the only thing stopping me from pulling the trigger on one of these is the MXM video cards, i am still trying to figure out upgradability :/
cause tbh, with how GPU's work, it will be no different than any other miner, it will NEED to upgrade to stay viable.
i would HATE to buy one of these, then VEGA drops and the possibilities open up. IF its easier to upgrade my own GPUS, ill stay with my own rigs
these are not for people who intend to upgrade them within less than a year - not sure what you expect to do with the used rx480 cards even if you did do the upgrade?
right, so why would these be appeasable ? just the plug and play thing?
hmm, interesting...
the only thing stopping me from pulling the trigger on one of these is the MXM video cards, i am still trying to figure out upgradability :/
cause tbh, with how GPU's work, it will be no different than any other miner, it will NEED to upgrade to stay viable.
i would HATE to buy one of these, then VEGA drops and the possibilities open up. IF its easier to upgrade my own GPUS, ill stay with my own rigs
@Phil. so are you looking at about 12 months+ ROI at 3k purchase price? IF not upgradable, that doesn't sound promising :/
My understanding is - you cannot easily upgrade MXM GPUs. Only source of them for customers will be on Ebay from users cannibalized their laptops.
I would gladly be wrong on it
thats what i was thinking, so i just dont see the reason to buy one of these myself then, except ya the plug and play thing, but wont it just be a paper weight by (if not b4) one even ROI's?
AMD has new cards coming, so does Nvidia, as always. Maybe Pandaminer will have local distributors one can take their machine to for upgraded cards in the future, as the ONLY thing that matters to me mainly is upgradability of these. the rest is just meh, can do it myself for cheaper (and more fun).
This system has a handful of advantages over a custom mining rig with fullsize gpus:
1) its pretty much plug-n-play, whereas a custom rig can take a several hours longer to assemble, install OS/drivers, etc even when done en masse
2) higher power density. you can stack these in a tight space (like a datacenter)
3) fans should last a long time, and are otherwise replaceable (80mm server fans i assume?)
This system isnt really for home mining. its for those who want to install a large number of GPUs where power is cheap and openrigs are not accepted (or require too much maintenance).
theres no reason why the rx480 wont remain relevant to mining (even if better cards are released) for at least 2 years. look at the fact that the 2xx series and 79xx series have both been profitable on ethereum and/or zcash over the past few months. even if the mxm cards can be upgraded, its likely most buyers wont be buying upgrades for it until 2019 or beyond (the case/mobo/cpu is only a small part of the overall unit price anyways)
MXM cards dont resell easily i imagine - so by upgrading youd be putting your rx480 cards aside to gather dust. As mentioned, i have 3 270x cards that are still turning about $0.30/day/gpu profit. I bought them in ~2014 for the litecoin boom, so its been over two years and they are still relevant
That said, i dont see why pandaminer wouldnt be able to obtain and sell upgrade boards to its customers eventually. I bet they can get the MXM cards at a good price (should be cheaper than a full GPU), tack on a bit of profit, and still sell them for cheaper than a fullsize GPU in stores.
If pandaminer plays their card correctly they will take over a big piece of the gpu market.
This is why I tried to help them out .
This will get support on many levels.
First off the fans are fully replaceable.
The cards are fully replaceable.
This is a pc plain and simple.
Yeah they need a better os. Maybe they do linux.
The linux build + roms by Eliovp is really good.
AMD would stand to sell a shit ton of mxm cards .
And I know that this does not need to be noisy. you can reduce fan speed from 100% to 50%
Here are the weak points 2 usb jacks ------- easy to fix just plug in a small usb hub.
Fans are loud --------------------------------- easy to fix with correct os. I am doing some fan work today.
Power on button is small ---------------------- easy to do an end around with correct os.
OS is an unactivated windows 10 enterprise - can be fixed with a linux os
uses a mobile cpu ----------------------------- we could be offered a choice of mobile cpus from them
uses a single stick of ram ---------------------- as tested by me you can switch from 4gb to 8gb I do not know of any gpu mining that needs more then 8gb
Strong points.
it is 40% the size of two 4 card rigs.
the case is well built
is sound is not an issue the fans will keep it cool.
can be headless
a home miner can run these.
six of these would fit on the rack below
so 24 full size gpus
would become 48 mxm gpus in the same space
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F4hhHwyE.jpg&t=665&c=dsX2-dfmIItIbw)
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FWAXLPYM.jpg&t=665&c=s_33cuduhs-0zg)