Bitmain's Released Antminer S9, World's First 16nm Miner Ready to Order

[-ck]

ROI discussion moved here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1964054.0

Please stay on topic.

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[edonkey]

So a couple of weeks after ROI'ing, one of my S9's has lost a hash board. It was showing all x's this morning.

Restarting and rebooting hasn't resolved it. Now it just shows a partial view of the dead ASICs:

xxxxxxxx xxx

I guess I should consider myself lucky that I've only lost a single board, and that it got to ROI first.

Probably no point in repairing this unit. Maybe I'll sell it and get something else (like an eBit).

For now, I've returned the unit to standard clocking (it's not an autotune unit). I had underclocked it because the board that is now dead was showing an inordinate number of hardware errors. No point in babying the that board now.

[captinkid]

Lost another s9 board, this one had a lot of HW errors before it went, so at least I knew it was the next in line. Oddly enough it's hashing in my failed board miner at .4TH/s with 27 ASICS visible. Weird failure. I'll keep it powered for a week or so to see if it's condition changes, but it's not worth running as it is.

So far since last September (9 months ago)

Lost 3 R4 boards (out of 12 total) (One was resuscitated by reprogramming the PIC with a copy from a good board, one was repaired by BitmainWarranty, one is left as failed and won't be repaired)

Lost 3 S9 boards (out of 12 total) (One was repaired by BW, two are left as failed and won't be repaired.)

The low quality of their products does extend the ROI payback time quite a bit, so if your numbers are close to the line I'd suggest rethinking their products. A 25% failure rate in 9 months is far too high.

In hindsight, they seem to put a "bad" board into each miner to balance out the good boards. Once you weed out the bad boards and consolidate your good boards the remainder should do just fine.

Seems like Bitmain is happy to sell boards that normal companies wouldn't clear past any reasonable QC. by my estimate 25% of your boards are broken from the date they ship, and should have been rejected in the QC testing phase, if you're willing to accept that, then go for it.

[ComputerGenie]

...So far since last September (9 months ago)

Lost 3 R4 boards (out of 12 total) (One was resuscitated by reprogramming the PIC with a copy from a good board, one was repaired by BitmainWarranty, one is left as failed and won't be repaired)

Lost 3 S9 boards (out of 12 total) (One was repaired by BW, two are left as failed and won't be repaired.)....

Out of curiosity, what were the settings you used (automatic or manual) and what were the physical conditions under which these miners were operating (ambient temps, airflow, type of room, etc.)?  

[captinkid]

They are all pre autotune units running original firmware at the original clock rate. My fail miners (one r4 and one s9) hosting the failed boards were updated to the autotune software for giggles and testing purposes but that was after the boards failed running on their original hardware and software.

They are in a cool room with air temps under 80F year round, and a clean, dry environment with stable power. Let's just say I have a bunch of other equipment (About half a dozen servers and GPU setups) that have had a 0% failure rate in the same room on the same power.

Different equipment same conditions, one with an obviously higher failure rate.

Of course comparing the QC of a company like IBM or HP to Bitmain is kind of apples to oranges. One obviously doesn't put the same care into their product to test long term quality. I'd prefer they raise prices a little and raise the QC bar, but it's their business and their choice.

I'm sure if I get enough quality servers and GPUs I'll run into a failure at some point, it can't stay 0% forever. But those companies also offer much better warranties and servicing if that happens.

 

[ComputerGenie]

... Let's just say I have a bunch of other equipment (About half a dozen servers and GPU setups) that have had a 0% failure rate in the same room on the same power.

Different equipment same conditions, one with an obviously higher failure rate...

And all of those are running at 100% load 100% of the time? 

[Entropy-uc]

Has anyone determined the size of each batch of orders Bitmain has been releasing?  Based on network difficulty it seems like they are shipping 20k+ S9s per week, but that's just a swag on my part.  Does anyone have actual data?

I think this may become particularly pertinent as their shipping backlog becomes longer and longer.  And more so if they follow suit with their decision to price their latest batch of L3+ units in LTC (at a huge price increase as well).  With 3 full batches shipping ahead of these it seems like the LTC network difficulty could be 10x larger when they ship and ROI chasers could be bankrupted as we saw happen in 2014.

