Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

48 THS, 58 THS and 72 THS MicroBT Whatsminer M20 Bitcoin ASIC Miner Up for Pre-Orders

19, Mar 2019

It seems that the ASIC miner market is waking up for the new generation of devices even with a market situation where profitability is still not that good as more ASIC manufacturers are announcing their new products. MicroBT, a Chinese manufacturer that is not very popular like Bitmain outside of Asia apparently, has is soon releasing their new generation M20 SHA256 ASIC miners for Bitcoin and other crypto currensies with the same algorithm and it resellers are already taking pre-orders for July delivery. Even though the official MicroBT website still has no info (to be officially unveiled on April 15th?), some of the partners such as Pangolin Miner and WhatsMiner Net have already listed for pre-order the new M20 ASIC in what seems to be 3 different configurations…

The MicroBT WhatsMiner M20 is a 12nm ASIC Bitcoin SHA256 miner with integrated power supply ad available in a M20V1 version with 48 THS hashrate with 2200W power usage (46W/Th) and 2500W integrated PSU available for $1450 USD, an M20V2 version with 58 THS hashrate with 3364W power usage (58W/TH) priced at about $1500 USD and M20S model with 72 THS with 3312W of power usage (46W/Th) available for $2160 USD. The provided integrated power supplies are apparently only 220V, so this could be a problem for use in some countries where different voltage for the power is being used such as USA!

Looking at the specifications it seems that the M20V2 version is most likely an overclocked variant of the V1 as it delivers higher hashrate, about 10 THS more, but at higher power consumption and worse efficiency. Thus the price difference between the two devices is not that big as most likely only the PSU is changed with a more powerful model in order to be able to handle the extra power usage. The top model M20S with 72THS has the same power efficiency as the standard M20V1, so apparently it has more chips running at the same operating frequencies and voltage as on the smallest model, however any additional significant overclock of this model may not be possible as the power supply shipped with the device may be already close to its maximum specs.

Bitmain Antminer Z11, a New More Powerful Equihash ASIC Miner

19, Mar 2019

The new Bitmain Antminer Z11 ASIC offers a hashing power of 135 KSol/s for the Equihash algorithm used by ZCash (ZEC) and other crypto currencies and is essentially the successor of the Antminer Z9 from the last year that offered 40 KSol/s and the Antminer Z9 mini that was just 10 KSol/s. The Antminer Z11 uses Bitmain’s latest proprietary 12nm chip, which is made using advanced Bare Die molding technology for better heat dissipation and has a power-efficiency of 10.50 J/KSol, so it is with significant improvement over the older hardware. The recommended power supply for this miner is 1800W, though the actual like the APW7 PSU from Bitmain, though the actual power consumption is lower (1418 W power consumption claimed). The current price of the Antminer Z11 is $1242 USD and shipping should start around the end of April (20-30).

Bitmain Antminer Z11 Specifications:
– Model No.: 240-Z
– Crypto Algorithm/Coins: EquiHash/Zcash
– Hashrate, KSol/s: 135
– Reference power on wall, Watt: 1418
– Reference power efficiency on wall @25°C, J/Ksol: 10.50
– Adapted AC/DC output requirement, Watt/ Volt: 1729/ 12.00
– Quantity of hash chips: 9
– Quantity of hash boards: 3
– Networking connection mode: RJ45 ethernet 10/100M
– Miner Size (Length*Width*Height, w/o package), mm: 242*134*302
– Net weight, kg: 5.40
– Noise, dBA @ 25°C: 70

– For more information about the Bitmain Antminer Z11 Equihash ASIC miner…

What About the Sapphire RX 570 16GB GPUs With ePIC Boost Miner for GRIN

7, Mar 2019

Back in January this year Sapphire, a popular name among AMD GPU miners, has announced their RX 570 GPUs with 16GB of video memory intended for use for GRIN crypto mining and more specifically the Cuckatoo31 algorithm that requires more video memory and can take advantage of the extra VRAM on these GPUs. This might have sounded interesting for some miners at least initially after the launch of the GRIN network and the hype and high initial price of the Grin coins, but things look different now. Miner developers have been able to optimize and enhance performance on 8GB+ Nvidia GPUs for the Cuckatoo 31 algorithm and the $399 USD mining GPU from Sapphire with just 6 months warranty already seems like a total joke when you compare performance…

The latest version of the miner specifically optimized for Grin mining on the Sapphire RX 570 16GB mining video cards ePIC Boost Miner supporting both Cuckaroo29 and Cuckatoo31 is apparently capable of delivering up to 2.6 G/s for Cuckaroo29 at 163W and up to 0.47 G/s for Cuckatoo31 at 195W if you have a top specs computer used for mining and not what a traditional GPU mining rig looks like. These results are for a mining rig with i5/i7/i9/Ryzen Multithreading CPU, PCIe 3.0 with Atomics and AMD ROCm Linux driver. If you use a low-end Celeron/Pentium CPU, like most GPU mining rigs do, PCIe 2.0 bus for the GPUs and the AMD GPU Pro driver you will be down to 1.5 G/s for Grin29 and 0.35 G/s for Grin31 according to the latest official performance results.

Now, how does an Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB of video memory compare with the currently fastest Cuckatoo31 miner NBMiner 21.0 under Windows 10 on a normal low-end mining rig with a Celeron CPU. You can easily get about 1.3-1.35 G/s with about 200W of power usage (lowered down TDP of the GPU, up to about 1.45 G/s with stock TDP) to get similar power usage as with the AMD. You get almost three times the performance with the Nvidia at the same power usage with two to three times the price of the AMD mining GPU from Sapphire and without a number of specific requirements that are not easy for a lot of miners.

The answer to the question are the Sapphire RX 570 16GB mining GPUs worth it at the moment is a simple NO! But what about the performance for the upcoming Grin Cuckatoo 32 protocol upgrade planned for 2020… well, who knows, but what will you be doing by then?


top