Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

New 2 THS Bitmain AntMiner S4 Bitcoin ASIC Miner Coming Soon

16, Sep 2014

bitmain-antminer-s4-asic

Bitmain has just posted a teaser about an upcoming product in the form of a Bitcoin ASIC miner – AntMiner S4. The new miner is supposed to offer 2 THS hashrate, but no other specifications or price is yet revealed. The tester does say however that the new miner should be available for order by the end of the week and it should start shipping to customers by the end of September. So it seems that the company is returning back to their previous way of doing business – announcing new miner and starting to ship it soon after orders are accepted and paid. Unlike with their recent announcement of a pre-order Scrypt ASIC miner – Bitmain Antminer L1 that did get not so positive feedback from users that are not happy with pre-orders that they have to wait for months.

How to Revive Your ZeusMiner Scrypt ASIC at the End of This Year

9, Sep 2014

zeusminer-gen3-upgrade-boards

Zeus has come up with an interesting new upgrade program for the owners of their ZeusMiner Scrypt ASIC miners that is supposed to allow users to make their current miners more up to date and profitable again at the end of the year. If you have purchased a previous generation ZeusMiner you are able to pre-order ZEUS GEN III chip Blades that you can use to replace your existing boards and make the miner much more powerful in terms of hashrate while fitting in the same power usage limit as your current hardware. You are going to essentially use the cases and cooling radiators and fans of your existing hardware and only replace the chip boards with the same modules that the recently announced ZeusMiner Volcano will be using.

The prices for the upgrade boards are quite attractive at the moment and they should not be very expensive to ship, because you will not be getting a whole miner with the big size and weight due to the case and cooling. ZeusMiner distributors such as MinerEU are also accepting pre-orders for the Generation 3 upgrade boards as well as the Volcano Scrypt ASIC. What you should know however is that these upgrade boards should be available and start shipping sometime by the end of December. If Zeus manages to keep their promise on the specifications they have announced the upgrade boards will most likely be a great way to revive your Scrypt ASIC as it may be a bit outdated in terms of performance by the end of the year. So while pre-orders could be risky, at this point of time the upgrade offer from Zeus does seem quite attractive to owners of ZeusMiner Scrypt ASIC devices.

New 300 MHS ZeusMiner Volcano Scrypt ASIC Miner Up for Pre-Order

4, Sep 2014

zeusminer-volcano-scrypt-asic-miner

Zeus has just announced their third generation of Scrypt ASIC miners and has started taking pre-orders for end of Q4 delivery. For the moment the only Gen III miner is the ZeusMiner Volcano that should be capable of 300 MHS with just 1000W of power usage. The next generation of Scrypt mining chips should be capable of 1.2 MHS per chip and with a per chip power usage of less than 4 Watts, so a 256-chip device should be capable of providing the advertised 300 MHS hashrate. The standard price for the new ZeusMiner Volcano Scrypt ASIC is $1699 USD, however the first 500 units will be sold for a discounted price of $1599 USD and existing customers also get a $50 USD discount code in their accounts for use on Volcano orders. Furthermore if you use BTC or LTC for your payment, then you will get an extra 5% discount from the price of the miner.

Zeus does provide a guarantee that they will deliver the Volcano by the end of Q4 2014, and they even back that promise by offering the customers to give an extra Volcano miner if the shipment is delayed by 1 moth or the power consumption is 50% higher than initially promised. Not a bad offer for something that you need to pre-order and pay in advance, but you should still be careful and consider well should you decide to pre-order mining hardware. As we’ve seen with the more recent pre-orders for Scrypt ASIC miners offered by companies such as KNCMiner or Alpha Technology by the time these are shipped there is a high probability that they will not even be able to ROI let alone make profit and the reason for that is the very long time it took from announcing pre-orders to the release on the market. The case with the ZeusMiner Volcano is not such however as the hardware is not so expensive and the time for delivery is not that far, furthermore Zeus has already delivered Scrypt ASIC miners. Nevertheless be careful with pre-orders and do the math carefully when deciding should you invest in a Volcano miner or not.


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