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First Impressions from the Baikal Mini Miner ASIC
14, Sep 2016
We have been playing around and testing the Baikal Mini Miner for a few days now and we are ready to share our first impressions from the device. First off it really works and works well with all of the six supported algorithms – X11, X13, X14, X15, Quark and Qubit. This is the first and only ASIC manufacturer (to our knowledge) to offer a dedicated ASIC miner supporting multiple algorithms (though they are not that different from each other). The device is able to deliver the promised hashrate of about 150 MHS in the different supported algorithms and does it with a low power usage also as promised in the specs. Furthermore thanks to the low power consumption is it really compact and nowhere near as noisy as we are used to get from ASIC miners lately, so the Baikal Mini Miner is actually great for a home crypto currency miner.
We are going to be talking more about exact numbers as well as technical details in a future post about the Baikal Mini Miner. This post covers our initial impressions from the device after a few days of normal mining usage to confirm it is working stable and reliable and it does indeed do that. The build quality and the overall design is probably not the best out there, but it works well and apparently allows for easy stacking up of multiple devices as we’ve seen form the Baikal Quadruple Miner that essentially stacks for of these devices together. Everything about the device looks pretty impressive so far aside from the price, the device is being sold for about $500 USD or 56 DASH coins. So it seems a bit expensive, but it is not when you compare it to the competition in terms of X11 ASIC miners that are less power efficient for the hashrate they provide and end up costing you more for the same hashrate. Not to mention that they only support X11, while this one comes with support for 5 other algorithms, so it is more usable and offers support for significantly more crypto coins.
The Baikal Mini Miner comes with its own mini computer unit similar to a Raspberry Pi that essentially controls the device, so there is no need to actually connect it to a computer for it to work. All you have to do is connect it to your Ethernet LAN network and then open up the web interface for control and monitoring of the device through a browser, the device uses DHCP to get an IP address on your network. The web interface is a modified version of Scripta mining distribution for Raspberry Pi. The default password for the web-interface is baikal and the username and password for the console login are also the same baikal and baikal respectively. You should be able to change them for security reasons of course, though be careful when you change them to note the new passwords for access.
The Scripta mining distribution works stable and really well with the Baikal Miner, it is easy to configure and monitor the device with it. There is a temperature sensor available and it is being reported by the software, though you probably will not be interested much in it as the temperature of the miner is really low. The switching between the 6 supported mining algorithms is as easy as clicking a button after you configure mining pools for each of them of course. The software supports priority based failsafe switching between pools/algorithms. What it could really use however is some sort of automation for profitability based switching between the supported mining algorithms.
Talking about profitability we cannot forget to do some calculation on the actual profitability of using the device as this is the factor that can be decisive in you choosing to get it or not. The Baikal Mini Miner does come with support for 6 mining algorithms, though not of them are really that popular and widely used. For example X11 is quite widespread, but there are already a lot of X11 ASIC miners on the market, yet it is still often the most profitable one to mine. Other such as X14 and X15 were never that popular, so unless there are some new coins coming out using them there are probably not that much worth mining (they use more power). Mining Quark and Qubit can also do you some good profit if you manage to catch something good. So for actual profit you will probably have to go looking for new coins or for trending ones and risk a bit more and mine them.
If you decide to go the safer way and just sell your hashrate on a service such as NiceHashfor example you will have a bit more stable and reliable profit in Bitcoin, but it might not be as high as if you can get by mining the right coins at the right time. Based on our experience using NiceHash with the Baikal Mini Miner we can say that you can expect to get something like 0.0034 BTC per day with the more profitable algorithms. That is like $2.08 USD a day, fortunately the power used by the device is really very little and the cost is not much, something like up to 1 kWh per day. So making let us say $2 USD per day and $60 USD per month it would take you more than 8 months to get enough to cover the cost of the miner. Not that much, but not that little time for the crypto currency world either, and that is only if the current conditions remain for the duration of the next 8 months. Of course you can also risk it and try to get more profit than using the more safer way, though in the end the result might be either better or worse. It is up to you to decide…
- In: Mining Hardware|Tests and Reviews
- Tags: Baikal Mini Miner, Baikal Quadruple Miner, Baikal X11 ASIC Mini Miner, Quark ASIC, Quark ASIC miner, Qubit ASIC, Qubit ASIC Miner, X11 ASIC, X11 ASIC Baikal Mini Miner, X11 ASIC miner, X13 ASIC, X13 ASIC Miner, X14 ASIC, X14 ASIC Miner, X15 ASIC, X15 ASIC miner
Looking at the official specifications of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC miner state that the device should be capable of 384 MHS X11 hashrate (plus/minus 10 percent) with a power consumption of 715W measured at the wall with 25 degrees Celsius ambient temperature. This should be the numbers for the default configuration, however we did some measurements ourselves in order to get more accurate results in order to be able to do better calculations about the cost of operating the device. We have already measured on NiceHash an average hashrate that is slightly above the official number of 384 MHS, so this is good, but what about the actual power usage and more importantly noise level. In our first impressions from the device we already mentioned that it is pretty noisy and not suitable for use in room where people will be present, but let us see what is the exact noise level as well.
