Worst case power consumption is now apparently 195w for a single SC. More than 3x advertised. Do these people ever tell the truth?
![Undecided](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/undecided.gif)
Scarier still is that Josh's worst case estimates often turn out to be the nearer to best case.
I wouldn't wanna be a batch #1 customers. Don't wanna be a guinea pig.
195W for such a tiny case, such a tiny heatsink and such a tiny fan - how is that supposed to work?
195W is about the same amount of power a 7970s uses - and they have
huge heat sinks.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fassets.vr-zone.net%2F14438%2FArctic_Accelero_Xtreme_7970_02.jpg&t=665&c=ImLu-F2EFQ587g)
If you read the shout log transcript, it is clear that they won't be shipping any 195w singles. Not saying this makes the issue go away, but it won't be as bad as 195w.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b8hvt/bfl_josh_updates_on_asic_status_full_transcript/Relevant excerpts:
SgtSpike: What's the current power usage?
BFL_Josh: We are trying to nail it down. We have some boards at 1.76w, some at 2.5 and some at 4 and one at 6 <- although I think the ones at 4 and 6 have either a broken power regulator and/or a bad power brick, because they power brick is only 120w and it's drawing like 195 watts which is ridiculous. When I get hte firmware here in KC, I'll be running it off of an ATX PSU to eliminate the power brick as the culprit. So you see, this is why the power issue is causing some difficulties.
BFL_Josh: If the cooling becomes an issue, like I said, we'd scale it back and ship multiple units.
smracer: So you will get 2 30Gh machines for each 60?
BFL_Josh: If need be, yes.
BFL_Josh: We will ship whatever we have to to get people hashing at their expected GH.
Lab_Rat: well then worst case scenario for a single would be 360W???
BFL_Josh: No, worst case is 195w, but the power systems on the board aren't rated to handle that really I don't think, so we'd back off the hashrate before we'd let it get that high.
Lab_Rat: ok thank you. they can handle up to what 120W?
BFL_Josh: Yeah I think 120w is a nice comfortable number. It can probably got a bit higher than that, but 195w is probably not where we want to be.
onryo: Wont a x4 unit blow the power unit?
BFL_Josh: Yeah, so we'd have to back off the hashrate on a per unit basis if that were the case.
BFL_Josh: We'd do like 2x 30GH/s singles in stead of 1 60 GH/s one
BFL_Josh: We will ship the purchased hashrate regardless of what it ends up costing us.
MrTeal: @BFL_Josh, do the LIttle Singles have all of the power supply circuitry populated, and could they run at 30GH/s even if the Big Single can't run at 60GH/s?
BFL_Josh: Yes
HTL2001: I think he means, if you ordered a big single they might do 2x little singles since the power limit is per board, not per chip
BFL_Josh: [HTL2001 is] correct
jjiimm64: Josh, will the paired down units still have all the chips in them?
BFL_Josh: Yes they will