KNC Neptune Miner

[ppage427]

Hello,
I have the chance to get my hands on a new, never used KNC Neptune Miner that my friend is willing to sell to me. I have messed around with buying and selling bit coins but I am new to bit coin mining. I have done a good bit of reading online but I would like advice from someone that has a lot of experience and helpful input.
Should I buy this machine from him, he is related to me so he will give it to me for $1,500. That seems like a good deal to me.
What type of software will I need?
Will I need to buy any other equipment to use the miner.

Any other information is appreciated.

I apologize in advance for the noob questions.

[adaseb]

Hello,
I have the chance to get my hands on a new, never used KNC Neptune Miner that my friend is willing to sell to me. I have messed around with buying and selling bit coins but I am new to bit coin mining. I have done a good bit of reading online but I would like advice from someone that has a lot of experience and helpful input.
Should I buy this machine from him, he is related to me so he will give it to me for $1,500. That seems like a good deal to me.
What type of software will I need?
Will I need to buy any other equipment to use the miner.

Any other information is appreciated.

I apologize in advance for the noob questions.

You should avoid the Neptune miners because they can burn your house down due to bad engineering.

[AbuGarcia]

Neptunes are only really worth 500 bucks.  You are getting ripped off.  don't pay more than $200 TH, even that is high

[Finksy]

Plug the values for efficiency, hashrate, miner cost and electricity cost into here: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Use 5% as a ballpark difficulty gain in the coming months (my opinion).  Using $0.10 per kW/h, 3,300 GH/s and 1950 watts I came up with a net loss of BTC4.7 of its useful life.  If you reduce difficulty increase to 0 for complete optimism/delusion, it would still take you nearly a year to break even.  Run your own models, but my suggestion:   Don't buy it...

[bcoinbilly]

Wow $200 For A Th - I never heard of that before

[AbuGarcia]

this gentleman is selling 3 s3's that are worth buying:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=958566.0
Just buy all three of his top performin s3's and some of his power supplies and call it a day.  he will probably make you a deal if you buy all three at once + PSU.

you want to get in the game a little just do this.  That will get you about 1.45 TH for under $300.  not too bad.  They are very good miners for beginners as most s3's are not temperamental.

DO NOT BUY THOSE NEPTUNES.

[notlist3d]

Wow $200 For A Th - I never heard of that before

It really depends on the efficiency.  If you look the A1 gear (dragons etc) are pretty low priced to buy per TH now but are very power hungry.

[Zelek Uther]

I'm not sure how many people responding here actually own and run a KnCMiner Neptune, but I got one from the very first batch (also known as the "Customer Appreciation" batch) and have been running it 24x7 since 2014-07-12... so over 7 months solid at the time of writing.

I use high quality power supplies: 3x Corsair AX1200i, each PSU powers two Neppy modules (except the third PSU which powers one module plus the controller). This may seem OTT but I'm expecting my bonus Neptune (at some stage), so I'll only need to buy two more AX1200is to power it, making 5x AX1200i PSUs powering two Neptunes (10 modules). The AX1200i PSUs do have an "issue" because they have Over Current Protection... so they actually don't work with the Neptune without using 2-to-1 PCIe Y-connectors. Choice of PSU is up to you.

Right from the start I used 2-to-1 PCIe cables (purchased from Cablez on this forum), to avoid overloading a single PCIe cable from the PSU. That is, two PCIe cables from each PSU go to a 2-to-1 PCIe Y-connector which then connects to the Neppy module.

I have never had a problem.

I'm no fan of KnCMiner, they used and abused us to fund their Datorhalls, and they should have put two PCIe connectors on each module... etc, etc. But if you use quality PSUs and 5x 2-to-1 PCIe Y-connectors you should be ok. The PCIe cables to my Neppy modules don't even get warm (probably thanks to the Y-connectors), but then I'm a safety nut and I don't even overclock it - I have kept the clock speed standard as issued. Even at standard, the power efficiency is excellent at around 0.58 J/GH.

I'm not going to comment on pricing, just saying I don't see any reason why you shouldn't buy a second-hand Neptune if you want to.

[Unacceptable]

I'm not sure how many people responding here actually own and run a KnCMiner Neptune, but I got one from the very first batch (also known as the "Customer Appreciation" batch) and have been running it 24x7 since 2014-07-12... so over 7 months solid at the time of writing.

I use high quality power supplies: 3x Corsair AX1200i, each PSU powers two Neppy modules (except the third PSU which powers one module plus the controller). This may seem OTT but I'm expecting my bonus Neptune (at some stage), so I'll only need to buy two more AX1200is to power it, making 5x AX1200i PSUs powering two Neptunes (10 modules). The AX1200i PSUs do have an "issue" because they have Over Current Protection... so they actually don't work with the Neptune without using 2-to-1 PCIe Y-connectors. Choice of PSU is up to you.

Right from the start I used 2-to-1 PCIe cables (purchased from Cablez on this forum), to avoid overloading a single PCIe cable from the PSU. That is, two PCIe cables from each PSU go to a 2-to-1 PCIe Y-connector which then connects to the Neppy module.

I have never had a problem.

I'm no fan of KnCMiner, they used and abused us to fund their Datorhalls, and they should have put two PCIe connectors on each module... etc, etc. But if you use quality PSUs and 5x 2-to-1 PCIe Y-connectors you should be ok. The PCIe cables to my Neppy modules don't even get warm (probably thanks to the Y-connectors), but then I'm a safety nut and I don't even overclock it - I have kept the clock speed standard as issued. Even at standard, the power efficiency is excellent at around 0.58 J/GH.

I'm not going to comment on pricing, just saying I don't see any reason why you shouldn't buy a second-hand Neptune if you want to.

Since the search function here is borked:

Cablez

He's a great asset to the community!!! 

[sidehack]

I remember how many AM Cubes had problems with roasted/melted PCIe jacks, and those were pulling about as much power PER PAIR as a Neptune does from a single. I do not trust them.

The guy advising fetching S3 instead, that's good advice. If you have $1500 to spend, fetch a SP20 nano farm and get more hashrate than the Neptune with better power consumption and a lot less risk of catastrophic failure.