Regarding Steamtyme's list of competitive hardware

[kano]

I would suggest you add info about decentralisation of the miners ...

You see, lately ALL the miner manufacturers have been making models that preclude home mining.

Requiring 3kW or more connections on a single miner, is, in general, not what most people would have available at home.

Thus they are forcing out home miners and thus CLEARLY going against the decentralisation of Bitcoin.

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[philipma1957]

The s17 pro is pretty good for a home miner.

The a1046 is pretty good for a home miner.

but that is about it.

sidehack has a 1tb miner which can be some fun for people.

[Searing]

So any current say "product' that you get now from Bitmain or from whomever (besides maybe the Sidehack 1TB miner) you'd get when? Say 2nd week in February? At the very prompt best? (assuming, as usual, the Chinese new year does not mess up shipping for any China ASIC's as was done in the past)

Anyway, you are still faced with:

(1) 5nm miners coming out at the end of Q1 supposedly. Call such as April 1st, 2020. Again a very optimistic date.

(2) Then about say at best, 6 weeks later, the BTC Halving happens currently May 12th, 2020. https://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/

I mean to get any more signs for not mining, you'd maybe need a mountain top with stone tablets made. Just saying, this does not look like anything that will change for the better and I'm not talking Home miners, IMHO, they are mostly out, I'm talking it looks beyond 'ugly' for the big miners that have to 'buy' equipment. Interesting Times. Though I must say, it is rather tranquil just selling crap on eBay and then buying dust BTC for HODL mode. Calm, compared to getting a miner these days.

Anyway, my take, others may have better angles or electric or whatever, we are all 'limited' by above and circumstances.

[kano]

The s17 pro is pretty good for a home miner.

The a1046 is pretty good for a home miner.

but that is about it.

sidehack has a 1tb miner which can be some fun for people.

Yeah I have one of the R606s (and 4 NewPacs) but they are just toys that already run at a loss.

But I mean all the new models coming out, that will make many of the current or older miners obsolete or close to it in the not too distance future.

I've even asked Canaan about it directly, and they've said they wont be making smaller miners since they see no market for it.

i.e. there needs to be some community response to tell the manufacturers to make home miners, and this thread probably would help with that.

With the specs of these new miners, making one half the power, thus requiring much less cooling, would even make them usable at home due to much lower noise - which also leads back to using them as home heaters like I've been doing for many years and told quite a few about how to setup the old A741 years ago for that and since then there's been threads about that also.

Using them as heaters is a very smart use, but secondary to the issue of actually getting new miners you can easily use at home.

[DaveF]

The other factor I think coming into play is support.
Do you think Bitmain wants to support 5000 users who bought 1 or 2 or 3 miners each. Or one big player that bought 15000?
Customer service and support is not cheap.
Then add on the fact that now you are dealing with home users who may or may not have as good power as a big industrial data center so now you have to deal with more repair issues.

The R4 was great, the a741 was great as was the a821. But sadly I think those days are gone.

What I would like to see is them partnering with someone like sidhack who they sell all their last generation chips to who produces a slower but quiet miner.

That or towards the end of the run start making the same miner with fewer boards (like many of us are doing with the S9) that can run cooler.
Sell them cheap to move stock of the old boards and chips with a 14 or 30 day DOA warranty and be done. You can get away with that with an old gen product for $249 you can't do that with a current gen for $2999 because, nobody is going to buy something that expensive that they plan to run for 18+ months with no support. For $249 a lot of people will roll the dice.

Just my view.

-Dave

[wndsnb]

It would be great if the industry was similar to the GPU industry, where the chip manufacturers may come out with a reference design but leave most of the mass production and end-user support to other companies.

[philipma1957]

Yeah the only really good new home miner is the s17 pro set to low speed.

It is quiet
burns under 1400 watts set to low.

I have the bigger spot with a lot of 3000 watt units they scare me. 
We use every thing correctly  proper wires proper cooling proper air filters still make me nervous.

Modded s9's set low are good to heat a home.

But you would think a s17 variation burning 1000 watts or so  would be desirable.

