[Announcement] Block Erupter USB

[mdude77]

http://dx.com/s/High+Speed+10+Port+USB+2.0+HUB

various colors ;-)

Ah, DX Too bad it takes like over a month for something I order there to get to here

Might buy one for fun raspberry projects later on

Thanks!

1. Get cheap hub from China and get big problems. Here's the review from one buyer...

WARNING: I have one of these, and they used a 0 ohm resistor where there should be a diode installed. This caused the hub to backfeed power into my mainboard and it blew my mainboard. I very nearly blew the replacement board too but I was being very careful and plugging things in one at a time. The second that I plugged this in to the new mainboard, it shut down instantly. It works OK if I don't hook up the power supply to power this hub. I'm going to unsolder the jumper resistor and put in the diode that should have been in there in the first place, but I won't be buying any more of these.

2. Don't expect the Pi to work with just any hub...
http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Working_USB_Hubs

I was looking at hubs as well.  Not impressed with what I've seen so far.  NewEgg doesn't seem to have any that make it easy to plug a good number of these puppies in.

Amazon has a bunch.  Those that are < $20 have horrible reviews.  Almost every one says "not enough power to power all my devices at once, sometimes not enough to power one".  If each of these pulls min of 0.5ma, I suspect these cheap things aren't going to cut it.  Not thrilled with the idea of spending $50 on a USB hub.. but it looks like that's what I'm going to have to do.

Thoughts?

M

[razorfishsl]

Don't buy these cheap 10-12 way hubs, they are Cu**t designs

open one up and take a look
The PCB layout is along the lines of :

CHIP: con:con:con:con :CHIP:con:con:con

Rather than
con:con:CHIP:con:con: con:con:CHIP:con:con

So the USB lines are twice as long as they need to be, and they run 4*USB signals  in parallel tracks side by side with no Guard bands

Then the PSU is just plugs STRAIGHT into the powerfeed for the chips... and back into the computer no VARs no blocking diodes.....

To safely power down your driving  CPU you have to UNPLUG the USB cable first...........


The whole design has been thrown together by some cock sucker in a rice field.

[ChinaCoin]

Yes, you'll have to spend money on a quality Hub, and $50 will take you there.

[HTML5 Gordon]

Hmm, if the asic chip is on the top of the PCB, and the heatsink is on the bottom, what is it sinking? and why is there no pictures of that side?

 I was thinking that myself... "Wouldn't you want the heatsink on the top of the plug to radiate heat up instead of through the PCB ?"

 *shrugs*

ASICMiner uses quad-flat no-leads (QFN) packages, so there is a metal plate on the bottom.  Heat dissipates through openings to the other side, hence the heatsinks being on the bottom.

[Xian01]

ASICMiner uses quad-flat no-leads (QFN) packages, so there is a metal plate on the bottom.  Heat dissipates through openings to the other side, hence the heatsinks being on the bottom.

*makes motions of things going over his head*

I'll need to look into QFN on teh Googles. Interesting stuff. Thanks.

[erk]

These things are not very profitable compared to a normal video card. The ROI on a video card is normally 2 months.

Plug in 300Mhz into this calc and see for yourself, don't forget to put in the power consumption of the host system and your electricity price.

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

The ROI I got was over 7mths.

[Xian01]

These things are not very profitable compared to a normal video card. The ROI on a video card is normally 2 months.

 If you factor in electrical costs, it's more-than-likely a wash. I agree they are a little bit on the pricey side, but not egregiously so considering this is a first gen device.

[mdude77]

These things are not very profitable compared to a normal video card. The ROI on a video card is normally 2 months.

 If you factor in electrical costs, it's more-than-likely a wash. I agree they are a little bit on the pricey side, but not egregiously so considering this is a first gen device.

Hmm.  Something is wrong with this picture.

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.
For $400 you can get two of these that gets the same with a fraction of the power drain.

How is a GPU ROI faster?

M

[Xian01]

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.

 That's where it gets a bit more difficult to figure out. A 7970 will do at least 680MH/s overclocked for ~$400. Don't know the wattage off the top of my head.

 Two Erupter USB's will pull a bit north of 600MH/s @ < 1W ?

 I'm not good enough with stats and math to figure out efficiency of a 7970 vs 2x Erupters, but I'm guessing the 2x Erupters will ROI faster than a single 7970 if you take electrical costs into consideration.

[abracadabra]

These things are not very profitable compared to a normal video card. The ROI on a video card is normally 2 months.

 If you factor in electrical costs, it's more-than-likely a wash. I agree they are a little bit on the pricey side, but not egregiously so considering this is a first gen device.

Hmm.  Something is wrong with this picture.

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.
For $400 you can get two of these that gets the same with a fraction of the power drain.

