Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

BaikalMiner Baikal Giant X10 ASIC Miner Coming Soon

12, Sep 2017

It seems that BaikalMiner also wants to join in the recent wave of new and much faster second generation X11 ASIC miners with their Baikal Giant X10 that was just announced on their twitter account (still not on the official website). The device is supposedly going to offer 10 GHS hashrate for X11 (DASH) at 800W of power usage as well as Quark and Qubit algorithms initially with lower power usage. Support for X13, X14 and X15 is not available on this device, but there is a mention of a future update that will add 4 new algorithms. The miner will supposedly be available at a price of $1188 USD with deliveries starting by the end of October. It is certainly not the fastest, but pricing does seem pretty reasonable for what you get in terms of hashrate and the extra flexibility in the form of support for additional algorithms is interesting and still unique compared to other X11 only ASIC miners.

Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A 6x PCI-E GPU Mining Motherboard

8, Sep 2017

The chances are not many of you have heard about the Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A motherboard that is intended for 6x GPU mining rigs and the reason for that is probably the fact that Gigabyte hasn’t been promoting this product much as a mining motherboard. Gigabyte is a bit late on the GPU mining front with a motherboard designed for mining rigs with the GA-H110-D3A, even though the motherboard comes with up to date specs. That however does not mean that the company hasn’t been offering other higher-end products that are good to go for use for crypto mining, there are quite a few of these already and we have been using some of the models ourselves. The GA-H110-D3A however is still new for us and we are going to be giving it a try and sharing our experience with the motherboard pretty soon anyway.

The key thing about the Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A is that it comes at an attractive price and has all the features you need in order to build a regular GPU mining rig with 6x video cards. It is a basic motherboard with 6x PCI-E slots (single x16 and five x1 slots) that needs to be durable and reliable and be cost effective, so no shiny extras that you won’t be needing anyway for mining. The motherboard comes with a M.2 slot allowing you to use SSD in that format and save some extra space and cabling, especially power cables as they may be a problem in some situations. There are also a couple of things to make the product more attractive marketing wise, though you probably won’t benefit much from them such as USB 3.1 Gen1 support, high quality onboard audio design or a Realtek Gigabit LAN with cFosSpeed internet accelerator software. Some of the extra features might be actually helpful however such as Humidity Protection Glass Fabric PCB, High ESD Ethernet & USB Port Protection or High Temperature Protection Lower RDS(on) MOSFETs Design as often mining rigs are not working in the best possible conditions.

Gigabyte has an interesting microsite for mining that is centered on the H110-D3A motherboard, but also has some more useful information for other of the company’s products that can be used for mining. The most interesting part is probably the table listing 12 different Gigabyte motherboards with information on what BIOS version to use for mining and how many GPUs can be used on the specific model. Do note that there are some motherboards that do require the use of additional M.2 to PCI-E adapter in order to reach the listed number of GPUs. For example the Z170-Gaming K3 is one of the board that we have used a lot for 6x GPU mining that did not have support for more than six video cards up until BIOS F22, but now Gigabyte seems to be saying that it will work with F23a using an additional M.2 to PCI-E adapter (something we need to test). There are even some motherboards for up to 9x GPUs with dual M.2 adapters like the Z170X-Gaming 5 and Z170X-Gaming 6, though you might actually have a problem using all 9 under Windows for example.

– Here is the Gigabyte microsite with some information and tips regarding mining motherboards…

FutureBit Moonlander 2, An Upcoming Scrypt USB ASIC Miner

30, Aug 2017

Last year we have tested and reviewed the FutureBit MoonLander USB Scrypt ASIC Miner and have found it to be a well-designed and working miner. Unfortunately with hashrate maxing at just about 1 MHS at that time it was not very up to date for practical use with mining profitability in mind. The good news is that there is a new version of the miner in the works – FutureBit Moonlander 2 and the new device will be more interesting specifications wise.

The FutureBit Moonlander 2 USB Scrypt ASIC miner is supposedly offering an efficiency of about 1.3 Watts per MHS and the device should be capable of delivering between 3 and 5 megahashes for Scrypt mining (depending on settings). With the recent peak of the interest in Litecoin we could be seeing increased interest in these devices as well. The new version of the USB Scrypt ASIC should most likely be available for orders in October with deliveries starting at the end of October or early November. The price is not yet fixed, but it will most likely be in the range of $40-$60 USD per miner.

Preliminary specifications of the miner:
– Hashrate: 3-5 MHS Scrypt performance per miner
– Power usage: about 1.5W per MHS for most of that range
– Operating frequency: core clock from 500 MHz to nearly 1 GHz!
– Operating voltage: fully customizable core voltage range from 0.6V – 1V
– Fully redesigned 5v->core voltage stage with about 95% efficiency
– Heavy duty/over speced parts were used to ensure wide range of operation (stick can be pushed to nearly 6mh if you can cool it)
– Status LEDs for power, TX and RX transmission
– Uses latest bfgminer 5.4 for control
– Will work with all Mac OS, Linux, and Windows based PCs, as well as RPi’s etc (and I will be offering easy to use pre-compiled binaries)

– For more information about the FutureBit Moonlander 2 USB Scrypt ASIC miner…


top