Butterfly Labs - Bitforce Single and Mini Rig Box

[triplehelix]

if they used actual thermal epoxy, it might indeed be a daunting task to remove the heatsink.  we'd need to know if it's naked silicon under the heatsink, or if there is a metal cap that the heatsink attaches to.  if its capped, often a razor blade and some patience go a long way, and you can scrape and sand any residue that can't be removed with a solvent.  can't do that with naked silicon.

It has a heat spreader (no naked silicon).  Still rather daunting.  I guess BFL might be willing to sell boards with no heatsink or thermal epoxy but mounting a waterblock w/ thermal epoxy isn't something I would be comfortable with.  Not the kind of wattage (thermal load) we are talking about here.  Obviously the current cooling system is sub-optimal and they might be looking to change.  If/when they do I hope they put some push pin holes in the board even if they aren't used.  That would allow alternative cooling.  Not just watercooling but miner's experimenting w/ larger cpu style heatpipe heatsink fan assemblies.

the big question then is exactly how tenacious the adhesive they used is.  if its just an adhesive TIM, no big job at all, if its thermal epoxy that cures strong like bull, well that's a much different situation, but most likely not a show stopper.

as for mounting the water block, i'm pretty sure a couple of zip ties and an adhesive thermal pad would do the job well.

i agree fully though, if they included mounting holes spaced like standard CPU holes, that would be the best option.

[abbeytim]

it seems like water cooling might be a good option for these units, both from a performance and noise perspective.

That was my first thought.  Since they appear to be the thermally limited I wonder if you could get 900 MH/s with watercooling.

Two problems
a) no mounting holes.  If it had any kind of pushthrough mounting holes you could use a universal northbridge water waterblock.

b) it looks like heatsink is epoxied on ?  If so removing it is going to be tough and depending on the thermal epoxy used you might not be able to get enough of it off to get a smooth surface for mounting.

Maybe in revision b?  A unit sold w/ no heat sinks or fans for watercooling?

remember these were made to plug and play easy to use  but i do agree  maybe they should use better heatsinks and or better fans

[bombo999]

looks like they have raised the price on the rig box to $30,055.00 ... and have removed bitcoin as a payment method

[rph]

-has all the FPGA competition been wiped out with this weapon ?

BFL's performance per watt is only about half of a 45nm FPGA, and 1/4 of a 28nm FPGA.
It looks fine today compared to 45nm GPUs and I'm sure their marketing talents
will generate some short-term sales, but 45nm and 28nm FPGAs can and will destroy this thing technically.

The payoff for a BFL unit today (832MH/s, $599, constant price/difficulty) is around 7 months.
28nm FPGAs will be mining in large numbers well before then.

-rph

[triplehelix]

looks like they have raised the price on the rig box to $30,055.00 ... and have removed bitcoin as a payment method

still showing $24.9 on the product page, but $29,890.00 on the detail page.  that a 20% price increase...which is huge.

[nbtcminer]

@RPH (Roger Patrick Harris?):

Do you really think that there will be 28nm FPGAs coming out in 7 - 8 months at an affordable price range? And if so, which companies are even doing R&D on a bitcoin mining solution?


Cheers,
nbtcminer

-has all the FPGA competition been wiped out with this weapon ?

BFL's performance per watt is only about half of a 45nm FPGA, and 1/4 of a 28nm FPGA.
It looks fine today compared to 45nm GPUs and I'm sure their marketing talents
will generate some short-term sales, but 45nm and 28nm FPGAs can and will destroy this thing technically.

The payoff for a BFL unit today (832MH/s, $599, constant price/difficulty) is around 7 months.
28nm FPGAs will be mining in large numbers well before then.

-rph

[fred0]

Since Inaba's single is no longer online, I thought I'd post the spreadsheet(LibreOffice Calc) I was using to track its performance.

http://www.fileswap.com/dl/eO5m5bYRg/Inaba_Single.ods.html

[Inaba]

I can put it back online if people want.  I just figured since one was in the wild, it was kind of redundant.

[fred0]

I can put it back online if people want.  I just figured since one was in the wild, it was kind of redundant.

No need. I was simply measuring performance. On the second sheet is a graph, where you can see the MH/s over time.

[makomk]

Inaba, are CGminer and Ufasoft the only miner options available

I have a poclbm fork but it's a bit quirky, I've no idea if it works with the non-prototype hardware, and it probably doesn't work anyway right now due because there's a bug in the core poclbm code which that branch doesn't have the fix for. To be honest CGminer is better anyway.

