Using Old AntMiners in 2022

[paramind22]

I have some AntMiners S7's and below. 

I have not used them for two years.

I used to use the Bitcoincash guy's site but not sure going to use them again.

Any ideas on good exchanges for older miners?   I'm using them in winter for primarily a heat source.   I figure it will cut down a bit from full price of heat. 

[hymperion]

I don't know how convenient it is to use it as a warmer ... I don't think anyone would buy it today.

[DaveF]

Some thoughts

1) You should move this post to here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0 or start new one.

2) Tell people where you are in the post. Some people will ask in case you are close, others will not even bother.

3) As others have said shipping is the killer. So there is also craigslist / facebook marketplace / and so on for selling locally.

4) --> Make sure they work before selling them <--

5) Be realistic in pricing, an S7 will probably loose MORE then the $1.50 a day that ETF posted once you factor in everything, these will be for people to play with so you are probably looking at just about scrap metal / e-waste recycling prices.

-Dave

[NotATether]

5) Be realistic in pricing, an S7 will probably loose MORE then the $1.50 a day that ETF posted once you factor in everything, these will be for people to play with so you are probably looking at just about scrap metal / e-waste recycling prices.

Honestly, anything below an S9 is practically e-waste and should be dismantled. It doesn't get closer to end-of-life than that.

How many old miners have you got? You could make a small fortune off disassembling and selling off the parts as scrap.

[DaveF]

5) Be realistic in pricing, an S7 will probably loose MORE then the $1.50 a day that ETF posted once you factor in everything, these will be for people to play with so you are probably looking at just about scrap metal / e-waste recycling prices.

Honestly, anything below an S9 is practically e-waste and should be dismantled. It doesn't get closer to end-of-life than that.

How many old miners have you got? You could make a small fortune off disassembling and selling off the parts as scrap.

Depends on the use case. An S3 is totally pointless to mine with, but is just about bulletproof, will run off an old 500 watt power supply and with the fans set to low speed makes a just about silent space heater.
Yes you CAN do the same thing with a 1 board S9 BUT even the stock S9 fans at low speed make more noise then the S3 ones and it's still not as reliable. It's not about making money, it's about generating heat at not a total loss.

You can drop an S7 in the trunk of your car and keep it there bouncing around for months and then take it out to demo mining to people and it will work. Put it back in your trunk and bounce it around some more.
If I sneeze too loud near an S9 a heatsink falls off......

So not 100% junk if you have a use for them.

Scrap heatsink aluminum is going for around $0.50 / lb here and the the circuit boards are at $1.00 / lb

-Dave

[Atrax]

Hm. With my old S3, I make about 4 cents a day. Close to nothing. The power, however, is free (as in solar power). The heat is used for producing water - which saves me some cents, too.
What puzzles me, though, is the low power consumption - about a fifth of what it had originally (~70 W).
So yes - I will not get rich with it. But it fits my needs and is fun to use.

[paramind22]

I have two S7's.  I got them used from a guy who seemed unstable (at least at the time).  He said there was a chip off in each of them.  I guess they would draw less and have less hashing power. 

I'm not sure of the math compared to an S3. 

[Atrax]

Checked and see that all chips are working. And I assume that the hashrate with the normal frequenzy settings wouldn't go this high with damaged ASICs?

[OgNasty]

Hm. With my old S3, I make about 4 cents a day. Close to nothing. The power, however, is free (as in solar power). The heat is used for producing water - which saves me some cents, too.
What puzzles me, though, is the low power consumption - about a fifth of what it had originally (~70 W).
So yes - I will not get rich with it. But it fits my needs and is fun to use.

If it's using 1/5th the amount of electricity, surely you're seeing a decrease in hashing rates.  I use solar as well and I can say that I think sending the overproduced energy to your electric company in order to receive a credit has to be better than just burning the electricity.  You could probably pay to run your actual heater with the saved funds and be more comfortable and have more money.  Not trying to discourage you, but for $0.04 a day you're probably better off solo mining with that thing and hoping to hit the lottery.  That at least has the possibility of getting you a return.  I think everyone else would agree though, you're better off just turning that thing off unless you need heat and your heater is broken or something.

[Atrax]

If it's using 1/5th the amount of electricity, surely you're seeing a decrease in hashing rates.

Strange enough: That's not the case. It hashes happily on all its ASICS with the normal hashrate.

I use solar as well and I can say that I think sending the overproduced energy to your electric company in order to receive a credit has to be better than just burning the electricity.  You could probably pay to run your actual heater with the saved funds and be more comfortable and have more money.  Not trying to discourage you, but for $0.04 a day you're probably better off solo mining with that thing and hoping to hit the lottery.  That at least has the possibility of getting you a return.  I think everyone else would agree though, you're better off just turning that thing off unless you need heat and your heater is broken or something.

I - partly - agree with you. My setting is, though, a bit different.

Overproduction from the roof goes to the electricity grid and I get paid for it. The mining thingies are decentralized. For example: My tractor's generator is defect. Instead of replacing it, I put a solar panel as roof on the tractor. It loads the battery. Once the battery is full, energy goes to a raspi with a SIM card. The raspi is connected to a little pod (50 GH/s).

Then I have a cave under my house. Two solar panels are producing electricity and first filling two batteries. Once full, the solar power is running a dehumidifier which collects the water to a barrel. Once the barrel is full, a pump - powered by solar energy - pumps the water to a cistern. Now all excess power goes into two old Bitmain S1 which hash with crappy 160 GH/s. Their heat is funneld into the cave for condensation. The water goes - you guess it - into the barrel, too. The excess heat is directed out of the cave again.

