A4 Dominator - Pre-Order Group Buy - 280mh, roughly 1000w, $1800 + shipping

[usao]

So, Alibaba has actual miner units in hand or are they privy to details sent to them by Inno and not to the rest of the group?
Anyone know how many units Alibaba has or has ordered?
Interested to know how this folds into our pre-order status.

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[hdmediaservices]

Compression rates are different throughout the photo.  This final image was recompressed at 75%, but has the quality of 40 to 50%. 

For the size of the file, this photo has been purposely compressed to a low quality image and then that low quality image was saved at a higher compression rate -- giving you a bloated file size with extremely low image quality.  A 190kB JPEG image of this size would look so much clearer.

It also contains a Photoshop signature.

Even without using analyzing software, you can easily see "smudged" areas throughout. 

Error Level Analysis clearly shows many parts throughout are not consistent.

Alibaba is just a trade website.  Buying through them can be a big pain.

[Ilan123]

So, Alibaba has actual miner units in hand or are they privy to details sent to them by Inno and not to the rest of the group?
Anyone know how many units Alibaba has or has ordered?
Interested to know how this folds into our pre-order status.

The person I was chatting with said 200 units in Batch 1 and Batch 2 would then be released in Dec

[suchmoon]

So, Alibaba has actual miner units in hand or are they privy to details sent to them by Inno and not to the rest of the group?
Anyone know how many units Alibaba has or has ordered?
Interested to know how this folds into our pre-order status.

Alibaba is just a marketplace like Amazon or eBay. You would need to contact each individual seller for the details and sadly even the presumably "reputable" sellers there lie a lot. Be very careful with the claims that they have the items on hand or "soon". Too many red flags as it is but if you decide to ignore them at least use a buyer-friendly payment method (e.g. a credit card) and be prepared to fight it.

[usao]

Yet, if the pictures are legit, someone (possibly Inno) is providing those shots of the miners.
They had said earlier that a video and other details would be made available, but it seems that someone has a special deal going on to get 200 units and have pix and such online while the rest of us are still waiting.
Somewhat disappointed, as I thought this was the only pre-order. Now it seems there was a pre-pre-order going on...

[lightfoot]

Well I guess I should start quoting prices to fix the burned PCIe plugs that are going to come from this. .3btc per plug burned plus shipping should do it as long as they didn't put an insane amount of copper into the board underneath.

And if you're thinking just chip off the burned plastic and get back to mining, don't. Either you will plug in the miner wrong by mistake; blowing out everything on every line or the damaged and pitted pins will lift a ground resulting in complete hilarity or you will overheat a pin burning out the internal vias to the power planes, causing all sorts of havoc.

Now for the fun question: Did they put optoisolators on the signal lines to prevent the inevitable lifted grounds from causing ground to rip though either the hashing chips or the level converters? Time will tell....

C

[vinylwasp]

Yet, if the pictures are legit, someone (possibly Inno) is providing those shots of the miners.
They had said earlier that a video and other details would be made available, but it seems that someone has a special deal going on to get 200 units and have pix and such online while the rest of us are still waiting.
Somewhat disappointed, as I thought this was the only pre-order. Now it seems there was a pre-pre-order going on...

I think you have to be prepared to see an official Inno A4 miner and possibly some third party miners powered by Inno A4 chips. In one of their press releases they mentioned buying chips at $12 ea. The sentence below from the initial press release is pretty telling too.

15-Dec-2015 http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/14.html
Good news for this partnership round: we have opened our A4 ASIC/Miner production to committed partners in order to share in both the cost and the profit. Anyone who commits $1.5 million to this partnership will get to share our ASIC production masks or purchase miners “at cost” for your mining farms. We have fully de-risked the design by shouldering all the R&D and MPW costs for the test chips. Also, we will showcase our testchip and test miners in couple of months to demonstrate the A4’s unsurpassable efficiency.

