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The demand for Bitcoin mining hardware seems to causing some strange decisions among the ASIC manufacturers and one such is apparently the announcement of the Bitmain Antminer V9. A small 4 THS SHA256 ASIC miner that uses 1 KW of power, so not very efficient, but it comes cheap at just $345 USD. There are already some speculations that this could as well be old hardware renamed and refurbished as a new product to clear up some old mining hardware used by Bitmain in their mining farms in China instead of having to relocate it to a new place. This batch has a MOQ (minimum order quantity) of 5 units and all ordered quantities can only be multiples of 5 (10, 15, 20 units and so on) with the maximum number of units in a single order up to 300. The shipping for all confirmed orders will start after March 1st and payment accepted is only in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and USD wire transfer.
Bitmain Antminer V9 Specifications:
– Product model: V9
– Hash chip type: BM1580
– Total quantity of hash chips: 135 PCS
– Total quantity of hash boards: 3 PCS
– Total hash rate: 4TH ±5%
– DC voltage input: 11.60~13.00 V
– DC current input @12V DC: 79.59 A +10%
– DC Power @12V DC input: 955 W +10%
– 220VAC Power @25℃, 93% conversion efficiency of APW3: 1027 W +10%
– 220VAC Power efficiency @25℃, 93% conversion efficiency of APW3: 253mJ/MH+10%
– Weight (without package）: 3.05 kg
– Operation temperature: 0-40 ℃
– Storage temperature: -40-85 ℃
– Operation humidity: 5%RH-95%RH, prevent condensation
– Noise: 76 dB
– Networking connection mode: Ethernet Cable
– Power connection mode: All three PCI-E ports are required to power the board. You can use one PSU to power multiple boards, but do not attempt to power one board with two PSUs.We suggest to prevent the control board to be powered up before hash boards be powered up.
– Size (Length*Width*Height, without package): 301mm*123mm*155mm
All in all not a very exciting new announcement of a new ASIC miner from Bitmain, efficiency wise the “new” hardware is disappointing for the performance it offers at the rated power usage. So it seems to be targeted at users looking for cheap hardware that have really cheap or even “free” power, otherwise it just does not seem economically reasonable to buy these miners at the moment.
This came as a bit of unexpected surprise, but it seems that BitMain already has a working ASIC miner for the Blake (2b) mining algorithm (and maybe even for other variants of Blake) and they have announced their plans to start shipping the Antminer A3. The Blake 2b crypto algorithm is currently being used by SiaCoin (SC) and last year there was a pre-order for an official SiaCoin ASIC miner the Obelisk SC1. BitMain’s ASIC miner however seems to be arriving much earlier with similar specifications and price, so anyone that has pre-ordered an Obelisk SC1 might not be that happy. On the other hand people that are interested in getting into mining SiaCoin and missed their chance with the pre-order might order now from BitMain and get the device shipped in 10 days after payment according to the company.
BitMain Antminer A3 Specifications:
– Product model: A3
– Hash ASIC type: BM1720
– Hashing algorithm: Blake(2b)
– Total quantity of hash chips: 180 chips
– Total quantity of hash boards: 3 boards per miner
– Total hash rate: 815 GHS ±5%
– DC voltage input: 11.60~13.00 V
– DC current input @12V DC: 98.8 A +7%
– DC Power @12V DC input: 1186 W +7%
– 220VAC Power @25℃, 93% conversion efficiency of APW3: 1275 W + 7%
– 220VAC Power efficiency @25℃,93% conversion efficiency of APW3: 1.56 mJ/MH + 7%
– Weight (without package): 4.2 kg
– Operation temperature: 0-40 ℃
– Storage temperature: -40-85 ℃
– Operation humidity: 5%RH – 95%RH, prevent condensation
– Noise: 76 dB
– Networking connection mode: Ethernet Cable
– Power connection mode: All three PCI-E ports are required to power the board. You can use one PSU to power multiple boards, but do not attempt to power one board with two PSUs. We suggest to prevent the control board to be powered up before hash boards be powered up.
– Size (Length*Width*Height, without package): 321mm*125mm*208mm
– For more details about the new BitMain Antminer A3 Blake (2b) ASIC miner…
It is not a secret that the default firmware and even settings for many of the ASIC miners that come out from the manufacturers are hardly with the best/optimal settings and often they are also limited in what you can tweak yourself. So some more advanced users take the matter in their hands in order to further optimize for performance and or stability and reliability and even add extra features that help owners of the devices to get better profit or higher profit for example. One such case is the Antminer D3 Blissz Modified Firmware for the X11 ASICs being produces by Bitmain that you might want to give a try if you have even at least one of these ASIC miners.
The custom firmware promises up to 20% lower power usage and some extra features such as ASIC voltage settings per chain as well as the ability to overclock or underclock per chain as well as more control on fan operational speeds. There are some usability improvements in the interface to make it easier and clear to use as well as some slight performance improvements as well to make it more stable and reliable in terms of operation including cgminer binary optimizations.
Do note that this is an experimental custom firmware and using it might void your warranty. Also note that it comes with built-in 1.5% developer fee built-in, so do have that in mind, although the improvements if working as promised are well worth the dev fee. The good thing is that even if you don’t like something or it does not work as expected flashing back the original firmware is as easy as installing the custom one, so you can quickly give it a go and if you don’t like the results to get back to the original.
– For more details and to download and try the Antminer D3 Blissz modified firmware…