DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI

[whitefire990]

I can't speak about pricing publicly, but the ROI is the same or better than the VCU1525.

[mineroc]

Will mineority deploy their cards before we get ours in the mail?  That would suck to those early buyers.

white, any word on support for nexy video?

[whitefire990]

Will mineority deploy their cards before we get ours in the mail?  That would suck to those early buyers.

white, any word on support for nexy video?

I am still hoping to build for the Nexys video, I haven't had time to fully address it yet.  I'm still working the KU040 mods & faster bitstreams as well as a dozen other things...!

[mroth76842]

Do you have a price estimate for the Bittware FPGA cards? Will you be accepting bank wire transfers or only crypto payments? I don't want to miss out again because I have to wait 2 weeks for bank to bank to coinbase transfers...

[d.v.]

Do you have a price estimate for the Bittware FPGA cards? Will you be accepting bank wire transfers or only crypto payments? I don't want to miss out again because I have to wait 2 weeks for bank to bank to coinbase transfers...

if you play in crypto arena, always keep a healthy chunk of crypto on standby for purchases or if you use Coinbase, keep some cash in the cash wallet.

[BlockchainDeal]

Interested in experimenting with a used board
pm me if available, old ones are OK

[OurManInHavana]

Do you have a price estimate for the Bittware FPGA cards? Will you be accepting bank wire transfers or only crypto payments? I don't want to miss out again because I have to wait 2 weeks for bank to bank to coinbase transfers...

I haven't seen a price, but some of the Discord comments mentioned things like "50% increase in price for 70% more performance". So if the BCU1525 was $3600... maybe keep $5500-$6000 in BTC queued up to cover the new Bitware equivalent w/incidentals (e.g shipping, or waterblock upgrades)?

[powerload79]

In crypto mining there is _only_ short term because if you haven't made your money back in the first few months you are in the long tail and will never break even.
For any algorithm that hasn't gone ASIC, residual hardware value is paramount. A previous generation GPU will still be worth something on the 2nd hand market to somebody looking to build a gaming rig.
What do you envisage an FPGA to be worth on the 2nd hand market when it is no longer clearly profitable for mining? How many FPGAs have been through ebay in the past year vs. how many GPUs?
IMO realistic residual value potential of an FPGA needs a long, hard look in the cold light of day.

This is ABSOLUTELY wrong.
People who started mining five years ago got their return on investment after 36 months so your argument is demonstratively false.

Right, but if it takes 36 months to earn enough to cover the cost of the rig, that means that net profit after 3 years is the resale value of the rig. Apart from the brief period of the mining craze that saw gamers pay stupid money for older GPUs that weren't good for mining, that's probably about 25%. 25% over 3 years is not exactly a goldmine.

[R0land]

Latest after 3 months, there will be asics with any fpga algorithm.

FPGA´s are perfect for asic development.

[colomine]

A little bit of competition among manufacturers will not harm mining community.
Its better  then gamblingbuying a  Bitman-used ASIC right before it is about to become door stopper.

[whitefire990]

Lots of updates on the downloads page today including:
- Critical Update to v1.32 FX Miner software which fixes numerous bugs;
- Slower 8.8GH/s VCU1525 0xToken bitstream for those having cooling problems and needing an interim mining solution;
- 2.4GH/s and 2.28GH/s KU040 0xToken bitstreams (requires mods to board to run);
- Preliminary description of KU040 modifications to increase current from 5A to 80A

http://zetheron.com/index.php/downloads/

[roc-noc]

Starting to prep a computer for the 4 Xilinx cards that I have on order (with plans to add 4 more Xilinx cards down the road).  I have ordered an EVGA 1600 watt power supply, Biostar BTC-250 Pro motherboard, i7-7000 kaby lake cpu, 16GB DDR4 RAM, I am thinking of buying a 128GB  SSD for Windows 10 and all the mining software needed.    Is that a large enough SSD for Win 10 plus all other software required?

[RivAngE]

Starting to prep a computer for the 4 Xilinx cards that I have on order (with plans to add 4 more Xilinx cards down the road).  I have ordered an EVGA 1600 watt power supply, Biostar BTC-250 Pro motherboard, i7-7000 kaby lake cpu, 16GB DDR4 RAM, I am thinking of buying a 128GB  SSD for Windows 10 and all the mining software needed.    Is that a large enough SSD for Win 10 plus all other software required?

I believe even 64GB would be fine, but going with 128GB is ofcourse the most futureproof. Windows folder is holding 23.3GB on my disk, I'm sure I have about 1GB of drivers and if you don't load any wallets in it, just the miners don't take up a lot of space. You need to have about 25GB free for Windows updates and there you have it.

[melpheos]

Starting to prep a computer for the 4 Xilinx cards that I have on order (with plans to add 4 more Xilinx cards down the road).  I have ordered an EVGA 1600 watt power supply, Biostar BTC-250 Pro motherboard, i7-7000 kaby lake cpu, 16GB DDR4 RAM, I am thinking of buying a 128GB  SSD for Windows 10 and all the mining software needed.    Is that a large enough SSD for Win 10 plus all other software required?