How is a GPU ROI faster?

M

IMO, the residual value of the 7970s is higher than that of the Block Erupter USBs.

[erk]

Hmm.  Something is wrong with this picture.

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.
For $400 you can get two of these that gets the same with a fraction of the power drain.

How is a GPU ROI faster?

M

I get over 600MH/s off a 7950 that costs $300 and the USB device does only 300MH/s and costs 1.99 BTC= $235 or $470 for two.

You can do even better than that if you use cheaper video cards like a 5830 for $65 that does 300MH/s

see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison for some examples.

The USB ASICs get more cost effective if you have several, however if you are going to go down that path you are probably better off waiting for a Klondike board or one of the other numerous Avalon chip projects on this forum.

[HTML5 Gordon]

Hmm.  Something is wrong with this picture.

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.
For $400 you can get two of these that gets the same with a fraction of the power drain.

How is a GPU ROI faster?

M

I get over 600MH/s off a 7950 that costs $300 and the USB device does only 300MH/s and costs 1.99 BTC= $235 or $470 for two.

But the 7950 uses 300w vs. only 10w for the two USB Erupters (they use ~5w each).  So ~600MH/s for each, but vastly different power usage.

[Henchman24]

Hmm.  Something is wrong with this picture.

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.
For $400 you can get two of these that gets the same with a fraction of the power drain.

How is a GPU ROI faster?

M

I get over 600MH/s off a 7950 that costs $300 and the USB device does only 300MH/s and costs 1.99 BTC= $235 or $470 for two.

There is another aspect I wanted to bring up.  Having only recently acquired a couple of BFL FPGAs, I never realized how wonderfully low maintenance a dedicated device is, when compared to GPUs.

I spent 3 minutes doing a firmware flash, plugged them into the USB port and I'm getting an almost identical rate of 873MH/s from each device

No core/memory tweaking, no voltage mods, no afterburner, no gpu-z, no overheating vrams, no proprietary fans to replace,...

[PeZ]

I get over 600MH/s off a 7950 that costs $300 and the USB device does only 300MH/s and costs 1.99 BTC= $235 or $470 for two.

Use your website calculator and you'll find the video card has about the same ROI time as two of these devices. Once you get to ROI, you will be making more bitcoin due to lower energy costs. With a video card you have to put up with heat, noise, bigger electricity bill, and one useless computer.

Anyways, if you are mining with a video card you should not be mining bitcoin.

[erk]

I get over 600MH/s off a 7950 that costs $300 and the USB device does only 300MH/s and costs 1.99 BTC= $235 or $470 for two.

Use your website calculator and you'll find the video card has about the same ROI time as two of these devices. Once you get to ROI, you will be making more bitcoin due to lower energy costs. With a video card you have to put up with heat, noise, bigger electricity bill, and one useless computer.

Anyways, if you are mining with a video card you should not be mining bitcoin.

Yes that's true, you normally mine what's the most profitable on the day, mainly scrypt coins, then convert to BTC.

[SpaceCadet]

For $400 you can get a 7970 that can easily get 600mh/s with a lot of power drain.

While I still think the Erupter is somewhat overpriced, the 7970 example only works if you already have a mobo (with ram and HD) and PSU rated to handle it.  So you need to add at least $200 for that (assuming a headless, chasis-less configuration).  With the Erupter (and hopefully the less expensive usb miners that will follow it!), you can pop them into any old device you already have lying around (or your laptop, for that matter!).  Can't do that with a 7970!

[CumpsD]

Don't buy these cheap 10-12 way hubs, they are Cu**t designs

open one up and take a look
The PCB layout is along the lines of :

CHIP: con:con:con:con :CHIP:con:con:con

Rather than
con:con:CHIP:con:con: con:con:CHIP:con:con

So the USB lines are twice as long as they need to be, and they run 4*USB signals  in parallel tracks side by side with no Guard bands

Then the PSU is just plugs STRAIGHT into the powerfeed for the chips... and back into the computer no VARs no blocking diodes.....

To safely power down your driving  CPU you have to UNPLUG the USB cable first...........

The whole design has been thrown together by some cock sucker in a rice field.

Which hubs would you recommend? Powered with lots of ports

I'd like to power a Raspberry Pi from it, as well as some Ztex modules and the future Erupter USB sticks

[GodHatesFigs]

The 7970 card will still be worth a couple hundred dollars in a year; these USB sticks won't be worth anything.

[arklan]

The 7970 card will still be worth a couple hundred dollars in a year; these USB sticks won't be worth anything.

sentimental value?

[muyuu]

The 7970 card will still be worth a couple hundred dollars in a year; these USB sticks won't be worth anything.

sentimental value?

They will be in museums. A piece of history