Avalon A7 announced

[HagssFIN]

https://github.com/Canaan-Creative/cgminer/blob/master/driver-avalon7.h

#define AVA7_MM741_ASIC_CNT      22
...

#define AVA7_DEFAULT_MINER_CNT   4

See this code.
There is also a 88x A3212 chip version of the Avalon7.  
Canaan Creative AvalonMiner 741.

[shield132]

So why do people still buy Bitcoin ASICs when GPUs can reach ROI in 4 months. If the current ZEC profitability stays constant then its more like 2 months.

Are GPUs harder to manage for most people and too much of a headache so they buy ASICs?

Nowdays it seems that ASIC miners don't worth to buy even if you have free electricity. Difficuly is increasing, increasing and price is more stable, it's not increasing. I don't know how miners are now making money with ASICs miners but it seems they have more special hardware (I mean bitfury and other serious companies). If bitmain won't release some great hardware, than it seems that bitcoin mining for simply humans will be dead. Nowdays GPU mining is much better because you aren't count on one coin and you can mine many altcoins.

[dogie]

I've had at least 20 Avalon6 come through hosting (most are still here), with two bad boards total. In about half as much time I've had around 25 S9 come through hosting with 4 bad boards total. I'm honestly surprised it's not higher than that. They do cost more, but there's something to be said about reliability (and, you know, customer service when something does go wrong).

Not sure you can directly compare those 2.

20 Avalon6= 40 boards
25 S9s = 75 boards

Avalon6 board failure rate: 5%
S9 board failure rate: 5.3%

Failure rate per miner is higher on S9 though.

It's also in less than half the time, and during a lot cooler period overall so it should have been easier on the works.

Bathtub failure curve so as long as you're say a month in, you've likely covered most of the initial failures.

[yxt]

There are much more complaints about the S9 than previous devices, although they were sold significantly more often. S9 quality seems not very good. But that is OT here

[Unacceptable]

So why do people still buy Bitcoin ASICs when GPUs can reach ROI in 4 months. If the current ZEC profitability stays constant then its more like 2 months.

Are GPUs harder to manage for most people and too much of a headache so they buy ASICs?

Nowdays it seems that ASIC miners don't worth to buy even if you have free electricity. Difficuly is increasing, increasing and price is more stable, it's not increasing. I don't know how miners are now making money with ASICs miners but it seems they have more special hardware (I mean bitfury and other serious companies). If bitmain won't release some great hardware, than it seems that bitcoin mining for simply humans will be dead. Nowdays GPU mining is much better because you aren't count on one coin and you can mine many altcoins.

Bitcoin=corp mining

Altcoins=home miners

.!.. Bitcoin mining  

[QuentinA]

I'd love a sound test once people start recieving it, hoping it's more like the Avaon 4 than the Avalon 6...

[yxt]

nope, pretty much the same as the A6

[philipma1957]

unboxing a A7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFzLT7yx1aM

Is that you in the video?

[sidehack]

It's also in less than half the time, and during a lot cooler period overall so it should have been easier on the works.

Bathtub failure curve so as long as you're say a month in, you've likely covered most of the initial failures.
[/quote]

You'd like to think that, but I just had a board go down last week on a B1 machine and another two weeks before on a machine from August. The other two dead boards were within the first month.
How many of Phil's miners waited a while before kicking it?

[philipma1957]

It's also in less than half the time, and during a lot cooler period overall so it should have been easier on the works.

Bathtub failure curve so as long as you're say a month in, you've likely covered most of the initial failures.

You'd like to think that, but I just had a board go down last week on a B1 machine and another two weeks before on a machine from August. The other two dead boards were within the first month.
How many of Phil's miners waited a while before kicking it?
[/quote]

the august one  was under a week   1 board then the controller.    and the repaired controller came back with new firmware which is next to worthless.

all other machines  ran from june until august before issues arose.

I have to say all my gear ran in a hot room underclocked and under volted.   fans at 85% boards at 65c --- 95c

  ambient room  was 65f to 105f.

my gear was low dust and low to medium moisture.

Some how I feel If I never purchased  the sixth machine in august  my other five would have fared better.

[SEGMining]

Looks like they'll be run like Avalon4 and Avalon6 were, where multiple modules are chained together to a single RPi controller. The single-point failure part isn't so great, but since it's an off-the-shelf part replacement is super easy. Setup and configuration are also super easy because you don't have to track down IPs for every individual machine. Overall a pretty good setup.

Just like we saw with the ASICMiner Prismas, we're going to end up with a stable configuration and RPis are fairly cheap and easily re-sellable if needed.  So buying 1 controller per 1-2 units is pretty reasonable to me. 

[sidehack]

If they daisychain like the Avalon4/6 you could buy one controller for like 50 units if you had USB hubs and such.

[bitcoinbarron]

If they daisychain like the Avalon4/6 you could buy one controller for like 50 units if you had USB hubs and such.

but with that you have the one single point of failure,

I will probably do 3-6 Avalon's per controller, although its going to be a learning curve for me as I have only set up Spondoolies and Bitmain kit.

Either way I feel this is a more reliable way to go with my mining enterprise rather than attempting to keep Bitmain S9's propped up ahah

[philipma1957]

unboxing a A7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFzLT7yx1aM

Is that you in the video?

nope found it on youtube ill never make videos of what i have, will screen shot from time to time . i don't mean that to offended.

