Posts Tagged ‘asic miner’

BitMain AntMiner S7 Batch 1 Now Available for Pre-Order

31, Aug 2015

bitmain-antminer-s7

After the recent announcement of the new BitMain BM1385 ASIC chips for mining Bitcoin or other SHA-256 crypto currencies BitMain has started taking pre-orders for their first miner based on the new chips – the Antminer S7. The new BitMain Antminer S7 miner has a more dense configuration than previous Antminer machines, using 162 chips in the same space that the S5 used only 60 in. The S7 uses just 1210 watts of electricity to deliver 4.86 terahashes per second of mining power per unit, so specification wise the new miners looks very attractive, especially when compared to older hardware.

antminer-comparison-chart

BitMain AntMiner S7 Specifications:
1. Hash Rate: 4.86 TH/s ±5%
2. Power Consumption: 1210 W (at the wall, with APW3, 93% efficiency, 25C ambient temp)
3. Power Efficiency: 0.25 J/GH (at the wall, with APW3, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temp)
4. Rated Voltage: 12V+5%, should not be less than 12.0V
5. Chip quantity per unit: 162x BM1385
6. Dimensions: 301mm(L)*123mm(W)*155mm(H)
7. Cooling: 2x 12038 fan
8. Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 40 °C
9. Network Connection: Ethernet

You can get the new miner for $1823 USD or roughly 7.896 BTC with the current exchange rate. When you add a suitable power supply like the 1600W APW3-12-1600-B2 that Bitmain sells for $155 USD (0.671 BTC) and you factor in the cost of shipping and custom taxes, electricity and the slowly increasing network difficulty you are already looking in probably 8-9 months at least to get back what you have paid for the miner. So although specifications wise the device looks very good it is still slow to ROI in the current not so great for Bitcoin conditions, but then again this is probably the best Bitcoin mining hardware available to end users at the moment. You can already pre-order a BitMain AntMiner S7 from Batch 1 with expected shipping date announced as late September of 21~30 with a possible delay of up to 10 days extra.

SFARDS SF100 ASICs Coming Soon, But Too Expensive

3, Aug 2015

sfards-sf100-miner

The SF100 Dual-Miner ASICs from SFARDS are expected to start arriving in mid-August 2015 to the most eager miners that have ordered some fromt he first batch of devices, or at least that is what the manufacturer is claiming on their website. The SF100 BTC and LTC Dual Miner has been listed briefly on the official SFARDS website with a price of 8000 RMB (about 1288 USD) last month and is since labeled as Out of Stock. This price however seems to be for larger quantities, some other websites have since listed single units of the SFARDS SF100 miners for pre-order and their prices are for example $1699 USD on AliExpress, ~$1700 USD on Asic Trade and $1999.99 USD on ZoomHash or with other words significantly higher than what was listed on the official website. Note that these prices are for the ASIC miner only and you need to add the shipping cost, extra import taxes and then you would also need at least good 1KW power supply for the miner, so the total price will easy go over $2000 USD. Even if these prices are higher because of the limited number of available units in the first batch they are way too expensive to consider them as a good investment with the current market conditions. Not to mention that we are yet to see if the miners will be able to perform as promised by the manufacturers in terms of performance for both mining SHA256 and Scrypt algorithms separately and at the same time. Another thing that may not be very much in favor of the late availability of the SF100 miners is the expected Litecoin Block Reward Halving from 50 to 25 coins by the end of August…

Litecoin is Still on the Rise, Testing $8 USD

9, Jul 2015

litecoin-price-on-the-rise

The exchange price of Litecoin (LTC) is still on the rise with the alternative crypto currency already testing the $8 USD target and this has caused a lot of speculation about the reasons behind this recent rise. Some people say it could be due to the recent high load on the Bitcoin blockchain and transactions processing slow due to a lot of unconfirmed ones in the backlog. Other say the reason could be just another pump and dump scheme by a big player with a lot of coins. Another plausible possibility is due to the upcoming fist halving of the LTC reward at the end of August, or the unfavorable situation in Greece at the moment or that on the issues with the China stock markets and the list goes on and on…

Regardless of the reason behind the jump in the exchange rate it is already causing increased demand for Scrypt ASIC miners and services offering Scrypt cloud mining, however nowadays these are scarce and had to find. The best thing you can probably get at the moment is an Innosilicon A2 Scrypt ASIC miner at a discounted price if you manage to find yourself a good deal for a SilverFish Scrypt Blade miner. With Bitmain Tech and ZeusMiner canceling their Scrypt ASIC projects last year (maybe they can restart them if the trend continues) and KnCMiner stopping to sell their Titan Scrypt ASICs and any other ASIC miners to end users there is just one new interesting option coming up. The new SFARDS SF100 Dual-Miner ASICs that are supposed to be available later this month, though SFARDS is still keeping silent about their pricing and expected availability is said to be July.

In the end it is good that we are finally seeing some movement surrounding LTC along with some other Scrypt crypto currencies as nothing much has been happening around Litecoin in the last few months, so the recent price jump and revived interest is definitely a good thing for people that are into altcoins. Especially now that Bitcoin mining is moving away from home miners and more and more towards large mining farms, whereas Scrypt mining is still at a phase where it is still focused mostly in the hands of small mining operations. So we are keeping a close eye on the development around Litecoin and so should you…


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