We need only 4 to 5 partners to participate in this incredible risk free win-win partnership round. This is the best ever opportunity to secure the world’s most profitable mining ASIC/Machines for the years to come. Further details will be available in the, limited member, partnership meeting.

I read this as 'you can either produce your own chips using our production masks, buy complete miners at cost or buy bulk A4 chips at $12ea.

The early bird status just means we're getting them at the same time as the partners, not before.

[vinylwasp]

It's interesting. If you look at this photo of one of my old A2 Minis and then look at the way Inno designed the A2 farmboy with a single Raspberry Pi controlling 3 miners (or 6 cards) you can see that with the A4 photo we've seen they're simply modifying this model again.

I never tried it (but wish I had), but I now wonder if I could have run 3 A2 minis off 1 Raspberry PI and daughter board. You can see that there's 6 connectors and I'm guessing this is precisely whats inside the 110Mhs A2 Terminator, and looks to be what they're using again with the A4

Like the A4's we've seen, the A2 Mini used a totally separate PSU, but unlike the A4 used 8pin PCIe connectors. I'm a little worried about that but they're not amateurs in the PHY space so I'm hoping they know what they're doing. Even so it looks like they're pulling 550w from 4 x 75w connections.



Note: The pic above is of a data center version of the A2 Mini, the retail one had a shroud over the Raspberry Pi and was painted black. This is how I received mine.

[Longsnowsm]

Well I guess I should start quoting prices to fix the burned PCIe plugs that are going to come from this. .3btc per plug burned plus shipping should do it as long as they didn't put an insane amount of copper into the board underneath.

And if you're thinking just chip off the burned plastic and get back to mining, don't. Either you will plug in the miner wrong by mistake; blowing out everything on every line or the damaged and pitted pins will lift a ground resulting in complete hilarity or you will overheat a pin burning out the internal vias to the power planes, causing all sorts of havoc.

Now for the fun question: Did they put optoisolators on the signal lines to prevent the inevitable lifted grounds from causing ground to rip though either the hashing chips or the level converters? Time will tell....

C

Glad to have you here Lightfoot.  I am suspecting we may need your services after seeing how they did this with 2 6pin PCIE connectors per board and pulling 550w across the 4 plugs/connectors.  Now if we can get Gentarkin to join in on the fun maybe we will be able to keep the A4's alive as long as you guys have managed to keep the Titan's going!  Going to be interesting to see what happens with these new miners.

[vinylwasp]

Well I guess I should start quoting prices to fix the burned PCIe plugs that are going to come from this.

Lightfoot, I'm quite concerned as well, but when you look at it, both the S7 and S9 Antminer have roughly the same draw per 6pin PCIe connector.

S7 = 1293W + 10% at the wall and the S9 is 1172W + 12% at the wall using Bitmain's APW3 PSU, possibly more for 80+ > Platinum. Dividing those numbers by 9 (3 cards with 3 connectors), you get about 140-150w per connector or twice the PCIe spec.

Do you have any insights into the failure rates of those miners? Is this something we should really be worried about?

[QuintLeo]

Ok, if these pics are real then I have some serious concerns about pumping 1100w through what appears to be 4 PCIE connectors!  That just is not going to work.

Also looks like they are getting 273mh from almost 1100w.  This means the Titans are clearly very competitive and the A4's will have nothing in this first batch on the Titans. 

I hope I am misreading the power and connector situation because those plugs are not designed to handle that kind of load.

 Worked fine pulling 288 Watts / connector (which is the spec for the CONNECTOR) on the Spondoolies SP20 - this will be pulling less than that and is well within the SPECIFIED LIMITS FOR THE CONNECTOR.

 You did NOT hear about issues related to the power connectors on the SP20 - and the internal software had power limiting at the 288 watt per connector level built in BECAUSE that was the connector spec.

 This is NOT pulling 300+ Watts per connector which is where certain KNC designs had issues with FIRES and burnt connections because they were EXCEEDING the connector ratings by a fair bit.



 The "75 watt" spec is a PCI-E SPECIFIC specification, not a CONNECTOR specification.


