Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

HashFlare, a New Cloud Mining Service

26, Apr 2015

hashflare-bitcoin-cloud-mining

HashFlare is a new cloud mining service that we’ve just discovered, apparently a part of the European company HashCoins that manufactures ASIC miners. There is a bit of controversy surrounding the ASIC maker, but it has been available for a while and apparently has shipped some miners already with more available for pre-order. We have not tested any of their hardware miners, but their cloud mining service is something that we are going to be testing. If you are interested in their mining hardware we suggest that you read a bit about the company and their products released so far, as their upcoming products do not seem very attractive price wise at the moment. Their cloud mining prices do seem a bit more interesting though, but don’t expect them to be the best out there.

hashflare-bitcoin-cloud-mining-prices

It is interesting to mention that the cloud mining service does offer Scrypt Cloud Mining at $9.95 per 1 MHS, something that is not worth investing at all at the moment in due to the very high price per megahash and very low ROI you can expect (less than 1 USD a month) due to the daily fee of $0.01 USD per megahash. The Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate prices do seem much better than he Scrypt ones, though we’ve seen better than $4.45 USD per 10 GHS with a daily fee of $0.01 USD per 10 GHS. Interestingly enough the service apparently also plans to offer Scrypt-N cloud mining powered by GPUs, even though that has not been profitable to mine for quite a while now and with the mother company having already announced upcoming Scrypt-N capable ASIC miners. So if you want to check the service out the only thing that is worth to go for is the SHA-256 cloud mining hashrate, and as usual we would not recommend to go with a large investment in a new service that has recently been launched.

hashflare-dashboard-hashrate

We have already purchased 100 GHS worth of Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate as an initial test at the service just to test things and we have even found some promotional codes that can give you discount from the regular prices. So if you do want to try HashFlare you might want to use the promo code for 5% off for purchases over 250 GHS – HF15SMMR5P2 or 20% off for purchases over 2500 GHS – HF15SMMR20P2, the codes should be valid for Scrypt hashrate as well. We have paid for the hashrate with Bitcoins and as soon as the first network confirmation was received the hashrate was available in our account, so it started mining for us. There are alternative ways to pay for hashrate such as with wire transfer or a credit card also available aside from the BTC option. You can apparently also purchase additional hashrate with coins you have mined and have available in your balance, so you can easily reinvest some of the miner coins for more hashrate. Another interesting feature is the ability to select up to 3 different pools to spread your hashrate from a list of pools available, you do not need to add workers or to have registration in any of the pools available. Do note that apparently the poos you choose and the percentage of your hashrate available at each pool may apparently affect your mining profitability.

– To check out the HashFlare Bitcoin Cloud Mining Service powered by HashCoins…

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 vs GTX Titan X Mining Performance

22, Apr 2015

nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-vs-titan-x

There are probably not much, if any, people out there mining for crypto coins on the latest and fastest Nvidia Geforce GTX Titan X GPUs, but that does not mean that the video cards based on them are not good for mining. The GTX Titan X does come with 12 GB of video memory, something that is not very useful for crypto mining, but it also comes with 50% more CUDA cores as compared to GTX 980. So you might expect to get up to about 50% performance in crease in terms of hashrate, but that performance increase may come up with twice or even more higher price compared to how much a single GTX 980 costs. So it seems that the GTX Titan X is not very price/performance efficient choice and it might be better to go for two GTX 980s instead not only for mining, but also for gaming as well.

nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-vs-titan-x-results

Nevertheless we still ran some benchmarks to see what is the actual hashrate difference between a GTX 980 and a GTX Titan X GPU using the latest ccMiner 1.5.45 SP-MOD. Do note that the Titan X is still a Compute 5.2 GPU, just like the GTX 980, so it does not bring a new evolution in terms of compute capabilities – just more raw power. As you can see from the table with the results we are seeing in between 30% to almost 50% performance increase in the hashrate of the GTX Titan X GPU as compared to what the GTX 980 currently offers. As we have already mentioned the price difference compared to the actual performance you get makes the GTX 980 the better choice for mining, and you can go for two of these instead of a single Titian X.

Do Not Pay With Bitcoins at Pi Sipply

18, Apr 2015

pi-supply-payment-options

A little over a month ago Pi Supply, an online store selling Raspberry Pis and accessories for them among some other interesting products, announced that they have started accepting payments with Bitcoin. We have decided to check how will things go, so we made an order and paid with Bitcoins for it with the idea to share our experience with you after that. Well it is time to share that experience and it is not positive at all, about a month layer we still have not received our order paid with Bitcoins. We have not received any email from Pi Supply saying that they are out of stock or there will be a delay with shipping our order or about any kind of a problem. A few days ago we even tried contacting them to see what is going on since it was getting almost a month since we have made an order and paid for it with BTC… still no answer from the store.

So in short, we would not recommend to purchase anything at Pi Supply and pay with Bitcoins. Do your payments with PayPal and ask for your money back if you end up in a situation like us when you are not getting what you have ordered a month later. You can also pay with a Credit Card and do a Chargeback if you encounter a problem like this, but unfortunately there is not much you can do if you have paid for an order with Bitcoins like we did and you are not getting your ordered items and not getting a reply with an adequate reason. Unfortunately contacting the Bitcoin payment processor that Pi-Supply uses – BitPay and explaining the situation to them did not bring any positive results.


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