ANTMINER S7 is available at bitmaintech.com with 4.86TH/s, 0.25J/GH

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip>
At this point when I bought the S7 I did it mostly to lower my power costs over the SP20/S5, but I knew it probably would never ROI.  Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

I too have been getting s7's mainly to increase my farm hash rate while staying under my power budget.

ROI depends on how you look at it. They are paid for out of the total farm BTC income. I haven't paid with fiat (~8k$) since April 2014. I've bought scads of miners, 2x TV's, 3x PC's, 5x UPS's, and more with the BTC earned and still have a sizeable BTC kitty left over even after ordering 2 more s7's a few days ago.

So, just how is mining after the GPU days now for "suckers"?

[fullzero]

<snip>
At this point when I bought the S7 I did it mostly to lower my power costs over the SP20/S5, but I knew it probably would never ROI.  Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

I too have been getting s7's mainly to increase my farm hash rate while staying under my power budget.

ROI depends on how you look at it. They are paid for out of the total farm BTC income. I haven't paid with fiat (~8k$) since April 2014. I've bought scads of miners, 2x TV's, 3x PC's, 5x UPS's, and more with the BTC earned and still have a sizeable BTC kitty left over even after ordering 2 more s7's a few days ago.

So, just how is mining after the GPU days now for "suckers"?

You don't pay for most of your electric; so your ROI is irrelevant to any ROI discussion.

Regardless; I don't think

Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

If you hold bitcoin and don't mine your neglecting Bitcoin.

Be the Network

[baazju]

Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

Meh.. I mean I see where you are coming from, but there is still money to be made if you do it smart. At least that is what I've experienced. I guess everyone's experience will vary to some degree based on the nature of Bitcoin.

[nhando]

<snip>
At this point when I bought the S7 I did it mostly to lower my power costs over the SP20/S5, but I knew it probably would never ROI.  Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

I too have been getting s7's mainly to increase my farm hash rate while staying under my power budget.

ROI depends on how you look at it. They are paid for out of the total farm BTC income. I haven't paid with fiat (~8k$) since April 2014. I've bought scads of miners, 2x TV's, 3x PC's, 5x UPS's, and more with the BTC earned and still have a sizeable BTC kitty left over even after ordering 2 more s7's a few days ago.

So, just how is mining after the GPU days now for "suckers"?

If I remember correctly, you also got free electricity right?  Second biggest cost next to the miner investment is electricity, so you're definitely way ahead of the game compared to the average miners.  If you have free Electricity, it's very hard to lose in this game as you can hold on to inefficient miners while others have to pay premium to stay in the game. 

[thedreamer]

So, just how is mining after the GPU days now for "suckers"?

IF you don't have free electricity and if you buy into the system now. Simple math, even Bitmain Fanboys have to admit.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip>
At this point when I bought the S7 I did it mostly to lower my power costs over the SP20/S5, but I knew it probably would never ROI.  Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

I too have been getting s7's mainly to increase my farm hash rate while staying under my power budget.

ROI depends on how you look at it. They are paid for out of the total farm BTC income. I haven't paid with fiat (~8k$) since April 2014. I've bought scads of miners, 2x TV's, 3x PC's, 5x UPS's, and more with the BTC earned and still have a sizeable BTC kitty left over even after ordering 2 more s7's a few days ago.

So, just how is mining after the GPU days now for "suckers"?

If I remember correctly, you also got free electricity right?  Second biggest cost next to the miner investment is electricity, so you're definitely way ahead of the game compared to the average miners.  If you have free Electricity, it's very hard to lose in this game as you can hold on to inefficient miners while others have to pay premium to stay in the game.  

Ja that has been an immense help. No debating that!  
Still, as a few min ago, after deducting electric cost of $0.15/kW/hr (nice that my pool lets me enter that into the dashboard) each s7b8 at home is still paying out $4.83 per day so money is still to be made for home miners. Just not as much as fast. If ya wanna go big you have to live in the right place or at least move the farm to a commercial/industrial location for lower electric rates.

edit: as an additional offset, the 7.3kw of heat the miners at home produce means that my furnace has rarely turned on this winter despite temps down to the single digits. Still paying for the the heat but the BTC income just offsets my usual bills for the furnace...

