Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

FutureBit Apollo BTC – A Bitcoin ASIC Miner and Full Node

1, Feb 2021

FutureBit Apollo BTC is an upcoming SHA256 ASIC miner designed for home users that is capable of not only mining, but also running a Full Bitcoin node. The device comes in the form of a compact and silent desktop class computer machine and is intended for home use and not for use in large crypto mining farms. It is based on the same idea of the FutureBit Apollo LTC Pod Scrypt ASIC Miner and Full Litecoin Node, but further improving things and not just only focusing on Bitcoin here.

FutureBit announced it is going to be taking Pre-Orders for the Apollo BTC starting this Friday 2/5/21 at 6PM EST (GMT-5) on their official website with shipping expected to begin at the end of April. The Batch 1 price starts at $349.99 USD, but the full package with the 500GB M.2 SSD and 200W dedicated PSU will cost you $599.99 USD and this is what you should probably get as it is the complete package that is ready to run.

The FutureBit Apollo BTC device consists of six CPU cores, 44 ASIC cores, 500GB NVMe-based SSD drive, quiet cooler, and with less than 200 Watts of power usage. At the heart of the new Apollo BTC device is a revamped SBC (Single Board Computer), that is as powerful as any consumer grade desktop system according to the developers and can run almost any Bitcoin Application natively on the device 24/7. All you have to do is to take it out of the box, plug it in, power it on, and you are already running a full Bitcoin node without needing to do anything more.

You can install a wallet of your choice, use any hardware wallet, run BTCPayServer, run a block explorer, run a Lightning Node and so much more. All of this is possible with the help of a six core ARM based CPU with 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB NVMe SSD drive that can easily store a FULL non pruned Bitcoin Node. The Apollo BTC device should be able to synchronize a Full Node in less than 48 hours, which is a record for a device of its class and almost an order of magnitude faster than any Raspberry Pi 4 based Bitcoin Full Node.

The FutureBit Apollo BTC mining hashrate and power usage is varying based on the settings you run it at, it should be capable of delivering between 2 and 3.8 TH/s of SHA256 performance per miner with 125 Watts of power usage in ECO mode, and 200 Watts in TURBO mode respectively. The best thing of all is that the device should be pretty silent, regardless of the modes it is running in, so that it can be friendly for home use as this is where its intended use is.

FutureBit Apollo BTC Features:
– Compact All-In-One Desktop Bitcoin System (4x6x4in) that mines Bitcoin and any SHA256 based crypto (Bitcoin Cash etc).
– Powerful 6 ARM Core CPU with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 500GB NVMe SSD (NOT included in the Standard or Standard + package).
– Comes Pre-Installed with a Bitcoin node, and you can install almost any Bitcoin Application
– Very wide range of operation modes with preset ECO (quiet) mode, BALANCED, and TURBO mode.
– 2-3.8 TH/s of SHA256 performance per miner (+/- 5%)
– 125 Watts in ECO mode, and 200 Watts in TURBO * +/- 10%
– Can be used as a full Desktop computer with a monitor keyboard and mouse (not included), or through our Web UI
– Connect almost any peripheral with our USB 3.0 ports, USB C port, HDMI, AC Wifi, and Bluetooth
– Clocks and Power is fully customizable by user with easy-to-use interface
– Hashboard now monitors both voltage and power draw for accurate measurements*
– Custom designed cold forged hexagonal pin heatsink with leading thermal performance for the quietest ASIC miner in operation!
– 1k-5k RPM Quiet Dual Ball Bearing Fan with automatic thermal management with onboard temperature sensor
– Controlled via local connection on a web browser similar to Antminers. You can simply set it up via smartphone browser. No crazy driver installs, hard to use miner software or scripts needed.
– Two Six Pin PCIE power connectors for wide-range of power draw
– Custom Designed all Aluminum case
– Ships with a custom built 200W 94% efficient PSU and is ready to run out of the box! (Does NOT come with Standard package).

– For More Information About the FutureBit Apollo BTC ASIC Miner and Full Bitcoin Node…

Ethereum (ETH) Mining With ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3090 Water-Cooled GPU

26, Jan 2021

Recently we have built a 720 MHs Ethereum Mining Rig With 6x MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPUs and shared our experience with it, and we just got our hands on a water- cooled RTX 3090 GPU form ASUS and had to give it a go for Ethereum mining as well. The ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3090 video card is the result of collaboration between ASUS and EK, it comes with EK full-coverage water block and takes up just a single slot.

Specifications wise the ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3090 is just like a standard RTX 3090 video card with 350W TDP rating and dual 8-pin PCI-E power connectors that are supplying the required power along with the PCI-E x16 slot (be careful with extender power draw for mining rigs). The EK full cover water block is a high-flow one that should efficiently cool not only the GPU, but also the memory chips and other hot components on the front of the video card and the aluminium backplate at the back should also help with not only keeping things together, but also with cooling. The EK water block is made from copper and is nickel plated for better looks and for improved durability, there is a transparent plexiglass top and an addressable RGB strip with support for ASUS Aura Sync.