 With that said, I'm still finding the pricing listed on that site for several of the items to be a major red flag.

[vinylwasp]

Ok, if these pics are real then I have some serious concerns about pumping 1100w through what appears to be 4 PCIE connectors!  That just is not going to work.

Also looks like they are getting 273mh from almost 1100w.  This means the Titans are clearly very competitive and the A4's will have nothing in this first batch on the Titans. 

I hope I am misreading the power and connector situation because those plugs are not designed to handle that kind of load.

 Worked fine pulling 288 Watts / connector (which is the spec for the CONNECTOR) on the Spondoolies SP20 - this will be pulling less than that and is well within the SPECIFIED LIMITS FOR THE CONNECTOR.

Thanks Quintleo, following up that lead, the 6Pin Molex 45559-0002 (Male) connector is rated at 8 or 9 amps per circuit depending on vendor, though most say 9A.
http://www.digipart.com/part/45559-0002

Across 3 circuits/pins, that would give 27A or 324W. 8A = 288W.

I'm feeling much happier now. Cheers

[lightfoot]

Fast summary: The damage to the plugs is cumulative as well as catastrophic. One of the odd things about the Titans is that they are one of the few miners that have had an operating profit life greater than a few months :-)

I'll do a bigger write-up later, but it's a combo of things that can make the plugs melt. Positive feedback loop.

[excelerator]

So another A4 offering  (1/2 hashing power compared to Dominator) either from another partner buying chips and offering a new rig , or just a honey trap for hapless pre-order buyers.
https://asicminermarket.com/product/pre-a4-135-scrypt-litecoin-miner-low-power-batch-1/#reviews

Has anyone bought anything from these guys in the past i.e. do they have any credibility?

[lightfoot]

I have seen pics of spoondles with burned connectors. I have fixed AsicMiner blades that people had shorted the fuses on (oops). I have pried connectors off BFL Monarchs that were pulling <250w per plug. And I have chipped off wreckage from both Neptunes and Titans that were run at 60mh/s (240w).

I have also worked on units that were dusty, dirty, filthy, and buried in manure. I have worked on units that were run in closed rooms in 120 degree aussie heat in the summer down there.

If and when the connectors implode on these things (if they wind up making it to market) I'd be happy to take a look and see what's left.

Some key things to remember:

0) Miner designs suck. Show me ones with UL listing for example, or even proper fusing.
1) It's not watts that determine the ampacity of wire, it's amps.
2) Amps go up as voltage goes down. This is very important when you find your 12v supply is only putting 10v at the miner plug.
3) Voltage drop increases as heat increases
4) Over time connectors get soft. Then one of the six pins starts to get a higher resistance. More current flows through the remaining ones, making things warmer.
5) Begin feedback loop.

Now commercial miners can run plugs with big wires going to 3,000 watt power supplies that will not sag if there is a heavy load on them. Plugs will hold up better. That's nice. But that same 3,000 watt supply will not sag when a cap fails in the miner and it turns the cap into a pretty plasma ball. Or mining chip or via, or whatever. That gets very funny very quickly.

Your mileage may vary. I don't argue with people who know everything, that seems to be pretty common on forums. I prefer objective reality and letting things play out.

Once again I wonder if the signal lines are isolated on these. That's always fun.

[vinylwasp]

So another A4 offering  (1/2 hashing power compared to Dominator) either from another partner buying chips and offering a new rig , or just a honey trap for hapless pre-order buyers.
https://asicminermarket.com/product/pre-a4-135-scrypt-litecoin-miner-low-power-batch-1/#reviews

Has anyone bought anything from these guys in the past i.e. do they have any credibility?

It's just a single unit of the modular design we saw on pgs 23 + 24. Good things are:

• Proof of life - there's a photo of 3 units with their banner sitting atop (doesn't look photo-shopped in)
• Specs in English
• 180 Day Warranty with clear warranty terms
• Free worldwide shipping

The price is fair if you consider that this is retail for a single unit. I would question one thing though. Does this include a Raspberry Pi for each unit and can you get a discount if you daisy chain 3 units per controller?

