Bitmaintech's Antminer S3+ vs. Spondoolies-Tech's SP30 / SP31 Yukon

[SMB-2525]

and in most of these apartments, are you able to run the SP30?  I doubt there's a proper circuit and a sound-proof dedicated room

but, winter is coming... heating included!!

IMHO, just S3s. You need a 30 amp circuit for an SP30 - right.

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[bozo333]

In your calculations you are assuming you will get a full month of mining with each difficulty. How do
you think that will happen? Each increase is on average every 14 or so days.

UPDATE: Think average of -12% every 14 days. The power of compounding-works both ways. Your ROI prognosis now
looks very different...

[TheJuice]

its amazing how the mining game has changed. it used to be bet on the company that will deliver 6 mo ahead of time. if right you win 2-3x.if youre wrong lose it all. now you know these companies will deliver (low risk) but we are now talking ~20% max roi over a year (low reward).

how much is an upset gf worth???

[SMB-2525]

how much is an upset gf worth???

I cranked upset gf into my BTC calculator. Using modified assumptions of $500/BTC exchange rate, 12% per bump every 12 days, $0.10/KWR power, $0.95/GHS investment in hardware and a 85W/GHS efficiency rating, it turns out that today, an upset gf is worth precisely 43% of an upset wife.

[jonnybravo0311]

Up Front Costs
10 S3 at 4.5TH/s is 3550 watts.  5.8BTC + PSUs.
1 SP30 at 4.5TH/s is 3000 watts.  $3895 + $300 shipping

Advantage: S3

Hosting
10 S3s, plus PSUs, lots of cabling, non-standard design
1 SP30, 1 network cable, 1 power cord, standard rack design

Advantage: SP30

Maintenance
10 S3s, individually configured, or creation of generic deployment scripts, individually managed firmware updates, or scripted, have to hunt on Bitmain's website to see if new versions are available
1 SP30, individually configured, individually managed firmware updates with clearly visible new version notifications

Advantage: SP30

Support
10 S3s, support handled through web-based tickets or email.  Long turnaround times and RMA through China.
1 SP30, direct support from Spondoolies-Tech staff including using TeamViewer to diagnose and troubleshoot problems directly on your machine.

Advantage: SP30

Time to Market
10 S3s shipped on or before 9/20
1 SP30 shipped end of September

Advantage: S3 (depending on how much before 9/20 they ship and what "End of September" means for SP30)

Disaster Recovery
10 S3s, losing a unit only costs 10% of your overall hashing speed
1 SP30, losing a unit costs 100% of your overall hashing speed

Advantage: S3

Conclusion
While the SP30 wins out in ease of deployment, support and maintenance, it loses on cost and potentially on time to market.  In favor of the S3 is precisely their ability to be spread around.  Use them as space heaters in the cold months, add a few more here and there to compensate for difficulty increases.  They can be reliably run at rated hashing speeds on 110V power.  The SP30 loses speed on 110V power due to PSU and firmware limitations.  You can test your luck and try to override those settings, but you'll void your warranty.

For data center deployment, the SP30 is the flat out winner.  The standard rack design works very well with high-density cabinets.  There's only a single machine with a power cable and a network cable.  The data center only needs to worry about managing a single IP address and providing remote access to the web-based configuration interface and direct SSH access can be controlled easily.

[RoadStress]

Disaster Recovery
10 S3s, losing a unit only costs 10% of your overall hashing speed
1 SP30, losing a unit costs 100% of your overall hashing speed

Advantage: S3

This is wrong. SP30 is built using a modular design. The whole unit can't fail so that you loose 100% hashrate. Each chip is independently and also each PSU is independently. So you can fail either 1 or more chips or 1 or 2 PSUs (highly unlikely). Most frequent fails are in a chip or series of chips (SP10). One SP30 chip is around 5% of the hashrate so the advantage would be SP30 here.

[jonnybravo0311]

Disaster Recovery
10 S3s, losing a unit only costs 10% of your overall hashing speed
1 SP30, losing a unit costs 100% of your overall hashing speed

Advantage: S3

This is wrong. SP30 is built using a modular design. The whole unit can't fail so that you loose 100% hashrate. Each chip is independently and also each PSU is independently. So you can fail either 1 or more chips or 1 or 2 PSUs (highly unlikely). Most frequent fails are in a chip or series of chips (SP10). One SP30 chip is around 5% of the hashrate so the advantage would be SP30 here.

I agree that the SP30 is modular and can certainly have single chips fail.  So can the S3.  I'm talking about failure.  Disaster recovery.  You lose that SP30, you're out 4.5TH/s.  You lose the S3, you're out 450GH/s.  It doesn't really have to be very dramatic.  Rip the network cable out of the unit.  Controller board fails.  It can happen, and when it does, losing that SP30 costs you everything.  Hence I gave the advantage to the S3.

[philipma1957]

how much is an upset gf worth???

I cranked upset gf into my BTC calculator. Using modified assumptions of $500/BTC exchange rate, 12% per bump every 12 days, $0.10/KWR power, $0.95/GHS investment in hardware and a 85W/GHS efficiency rating, it turns out that today, an upset gf is worth precisely 43% of an upset wife.

but that is an avg gf against an avg wife

you need 3 scales of gf against 3 scales of wife.

poor -normal - good    to poor-normal-good

a good gf  being upset  is  worth almost 95% of a poor wife being upset.

would be higher but a fully upset poor wife has a huge downside ---- alimony / child care.

(tongue firmly planted in my cheek)

[Biffa]

Don't underestimate the hosting advantage, you will be charged for space as well as power and 10 S3's take up a lot of space which can more than make up the initial difference in hardware cost.