The power supply built into the miner is an 850 Watts server grade one that is compatible with 100-240V range (for worldwide use). The exact model is ASPOWER U2A-A20850-D and according to the official specifications is it rated as 80 Plus Silver, so a high efficiency solution. At stock settings (110 MHz PLL) the power usage we have measured on the wall with 230V EU power input was 686 Watts as you can see on the photo, the power usage in Watts might be slightly higher in US and other 110-120V countries due to slightly lower power efficiency. Increasing the operating frequency with +1 MHz steps is resulting in the power usage going up with about 5-6W on each step, so the 850W capacity of the PSU should be able to take up some nice extra overclock if the chips are capable of working well when overclocked and cooled well. We are going to be doing more extensive testing about the overclocking potential with results on the power usage and performance changes, working temperatures and cooling very soon.
Now for the noise level, as already mentioned it is pretty high… just like from a rackmountable server for example. With a measurement showing about 72.6 dBA average it is perfect to be installed in a data center or a dedicated mining room, but it is not suitable for home miners as the noise level is too much for people to be in the same room for more than a few minutes… and even in the next room it might be quite noisy. The reason for the high level of noise is that the unit uses server grade fans by Delta Electronics and they are set to run at maximum RPM all the time (no temperature control). The same goes for the fan used in the power supply, a powerful Delta Electronics fan running at maximum RPM all the time, even though the PSU is highly efficient and there is not so much heat generated. The good thing about this default fans setup is that even at not that good conditions such as high ambient temperature the miner should be able to operate without any issues at optimum level. The not so good part is that small miners might have issues with the high level of noise and would probably want to do something to make it less noisy without compromising performance – this is possible with some modifications and we are already working on a solution to optimize the cooling, so more on that will be coming soon as well.
The Software of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC Miner
10, Mar 2016
The controller for the iBeLink DM384M DASH (X11) ASIC Miner is running on the Raspberry Pi inside the device and is apparently based on the MineNinja Open Source/Free Platform for Bitcoin Mining on the Ti BeagleBone Black that is modified for the specific hardware. You get a basic web-based interface for configuration and monitoring of the mining hardware, once you plug in the device in your network and turn it on it will get a dynamic IP if you have DHCP running, but you should be able to access it via the default “iBeLink” hostname if you do not know the IP. The backend used for the actual mining process is apparently a fork of cgminer 3.5.5 that the device is being shipped with, but there is a new version available that you can update to directly from the web interface. The latest cgminer 3.5.6 version adds support for the NiceHash extranonce, so that if you are selling your X11 hashrate there you should be getting very little rejected shares thus maximizing performance.
The management from the web-based interface is pretty basic and very easy to use, you can add/remove pools and set email notifications for low hashrate or too many rejects. Unfortunately there is no temperature monitoring available on a hardware level and thus no notification for potential cooling issues or an option to shutdown the hardware in case of failure of the cooling or from overheating. Temperature monitoring can also be helpful if/when you are overclocking or underclocking the device in order to optimize it for maximum performance or efficiency for example. So there is more to be desired for any future products, but for first generation it is actually pretty good for a starting point to build on. Another thing that needs extra work is the status of the device as the currently reported local rates do not seem very accurate especially in terms of hashrate or at least the numbers are confusing, so you need to look at the poolside reports for details.
The most interesting part of the software is the blade configuration page and more specifically the PLL frequency that can be used to overclock or underclock the miner as we have already seen some time ago when the online manual for the device was published. The default setting for PLL is 110 MHz and the software says the maximum setting is 115 MHz, but the good news is that it accepts 116 or 117 as well, so higher frequencies should be possible and we have seen an increase of power usage as we increase the operating frequency. This however needs more testing and we would advice to be careful with overclocking in order to avoid possible overheating of the chips or overloading of the power supply and thus maybe even damaging your mining hardware.
And now for some potential issues that we are seeing for the moment. There is no source code available for the cgminer fork used by the device, there is even no binary release or full RPi image release available yet. So integration into other mining software or further optimizing or maybe adding other features is problematic as they need to be released by the makers of the device only. It seems that there are no plans for making the source code available, though we should soon have a backup image of the complete Raspberry Pi software in order to be able to restore it if something fails. With that said there is no official website or contact details available for support form the hardware manufacturer, so the only way to communicate with them is the dedicated iBeLink DM384M ASIC Dash Miner Support Thread on the DashTalk forum and this is not the best way to do more serious business and provide support for your customers. So thee is more to be desired for sure, but things are moving in the right direction, it will probably just take some more time… and if iBeLink does not do it right an upcoming competitor might quickly overtake the new X11 ASIC market, that is if they manage to do things better and we are yet to see something like that happening.