All the specs line up with what we know to date, i.e. each unit has 2 A4 boards with 20 chips apiece. The advertised Pre-order 280 MHs Dominator miner would be 2 of these units like the A2 Farmboy.

A4-135 Specifications:
1. Hash Rate: 135MH/s ±2%  <-- this is interesting? Inno said they were getting 'better' performance that expected. Really?
2. Power Consumption: 520w
3. Rated Voltage: 11.60 ~13.00V
4  Chip quantity per unit: 40x A4
5  Power connector: 6PIN 12V
6. Dimensions: 285mm(L)*130mm(W)*130mm(H)
7. Cooling: 1 fan
8. Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 40 °C
9. Network Connection: Ethernet
10. Default Frequency: 1200M

Starting to get a clear picture. Pitty we're piecing it together from re-sellers and not Inno themselves.

[excelerator]

So another A4 offering  (1/2 hashing power compared to Dominator) either from another partner buying chips and offering a new rig , or just a honey trap for hapless pre-order buyers.
https://asicminermarket.com/product/pre-a4-135-scrypt-litecoin-miner-low-power-batch-1/#reviews

Has anyone bought anything from these guys in the past i.e. do they have any credibility?

It's just a single unit of the modular design we saw on pgs 23 + 24. Good things are:

• Proof of life - there's a photo of 3 units with their banner sitting atop (doesn't look photo-shopped in)
• Specs in English
• 180 Day Warranty with clear warranty terms
• Free worldwide shipping

The price is fair if you consider that this is retail for a single unit. I would question one thing though. Does this include a Raspberry Pi for each unit and can you get a discount if you daisy chain 3 units per controller?

All the specs line up with what we know to date, i.e. each unit has 2 A4 boards with 20 chips apiece. The advertised Pre-order 280 MHs Dominator miner would be 2 of these units like the A2 Farmboy.

A4-135 Specifications:
1. Hash Rate: 135MH/s ±2%  <-- this is interesting? Inno said they were getting 'better' performance that expected. Really?
2. Power Consumption: 520w
3. Rated Voltage: 11.60 ~13.00V
4  Chip quantity per unit: 40x A4
5  Power connector: 6PIN 12V
6. Dimensions: 285mm(L)*130mm(W)*130mm(H)
7. Cooling: 1 fan
8. Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 40 °C
9. Network Connection: Ethernet
10. Default Frequency: 1200M

Starting to get a clear picture. Pitty we're piecing it together from re-sellers and not Inno themselves.

Question still remains - are they a credible reseller and has anyone bought from them previously or is this a honeytrap?

[cloudnthings]

I have had bad experience with Alibaba. Actually the suppliers as Alibaba just connects buyer and sellers. Be very careful. I would not transact there again.

This forum being nice and open gives all the manufacturers access into our thinking. The reverse is not true. I would guarantee there is a pre-pre order. This is a business and manufacturers are out to make money.

I have no evidence but assume the A4's will be delivered. The conditions under which it will be is the difference.

[vinylwasp]

Well this is very interesting, Asicminermarket has a Youtube channel with 4 VIDEOS of the A4-135 in action posted 5 days ago.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP-E1tvEw2KCGbAOillpLiQ/videos

FYI: They also have videos of many of the other miners they sell.

Their 'About Us' page says they're the China based business of BitcoinWare.net, which is Canada based.

I know nothing about either company, but this doesn't look like Vaporware.

[excelerator]

So it's 8:32 am October 8th in Shenzhen, the extended holiday is over, so it'll be interesting to see what's next up on deck from Innosilicon.

I snipped this from an email I received earlier in the week from Innosilicon.

"One thing we should claim is that we have no authorized reseller worldwide. We are the exclusive brand of A4 chips as well as our A4 miners.
We can guarantee the quality of our products but not others."

Grabbing my popcorn and looking forward to the new countdown for October 15th!!!!

T-7.......