[methodlimp]

you should not blame Bitmain for your decision to buy overpriced miners and not being able to predict reaslistic ROI times
[/quote]

Well, when the s7 came out, it was not overpriced. Hence, I did not buy an overpriced miner, given the timeframe. It only became an overpriced miner when bitmain decided to sell the same unit for half the price less than 3 months later. And yes, I can blame bitmain for poisoning the resale well, because no one who bought a miner when the s7 first came out would have ever thought that bitmain would lower the same price on the same miner to half in less than 3 months.

Who would want to buy an s7 at my breakeven price? I can't sell it for a breakeven price on ebay if I wanted to, because bitmain is selling a brand new unit for less on their own website, with a brand new warranty. Do you see my frustration now?

And when it comes to predicting realistic ROI time, who could have predicted the bitcoin network would jump from 471 petahashes on november 11th, to 1,066 petahashes as of today (less than 3 months later)?

To give you an idea on the massive increase in hashing power in 3 months alone, on April 29th, 2014, the bitcoin network had 57 petahashes. On that same date in 2015, the network was at 340 petahashes - it took an entire year to gain slightly less than 300 petahashes in power.

Fast forward to August 8th, 2015 - the network was at 377 petahashes.

less than 5 months later, we are almost triple that.

Between the bitcoin whitepaper coming out in 2008, until August 8th, 2015... it took 7 years to get to 377 petahashes. And we tripled all of the hashing power that took 7 years to build, less than 5 months after that point.

So you tell me how someone could accurately predict something like that?

[nhando]

<snip>
At this point when I bought the S7 I did it mostly to lower my power costs over the SP20/S5, but I knew it probably would never ROI.  Mining has pretty much been for "suckers" past the GPU days.

I too have been getting s7's mainly to increase my farm hash rate while staying under my power budget.

ROI depends on how you look at it. They are paid for out of the total farm BTC income. I haven't paid with fiat (~8k$) since April 2014. I've bought scads of miners, 2x TV's, 3x PC's, 5x UPS's, and more with the BTC earned and still have a sizeable BTC kitty left over even after ordering 2 more s7's a few days ago.

So, just how is mining after the GPU days now for "suckers"?

If I remember correctly, you also got free electricity right?  Second biggest cost next to the miner investment is electricity, so you're definitely way ahead of the game compared to the average miners.  If you have free Electricity, it's very hard to lose in this game as you can hold on to inefficient miners while others have to pay premium to stay in the game. 

Ja that has been an immense help. No debating that! 
Still, as a few min ago, after deducting electric cost of $0.15/kW/hr (nice that my pool lets me enter that into the dashboard) each s7b8 at home is still paying out $4.83 per day so money is still to be made for home miners. Just not as much as fast. If ya wanna go big you have to live in the right place or at least move the farm to a commercial/industrial location for lower electric rates.

Next difficulty will not be as nice.  I'm riding on a ton of equipment right now but by purchasing over different time period helps the dollar cost averaging.  Your free Electricity help soften the next difficult blows as cost for electricity will be almost 50% of the total income in 1.5 days.  In a month Electricity cost will be higher than 50%, etc.  Let's hope BTC rise above $450 soon and that will help soften the blows.  This is really a fun hobby / business so I hope it remains profitable for many years to come so we can all enjoy it. 

[nhando]

To get back on point.  For those that are prepping in advance to battle the Spring / Summer heat.  I found these 2 methods very effective.   Very cost effective for larger deployment.  You don't have to have a fancy setup, the more sealed the environment, the more effective at creating the negative pressure.  I even test just funneling horizontally and it works fine.   .  Hot air rises so the solution below is the most effective.  I have an Exhaust fan (recommended by MarkAZ) sucking up the hot air.  It can easily pull down the Temp by 20-30C as you're pulling all the heat out quickly.  The heat wall prevent the hot air from recycling back.  Without the heat wall, you will lose about 10C+ of cooling easily and you will need a much higher CFM fan then a sealed solution with a cheap foam board heat wall.

