Posts Tagged ‘Bitmain

Bitmain has announced a new AntMiner T9 ASIC miner that should go on sale today for $1104 USD offering 11.5 THS hashrate. The new miner is based on the previous AntMiner S9, though it comes with a bit less chips that are apparently clocked at a higher operating frequency. The new T9 is a bit cheaper, but not as efficient as the S9 as based on the official specs it consumes about 1450W for the 11.5 THS while the Batch 22 of the S9 came with 11 THS at 1078W and Batch 23 was with 14 THS for 1372W. The new T9 miner comes with just 171 BM1387 chips while the S9 was based on 189 BM1387 chips. The two fans cooling the new device are the same as on S9, so you can expect similar level of noise from the device. So in short the new AntMiner T9 does not in fact seem so attractive to miners, but with the lack of new S9 miners you might not have much of a choice…

BitMain AntMiner T9 Specifications:
– Hash Rate: 11.5TH/s. A variation of +/- 5% is expected
– Power Consumption: 1450W +7% (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temperature)
– Power Efficiency: 0.126J/GH + 7% (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temperature)
– Rated Voltage: 11.60 ~ 13.00V
– Chip Type: BM1387
– Chip quantity per unit: 171 chips
– Dimensions: 350mm (l) x 135mm (w) x 158mm (h)
– Cooling: Two 12038 fans. Front fan: 6000RPM, rear fan: 4300RPM
– Operating temperature: 0°C to 40°C
– Network connection: Ethernet

antminer-r4-1

Bitmain is apparently setting a very ambitious goal of their new miner called AntMiner R4 and that goal is to bring back home mining of Bitcoin. What they are doing in order to get home miners’ attention is trying to make the miner more compact and less noisy while still managing to provide quite a serious hashrate rated at 8.6 THS with just about 845 W of power usage. What will make the most difference for home users however is the price of the new miner and if it is not right, then why would you bring one or even more of these home, guess we’ll know in a few days as sales start at 23:00 (GMT+8) on 29 August when we’ll probably also get an idea about the price of the device.


Bitmain AntMiner R4 Specifications:

– Miner Hash Rate: 8.6TH/s (Variation of ±5% is expected)
– Power Consumption: 845W +9% at the wall (with Bitmain APW5 PSU)
– Power Efficiency: 0.1 J/GH +9% at the wall (with Bitmain APW5 PSU)
– Noise level: 52dB (at an ambient temperature of 35°C)
– Chip quantity per unit: 126 x BM1387
– Default Frequency: 600MHz
– Rated Voltage: 11.60 ~13.00V
– Network Connection: Ethernet
– Operating Temperature: 0°C to 40°C
– Product size: 515mm (L) x 100mm (W) x 222mm (H)

antminer-r4-2

One of the most interesting things that you will notice with this miner is the cooling fan it uses, Bitmain calls is “a groundbreaking custom-design fan” that is intended to reduce the noise coming from the miner. Instead of using traditional computer fans (designed for servers) that are not intended to be silent, but instead to do their job providing good cooling they have opted out for a different design for the R4’s cooling. The fan that Bitmain uses in the AntMiner R4 is apparently inspired by the fan of a silent split air conditioner, so it was designed to make less than half the noise of the standard miner fan. Furthermore the rotational speed is being automatically controlled to ensure it never creates more noise than is absolutely necessary to keep the miner cool and running, so the noise will also depend on the ambient temperature.

bitmain-apw5

Bitmain will be also offering an optional custom-built PSU for further noise reduction to go along with the AntMiner R4 – the Bitmain APW5. The power supply works with both 220V and 110V (the standard in North America) input to deliver 2600W and 1300W, respectively. It has a dynamically controlled fan that runs at full speed only after heat sink temperature is 80°C. The Bitmain APW5 should start selling along with the Antmier R4 miner in a couple of days, do note that this is a 12V only power supply that is capable of delivering a very good efficiency of up to 93%. So it may be a great choice to go along with the R4, unless of course you already have some spare 1 KW or more computer power supplies sitting idle.

For more details about the upcoming release of the Bitmain AntMiner R4 Bitcoin ASIC miner…

bitmain-antminer-s9-asic

One more announcement fro Bitmain, the AntMiner S9 ASIC Bitcoin miner is no official and will start shipping on June 12th for $2100 USD without the shipping cost (power supply is not included). The device uses the company’s new 16nm ASIC chips BM1387 and essentially triples the hashrate of the previous generation S7 miners while offering the same level of power usage. The Bitmain AntMiner S9 should be capable of 14 THS SHA-256 mining hashrate with a power usage of 1375 Watts at the wall, so definitely a good improvement over the S7.

Bitmain AntMiner S9 Specifications:
– Hash Rate: 14.0 THS ±5%
– Power Consumption: 1375W + 7% (at the wall, with APW3 ,93% efficiency, 25C ambient temp)
– Power Efficiency: 0.098 J/GH + 7% (at the wall, with APW3 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temp)
– Rated Voltage: 11.60~13.00V
– Chip quantity per unit: 189x BM1387
– Dimensions: 350mm(L)*135mm(W)*158mm(H)
– Cooling: 2x 12038 fan
– Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 40 °C
– Network Connection: Ethernet
– Default Frequency: 650 MHz

The big question however is if now was the right time to announce the new mining hardware, as of you order now from the first batch you might be getting your units delivered right before the Bitcoin block reward halving. So it might be wise to wait for a later batch of S9 miners after the halving to see how the situation will change and if you might get a better deal in terms of price for the hardware. Then again if you are using S7 miners you might already get to the planning for switching to S9 now that the previous generation S5 is no longer profitable barely covering the electricity costs.


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