Will Innosilicon ROI with A5 or A4?

[BestSumo]

I ordered an A5 at $9,999 and it was supposed to deliver mid October and mine at 38GH/s. Now they are delaying to November and claim they will offer a 12% hash rate increase but looking at November it seems it will only be mining $24/day which puts ROI at 416 days assuming the difficulty remains the same which it is guaranteed not to.

I also ordered 5X A4's at $1,400 each. They were supposed to deliver by September and are getting pushed to October with the option to double the hash rate if I pay another $1,400 each.

What do you all think? Will these miners be toasters by the time I get them or is there a chance?

[monkeyxking]

I was very upset to hear that the A5 was delayed to November. Seems to me Innosilicon doesn't know where it stands with its reputation regarding timely delivery, and with this it's abundantly clear that they have no control over anything. It makes it hard to put any faith in them as a company. First the A4s had issues with delivery, then the hashrate was much lower than they advertised. How can you claim to have the best miner? Who's going to take this company seriously anymore?

[QuintLeo]

If the A5 meets it's efficiency specs AND matches up to traditional Innosilicon RELIABILITY, it might be the ONLY X11 miner that will be profitable 6 months from now unless you have VERY VERY cheap electric.

 WAY too much hashrate (especially out of Bitmain D3 units) going to be hitting the network by the end of November to leave much room for profitability of less efficient miners.
 I'm also not impressed with what I've been seeing so far about D3 reliability - seems to have the SAME issues as the S9 on that score so far.

 The A4 met it's FINAL advertised hashrate - it was the early "before the units actually exist" estimates it didn't meet.


 On the other hand, Innosilicon really needs to get to work on it's ordering process AND it's customer service - they do a better job than most on supporting their gear, but it's a PAIN dealing with them at all.
 I had issues with an A4 preorder from a month or two back - they JUST YESTERDAY finally emailed me with an offer of a fix for the issues, long since I'd SPENT the money on other gear....

[monkeyxking]

If the A5 meets it's efficiency specs AND matches up to traditional Innosilicon RELIABILITY, it might be the ONLY X11 miner that will be profitable 6 months from now unless you have VERY VERY cheap electric.

 WAY too much hashrate (especially out of Bitmain D3 units) going to be hitting the network by the end of November to leave much room for profitability of less efficient miners.
 I'm also not impressed with what I've been seeing so far about D3 reliability - seems to have the SAME issues as the S9 on that score so far.

 The A4 met it's FINAL advertised hashrate - it was the early "before the units actually exist" estimates it didn't meet.


 On the other hand, Innosilicon really needs to get to work on it's ordering process AND it's customer service - they do a better job than most on supporting their gear, but it's a PAIN dealing with them at all.
 I had issues with an A4 preorder from a month or two back - they JUST YESTERDAY finally emailed me with an offer of a fix for the issues, long since I'd SPENT the money on other gear....

The issue is that because of the ridiculously high cost, the A5 will only be profitable after the 6 months. Those first six months you get it are going to be dedicated to recouping the cost. And the further they push back the promised delivery timetable, the longer that breakeven point is drawn out. Regarding the A4, meeting the final advertised hashrate isn't the same as meeting the advertised specs people used to make decisions on whether to plunk down the cash or not. Look at Bitmain's example where their final spec wound up being over what they originally estimated (17 GH vs 15 GH, and less power draw to boot). I'm not pleased with Bitmain for the amount of product they're putting out, but at the very least I can't fault them for delivering ON TIME and over their estimated specifications. 

[QuintLeo]

The S9 however only met it's "original advertised specs" people made purchase decisions on in the first couple batches - and was VERY UNRELIABLE when pushed hard enough to meet those specs.

 The S9 CONTINUES to be a very iffy unit on reliability - I'd consider that a MUCH BIGGER ISSUE since Bitmain has never fixed it and doesn't appear interested in doing so.

The A4 for Innosilicon was a very rare case of them advertising a product before they had the silicon on hand - they did NOT have that issue with the A2 or A1 as they never did preorders on those AT ALL, and they appear to have dropped the A3 because it was not going to be ABLE to compete and never advertised specs on it at all.


 Complaining about inability to achieve ROI in 6 months is stupid in the current market - we're NOT looking at "new generations" every 8-12 months any more, more like 2-3 YEARS for the S9 and probably 5+ years for whatever shows up on the next generation of miners after the S9/L3+/A4+/A5/D22G/et cetera.
 I'm starting to wonder of mining chip designers are EVER going to have enough foundry capacity available to flood the LARGE network hashrate cryptocoins like Bitcoin or Litecoin (All of X11 combined in "unit of miner" basis is TINY compared to the other 2) in a timeframe of less than years.

[BestSumo]

Just thought I'd give you guys an update.

A5 arrived yesterday, firmware does not allow me to change any settings, I can telnet into it and change settings, but it does not mine. Seems like it needs a firmware flash, but the Micro SD card slot is missing.

I still do not have A4's or A4+'s. They are pushing 3 months late now with those.

I hate to be crass, but Innosilicon is the worst company I have ever dealt with. They are over priced and so far their products don't work at all.

[sil2222]

Sucks sorry to hear Inno is still not delivering A4+ to customers. I believe problem with Inno is they do a lot of computer simulation testing before they make prototype which of course leads to delay in final production.
The same thing happened with A4 Dominator initially they said it would hash at 800 mhs ,but final product is 270 mhs and that with 2 miners connected together via module. Inno has a habit of selling Vapor ware . Final production does not meet advertised specs and in the case of the A5 seems like the miner is very buggy.