Review of Panda Miner coming up.

[Searing]

Looks like I have a big plate of crow to eat! Fantastic looking piece of kit. I still don't see the point vs building your own 7 or 8 GPU rig, though. Especially when it comes time to sell the hardware or upgrade.. But this is good for quick deployment and people who are clueless when it comes to building a PC.

the unit has nice size.
Fit is good parts are quality.

If you look closely the power button is small. A complaint.
The case is nice sturdy.
The fans are quality
The seven jacks that take in the six pin pcie cables are designed to prevent upside entry see photo.

So outside looks good.

I will open case.
I want to pull the ssd and load a fresh windows install.

I read on micro soft website that certain windows builds of ten can not switch from Chinese to English you can get a mix at best.   So far the best I can do is get it to do,some English but the internet is still giving me all
Chinese which sucks.

I got claymore 9.3 to work on a different pc I then copied it to a USB stick.

I pulled the keyboard put the USB stick In as the panda has two USB .

Then i simply clicked on the 9.3 file and boom. 1630 is now about 1740. Watts 1030 became 1060.

A miner doing 1740 with 1060 watts is nice. But this unit is very small.  I believe you can fit a lot more gear in the right spot.

Well just in my case at 1760mh and 1060 watts at my winter rate of 10c kwh (which is weird...should be 11c may really be that) and my summer rate of 14c kwh starts may 15th)

anyway at the above NOW at 10c kwh I get $0.25/hr $5.92/day $41.41 a week $177.48 a month and $2159.39 a year...again at that 10c rate (which won't last)

soooo..there is a whole 'nother' kettle of fish to consider

I used this link for this

http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/zcash-mining-calculator

I COULD (in that I will mine enough LTC or scrypt next year to use this at the 100% equipment deduction with IRS thus 25% off taxes owed all allowed 1st year) as a deduction in 2017
I COULD justify that ..kinda sorta ....toy wise

That would knock my real $$$ invested from what was it? at $2130 down to say $1597.50 for the unit?...kinda tempting IF you believe Z-cash can survive at these
higher and higher difficulties....and/or gpu mining in general..kinda/sorta

unsure...but anyway as an aside use the above calculator or the above home business tricks if in the USA and see where you stand

some folk on bitcointalk at 4c kwh on here and the equip deduction above (if you mine enough coin and legal with IRS) this would make sense I guess

but damn 30 day warranty...sheesh....one bad bump from china and your so screwed in shipping damage

interesting thou it is

edit:

Public Service Announcement .....coward runs away like small child

In the interest of FAIRNESS on here ..I HAD $4K of equip (10 gpu cards 2 rigs rx 480 etc etc) that I just dumped for $3K with the addtitional PSU's (server 2560) I can use
on Titans in basement as an upgrade etc (psu's $600 for both)

Again I just 'punted' and took the 1K loss (again with next years loss put on 2017 Taxes that will hopefully be about $750 buck loss on the 2 units in real money..I now I can
get $250 usd back in real money that way in 2017). I was looking at zCash and ethereum etc and made 750k on the lisk pos coin ICO....thus went what the heck..it all is/was
treading water....dump the GPU's get the PSU's and you can see my 'yellow back' sprinting towards the trees as I leave you all on the gpu/zcash/ethereum battle field (I so
relieved...er I mean ashamed)

So I'm calling the 2 efforts with the loss on the GPU's and the small pump on the LISK above a draw and saving the last 3k on this 'experiment' ....gave a buddy with better electric etc a deal so at least HE can ROI on this....so tossed self overboard....only one can survive imho

You can all tell me how wrong I was but 'punted' and ran away like a small child when this all takes off not the first boat I probably missed nor the last

maybe I'm learning something in crypto? Anyway 3k in hand left in BTC seems the better bet...I also got to keep the server PSU's ($600) on the 2 units at 2560watts
I want to use on Titans at home (already paid) so hell I ran like the wind.......a lot of running about this last 5 months for oranges to oranges...but hey us small
children scare easy!

just thought I'd toss that out their so you can see the cowards way on this whole GPU revival on pow coins
and everyone has this thread/bitcointalk I'm on record so you can give me grief on this someday ..if this is yet another boat missed....

So take anything I say on anything GPU related this or other stuff with a grain of salt...again I am running away as fast as possible .......(its true) alas...

