Posts Tagged ‘Kadena home miner’

Quick Comparison of the Goldshell KD BOX PRO and Goldshell KD BOX II Kadena ASIC Miners

20, Feb 2023

Goldshell’s new KD BOX II Kadena (KDA) ASIC miners are getting into the hands of more and more small and home miners and we’ve also picked up one (now also a WiFi version is available) and have decided to do a quick comparison between the KD BOX II and the older KD BOX PRO model. The older KD BOX PRO model was rated at 2.6 TH/s with 230 Watts of power usage or 0.088 W/GHs and the new KD BOX II is rated at 5 TH/s at 400 Watts of power usage or 0.08 W/GHs or with other words more powerful and just slightly more efficient (there is also a more efficient low-power mode with 3.5 TH/s at 260 Watts). The advantage of the new model is the higher hashrate in a slightly bigger size compared to the older model as you can see from the photo with just a tiny bit of power efficiency improvement. Interestingly enough Goldshell’s website does cite the same size of the case for both miners and contradicting numbers regarding their weight, well the new KD BOX II is clearly a bit larger and weights more. The noise level cited in the specifications is also the same, though the new model definitely is a bit noisier with just a few decibels (can vary greatly on conditions you use it at), but nevertheless still runs pretty silent and is fine for home use.

Just like with the previous model, the new KD BOX II does get pretty hot inside as the miner is designed to run silently, while keeping the operating temperatures of the ASIC chips inside pretty high, making the new devices great for use as home heaters as well with their 400W of power usage… especially if you pick a few. The new KD BOX II miner however does get hotter as expected both on the inside and the outside as you can see on the comparison thermal image with an average of about 10 degrees Celsius.

The increased power consumption to almost double the one of the previous model and adding a second 6-pin PCI-E power connector doesn’t help much in keeping the power cables much cooler. We are not too keen on the idea on pulling 200W or even more over a 6-pin PCI-E power cable even if it is a thicker good quality one (16 AWG), let alone using cheaper and lower quality 18AWG or even 20 AWG (this could be dangerous). So, good quality power cables can easily get to slightly over 40 degrees C on both the old and the new models…

The real issue with the new Goldshell KD BOX II Kadena ASIC miners however is not the fact that they are slightly larger, hotter and not very much more power efficient, after all their price per TH/s is lower than that of the previous gen when it came out. The real problem is that they are coming on the market at a time when the new generation of large scale powerful KDA ASIC miners are also getting deployed such as the Bitmain Antminer KA3 ASIC that does 166 TH/s with 3154 Watts of power usage… that is 4 times more power efficient compared to the KD BOX II and a lot more hashrate.

All this new hashrate coming from more efficient miners getting deployed on the KDA network is driving the amount of new mined Kadena coins with the small home miners down quite fast each new day (network difficulty is skyrocketing). So, unless we see a good increase in price of KDA, the purchase of a new Goldshell KD BOX II might be pretty pointless by the time you get the device actually delivered to you, thus you should think carefully if it is actually a good idea to go for these new miners. And going for the older KD BOX PRO or even the previous KD BOX miners might be an even worse idea at this point, even if they do give them to you for free.

Goldshell KD BOX II Kadena (KDA) ASIC Miner Available Now

5, Jan 2023

The ASIC manufacturer Goldshell has started selling an updated version of their smaller KD BOX PRO home-oriented ASIC miner for Kadena (KDA) dubbed Goldshell KD BOX II capable of up 5 TH/s hashrate with 400 Watts of power usage with a price of $325 USD (without shipping and customs expenses), starting to ship in mid-January from Asia. The new device comes in a similar small-scale form factor with increased performance and two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors instead of just one due to the increased power usage as well (still a bit on the edge for 24/7 400W power usage though in our opinion). Interestingly enough there is no WiFi capability, just Ethernet port and the wireless connectivity especially for home miners is a really useful feature that the previous PRO model did come with. Interestingly enough even with the higher power usage the new KD BOX II is still rated at the same noise level as the PRO version, we kind of expected to be noisier, and it actually could still be.

Goldshell KD BOX II Specifications:
– Default Hashrate Mode: 5 TH/S (±5%)
– Default Hashrate Power: 400 (±5%)
– Low-Power Hashrate Mode: 3.5 TH/S (±5%)
– Low-Power Hashrate Power: 260 W (±5%)
– Dimensions: 178x150x84 (mm)
– Weight: 2KG
– Noise level: <35 dB
– Connection Port: Ethernet
– Operating Temperature: 0~35°C
– Relative humidity: ≤65%
– Input Voltage: 100-240V

So, the new Goldshell KD BOX II comes in the same compact size case, weights the same, however is capable of increased performance compared to the older PRO model. It consumes more power, yet it should remain with the same low noise level that is very acceptable for home use – great for a heater/miner choice, or so the official specs claim. There are apparently two modes of operation (a single miner replacing the regular and Pro models in the previous generation?) resulting in 5 TH/s mining hashrate for KDA with 400 Watts of power usage or 3.5 TH/s at 260 Watts of power usage.

As a comparison the KD BOX PRO is rated for 2.6 TH/s at 230 Watts of power usage… that is just about 0.0885 Watts per Gigahash of hashrate. As a comparison the new KD BOX II does manage to offer 0.0743 Watts per Gigahash in low power mode when running at 3.5 TH/s or 0.08 Watts per Gihagash in full power 5TH/s hashrate mode. These numbers actually show that there is just about 10% improvement in power efficiency in the high-power mode when the new miner runs at full 5 TH/s hashrate, the lower power mode is better though.

What is our verdict for the Goldshell KD BOX II then? Considering the not that much of power efficiency improvement in the full power mode that will most likely also come with significant increase in noise level (the less than 35 Decibels is probably the rating in low power 3.5 TH/s mode we suspect) and the lack of WiFi capability it might not actually be that much better choice than the KD BOX PPRO model. The only advantage is the lower price and the fact that the older models are no longer available for sale from Goldshell. We kind of expected to see something like the difference between the KD BOX and the KD BOX PRO models where improvement was much more significant than what we are getting there between the KD BOX PRO and KD BOX II.

– For more about the Goldshell KD BOX II Kadena (KDA) ASIC Miner…


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