[ComputerGenie]

Has anyone determined the size of each batch of orders Bitmain has been releasing?  Based on network difficulty it seems like they are shipping 20k+ S9s per week, but that's just a swag on my part.  Does anyone have actual data?

I don't think they have ever made those numbers public (from any batch).

[captinkid]

... Let's just say I have a bunch of other equipment (About half a dozen servers and GPU setups) that have had a 0% failure rate in the same room on the same power.

Different equipment same conditions, one with an obviously higher failure rate...

And all of those are running at 100% load 100% of the time?  

Yes everything is full load, like I said the only difference is build quality.

And yes you can still make money on them, there is still profit to be had, but the ROI isn't as rosy as the stats would have you believe. Reduce your hash rate calculation by 25% over the long term and calculate using that number instead, you'll be much more accurate.

[ComputerGenie]

... Let's just say I have a bunch of other equipment (About half a dozen servers and GPU setups) that have had a 0% failure rate in the same room on the same power.

Different equipment same conditions, one with an obviously higher failure rate...

And all of those are running at 100% load 100% of the time?  

Yes everything is full load, like I said the only difference is build quality.

And yes you can still make money on them, there is still profit to be had, but the ROI isn't as rosy as the stats would have you believe. Reduce your hash rate calculation by 25% over the long term and calculate using that number instead, you'll be much more accurate.

The main reason I ask all of this is, on the business end, we have less that 4% failure rate and on my hobby miners (all overclocked and in a cross-ventilated building that fluctuates between 70-85F) I have 1 bad board in 15 (and that 1 was a 600 that ran @ 700 for 6 months). Conversely I've never purchased more than 3 sticks of RAMM at a time without at least one needing a replacement. I guess we each get the lemons of a given industry?  

[Ahasan]

That's great work bitmain.I have a question, Can I use this miner to mine any other coins?

[HagssFIN]

That's great work bitmain.I have a question, Can I use this miner to mine any other coins?

You can mine any SHA-256 coin with this miner..

[Ahasan]

That's great work bitmain.I have a question, Can I use this miner to mine any other coins?

You can mine any SHA-256 coin with this miner..

Thanks for your answer.Please reply me, Which altcoins more profitable to mine?

[jekecoin]

That's great work bitmain.I have a question, Can I use this miner to mine any other coins?

You can mine any SHA-256 coin with this miner..

Thanks for your answer.Please reply me, Which altcoins more profitable to mine?

You can watch it on coinwarz or whattomine

[HagssFIN]

Thanks for your answer.Please reply me, Which altcoins more profitable to mine?

You can watch it on coinwarz or whattomine

^ This.

Bitcoin is usually the most profitable in long term..

Peercoin usually second.

[ComputerGenie]

...Bitcoin is usually the most profitable in long term..

Peercoin usually second.

Only if you mine one single coin (instead of switching based on current given profitability).  If you solo-mine and switch between multiple coins, most days will pay no less than 1.5x what you would make in a pool mining just bitcoin.

[HagssFIN]

...Bitcoin is usually the most profitable in long term..

Peercoin usually second.

Only if you mine one single coin (instead of switching based on current given profitability).  If you solo-mine and switch between multiple coins, most days will pay no less than 1.5x what you would make in a pool mining just bitcoin.

Yes. I only answered for a single-coin situation.

[Kryptowerk]

As I understand the s9 is still the fastest/most effective miner in the world. I was wondering, are there any news or indications that a new, faster asic will be released soon?
Just two weeks ago there was a very high bump in difficulty - could this be because of new "unreleased" hardware going online somewhere in the world?

[ComputerGenie]

As I understand the s9 is still the fastest/most effective miner in the world. I was wondering, are there any news or indications that a new, faster asic will be released soon?
Just two weeks ago there was a very high bump in difficulty - could this be because of new "unreleased" hardware going online somewhere in the world?

More likely that has to do with the fact that the cost of an S9 has been under 0.4BTC for a while now.

[mustangy]

get 5 of s9 
and it is all about aug 1 segwit the price will sky rock or goes down to hell like crazy we ll see..
and they double l3+ price in a month first to 1300$ and now $2000 + 
my main concern is any one bought 10 4 of them had usually board problem and it is mention by a lot of user bitmain sales whole sales to big clients and those sold to consumers are usually the machines that can not pass quality control how come 4 of 10 machines stop work in a few week crazy
i guess i just gambled to 5  of them august batch and we ll see