Antminer L3+ has been gathering lots of attention, but I'm not sure when the next batch (direct from Bitmain, since trying to get one anywhere else is going to cost you your firstborn, although they may ship immediately) is going to be available to order, let alone when that batch will be shipped.

Important questions to always ask before buying dedicated mining systems:

Why is the company sending the miners out instead of mining with them on their own? *Cough*BFL*Cough*
When will you receive a unit? Some people ordered 2 months ago or earlier and don't expect to see them until September or later. There's a big L3+ thread in this subforum that has many posts.

You should also keep the skyrocketing mining difficulty and changes in LTC/USD price in mind, but those are incredibly difficult to predict. If you're in it for the long haul, LTC/USD price might not be as important to you as the mining difficulty changes will be.

There are older ASICs available, but as more L3+ units ship, those may or may not remain a viable option. Unfortunately, there's no concrete "yes" or "no" to what you should do here, but those are some things to consider.

[ulysseso]

I feel like mining isn't cost efficient anymore if anyone can correct me. but the electric is so much

[Undefined31415]

I feel like mining isn't cost efficient anymore if anyone can correct me. but the electric is so much

It varies based on many things. The L3+ scrypt ASIC is advertised to get 504 MH/s (give or take) on Litecoin drawing around 800W.
At the current difficulty, LTC/USD exchange rate, and even having a ridiculously high electricity rate of $1.00 per kWH, we'd still expect to gain money over electricity.

https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc?hashrate=504&speedunit=MH%2Fs&difficulty=350559.62285411&price=44.34&currency=USD&power=800&energycost=1.00

Of course, whether or not the unit would pay for itself over its lifetime is another matter. (Not to mention that the current difficulty isn't accurate enough to base long-term profitability calculations on, especially for a miner that won't be shipped for some time.)

[QuintLeo]

Antminer L3 seems to be out of stock.

a) When is there going to be available again?

b) What other powerful miners for Litecoin are there out there?

I'd like to mine LTC. What are the best hardware options?

thnx

 a) Never, the L3 was replaced months back by the L3+ in the Bitmain lineup.
     No clue when they will make preorders for the next L3+ batch available, you'd have to ask THEM and I doubt they are saying.

 b) Innosilicon A4 - which is also "out of stock" right now but they ARE accepting preorders for their next batch - MOQ of 5 though.
     older used less-efficient miners like the Innosilicon A2, the KNC Titan (those that haven't died so far), the Alcheminer, and the even lower efficiency stuff from Zeus and the Silverfish and the Gridseed GC3355 based stuff etc.

 It seems to be a tradeoff on which is "best" - after Innosilicon got the issues with the first 2 batches of the A4 fixed, they seem to have turned into very solid A2-level miners, but the L3+ is lower cost per hash AND more efficient when you can get them but seem to have the issue Bitmain has been having with ALL of their 14/16nm miners of hash boards dropping out or dying quite a bit.

[PurpleDog]

@Undefined31415 I have no mining experience and right now I try to understand the basics. I am familiar with most things you say and it's always good to read a good informative post like yours and get a more clear picture. Thanks!

Why is the company sending the miners out instead of mining with them on their own? *Cough*BFL*Cough*

Interesting question. Is there an answer to this?

@QuintLeo I was actually reffering to the L3+

I did ask Bitmain two days back. I hope I will get an answer.

I see that the Innosilicon A4 Dominator has a 280Mhs capability when the Antminer L3+ is almost double: 504MH/s

Does it mean that the A4 will produce almost half the LTCs?

(but then again, this is all theoretical since none is available right now)

[Undefined31415]

@Undefined31415 I have no mining experience and right now I try to understand the basics. I am familiar with most things you say and it's always good to read a good informative post like yours and get a more clear picture. Thanks!

Why is the company sending the miners out instead of mining with them on their own? *Cough*BFL*Cough*

Interesting question. Is there an answer to this?

@QuintLeo I was actually reffering to the L3+

I did ask Bitmain two days back. I hope I will get an answer.

I see that the Innosilicon A4 Dominator has a 280Mhs capability when the Antminer L3+ is almost double: 504MH/s

Does it mean that the A4 will produce almost half the LTCs?

(but then again, this is all theoretical since none is available right now)

There's plenty of legit ASIC companies where we don't really have an exact answer as to why they don't just mine on their own products instead of selling them, but it remains an important question to consider.
Perhaps they really do just want to help benefit the network and promote a cryptocurrency, or perhaps they need to quickly recoup development/production costs or repay investors and can't wait around to keep mining. Or maybe they already have a secret stash of their next-generation ASICs, and are using those to mine, meanwhile selling products with the old design... (Okay, that last one might not be super likely, but it remains a possibility.)

In general, expected earnings are proportional to the hashrate. Double the hashrate, double the expected earnings before operating cost considerations.