Just made it to the trees...you guys really, really did not have to fire at my back to increase my sprint (as*hole*s) ..but good luck with the war!

I now end this 'public service' announcement of my cowardice in the face of GPU and POW mining endeavors.....and 'slink' away....

(now on bleachers watching from sidelines)

[Amph]

what's the point of this if the consumption is way higher than a normal rig with 6 x 480 or 470?

a 6 x 470 rig can do 600 watt 1400-1500, that thing consume more than 1k watt for just the same hash...

[Prelude]

what's the point of this if the consumption is way higher than a normal rig with 6 x 480 or 470?

a 6 x 470 rig can do 600 watt 1400-1500, that thing consume more than 1k watt for just the same hash...

Gotta assume that the voltage is stock on these, so lots of potential to save power with undervolting.

Speaking of which, Phil can you confirm if watttool and afterburner works on these? Maybe also grab a screenshot of gpu-z? Also, if you're going to reinstall windows I'd advise doing that on a new drive and keeping the original, or of you don't have a spare drive at least clone the drive so you can revert if need be.

Also, what driver version did the rig ship with? I wonder if Windows is genuine or if it's cracked. Either way, I don't think I'd want to keep a Chinese version of Windows on there. Windows is bad enough in terms of spying on users, I can't even imagine what China would demand of Microsoft to give them permission to distribute the OS over there.

[Tmdz]

what's the point of this if the consumption is way higher than a normal rig with 6 x 480 or 470?

a 6 x 470 rig can do 600 watt 1400-1500, that thing consume more than 1k watt for just the same hash...

It is a farm solution so they can have more gpus in less space, as well won't have to dick around building rigs.  Maybe once it is undervolted then the power consumption will be more in line, also this looks like a 8 gpu model.

The miner is interesting though, i didn't realize it was a full computer with hdd all in one.

[Eyedol-X]

20 inches wide and 8 inches deep 4 inches high.

Bummer, means using it in a enclosed rack would be a challenge if not impossible as I thought because of cables sticking out of both sides.

I would caution reloading windows because they may have altered the OS to support a GPU hack if they re-flashed them. I would use another SSD if you are going to test a reload.

My First Impressions:

Pro's I see:

• This thing looks like a great starting point for someone that doesn't know anything but wants to GPU Mine
• The design appears to be good

Con's I see:

• The enclosed rack issue may be an issue for some
• Fan Noise is crazy, that's louder than my A4

Concerns I have:

• We are on the cusp of AMD's next generation cards being out in a few months, I expect that the RX4x0 series cards will price drop slightly -- will the Pandaminer price drop by then?
• Fan life, I assume they are running at high rpms constantly -- I wonder what the life expectancy will be and how easy it will be to get replacement fans. I would try to determine this information in your review.

Other Thoughts:

• I hate the power button
• I wish they would have gone taller instead of wider so you could have the cables out the back instead of the sides

[Hutalar]

what's the point of this if the consumption is way higher than a normal rig with 6 x 480 or 470?

a 6 x 470 rig can do 600 watt 1400-1500, that thing consume more than 1k watt for just the same hash...

I think if you undervolt, you can get better power numbers.

[m1n1ngP4d4w4n]

Overall, this is very interesting, but the 30days even 6 months warranty makes it pretty much worthless in my eye, it cannot beat the 2-3+ years you get on normal GPU's.

[citronick]

Phil - can you get into BIOS and see if boot via USB is possible - I reckon any modern custom mobo should do the trick but just incase this panda mobo is fixed format to boot only from its own SSD - anyways pls see if you can take some pix. I interested to see it booting Linux (SM or ethOS) from a USB stick. Thanks.

[tbonetony]

Looks like I have a big plate of crow to eat! Fantastic looking piece of kit. I still don't see the point vs building your own 7 or 8 GPU rig, though. Especially when it comes time to sell the hardware or upgrade.. But this is good for quick deployment and people who are clueless when it comes to building a PC.

the unit has nice size.
Fit is good parts are quality.

If you look closely the power button is small. A complaint.
The case is nice sturdy.
The fans are quality
The seven jacks that take in the six pin pcie cables are designed to prevent upside entry see photo.

So outside looks good.

I will open case.
I want to pull the ssd and load a fresh windows install.

I read on micro soft website that certain windows builds of ten can not switch from Chinese to English you can get a mix at best.   So far the best I can do is get it to do,some English but the internet is still giving me all
Chinese which sucks.

