Cointerra trip report

[RickJamesBTC]

Still, those are things that are easy to make in small quantities and present difficulties when you try to mass produce. A custom radiator impresses you? Any radiator shop in your hometown can braze one together for you in an hour, and that would be 100x larger. A prototype board is easy to get. It's nice that they have something almost working, even though it doesn't have the key part that makes it a miner, but again those can be made in small quantities by a local fab place in a day or two. The holidays are coming up, suppliers won't be working for at least a few days, shipping delays will slow everything down. At this point in time to ship anything in december they need to have parts on hand and being assembled. They should have a container full of cases and power supplies already, boards off being tested and produced.

They have done a lot more, and shown a lot more than someone like hashfast, certainly terrahash.... But it doesn't inspire any confidence that units will be shipping before mid-late january in small quantities. Once they get into the cycle of being perpetually behind, it'll be difficult to catch up. I hope they start producing them, but right now it is just another preorder with no shipping date.

[aerobatic]

Redundant hotswap power supplies is very cool.

Hmmm, I think it may be one per mining board (of which there are 2), not redundant PSU's at all. Overall power draw for a TerraMiner IV is estimated between 1250-1500W. Maybe the Mk. II could have a redundancy setup.

totally right, the system will need both of them to run.  although those power supplies could be used in a redundant server, those aren't eh way cointerra is using them

[aerobatic]

Will all the units be rackmount cases? I didn't see any option for that in the order form. Rackmount cases would definitely be my preference.

John from cointerra says that all the miners will be packaged with the bits needed to turn them into rack mount (handles and screws?) or tower systems (rubber feet) so its up to each user how they want to use them.  apparently you can also buy rails from them as an extra cost item though i suspect you can buy those anywhere.

My personally opinion is that a lot of them will be used in rack mount mode, as this is a high power device that is going to warm up a home quite a bit so i think it best used in a data centre where you have adequate cooling and good power connections.

[xstr8guy]

Ok, I have to admit that Cointerra is starting to excite me now the way KNC and Bitfury did months ago.

And because I'm very late to this preorder, just how dumb would it be for me to order an April batch TerraMinerIV?  Or if you still think it's a good idea, please tell me why.

I already have preorders for a Neptune and 2 Monarch 600's.  And I feel like now might be a good time to add another miner to my collection before BTC crashes back to $130... "Panic Buying!"  Lol.

[aerobatic]

Ok, I have to admit that Cointerra is starting to excite me now the way KNC and Bitfury did months ago.

And because I'm very late to this preorder, just how dumb would it be for me to order an April batch TerraMinerIV?  Or if you still think it's a good idea, please tell me why.

I already have preorders for a Neptune and 2 Monarch 600's.  And I feel like now might be a good time to add another miner to my collection before BTC crashes back to $130... "Panic Buying!"  Lol.

its not for me to sway you one way or another.  you need to make your own decisions.  I'm just reporting what I've seen and heard from cointerra.

like you, I've ordered from multiple asic providers to spread my risk.  i rate knc highly and i think you can't go wrong with them.  cointerra is also good (and cheaper).  I'm not so hot on bfl.

i personally think the neptunes will be wayy better than the monarchs.  i think the idea of putting monarchs into a pc, like a graphics card isn't a good solution.  they've left it to the user to figure out how to make the pc run in low power mode, and not suck down more wattage than the mining card itself will use.  and how to cool a pc that has one or more multi hundred watt cards inside is a lot harder, with all the bits and bays and cables its got.. than a dedicated miner.  i want to see how their cooling solution works out... as putting high powered cards into a pc each draw more than the pc.. right next to each other.. is a significant challenge to cool, and keep running.  and if they decide to go down the liquid cooling route that hashfast and cointerra have gone down (which is the only option that makes sense as i honestly don't think they can air cool something like that at the performance they're expecting) then they're making the user jump through hoops.  i mean, if you had to cram in 3 liquid cooling systems into the box, you'd need to buy a very big pc case that lets you mount three separate radiators, each with 120mm fans.  and cooling radiators are bigger than the fans, so they don't always co-exist nicely next to each other.  its going to be an awkward install for the customer, not to mention a high extra cost.