Here are some specifications from GPU-Z: the base GPU clock is 1395 MHz, the boost clock is 1695 MHz and the memory clock is 1219 MHz (19.5 Gbps effective) with Micron GDDR6X chips and a 384-bit wide memory bus. That is your typical GA102 GPU specs and what you should expect from an Nvidia RTX 3090 video card that is not factory overclocked. The default TDP of the video card is 350W here (unlike some OC models that come with 420W TDP) even though the GPU is water cooled and you can change it in the range between 28.6% and 104.6%, so not a lot of headroom for overclock – just about 5% extra or 366W max. We are more interested in optimizing TDP for lower power consumption, not aiming for higher with mining though in order to maximize performance and power efficiency.

Running the PhoenixMiner in order to check what Ethereum hashrate can we get with stock settings (default GPU and VRAM clocks and 100% TDP) – no surprise here with the result of 106.8 MH/s with the water-cooled GPU running at 51 degrees Celsius with the power usage reported from the miner is 322W, so it is almost filling up the available 100% Power Limit level. Hashrate for Ethereum in the range of 105-106 MH/s is the normal result for Nvidia RTX 3090 GPUs at default settings. Here we have water cooling on the GPU and memory and that is nice as far as silent operation is required for use in your home computer for example, but that does not mean that things will most definitely be much better compared to good air-cooled RTX 3090 video card. A good air cooler on an Nvidia RTX 3090 can also do around 50 degrees Celsius for the GPU with fans at 100%, though the noise will be more than when using water-cooling.

The more important thing here is the operating temperature of the memory. We were eager to see if the water-cooling improves the situation with the hot video memory on RTX 3090 or not when mining Ethereum (ETH) and the memory is under high load constantly. Unfortunately, even with the water-cooling the temperature of the backplate is still in the 70 degrees Celsius range when mining which is similar to what we’ve already seen on other air-cooled RTX 3090 video cards. Checking the backplate with a thermal imaging camera shows that at stock settings when mining you get around 72.8 C (the hottest spot) and with overclocked memory the hottest spot on the backplate where the memory chips are is 75.8 C, because even though the GPU power consumption is reduced, the memory uses more power due to the higher operating frequency due to the overclock we have applied.

On the ASUS EKWB GeForce RTX 3090 we’ve managed to lower down the Power Limit level to 76% with the video card still capable of providing 106 MH/s hashrate for Ethereum mining with about 266W of power usage reported by the miner (the same hashrate as with 100% TDP). Overclocking the video memory with 1100 MHs over the stock settings in MSI Afterburner and increasing the Power Limit level at 86% allowed us to reach 120.4 MH/s hashrate and 301W of power usage for the video card as reported by the miner software.

Optimized ASUS RTX 3090 EKWB ETH Mining Settings:
– TDP: 86%
– GPU: -400 MHz
– VRAM: +1100 MHz

We got 14 MHS more with 14% less power usage, but we kind of hoped for better results from the water-cooling of the RTX 3090. You can continue pushing the memory clock higher than our sweet spot of +1100 MHz that ensures 120 MH/s hashrate for a few extra megahashes, but we are worried about the memory temperature and the possibility of it starting to throttle because of getting too high. That is why we would recommend to place a cooling fan on top of the GPU backplate to help keep things cooler even if mining Ethereum with stock settings, let alone after you overclock the video memory, so that it will help keep things running optimally and problem free on the long run!

– For more information about the ASUS GeForce RTX3090-24G-EK Water-Cooled GPU…

720 MHs Ethereum Mining Rig With 6x MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPUs

23, Jan 2021

The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G (Nvidia RTX 3090 or GA102 graphics processor) features 10496 CUDA cores with 1860 MHz Boost clock for the GPU, it has 328 TMUs and 112 ROPs, the SM count is 82, there are 328 Tensor cores and 82 RT cores. The card is equipped with 24GB GDDR6X video memory with 384-bit wide memory bus running at 1219 MHz with 19.5 Gbps effective memory speed for a whooping bandwidth of 936.2 GB/s. Normally the RTX 3090 GPUs are rated at 350W TDP and need 2x 8-Pin PCI-E power connectors, but these SUPRIM X cards have a TDP of 420W and feature 3x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors. This is important as it means that you would need 18x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors and a powerful enough power supply or actually two for that matter to make your life easier. The cooler of the video cards is massive and very effective, there is a backplate with heatpipes on the back and triple fans with dual ball-bearings to keep things cool and not very noisy even when running at 100% speeds. Keeping everything operating at low temperatures is very important when mining and especially with powerful GPUs that use a lot of power. The GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G is easily cooled as far as the GPU is concerned as the operating temperatures at stock settings are quite low, but the issue that needs to be addressed with RTX 3090 is also keeping the GDDR6X memory chips as cool as possible. The video memory gets hot, especially when using the card to mine Ethereum (ETH) and you can experience hashrate drops if they get too hot, not to mention that they can give you further trouble if not properly cooled while mining in the not-so-distant future.

