I do not agree with Antminer S2's pricing

[crazyates]

I believe the huge mod will be proper down clock of the s-1s to the lower wattage/voltage.  right now a down clock to freq 250 drops hash to 128gh and watts to 250.  volts stay the same. so watt per hash is not improved.

I run all my S1 Antminers undervolted to 8.5V at freq 275. They hash at 140 GH/s , around 160 watts at the wall. They run pretty quiet

 
please pm details .   do I just need to run a 9 volt power supply   to the gear using the older style hookup on the boards.  I know how to ssh the freq to 250 , 275 or 300.   

He meant he's got the chips undervolted from 1.10v to 0.85v. He is NOT running anything at 8.5v, that was a typo.

[noise23]

I believe the huge mod will be proper down clock of the s-1s to the lower wattage/voltage.  right now a down clock to freq 250 drops hash to 128gh and watts to 250.  volts stay the same. so watt per hash is not improved.

I run all my S1 Antminers undervolted to 8.5V at freq 275. They hash at 140 GH/s , around 160 watts at the wall. They run pretty quiet

 
please pm details .   do I just need to run a 9 volt power supply   to the gear using the older style hookup on the boards.  I know how to ssh the freq to 250 , 275 or 300.   

He meant he's got the chips undervolted from 1.10v to 0.85v. He is NOT running anything at 8.5v, that was a typo.

Yes it was a typo, sorry. I meant the chips undervolted to 0.85V, corrected my post now.

[ScaryHash]

With the undervolting on the S2, I bet you could put a 1500 W power supply in there, and take out the 1000 W Enermax and use it to power some leftover AntMiner S1's.

Then you could jack up your S2 to 1.2-1.3 TH, and buy some leftover S1's cheap.

You'd be up to 2 TH in no time, and probably pulling 3200 W at the wall. Just enough for 2 circuits, which should be no problem.

[Zelek Uther]

You're missing 2 things.

1) When the S2 was announced, Ant S1s were 0.98BTC, and the coinbase price was $634. This made the cost of buying 1TH/s of S1s almost $3200. Now you still had to spend a few hundred in PSUs, but you were hashing within a few days. The point is that upgrading only cost an extra $400, and you could cut your power consumption in half.


2) The chips in the S2 aren't "underpowered". The reality is that Bitmain is using the same chips in the S2 as what they've already been using the in S1. The difference is that the S1 chips were set at max voltage and max clocks, for max performance. The S2 chips are set at the lowest voltage, with a much lower clock rate, for max power efficiency.

Here are the chip ranges:


The S1 uses 8 banks of 8 chips (total=64 chips) at 2.8GHs/chip for 179.2GH/s. The S2 probably uses somewhere in the range of 600-650 chips at 1.6GHs/chip for a total of 1TH/s.

It's theoretically possible to take an S2, and increase the chip voltage and clock speeds to higher, but IDK if the boards can handle it, nor if the PSU it comes with can handle it. You could probably OC to 1.2 or more pretty easily, tho.

Well put. The third thing the OP is missing is the cost of PSUs to power those 5 overclocked S1s. S1s do not come with a PSU, S2 does.

[Gazza1]

Any of the Antminers are a ripoff and you will not make your investment back unless you hold your coins and hope Bitcoin someday rises.

[crazyates]

Any of the Antminers are a ripoff and you will not make your investment back unless you hold your coins and hope Bitcoin someday rises.

My goal for mining is to mine more BTC than it costs to buy the hardware. Our power costs are seen as an investment into BTC. The Antminers accomplish this.

https://tradeblock.com/mining/a/c526cb20e6

The current cost of 0.893BTC, that is easily accomplished within a 2-3 month timeframe. This is completely independent of price.

[herebittybittybitty]

Any of the Antminers are a ripoff and you will not make your investment back unless you hold your coins and hope Bitcoin someday rises.

The evidence you provide is overwhelming; you must be right. Aristotle would be proud.