[urbanBTC]

You ship

being able to omit VAT is my secret weapon here

How is it you don't pay VAT ?

Ship to a colocation facility outside the Eurozone; for example we have several European customers hosting S3's with us at $65/mo.

Be carefuls with ninjas!

He trieds to do a S3 buy that was trickys and was a lease!  And made it sound like Bitmain backed SLA - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=715299

Ship to somewhere safe with your miner! Watch out with dealing with ninjas!!

[Syke]

Don't underestimate the hosting advantage, you will be charged for space as well as power and 10 S3's take up a lot of space which can more than make up the initial difference in hardware cost.

Hardly. Almost every hosting contract for miners is rated by power. Even for S3s.

[TheDragonSlayer]

I prefer sp30, cause the power supply is included and they looks more neat. Antminer with power supply is a mess..

[RoadStress]

Don't underestimate the hosting advantage, you will be charged for space as well as power and 10 S3's take up a lot of space which can more than make up the initial difference in hardware cost.

Most regular DCs will charge you for the space too. DCs that know how bitcoin works won't charge you for space. Only for power(hint: Advania).

[Master One]

I've been watching the exchange rate go down over the last couple of days, that must have a huge impact on large mining farms not holding the BTC.

Playing around with mining calculators does not make any sense (well, it never really did) with unpredictable difficulty increase and exchange rate, but what the heck, I'm still considering investing in 6 or 9 S3+ (multiple of 3 to have each 3 on one EVGA1300) and buying some BTC (10 should do, this is a gamble, no serious investment, I've had worse luck with some stocks).

Although the SP30 (despite the higher purchase price ) would make more sense in the long run due to the lower energy consumption it pretty much is out of the picture now, because one has to think of selling the hardware off once not profitable any more, and a bunch of S3s is definitely easier to sell than one SP30. With the ROI calculations not considering the selling price of the hardware it should nevertheless be possible to reach a positiv ROI because used Antminers just sell.

What I have not found out so far:

If you place an order at Bitmaintech, when do you have to pay?

[jonnybravo0311]

I've been watching the exchange rate go down over the last couple of days, that must have a huge impact on large mining farms not holding the BTC.

Playing around with mining calculators does not make any sense (well, it never really did) with unpredictable difficulty increase and exchange rate, but what the heck, I'm still considering investing in 6 or 9 S3+ (multiple of 3 to have each 3 on one EVGA1300) and buying some BTC (10 should do, this is a gamble, no serious investment, I've had worse luck with some stocks).

Although the SP30 (despite the higher purchase price ) would make more sense in the long run due to the lower energy consumption it pretty much is out of the picture now, because one has to think of selling the hardware off once not profitable any more, and a bunch of S3s is definitely easier to sell than one SP30. With the ROI calculations not considering the selling price of the hardware it should nevertheless be possible to reach a positiv ROI because used Antminers just sell.

What I have not found out so far:

If you place an order at Bitmaintech, when do you have to pay?

Orders placed with Bitmain must be paid in full within an hour of placing the order.  They only accept BTC, and when you place the order, you're given a BTC address to which you will send payment.

[grn]

Disaster Recovery
10 S3s, losing a unit only costs 10% of your overall hashing speed
1 SP30, losing a unit costs 100% of your overall hashing speed

Advantage: S3

This is wrong. SP30 is built using a modular design. The whole unit can't fail so that you loose 100% hashrate. Each chip is independently and also each PSU is independently. So you can fail either 1 or more chips or 1 or 2 PSUs (highly unlikely). Most frequent fails are in a chip or series of chips (SP10). One SP30 chip is around 5% of the hashrate so the advantage would be SP30 here.

Tell that to psahx.....

Zvi, I have a problem...

One of my SP10s stopped mining several hours ago. Restart and reboot won't help. What are the suggestions?

Please help. Thanks.

[RoadStress]

Tell that to psahx.....

Oh

Hard-reset brought my SP10 back to life. Thanks Collider and Zvisha for help.

Ok. A single type of problem that was solved in no time with a hard reboot. For me the winner is already in my possession hashing nice and steady.

[grn]

Tell that to psahx.....

Oh

Hard-reset brought my SP10 back to life. Thanks Collider and Zvisha for help.

Ok. A single type of problem that was solved in no time with a hard reboot. For me the winner is already in my possession hashing nice and steady.

Congrats on your S3 purchase

[grn]

Hosting
10 S3s, plus PSUs, lots of cabling, non-standard design
1 SP30, 1 network cable, 1 power cord, standard rack design

Advantage: SP30



For data center deployment, the SP30 is the flat out winner.  The standard rack design works very well with high-density cabinets.  There's only a single machine with a power cable and a network cable.  The data center only needs to worry about managing a single IP address and providing remote access to the web-based configuration interface and direct SSH access can be controlled easily.

With the current price of Bitcoin SP30s hosting requirement may now be considered a disadvantage. In less than 90 days it wont even be able to pay the hosting fee

[jonnybravo0311]

Hosting
10 S3s, plus PSUs, lots of cabling, non-standard design
1 SP30, 1 network cable, 1 power cord, standard rack design

Advantage: SP30



For data center deployment, the SP30 is the flat out winner.  The standard rack design works very well with high-density cabinets.  There's only a single machine with a power cable and a network cable.  The data center only needs to worry about managing a single IP address and providing remote access to the web-based configuration interface and direct SSH access can be controlled easily.

With the current price of Bitcoin SP30s hosting requirement may now be considered a disadvantage. In less than 90 days it wont even be able to pay the hosting fee

That's relevant to both the SP30 and the S3 equally.  The advantage still goes to the SP30 regardless of what the price of BTC does.  The SP30 requires less space and less power in the hosted environment.