[vapourminer]

im out of btc miners entirely for that reason: anything that might be profitable is not usable in my house. too loud (not that big a deal to a point), too power hungry - needs to be configurable to some figure, say, 500 watts or so. this figure would allow spacing rigs out in ones home too, both to spread waste heat out to manageable levels (no need for industrial fans and large scale heat management when 500 watts per room is all that needs to be dissipated) and no need for dedicated 120/240v line for every miner.

hey i loved mining on gpu/early FPGA/early ASICs. donated to both -ck and kano for their work on cgminer. but now? i mine shitcoins with gpu/FPGA to exchange for btc. which does nothing to secure the network

yes, i realize that btc mining now is vastly different and its for the "big boys" now. fine. but to run even  ONE decent btc miner at home now? probably have to run another dedicated electric line and build some sort of special space with soundproofing and ventilation/ducting.

lower noise, lower power units that can be spread around the home.. is it that hard to do? genuine question. i would love to have a home friendly btc miner back in the home. mining shitcoins just seems... dirty heh.

[favebook]

I think that home mining has been dead for almost a year or even more. S9's have been the last of so called "smaller miners". I remember when I was making space for my "farm" to grow and I had to take separate fuse box and make ventilation holes in wall for all my miners, but it was just a hobby then. And I ran around 10 miners there without any issues. Now I am having trouble running more than 4 S17e/S17+ in that same place due to heat, power usage and overall amount of cables. And soon I will have to request another fuse box and search for a whole new storage hall so I can accommodate new units.

From home mining it turned to "big fishes" only really fast... And it is just going to get worse as years go by. I wouldn't be surprised if next miner had to use 3 cables instead of 2 like they do now.
Also, as far as I remember Bitmain used to have equipment for handful of different coins. Remember DR(D)/Z/E(G)/X/A/B/L models? They were all a bit cheaper than V/T/S models as far as I remember, and they could have easily been home miners. And what happened to them? They stopped producing them... For unknown reasons (but probably due to regulation or profit margin).

Home mining was much easier in past. Now it is harder and harder to find buyers even here in Serbia for such a big models (even tho they are more profitable than other smaller miners). And as time flies, all smaller miners will sell their equipment and farms are going to get bigger and bigger. Decentralization of Hash power is become more and more centralized day by day. And you can quote me on that.

[philipma1957]

Here in the states most home miners don't have cheap power.

A s17 pro  at 53 th pulling 2250 watts.  uses 54 kwatts a day at 10 cents that is 5.40 in power cost.

It earns 7.66  the net = $2.26

Very marginal but doable if you need it to heat home 4 or 5 months a year.

We could say home mining is dead in usa.

Or not.  But with out much other choice for a home miner With 10 cent power a risky move at best I would say yeah it is dead.

[favebook]

Here in the states most home miners don't have cheap power.

A s17 pro  at 53 th pulling 2250 watts.  uses 54 kwatts a day at 10 cents that is 5.40 in power cost.

It earns 7.66  the net = $2.26

Very marginal but doable if you need it to heat home 4 or 5 months a year.

We could say home mining is dead in usa.

Or not.  But with out much other choice for a home miner With 10 cent power a risky move at best I would say yeah it is dead.

Well, you are lucky if you get 10 cent power here in Serbia...

It's usually around 12 cents for homes and I use commercial power which is around 6 cents before additional costs.
So yeah... Home mining is gonna die faster here than in states...

[Searing]

FYI, check your January 2020  electric bill. Mine just went from 10c kWh winter rates to 12c kWh winter rates. Last summer my rates were 17.6c kWh. Sh*t. This would have hurt like hell even when I was home mining a year or so, back in the day. So equipment may not be the issue anymore with home mining.

[kano]

I think that home mining has been dead for almost a year or even more.
...

Home mining has effectively been dead for years.
Home power costs WAY more than the large miners and datacentres get and it has been that way for a very long time.

The point of the request was to make it clear which miners are available to use at home for the average person and give a push to the manufacturers to actually produce home miners rather than finalise the push of Bitcoin in the direction of only having centralised companies mining ... the way the mods here seem to want it to go.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

^^Perhaps.
However I also see  a technical need for less THs per-miner and the resulting less power draw per-machine: namely what happens when a miner goes down.