I got claymore 9.3 to work on a different pc I then copied it to a USB stick.

I pulled the keyboard put the USB stick In as the panda has two USB .

Then i simply clicked on the 9.3 file and boom. 1630 is now about 1740. Watts 1030 became 1060.

A miner doing 1740 with 1060 watts is nice. But this unit is very small.  I believe you can fit a lot more gear in the right spot.

Thanks for sharing this very initial information on pandaminer.

Just a few comments:
1. Would you consider reorg all your comments into the first post for better readability? You may make it chronological log style.
2. I read somewhere that they made the power switch inconvenient  to avoid accidental shutdown.
3. I can help you with Chinese translation if you ever need a hand.
4. One of my concerns is the genuity of their Win 10 copy. I don't think they have a volume licensing agreement with MSFT and this could mean violations of software license. In reality one could get away in 99.9% of the case but it does not justify the legality of such action. In your case, you are doing us a great favor but keep in mind your review is in public.

[Eyedol-X]

3. I can help you with Chinese translation if you are stuck. One of my concerns is the genuity of their Win 10 copy. I don't think they have a volume license with MSFT and this could mean violation of software license. In reality one could get away in 99.9% of the case but it does not justify the legality of such action.

I wondered this myself. Also if it's a hacked Chinese version of Windows 10, who knows what kind of backdoors or vulnerabilities it may have....

IMO they should be providing the license key information for the Copy of Windows 10 provided. To do anything less is a violation of MS Reseller/EULA.

[Amph]

what's the point of this if the consumption is way higher than a normal rig with 6 x 480 or 470?

a 6 x 470 rig can do 600 watt 1400-1500, that thing consume more than 1k watt for just the same hash...

I think if you undervolt, you can get better power numbers.

this change everything of course, i'm curious now on the possible final consumption after the right tweak

[Eliovp]

Ok, at first i wasn't directly planning on posting anything regarding this but oh well.

Anyhow, i ordered one myself.

I will obviously as i can't handle myself, get the roms of those mxm cards, modify them as hard and as stable as i can, meaning, custom timings, no copy pasting , downvolting and last but not least, i'm going to put a linux os on this thing.

I will get mine (if everything is right) this monday.

I will report back with info and details.

Greetings!

[philipma1957]

Few more shots.

[TheYankeesWin!]

So I ask again  what happens if you can not do a better conversion of language?

[philipma1957]

So I ask again  what happens if you can not do a better conversion of language?

Well I will work on it next year  I have a party to go to today

To be serious I will open case up on Monday  to see if I can put a different ssd in it and load a windows 10.

I ran it overnight in my basement den temp in the den went from 81f to 84f

I did six or seven  infra red the out side of the case was 81 f to 88 f  really impressed with that.

It still was doing 1700 h on 1060 watts.

 lots more photos:

moved it to the garage



this rack can fit 6 four card diy builds
or 6 eight card panda units.



13 amps at 240 volts


17 amps at 240 volts

[Longsnowsm]

This is quite interesting.  Has Pandaminer said anything about upgrade options when new GPU's are released into the market?  Can this rig be upgraded to preserve some of the investment? 

[philipma1957]

This is quite interesting.  Has Pandaminer said anything about upgrade options when new GPU's are released into the market?  Can this rig be upgraded to preserve some of the investment? 

it is a good question.

This is a good unit

the imac uses

AMD Radeon R9 M395 graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory

Configurable to AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory



http://www.apple.com/imac/specs/


so these are rx 480 they could be possible upgrade for the imac.

[citronick]

This is quite interesting.  Has Pandaminer said anything about upgrade options when new GPU's are released into the market?  Can this rig be upgraded to preserve some of the investment? 

it is a good question.

This is a good unit

the imac uses

AMD Radeon R9 M395 graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory

Configurable to AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory



http://www.apple.com/imac/specs/


so these are rx 480 they could be possible upgrade for the imac.

Before the RX 480s, my first "high end" card was the 390s which was at least a "1 year old' card when I bought some and thats was end of 2015 during the ETH hey days.

The 390s today is still quite an impressive work horse, very much the same as their 290/290x generations before that but with faster memory. Both are power hoggers though...