Method 1:  Funnel all the hot air to a Plenum, or tunnel to outside or thru the ceiling / attic.   I connect the FAN to my WEMO insight, so I can set rules to only have it run during the hot hours and turn off during the cool period to save energy.   The fan works so well with the funnel, I don't even have to put it on Max speed, only on low or off still is fine as the miner's exhaust fan can do a lot of pushing.






Method 2 - For small setup.
Use these 3D printed ducts, connect to Exhaust and intake fan.  You can either just blow out the hot air or the best is to take in outside air and blow out hot air outside.  This will have no impact on your house temperature as it's all recycling from the outside air.  You can actually put acoustic foam around the dryer duct to help reduce noise level as well.  This solution works for all 120MM fans, so you can reuse them even after upgrading your miners.  Works amazingly well as you no longer worry about overheating your room or pulling out all the AC air. 

[mavericklm]

Test on Batch 8 with dps-2000bb at 240v and fans at 40%

600mhz: 1130watt

650mhz: 1230watt

700mhz: 1320watt

http://imgur.com/a/sOO1z

I got the same results on another test & same results confirmed by a friend

[hawkfish007]

To get back on point.  For those that are prepping in advance to battle the Spring / Summer heat.  I found these 2 methods very effective.   Very cost effective for larger deployment.  You don't have to have a fancy setup, the more sealed the environment, the more effective at creating the negative pressure.  I even test just funneling horizontally and it works fine.   .  Hot air rises so the solution below is the most effective.  I have an Exhaust fan (recommended by MarkAZ) sucking up the hot air.  It can easily pull down the Temp by 20-30C as you're pulling all the heat out quickly.  The heat wall prevent the hot air from recycling back.  Without the heat wall, you will lose about 10C+ of cooling easily and you will need a much higher CFM fan then a sealed solution with a cheap foam board heat wall.

Method 1:  Funnel all the hot air to a Plenum, or tunnel to outside or thru the ceiling / attic.   I connect the FAN to my WEMO insight, so I can set rules to only have it run during the hot hours and turn off during the cool period to save energy.   The fan works so well with the funnel, I don't even have to put it on Max speed, only on low or off still is fine as the miner's exhaust fan can do a lot of pushing.

https://i.imgur.com/z1BCEl4.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/MgA8sv4.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/EzZNuaQ.jpg

Method 2 - For small setup.
Use these 3D printed ducts, connect to Exhaust and intake fan.  You can either just blow out the hot air or the best is to take in outside air and blow out hot air outside.  This will have no impact on your house temperature as it's all recycling from the outside air.  You can actually put acoustic foam around the dryer duct to help reduce noise level as well.  This solution works for all 120MM fans, so you can reuse them even after upgrading your miners.  Works amazingly well as you no longer worry about overheating your room or pulling out all the AC air. 

https://i.imgur.com/ApboB8c.jpg

Very nice nhando, great idea to reduce cooling cost if I ever want to get a place with industrial electricity rate.

[aarons6]

Well, when the s7 came out, it was not overpriced. Hence, I did not buy an overpriced miner, given the timeframe. It only became an overpriced miner when bitmain decided to sell the same unit for half the price less than 3 months later. And yes, I can blame bitmain for poisoning the resale well, because no one who bought a miner when the s7 first came out would have ever thought that bitmain would lower the same price on the same miner to half in less than 3 months.

Who would want to buy an s7 at my breakeven price? I can't sell it for a breakeven price on ebay if I wanted to, because bitmain is selling a brand new unit for less on their own website, with a brand new warranty. Do you see my frustration now?

And when it comes to predicting realistic ROI time, who could have predicted the bitcoin network would jump from 471 petahashes on november 11th, to 1,066 petahashes as of today (less than 3 months later)?

To give you an idea on the massive increase in hashing power in 3 months alone, on April 29th, 2014, the bitcoin network had 57 petahashes. On that same date in 2015, the network was at 340 petahashes - it took an entire year to gain slightly less than 300 petahashes in power.