[QuintLeo]

@Undefined31415 I have no mining experience and right now I try to understand the basics. I am familiar with most things you say and it's always good to read a good informative post like yours and get a more clear picture. Thanks!

Why is the company sending the miners out instead of mining with them on their own? *Cough*BFL*Cough*

Interesting question. Is there an answer to this?

@QuintLeo I was actually reffering to the L3+

I did ask Bitmain two days back. I hope I will get an answer.

I see that the Innosilicon A4 Dominator has a 280Mhs capability when the Antminer L3+ is almost double: 504MH/s

Does it mean that the A4 will produce almost half the LTCs?

(but then again, this is all theoretical since none is available right now)

 Bitmain is *primarily* in the "sell miners" business, I suspect most of their in-house mining is done via their HASHNEST operation or as "unit testing" for 1-3 days when they finish building each miner.
 They probably like the "certainty" of having their money RIGHT NOW when they sell a miner vs. the risk of mining and possibly NOT making as much, plus they need to pay for the "next batch of chips" somehow.
 I SERIOUSLY DOUBT it is about "help benefit the network".

 The A4 will earn a bit less than 60% of the LTC income of the L3+ = assuming both have equal reliability - current specified hashrates on both appear to be reasonably accurate.
 From many reports though, other than the first 2 A4 batches the A4 has superior reliability to the L3+ (and Innosilicon worked with folks to FIX those first 2 batches that had firmware issues to the point they are supposed to be rock-solid like the later A4 batches now).

[PurpleDog]

I am sure they use them to mine for themselves and at the same time make one part of the miners available to the market so that they get money instantly, money that they can invest in keep building better miners. I mean, if you mean to develop good miners even for own use, it's good to have one part used and tested by the community, isn't it?


btw I just had a look. Preordering the A4 costs 4900 USD; 5320 USD with the PSU for fucks sake. :/

[QuintLeo]

MOQ 5 on the A4, unfortunately.

 There WAS a group buy early on where you could order "only" 3 at a time, but I dunno if they'd honor that at this late point.


 Innosilicon seems to be the only major miner maker that doesn't run it's own mining farm - probably because they are the *only* miner maker to date that already had an existing chip-making business before they got involved in cryptocurrency ASIC making (I don't count SFARDS there due to how it came into existence, though the WiiBox side of SFARDS might count the GridSeed side does not).

[Marvell1]

MOQ 5 on the A4, unfortunately.

 There WAS a group buy early on where you could order "only" 3 at a time, but I dunno if they'd honor that at this late point.


 Innosilicon seems to be the only major miner maker that doesn't run it's own mining farm - probably because they are the *only* miner maker to date that already had an existing chip-making business before they got involved in cryptocurrency ASIC making (I don't count SFARDS there due to how it came into existence, though the WiiBox side of SFARDS might count the GridSeed side does not).

the cost is low for 5 thoug only 2BT around 6k, i think each L3 is 40 LTC or around 1700USD

[QuintLeo]

They put the new batch up to 1500 though, as opposed to the one batch at 1400.

 Even at 1400, they were quite a bit more expensive per MH than the L3+ and not all that much less in absolute terms.

 I suspect the only reason they're getting away with it is that Bitmain isn't even close to being able to keep up with the demand on the L3+, coupled with the much higher reported issues with Bitmain current-gen tech products vs Innosilicon getting THEIR issues with the first 2 A4 batches fixed in later batches and WORKING WITH CUSTOMERS to fix earlier batch machines.

[youngcoolzeero]

how many LTC today??

[PurpleDog]

using a verb would help consinderably to understand what you are asking

[carlfebz2]

using a verb would help consinderably to understand what you are asking

Well that's already understandable but should really be written on complete so that we can able to read and understand it well on what hes asking.  Checking on the current price of LTC as of my writing is 0.01630019 btc/ltc which you can see  on poloniex. Back to the topic the only miner did I know which can possibly mine Litecoin is L3+ but seems its out of stock and would really take some time to get some stocks again for us to order.

[Ayers]

Antminer L3 seems to be out of stock.

a) When is there going to be available again?

b) What other powerful miners for Litecoin are there out there?

I'd like to mine LTC. What are the best hardware options?

thnx

there is only the small oen the l3+, but if the big oen is not available i guess the small oen is also out of stock, there are not other powerful miners, last tiem i remember only the terminator was good before the l3 coem out, but now the diff is too high for the terminator, to do anything

[Marvell1]

They put the new batch up to 1500 though, as opposed to the one batch at 1400.

 Even at 1400, they were quite a bit more expensive per MH than the L3+ and not all that much less in absolute terms.

 I suspect the only reason they're getting away with it is that Bitmain isn't even close to being able to keep up with the demand on the L3+, coupled with the much higher reported issues with Bitmain current-gen tech products vs Innosilicon getting THEIR issues with the first 2 A4 batches fixed in later batches and WORKING WITH CUSTOMERS to fix earlier batch machines.

oh i did not realize they raised thier prices