128Go is perfectly fine and should last more than 10 years.
64Go should be OK as well but we dont know how much space is required for virtual memory with FPGA... Probably not that much

[whitefire990]

Starting to prep a computer for the 4 Xilinx cards that I have on order (with plans to add 4 more Xilinx cards down the road).  I have ordered an EVGA 1600 watt power supply, Biostar BTC-250 Pro motherboard, i7-7000 kaby lake cpu, 16GB DDR4 RAM, I am thinking of buying a 128GB  SSD for Windows 10 and all the mining software needed.    Is that a large enough SSD for Win 10 plus all other software required?

Two comments:
- 1600W is okay if you are running on 240V circuits; if you are running on 110V you might trip the breaker, depends on your house wiring
- 4 cards = 4 USB cables + keyboard + mouse + thumb drives if used, so unless you have 7 USB ports, you should add a 4-port PCIe USB3 card

128GB SSD is fine.

Eric

[whitefire990]

The Zetheron Dynavolt USB Dongle ($95) will be available for purchase on the Zetheron website in a few days with shipments starting in around 2 weeks.  This performs generally the same function as the hard-to-get DC1613A, except that the Dynavolt works right out the box and allows 'live' or dynamic voltage adjustments while mining.  Not only does this give the 30% hash boost on the VCU1525 (11 to 15GH/s on 0xToken, for example), but it also allows the mining software to drop the voltage to the minimum possible level where there are still minimal errors, reducing electricity consumption 15% or more.

The Dynavolt is specifically designed to mount on the VCU1525 and 'live' there permanently.  It also includes an open-platform API library so other developers can access it as well, for live voltage adjustments and live current/power monitoring.

Eric

[melpheos]

The Zetheron Dynavolt USB Dongle ($95) will be available for purchase on the Zetheron website in a few days with shipments starting in around 2 weeks.  This performs generally the same function as the hard-to-get DC1613A, except that the Dynavolt works right out the box and allows 'live' or dynamic voltage adjustments while mining.  Not only does this give the 30% hash boost on the VCU1525 (11 to 15GH/s on 0xToken, for example), but it also allows the mining software to drop the voltage to the minimum possible level where there are still minimal errors, reducing electricity consumption 15% or more.

The Dynavolt is specifically designed to mount on the VCU1525 and 'live' there permanently.  It also includes an open-platform API library so other developers can access it as well, for live voltage adjustments and live current/power monitoring.

Eric

Works for BCU as well ? (as BCU is already vmoded)

[whitefire990]

The Zetheron Dynavolt USB Dongle ($95) will be available for purchase on the Zetheron website in a few days with shipments starting in around 2 weeks.  This performs generally the same function as the hard-to-get DC1613A, except that the Dynavolt works right out the box and allows 'live' or dynamic voltage adjustments while mining.  Not only does this give the 30% hash boost on the VCU1525 (11 to 15GH/s on 0xToken, for example), but it also allows the mining software to drop the voltage to the minimum possible level where there are still minimal errors, reducing electricity consumption 15% or more.

The Dynavolt is specifically designed to mount on the VCU1525 and 'live' there permanently.  It also includes an open-platform API library so other developers can access it as well, for live voltage adjustments and live current/power monitoring.

Eric

Works for BCU as well ? (as BCU is already vmoded)

Works for BCU1525 as well; the BCU arrives under-volted, but some algorithms like CN7 require over-volting the FPGA for maximum performance.  Core heavy stuff generally runs best at 0.65-0.74V, while RAM heavy stuff runs best at 0.85 - 0.95V.

[xpm-guru_v2]

The Zetheron Dynavolt USB Dongle ($95) will be available for purchase on the Zetheron website in a few days with shipments starting in around 2 weeks.  This performs generally the same function as the hard-to-get DC1613A, except that the Dynavolt works right out the box and allows 'live' or dynamic voltage adjustments while mining.  Not only does this give the 30% hash boost on the VCU1525 (11 to 15GH/s on 0xToken, for example), but it also allows the mining software to drop the voltage to the minimum possible level where there are still minimal errors, reducing electricity consumption 15% or more.

The Dynavolt is specifically designed to mount on the VCU1525 and 'live' there permanently.  It also includes an open-platform API library so other developers can access it as well, for live voltage adjustments and live current/power monitoring.

Eric

Works for BCU as well ? (as BCU is already vmoded)

Works for BCU1525 as well; the BCU arrives under-volted, but some algorithms like CN7 require over-volting the FPGA for maximum performance.  Core heavy stuff generally runs best at 0.65-0.74V, while RAM heavy stuff runs best at 0.85 - 0.95V.

So what you are trying to say is that all hosted BCU cards are not going to achieve 14kh/s of CN7 ?
Or is mineority going to fiddle with it to reach max hash?

[Vlado]

The Zetheron Dynavolt USB Dongle ($95) will be available for purchase on the Zetheron website in a few days with shipments starting in around 2 weeks.  This performs generally the same function as the hard-to-get DC1613A, except that the Dynavolt works right out the box and allows 'live' or dynamic voltage adjustments while mining.  Not only does this give the 30% hash boost on the VCU1525 (11 to 15GH/s on 0xToken, for example), but it also allows the mining software to drop the voltage to the minimum possible level where there are still minimal errors, reducing electricity consumption 15% or more.

The Dynavolt is specifically designed to mount on the VCU1525 and 'live' there permanently.  It also includes an open-platform API library so other developers can access it as well, for live voltage adjustments and live current/power monitoring.

Eric

Well done! Keep us updated when you start the sales.