Then there is a solar loading station for my electric lawn mower. Once its batteries are full, the power goes - you guess it - into mining.

There are several spots on my land like these, they all run old devices. Does it pay off? No. Of course not. But if every solar powered device which is not connected to the grid would produce some GH insstead of heat when not being used, it would be awesome and a great step towards decentralisation of mining (again).

[Daltonik]

Well, you can just set it up for solo mining on a pool solo.ckpool.org if you use it for heating anyway, then why not try to try your luck, maybe it will smile on you, just read here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5237323.0

[DaveF]

There are several spots on my land like these, they all run old devices. Does it pay off? No. Of course not. But if every solar powered device which is not connected to the grid would produce some GH insstead of heat when not being used, it would be awesome and a great step towards decentralisation of mining (again).

How are you getting bandwidth to all these things? Wi-Fi? 4g? and how are you powering that equipment? Or is everything hard wired?

I have frequently looked at some places that I can use that have more power then they can use, and at least this time of year could use the extra heat of a miner, but the issue turns into I don't have internet there and would have to get some reliable internet there to mine.

With free power and free miners more or less. Even assuming my time was 100% free, just the cost of getting cheap internet would kill any potential money that these miners would make.

-Dave

[Atrax]

There are several spots on my land like these, they all run old devices. Does it pay off? No. Of course not. But if every solar powered device which is not connected to the grid would produce some GH insstead of heat when not being used, it would be awesome and a great step towards decentralisation of mining (again).

How are you getting bandwidth to all these things? Wi-Fi? 4g? and how are you powering that equipment? Or is everything hard wired?

I use raspberries with a GSM module and IoT-cards with 500 GB prepaid. Also one GSM-router, but this is pretty shaky.

With free power and free miners more or less. Even assuming my time was 100% free, just the cost of getting cheap internet would kill any potential money that these miners would make.

I agree - for the moment. One solution would be to have a multisig-wallets for hundreds of small miners (like: Three trusted members would administrate this wallet). If all these small miners would send their hashes to one pool, the payout could take place once a year and then being distributed to lightning wallets. Still, it most probably wouldn't pay the costs, but at least the minimum payout of some pools could be eliminated this way.

In the best of all worlds - we don't live in one - all micro-miners could pool and solo-mine...

[mikeywith]

With free power and free miners more or less. Even assuming my time was 100% free, just the cost of getting cheap internet would kill any potential money that these miners would make.

Get an LTE connection, even 3G would do, you can mine with a 1-2mbps connection just fine, regardless of how many gears you have -- you could always use a proxy.

OP>

I think last I checked Antminer S9 was going for like $50 with a PSU, since your miners are an order of magnitude less efficient, I think they won't sell above $10 so anyone who can't pick them up locally would probably refuse to get them even for free.

Of course, this might not last forever, in the previous bull market people sold their S9s for $500-600 (they were as cheap as they are today in the 2019 bear market), so if BTC ever recovered to those levels, S9 would probably be at $200-300 and your gears might be worth something again.

[Argenttenir]

  So  I have heard older asics have been used to keep a steady load on bigger diesel generator setups in different parts of the world. One example was a mine in alaska and a friend. That worked in Africa at an airfield to repair airplanes. They had expensive generators and very efficient air conditioners. But at peak times had to run  aircompressor ,drain pumps ect .. and at night alot of lights. They would use the load of the asics to prevent burning out the gennys. But the mindset was different the mtx ran them for load and did not take care of them, like for example rain getting sucked in they were just plugged in and run inefficiently, they did have network cables on them.  Btw the way the whole conversation started was he was showing pics they had a meal kitchen place setup and low and behold there was what looked like the case of an s9 stripped out on end with a teapot on top.

[hymperion]

With free power and free miners more or less. Even assuming my time was 100% free, just the cost of getting cheap internet would kill any potential money that these miners would make.

Get an LTE connection, even 3G would do, you can mine with a 1-2mbps connection just fine, regardless of how many gears you have -- you could always use a proxy.

OP>

I think last I checked Antminer S9 was going for like $50 with a PSU, since your miners are an order of magnitude less efficient, I think they won't sell above $10 so anyone who can't pick them up locally would probably refuse to get them even for free.

Of course, this might not last forever, in the previous bull market people sold their S9s for $500-600 (they were as cheap as they are today in the 2019 bear market), so if BTC ever recovered to those levels, S9 would probably be at $200-300 and your gears might be worth something again.

S9 for $50? I can never find them at that price. 4 months ago I paid $200 for it and currently the prices I see around are more or less those.

[mikeywith]

S9 for $50? I can never find them at that price. 4 months ago I paid $200 for it and currently the prices I see around are more or less those.

It depends on where you get them from in the first place, but $200 does not make sense, it is a rip off, you paid 14.5$ per th for an S9, you can get m21s for close to half that rate.

You can get M21s in China for 7.5$ per th ( this is todays price list)

It has been awhile since i requested S9 prices, but if you need help sourcing them in China and your order qty is large enough i can arrange for you.

[hymperion]

since I have few amps and I don't make big purchases I usually buy on ebay.

then, living in Italy, I would still pay quite high customs fees if I had to buy large quantities from China.

[Atrax]

since I have few amps and I don't make big purchases I usually buy on ebay.

then, living in Italy, I would still pay quite high customs fees if I had to buy large quantities from China.

I also live in Italy. Cheapest way to buy them is through some addresses in Switzerland (Lugano).

[betosworld]

Our company (SafeTek Solutions) is currently looking for LARGE amounts of broken/unwanted/obsolete/scrap mining servers/equipment.

If you happen to come across a lot that fits the bill, please let me know.

I personally would like to use old Antminers for heat in the winter time lol