Fast forward to August 8th, 2015 - the network was at 377 petahashes.

less than 5 months later, we are almost triple that.

Between the bitcoin whitepaper coming out in 2008, until August 8th, 2015... it took 7 years to get to 377 petahashes. And we tripled all of the hashing power that took 7 years to build, less than 5 months after that point.

So you tell me how someone could accurately predict something like that?

i see you are new but they did this with all of their miners. keep in mind the s7 wont be for sale forever and the value will probably be worth more after the sales run out. just look at the s3 and s5, still selling well after they have been discontinued.

[nhando]

Test on Batch 8 with dps-2000bb at 240v and fans at 40%

600mhz: 1130watt

650mhz: 1230watt

700mhz: 1320watt

http://imgur.com/a/sOO1z

I got the same results on another test & same results confirmed by a friend

Awesome test - I only tested on 120V at 60% fan and EVGA G2 which shows 1440W+ depending on FAN speeds.   Can you do the same test for 700MHZ with FAN speed of 70% and 731M?  This is good info when we need to download clock or OC.

[mavericklm]

731M is a bit too much for me! Might try it, no promise

Send me a PM with some links to pics with speed above 731 to convince me

[klondike_bar]

you should not blame Bitmain for your decision to buy overpriced miners and not being able to predict reaslistic ROI times

Well, when the s7 came out, it was not overpriced. Hence, I did not buy an overpriced miner, given the timeframe. It only became an overpriced miner when bitmain decided to sell the same unit for half the price less than 3 months later. And yes, I can blame bitmain for poisoning the resale well, because no one who bought a miner when the s7 first came out would have ever thought that bitmain would lower the same price on the same miner to half in less than 3 months.

Who would want to buy an s7 at my breakeven price? I can't sell it for a breakeven price on ebay if I wanted to, because bitmain is selling a brand new unit for less on their own website, with a brand new warranty. Do you see my frustration now?

And when it comes to predicting realistic ROI time, who could have predicted the bitcoin network would jump from 471 petahashes on november 11th, to 1,066 petahashes as of today (less than 3 months later)?

To give you an idea on the massive increase in hashing power in 3 months alone, on April 29th, 2014, the bitcoin network had 57 petahashes. On that same date in 2015, the network was at 340 petahashes - it took an entire year to gain slightly less than 300 petahashes in power.

Fast forward to August 8th, 2015 - the network was at 377 petahashes.

less than 5 months later, we are almost triple that.

Between the bitcoin whitepaper coming out in 2008, until August 8th, 2015... it took 7 years to get to 377 petahashes. And we tripled all of the hashing power that took 7 years to build, less than 5 months after that point.

So you tell me how someone could accurately predict something like that?
[/quote]

you could look at the larger scale and see its exponential growth, doubling every 3-6 months. If you bought the S7 thinking difficulty wasnt going to go up, you were crazy.

It happened with the S1, the S3, the spondoolies Sp3X, and with the s5. every new generation of hardware and better efficiency is constantly replacing the old gear. you didnt buy an S1 right? you knew the s7 was the one that could make money.

and the price went down a lot in bitcoin (>50%) but in dollars only about 20% due to USD/BTC

[methodlimp]

you could look at the larger scale and see its exponential growth, doubling every 3-6 months. If you bought the S7 thinking difficulty wasnt going to go up, you were crazy.

It happened with the S1, the S3, the spondoolies Sp3X, and with the s5. every new generation of hardware and better efficiency is constantly replacing the old gear. you didnt buy an S1 right? you knew the s7 was the one that could make money.

and the price went down a lot in bitcoin (>50%) but in dollars only about 20% due to USD/BTC
[/quote]

Oh trust me, I've been mining long enough to understand how difficulty spikes are to be expected. And in all honesty, I'm not even complaining about the new hashing power (I was discussing that because the other guy said I didn't know how to properly calculate difficulty raises as it relates to my ROI).