I don't do you tube videos myself so I am fine with that.

[valkir]

unboxing a A7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFzLT7yx1aM

Is that you in the video?

nope found it on youtube ill never make videos of what i have, will screen shot from time to time . i don't mean that to offended.

I don't do you tube videos myself so I am fine with that.

VIP buyer. I though the miner was available on nov 14 

[dogie]

If they daisychain like the Avalon4/6 you could buy one controller for like 50 units if you had USB hubs and such.

And they have really, really good mine-level software to go along with it.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

On a side note, I see that canaan is back on CKpool again and back to their previous historical rate of around 247-280TH/s. Pretty sure that is Canaan Creative aka Avalon.

Hopefully testing more A7's maybe? Until a couple days ago, in fact maybe until just 1-2 days before their announcement here, canaan was holding at a solid >2.5PH/s for over a week in an impressive boost - bet that was a mass test of the A7's. From what the Canaan website says, the have the hosting infra to handle several MW so...

edit: Hmmm... just looked at https://canaan.io/about/ and -- see no mention of the operation they had here in the USA. I know some bad blood showed up in the USA op but thought it was resolved. When what huh???

edit edit: found an old bookmark, BlockC was name of the op here in the USA http://www.blockc.co/
 heh heh... "Well be Back soon" etc. Site name unavailable.

[toptek]

There may be  some give a ways  on CKpool like the last two Avalon. don't for get that. .


some thing bitmian won't do .

[isoneguy]

Interesting but I don't really see this being profitable, $888 for 6 Th/S isn't really all that good and for everyone with electric over .09 cents/KW this thing isn't profitable enough to even break even on the miner, then factor in rising difficulty and its really a total loss for most people.  It's not like you can really resell this for much after, look at the S5 its selling for like $40 now.  

Can't look at it per-miner. Gotta look at farm income. Give the age of miners I have running most are long ago paid off and making BTC for upgrades. Even the latest s9 b18 I bought will paid for by the entire farm in another 7 days.

Now, if starting from ground-zero with these, ja would be rough but I'd still take the risk.

For me running 18x s7's (and 9x s9's) it is a good upgrade value for the s7's I have running. Almost 2x the speed vs uv/c s7's at same power per-miner.

It's not overly difficult to start from the ground up. Purchased 1btc worth of s7-ln's used income from that to purchase another s7. Used income from that to purchase another s7...etc.

You just have to accept some of the expenditure as hobby cost and you reach ROI real quick.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Interesting but I don't really see this being profitable, $888 for 6 Th/S isn't really all that good and for everyone with electric over .09 cents/KW this thing isn't profitable enough to even break even on the miner, then factor in rising difficulty and its really a total loss for most people.  It's not like you can really resell this for much after, look at the S5 its selling for like $40 now.  

Can't look at it per-miner. Gotta look at farm income. Give the age of miners I have running most are long ago paid off and making BTC for upgrades. Even the latest s9 b18 I bought will paid for by the entire farm in another 7 days.

Now, if starting from ground-zero with these, ja would be rough but I'd still take the risk.

For me running 18x s7's (and 9x s9's) it is a good upgrade value for the s7's I have running. Almost 2x the speed vs uv/c s7's at same power per-miner.

It's not overly difficult to start from the ground up. Purchased 1btc worth of s7-ln's used income from that to purchase another s7. Used income from that to purchase another s7...etc.

You just have to accept some of the expenditure as hobby cost and you reach ROI real quick.

Rarely will I keep all of my quoted bits when I reply but THANK YOU! Usually this goes on deaf ears. Yes, ya gotta roll them bones and start somewhere.

#1 Rule: Even if going into this with ideas of a business, Consider your initial $$$ investment be it for 1 miner or 100 miners SPENT. Gone. Period. End of Story. Do not EVER use money you cannot afford to lose or pay back! I hope it is needless to say, never take out a loan to buy miners... Look at it like planning a nice long weekend or vacation at you favorite casino. I for one have a good idea of how much $$$ we set aside for gambling losses for our time there. If we win enough to lets us play all day/night while we are there, Great. Fantastic. But still have the probable overall gambling losses vs money we brought in mind. We walk in the Casino considering that money spent.

After that, reinvest all possible BTC income back into expanding the farm. Yes it takes time but over a few months it will get surprising how many miners you can get as it becomes more affordable from a farm income perspective . My main limit has been total power I have available (for free at work) and care to pay for at home. Total is around 28-29kW.

Finally, something missing from all of the "ROI" calculators oft mention in the Forum: The plain and simple fact that since here in the USA the IRS wants a piece of ALL BTC you convert to Fiat be it reported as Personal Income (and subject to Capital Gains Rules if earned from Trading) or reported as mining business + folks keep talking about ROI then treat the cost of miner like the business expense it is!  From a business perspective a miner is the same thing as an office PC and for Tax purposes is a business expense/writeoff. Last I recall the full amount can be written off in 3-years. Yes is a long time in Miner Years but - I have s7's still making money and some are from day-1 they were available so...

Since can't expand to use more power and limited miner availability restricts my s7 to s9 or A7 upgrades, um, BTC is starting to pile up again. Along with a growing pile of off-line s7's...