The fact that 1 miner down can now mean up to what, around 75THs or more lost? On the PSU side, keeping the total output to say (with margin) 1,600w makes it easier and cheaper to make than one that has to pump out 3-4kw. Certainly easier to cool. Those multiple tiny fans scream....

To me, unless you are running several hundred PH or more, I'd much rather have say 20-30THs per miner drawing 1,500w or less. Sure, you need more of them but unless they are uber-reliable like Avalons have historically been then I'd much prefer a miner failure to take out a lower % of the total farm hash rate.

The side benefit is that it keeps power draw to something that a 'home' miner can easily provide if they decide to mine regardless of electric cost.

[philipma1957]

If the s17 pro had a s17 LN pro version

two boards with bigger heat sinks it could sell.

28th.  low 850 watts
34th.  medium 1400 watts
38th.  high 1800 watts

I think 🤔 it would be a hit.

Some would use it at home.
Some would use it at data centers.

[Steamtyme]

Kano. I'll look to fit this information in somewhere. If you have a nice write up or post you would like me to link to that would be great. That list in itself is meant to be just a listing of what's currently competitive from an efficiency standpoint.
So even a small homestyle miner that is competitive would be listed.
I would more likely think it fits in my First time/small time miner thread, and would also be willing to link there from the competitive list. It makes sense someone looking at hardware could benefit from seeing that topic.
I'm not always great with words but have been invited to produce some blog posts in regards to anything crypto and this was a topic I have been planning on writing about as for their platform.
I'm still on mobile as I was yesterday when I saw your suggestion you can also reach out to me on discord anytime if you want to discuss something.

[kano]

Well it would simply be to include on your list, a comment simply based on power usage.
Clearly, a 3kW miner is not a home miner anywhere in the world.

But also there's the issue of J/GH - since with the next batch of miners, the top miners will have a lower J/GH again - which of course means that old miners are even more pointless mining with.

In the USA on 110V a 1100W miner uses 10A and thus is borderline going to melting/burning power leads.
So for the USA, it should be less than 1kW

Anywhere in the world where you have 220V, 2kW is really what the limit should be to classify it a 'home' miner.

Any company producing current miners 2kW or less is still in the ball park IMO.
But anything in the 1kW range should get a higher rating for home mining.

[DaveF]

I 1kW range/2 kW for 110/220 is still iffy in older construction that has not been updated. Sadly there is a lot of that. Parents house was built in 1970/71 and the wiring in there scares the crap out of me.

If you are building a setup in the garage or shed and bringing in new power I would hope it would be done properly.

-Dave

[philipma1957]

my home was built in 1970/1971. all aluminum wiring. due to copper shortage from Vietnam war.

So i rewired it in the 1990’s .  I was a hifi nut 🥜 so I did all code or above code.

No 14 gauge.  Only 12 or 10 gauge. Got lucky as my home is easy to run gear as I have three extra 30 amp circuits 240amp.

My problem Is winter power is 13.7 cents reduce to 10 due to heat benefits.

Even with all that It is not very profitable to mine at home.

Now the idea of space heating yeah I can justify some of that.
Prepping gear to bring to clifton i can justify.
But i do not think 🤔 Home mining ⛏ will ever be feed by asic builders like it could.

[Steamtyme]

Well it would simply be to include on your list, a comment simply based on power usage.
Clearly, a 3kW miner is not a home miner anywhere in the world.

Okay, so you are just referring to the list at the top. Each of the miners that I have spec'd out on that page have their advertised power draw stated in Watts. When I do the next update I will tag gear in red with an asterisk point underneath stating what the color represents.
While not perfect, and definitely not the norm I run a 3KW miner as a home miner. It's not ideal but is doable, mainly because I have a garage and am willing to put in the effort of soundproofing in the winter months for my house. People have complained about running gear in home for as long as I can remember(not long compared to some here), it just takes some knowledge or extra cash but can be done. I also personally don't recommend anyone run any miner on 110V, in North America all homes are fed with 220V so it's a no brainer to run miners on those circuits. It's no different than stoves and dryers.
For me my biggest concern is the large chunk of hashrate that I lose when it's down not necessarily the power draw.

Either way the list is simply that a listing of gear available, the forum and it's threads are where people need to make the decision on what they can mine with, how they can mine with it, and what if anything they can do about the decentralization of mining.