Then came the Polaris cards, 480s and 470s were nice because of the price-point, lower power consumption, decent hash power and easily rom modded further to get that extra juice.

I think the 480 will still be around in a year or two, unless the 490 / Vega series is quantum leaps ahead of 480s in terms of core clocks and high speed memory - which we need, in the memory intensive top coins. A optimised undervolted 480 rig today can already dip well below 150w or lower TDP per card. So 480 to 490, how far more can it go.... I doubt if everyone will queue to buy 490s to replace the 480s.

IMHO, I think 1-2 years from now, I bet the 480s are still the workhorses of GPU farms, just like their 290s/390s did prior. The only difference now is how low can the power consumption go still -- at what MHs performance ratio.

Maybe the more experienced miners can feedback.... because I know a number of them have brought back their Scrypt/LTC rigs of yester-years from the dead and still got decent $$$ mining ETH, ZEC and XMR.

The 480 powered Pandaminer I think will be worth investing and keeping for at least 1-2 years in the mining game, unless something drastic happens... like the unexpected rise of CPU mining.

Anyways, this is just my observation from mining just under 1.5 years now.

Appreciate comments from more experienced miners out there.

Have a great New Year 2017 and have safe holidays ahead!

[philipma1957]

This is quite interesting.  Has Pandaminer said anything about upgrade options when new GPU's are released into the market?  Can this rig be upgraded to preserve some of the investment? 

it is a good question.

This is a good unit

the imac uses

AMD Radeon R9 M395 graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory

Configurable to AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory



http://www.apple.com/imac/specs/


so these are rx 480 they could be possible upgrade for the imac.

Before the RX 480s, my first "high end" card was the 390s which was at least a "1 year old' card when I bought some and thats was end of 2015 during the ETH hey days.

The 390s today is still quite an impressive work horse, very much the same as their 290/290x generations before that but with faster memory. Both are power hoggers though...

Then came the Polaris cards, 480s and 470s were nice because of the price-point, lower power consumption, decent hash power and easily rom modded further to get that extra juice.

I think the 480 will still be around in a year or two, unless the 490 / Vega series is quantum leaps ahead of 480s in terms of core clocks and high speed memory - which we need, in the memory intensive top coins. A optimised undervolted 480 rig today can already dip well below 150w or lower TDP per card. So 480 to 490, how far more can it go.... I doubt if everyone will queue to buy 490s to replace the 480s.

IMHO, I think 1-2 years from now, I bet the 480s are still the workhorses of GPU farms, just like their 290s/390s did prior. The only difference now is how low can the power consumption go still -- at what MHs performance ratio.

Maybe the more experienced miners can feedback.... because I know a number of them have brought back their Scrypt/LTC rigs of yester-years from the dead and still got decent $$$ mining ETH, ZEC and XMR.

The 480 powered Pandaminer I think will be worth investing and keeping for at least 1-2 years in the mining game, unless something drastic happens... like the unexpected rise of CPU mining.

Anyways, this is just my observation from mining just under 1.5 years now.

Appreciate comments from more experienced miners out there.

Have a great New Year 2017 and have safe holidays ahead!

I would think the cards in here do not need an upgrade for at least a year to 16 months.

for me  getting an english windows 10 will be important.  I am not going to try until monday.

 it is in my garage and is not nasty sound like the s-5 s-7 s-9 from antminer.

So my fears were hot and loud and chinese gui.

it is under 90f to the touch.  a plus
while loud the pitch is lower then I thought it would be so a plus

chinese windows 10 is driving me nuts.  biggest flaw for me.

Do I think it is good yes assuming they ship them to you on time.
They did do the no risk shipping to me and they will not do this for others . I still have yet to pay for it.

lets see if some known people that ordered get theirs timely.
lets see how they hold up. for a bit.

but the size factor is really good.  the heat seems good.

I am yet to test the stock psu it is 220-240 volts only. 

Do I recommend it yes but we need to understand down side.

Short warranty.
Chinese windows 10 is very hard to make fully english _______ this just may be my stupidity but I did read some windows 10 software builds will not allow full switch to english. only a mix.
we do not know how fast they will ship to you.

If I had a 3 cent warehouse   I would want a lot of these.

I am pretty sure I will keep it.  So I am selling gear to pay for it.

[UGMZ]

I think I will order one to the UK to have a play about with it.
Won't be till mid January but I will keep you posted on delivery times ect.