My single frustration is about bitmain lowering the price for the s7 to half of what I paid less than 3 months ago.

Case in point, I paid $5,154.42 for 3 batch 7 units that shipped on 11/27/15. Including shipping, that's $1,718.14 per unit.
I also paid $4,677.23 for 3 batch 8 units that shipped on 12/9/15. Including shipping, that's $1,559.07 per unit.

Less than 60 days after the shipping of my batch 8 units, batch 10 units are selling (before shipping) at $805.04 per usd (based on current btc to usd ratio).

Am I the only one that thinks bitmain is turning their backs on the miners for doing this? I truly could not sell my batch 7 or 8 miners at a breakeven at the moment, even if I factor in how much btc I've made in the last 60 days, because they're still selling units.

When has bitmain ever lowered price by 50% in subsequent batches of miners in less than 60 days and kept selling batches in the past? In my experience, antminers usually sold out quickly, and there was a limit to production. They kept price consistent. The other antminers didn't decrease in value by more than 50% in less than 60 days, like what's happening right now.

[Exoskeleton]

Bitmain sells S7s for the price the market will buy at. Its capitalism 101. Don't be mad, its the way of the world that we live in.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip>
When has bitmain ever lowered price by 50% in subsequent batches of miners in less than 60 days and kept selling batches in the past? In my experience, antminers usually sold out quickly, and there was a limit to production. They kept price consistent. The other antminers didn't decrease in value by more than 50% in less than 60 days, like what's happening right now.

Miners have always started out at a high price for the first - second batches. Hell my s2 bought as soon as they came out was around $1,750 as I recall. Just before they were stopped to make way for the s3's the S2 price was around $1k. Most extreme was Bitmain's s1. Intro price in Nov/Dec 2013 was over $2,000. When I got into mining in late Feb 2014 they were still around $1750 direct from Bitmain (and is why I got bit by the AMT scam for A1 miners). I still did not buy in. But - by late March - I could get new s1's through Amazon for $750. That started my farm. Last s1 I bought direct from Bitmain was around what, $225?

Same applies to PC's. Want the latest CPU/MoBo/GPU and you pay mega top-dollar. Give it few months and prices drop dramatically (for the same components). Mainly happens so Intel/AMD/whoever can recupe their dev costs as fast as possible.  Once those are at least mostly paid for then they can drop the price and now make profit off of volume. Just like the miner makers they know a ton of folks will pay premium prices for latest/greatest when it comes out.

Only difference is that the mining ASIC makers don't seem to think that there is a market for chips after a new gen comes out whereas CPU's and such may soon be outclassed by new ones but - the end user market mostly does not care so chips are used and made for years. Personally I would LOVE to see Bitmaintech or BitFury sell prev gen chips after new ones come out. I mean why not??? They should be almost pure profit considering all the production steps and setup costs have been paid for...

[mavericklm]

......

Awesome test - I only tested on 120V at 60% fan and EVGA G2 which shows 1440W+ depending on FAN speeds.   Can you do the same test for 700MHZ with FAN speed of 70% and 731M?  This is good info when we need to download clock or OC.

i put the miner in the window and here are the results:

1375watt at 225volt, fan at 70%

temps 27, 26, 30 ambient: Temperatura acum: -0.9 ˚C

5m9s      5,148.56      4,910.36

6m12s    5,185.98      4,952.81

7m21s    5,195.43      4,983.65

8m42s    4,832.80      4,955.82

10m46s  4,738.82      4,940.59

12m39s  4,828.41      4,931.71


HW 48   0.0065%  0.0066%

[Exoskeleton]

Personally I would LOVE to see Bitmaintech or BitFury sell prev gen chips after new ones come out. I mean why not??? They should be almost pure profit considering all the production steps and setup costs have been paid for...

Because the cost of printing another new round of old chips is more than the chips can sell for. They can print a round of newer chips for almost the same price, and they are better chips. In this hyper-inflation market, the cheapest wins. Even at an inflated cost.

Even the new chips are barely turning a profit. Why make more of the old chips at a loss?