Why use Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 video cards for mining when they are much more expensive than Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs and when we know that they are not going to offer us the best price/performance match for Ethereum (ETH) crypto mining. At the moment with all the GPU shortages on the markets it is you mine with what you can get and if it is RTX 3090 then it is RTX 3090. Of course, there are options that offer better price/performance ratio such as RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and even the RTX 3060 Ti, but the RTX 3080 is definitely the best choice you have, but then again it is also the hardest if not impossible to find at the moment. The runner up is the RTX 3060 Ti as it is the cheapest 30-series GPU to give you really high hashrate for Ethereum mining, but another one that is also very hard to find. So, it seems that the RTX 3090 are easier to find because of their very high price with RTX 3070 cards also more easily popping up from time to time, unlike the RTX 3080 or RTX 3060 Ti. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is definitely the fastest video card for Ethereum mining at the moment with its stock hashrate of roughly 105 MHS at default settings, but you can tweak it a bit to get up to around 120 MHS. If you manage to get your hands on RTX 3080 GPUs then do not hesitate as these are significantly cheaper and can still provide you with about 90-95 MHS hashrate with tweaked settings.

As already mentioned, the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPU is capable of giving you around 105 MHS hashrate for Ethereum mining out of the box at stock settings and that means about 400W of power usage per GPU. With a bit of tweaking, you can get better hashrate and with a lower power usage – lower electricity expenses and better cooling for long term mining operation without problems. On the RTX 3090 it is a wise idea to go for 100% speed of the cooling fans, so make sure you get GPUs with good quality ball-bearing fans (yes, there are RTX 3090 GPUs with sleeve bearings being sold by some brands!!!). We start by lowering the Power Limit level down until we see the hashrate starting to drop below the MHS we get at stock settings, in the case of the MSI RTX 3090 GPUs this happened at around 65% TDP. So, with 35% less power used we can still get 105 MHS mining Ethereum (ETH) with RTX 3090, meaning there is no reason whatsoever to waste any extra power without any additional performance. Then it is time to overclock the video memory and at some point, we may also need to bump up the TDP level with a few percent to allow more headroom due to the increased memory power consumption for the extra hashrate. The settings below for the MSI RTX 3090 SUPRIM X GPUs provide us with a hashrate of 120.9 MHS per GPU mining Ethereum or for the whole 6x GPU mining rig we get a little over 720 MHS total and that is an impressive number for a single mining rig with just six video cards in it.

Optimized RTX 3090 Mining Settings:
– TDP: 73%
– GPU: -400 MHz
– VRAM: +1100 MHz
– FANs: 100%

With these settings PhoenixMiner reports a bit over 1800W of total power usage for the six GPUs with a little over 300W per GPU, but measuring the power consumption at the wall and taking into account the other components in the mining rig as well as the power supply efficiency the total power usage for the whole rig is more like 2100 Watts, the energy you end up paying for. This means that a single 2000W PSU such as Leadex Super Flower 2000W is not enough (we know, we tested it) with the following settings. If you drop down the Power Limit to about 65% you can manage with a single really good 2000W PSU, but it will be pushed near its limit, so not a good idea on the long term for a number of reasons. Not to mention the fact that a single even 2000W PSU does not come with enough 8-pin PCI-E power connectors and using cable splitters on such power-hungry GPUs is never a good idea as it could cause issues with the power cables or PSU connectors burning. What you need to just do is add a second less powerful PSU, so we ended up doing 4 GPUs on the 2000W Leadex and then added a second Corsair 1200W PSU for the remaining two cards. This way the mining rig can work well even at 100% TDP with full load without having trouble with the power supplies, just know to be on the safe side that even 2x 1200W power supplies might be on the edge, so consider going with a bit more powerful PSUs to be on the safe side.

Based on our experience so far, the +1100 MHz memory overclock seems to be the sweet spot for the RTX 3090 and also in general for other Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs in terms of performance, stability and operating temperatures when using the cards to mine Ethereum. Sure, it is possible to get a bit higher operating frequency up to about +1300 MHz on some GPUs, but not all may work stable and frankly we are more concerned about the operating temperatures of the GDDR6X chips when overclocking too much. Higher operating frequency means higher temperature and more power used, not to mention that the extra boost of about 1-2 MHS you get by pushing the video memory further may not be worth the trouble. So, single MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G video card doing 120 MHS at a little more than 300W of power used for mining Ehtereum (ETH) and a 6x GPU rug with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 cards doing 720 MHS in total is definitely impressive performance. The GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs are a little graphical performance monsters and that goes not only for memory intensive crypto algorithms like Ethash, but for more GPU intensive ones as well. That would of course need some more time testing and experimenting with and may need different GPU/VRAM/TDP settings for the cards in order to maximize performance in a specific algorithm…

– For more information about MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPUs…
– To Download the latest PhoenixMiner 5.5b AMD and Nvidia Ethereum (ETH) miner…


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