[xstr8guy]

Ok, I have to admit that Cointerra is starting to excite me now the way KNC and Bitfury did months ago.

And because I'm very late to this preorder, just how dumb would it be for me to order an April batch TerraMinerIV?  Or if you still think it's a good idea, please tell me why.

I already have preorders for a Neptune and 2 Monarch 600's.  And I feel like now might be a good time to add another miner to my collection before BTC crashes back to $130... "Panic Buying!"  Lol.

its not for me to sway you one way or another.  you need to make your own decisions.  I'm just reporting what I've seen and heard from cointerra.

like you, I've ordered from multiple asic providers to spread my risk.  i rate knc highly and i think you can't go wrong with them.  cointerra is also good (and cheaper).  I'm not so hot on bfl.

i personally think the neptunes will be wayy better than the monarchs.  i think the idea of putting monarchs into a pc, like a graphics card isn't a good solution.  they've left it to the user to figure out how to make the pc run in low power mode, and not suck down more wattage than the mining card itself will use.  and how to cool a pc that has one or more multi hundred watt cards inside is a lot harder, with all the bits and bays and cables its got.. than a dedicated miner.  i want to see how their cooling solution works out... as putting high powered cards into a pc each draw more than the pc.. right next to each other.. is a significant challenge to cool, and keep running.  and if they decide to go down the liquid cooling route that hashfast and cointerra have gone down (which is the only option that makes sense as i honestly don't think they can air cool something like that at the performance they're expecting) then they're making the user jump through hoops.  i mean, if you had to cram in 3 liquid cooling systems into the box, you'd need to buy a very big pc case that lets you mount three separate radiators, each with 120mm fans.  and cooling radiators are bigger than the fans, so they don't always co-exist nicely next to each other.  its going to be an awkward install for the customer, not to mention a high extra cost.

If you don't mind, I'd like to start a new thread for this topic and move your post there.  I don't want to hijack this thread.

[takagari]

Awesome. I travel a lot, they are on my too visit list!

Would of liked to see a credit card machine in the pics... 

Make me feel nicer buying from them

[User705]

Will all the units be rackmount cases? I didn't see any option for that in the order form. Rackmount cases would definitely be my preference.

Would it be possible to get "de-badged" cases? Just thinking of those people who have to think about the scruples of those who they're employing to do moving jobs that include these units. With "Terra Miner" and "Coin-terra" written all over the cases, I don't think there's any real way of keeping the purpose of the devices at all discreet. Some bright spark will inevitably start talking about this in their leisure time, or worse, decide themselves to plan a heist on a datacenter or home residence.

Economics tells us that if the item is valuable then security measures simply raise the price until it is roughly in line with market price so de-badging does nothing.  Here is something similar I brought up about HF back in August.  Cointerra will be no different.  De-badged or not you are unlikely to receive a miner that will cost a lot less then market price at the time of receipt.  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=274470.msg2948177#msg2948177

[aerobatic]

Awesome. I travel a lot, they are on my too visit list!

Would of liked to see a credit card machine in the pics... 

Make me feel nicer buying from them

its probably not going to happen any time soon!

I'm sure that the asic companies that are shipping from stock may be able to take paypal and credit cards, but the ones that take pre-orders just won't be able to do it.  its the same story for pretty much every asic company.  you have bfl screwing over customers to thank for paypal's policy.

and for those younger companies that haven't started production yet..  it defeats the main object of taking pre-orders.. which are to fund production costs (crowd funding).

[hardpick]

 Looking at these photos I do not get any “warm and fuzzy feelings” that the hardware will ship in January
All I see is a case and a water-cooling block – these are not difficult to source.
I would have expected at least a proto PCB mounted in the case
I think I read that the 1st terraminer IV was supposed to ship in December
To me it looks more like late February shipping