[matthewh3]

Just ordered one today with PayPal how long is UK delivery?  Emailed them this morning and they haven't got back yet?

[Epoch]

Just ordered one today with PayPal how long is UK delivery?  Emailed them this morning and they haven't got back yet?

I suspect they have been inundated with orders ever since Inaba and Gigavps started to publicly display their units. My understanding is that BFL has generally been quite timely in responding to customers (via email correspondence).

[matthewh3]

Does anyone know how difficult/easy these are to set up to do merged mining on P2Pool?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Does anyone know how difficult/easy these are to set up to do merged mining on P2Pool?

It shouldn't be any different.

The miner hardware (actual CPU/GPU/FPGA) simply gets a binary blob of data combines it with a nonce that it increments, hashes it and looks for nonces "small" enough". It has really no concept of what it is doing.

It is the mining software which sets up those "work units" and returns proofs of work. 
It is the pool (p2pool daemon for p2pool) which ensures the blockheaders work for both chains.

[matthewh3]

Does anyone know how difficult/easy these are to set up to do merged mining on P2Pool?

It shouldn't be any different.

The miner hardware (actual CPU/GPU/FPGA) simply gets a binary blob of data combines it with a nonce that it increments, hashes it and looks for nonces "small" enough". It has really no concept of what it is doing.

It is the mining software which sets up those "work units" and returns proofs of work. 
It is the pool (p2pool daemon for p2pool) which ensures the blockheaders work for both chains.

Does anyone know where I should look for info on setting one up using Ubuntu.  Only ever set up a CPU miner before on Ubuntu which wasn't very difficult thanks to simple instructions.

[kano]

Does anyone know how difficult/easy these are to set up to do merged mining on P2Pool?

It shouldn't be any different.

The miner hardware (actual CPU/GPU/FPGA) simply gets a binary blob of data combines it with a nonce that it increments, hashes it and looks for nonces "small" enough". It has really no concept of what it is doing.

It is the mining software which sets up those "work units" and returns proofs of work. 
It is the pool (p2pool daemon for p2pool) which ensures the blockheaders work for both chains.

Does anyone know where I should look for info on setting one up using Ubuntu.  Only ever set up a CPU miner before on Ubuntu which wasn't very difficult thanks to simple instructions.

The P2Pool thread?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

[matthewh3]

Does anyone know how difficult/easy these are to set up to do merged mining on P2Pool?

It shouldn't be any different.

The miner hardware (actual CPU/GPU/FPGA) simply gets a binary blob of data combines it with a nonce that it increments, hashes it and looks for nonces "small" enough". It has really no concept of what it is doing.

It is the mining software which sets up those "work units" and returns proofs of work. 
It is the pool (p2pool daemon for p2pool) which ensures the blockheaders work for both chains.

Does anyone know where I should look for info on setting one up using Ubuntu.  Only ever set up a CPU miner before on Ubuntu which wasn't very difficult thanks to simple instructions.

The P2Pool thread?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

This thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62842.0 - looks better for setting up P2Pool to merge mine on Ubuntu but there is no instructions on setting the BFL's up on cgminer using Ubuntu.

[bulanula]

Just ordered one today with PayPal how long is UK delivery?  Emailed them this morning and they haven't got back yet?

PLEASE let us know when they arrive and how much you are taxed, VAT, import duty, shipping etc.

Eg all in all how much does a single unit cost fully in GBP to my door with all the extra $$$ included etc.

I bet they won't be marking them as "gifts"

Thanks !

[cablepair]

I have placed two orders in the last couple of days, first i placed an order 2 BFL singles  with bitcoin as payment but like an hour later they took Bitcoin off their site as accepted payment, so I placed another order this morning to order paying with dwolla

I have not heard back from them at all by email or by phone

I am hoping they are just not working today (friday) and will be around monday. I would really like to get my order in motion.

Anyone else having a similar experience or currently trying to place an order with BFL other than with PayPal?

[matthewh3]

Just ordered one today with PayPal how long is UK delivery?  Emailed them this morning and they haven't got back yet?

PLEASE let us know when they arrive and how much you are taxed, VAT, import duty, shipping etc.

Eg all in all how much does a single unit cost fully in GBP to my door with all the extra $$$ included etc.

I bet they won't be marking them as "gifts"

Thanks !

My PayPal payment came to £449.15