Posts Tagged ‘Blizzard Scrypt ASIC’

What is the Power Consumption of the ZeusMiner Blizzard Scrypt ASIC

15, Jun 2014

zeusminer-blizzard-scrypt-asic-power-usage

We’ve read some comments about people complaining from the stock ZeusMiner Blizzard Scrypt ASICs’ like them being crappy and getting too hot. From our personal experience we can also confirm that the 60W power adapters provided with the miners do get hot, but this is to be expected with a power draw of the device of about 44W at 300 MHz and 48W at 328 MHz. Our unit that we are currently testing is hot to the touch, but only using that to judge can be misleading as any temperature higher the one of our body is perceived as hot. Anyway, we did decide to try using the Blizzard miner with a high-quality ATX power supply and measure the actual power draw we are getting…

We have attached the ZeusMiner Blizzard to an 80Plus Platinum power supply and the result was a bit surprising – very low efficiency of the power supply due to the low load. Clearly the 1200W Corsair power supply is not designed to be very efficient with a load of just about 50W, actually 48-49W measured as used by the miner, so not much different than what we got from the standard PSU. The difference here however is that due to the low efficiency that the PSU is running at the actual power consumption of the miner off the power socket is about 64W. We did measure 48W of power usage with the stock power adapter supplied with the miner at the power socket, so it seems that these 60W power adapters are quite efficient in converting the 220V power to 12V. Of course by increasing the number of miners connected to the power supply and raising the load to at least 10% or more the efficiency should increase and make things right, though no point in running just a single Blizzard off an ATX computer power supply – better stick to the power adapter supplied with the miner.

Zeus Catching Up With Shipping Units from the BATCH 1 Orders

5, Jun 2014

zeusminer-new-case-design

It seems that our order for a ZeusMiner Blizzard has been finally shipped yesterday (Order #2054 ), so it seems that the company will most likely be able to do what they have promised. That however does not make the Blizzard an interesting buy other than for testing, and that is precisely why we did order the unit, so that we can review it and try the Zeus Scrypt ASIC chips. Meanwhile Zeus has announced they are going to e releasing a ZeusController image for Raspberry Pi with a web-based interface for their miners and apparently they are also working on offering miner hosting options for customers that request it. With the reports we are seeing on higher actual power consumption than what was previously announced as official specs, a hosted option may not be a bad option if the price is right.

zeusminer-batch-2-prices

Zeus also announced new prices for Batch 2 orders that are supposed to start shipping on June 15th, the new Hurricane and Thunder miners will also come with new and improved cases. But there is no word on optimized firmwares yet to help users get the best performance/power usage ratio. Also BATCH 1 customers will get an additional 10% off for one order from the second batch, and if you are already an existing BATCH 1 customer, you automatically qualify for the more free stuff If you place an order for the same amount of higher for BATCH 2. It is up to you do decide if it is worth ordering, for us, well we are waiting for our first miner to see how things are actually working.

– To read the latest update from ZeusMiner regarding the current status of shipping units…

Zeus Could Start Shipping Their Scrypt ASIC Miners Earlier

8, May 2014

The company Zeus has released an update on their website about the current progress for the ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs that they already promised to start shipping by the end of this month. They have just announced that they will be starting to ship the first 500 orders from May 20th to latest May 25th, so apparently they are a bit ahead of the previously announced schedule to start shipping by May 31st. Another interesting thing is that the company will be releasing the miners not pushed to the maximum and promises an update that will allow users to further increase the hashrate later on. Also the company has announced that they will give out a second free miner, one that is a level lower in the product line than the ordered by the customer, so only the Blizzard customers will not get a second free miner with their orders. There is also a not so good quality video published from the company’s assembly factory in Shenzhen, China that you can see embedded above. So far things are looking pretty good for Zeus and their ZeusMiners and the only problem we currently find is that they do not have an official distributor in Europe for example to make it easier to get their products as they will be shipped from China.

We have decided to order one of the smallest 1.2 MHS Blizzard ZeusMiners in order to be able to test it and publish our hands-on experience with the Zeus Scrypt ASIC chips that are also used in the bigger miners. There are two options to pay directly to ZeusMiner, with BTC/LTC via CoinPayments or with Direct Bank Transfer, obviously using coins would be easier and faster and with no extra taxes from the bank. The price of the small Blizzard ZeusMiner is $199 USD and the shipping we got to Europe was $53.98 USD, so pretty steep price for shipping a small package from China, unless express courier service is used. Our order number was #2054, so apparently a lot of people have ordered Zeus Scrypt ASIC miners already with the company close to start shipping the actual units. We’ll keep you updated how things progress with our order.

– To read the latest update from ZeusMiner regarding the current status of their operations…


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