Posts Tagged ‘Scrypt ASIC Miners’

What is Going on With Mining Asics Technologies

10, Oct 2014

mat-scrypt-asic-mining

Now, if you are thinking that the situation with Alpha Technology and their Viper Scrypt ASCI miners still not shipping, what should you think about the situation MAT (Mining Asics Technologies). According to the new information released by the company they have received their first ASIC chips at the beginning of August and by the end of the month and early September they were already releasing videos of some of their products hashing. On the company’s website we’ve seen an estimated shipping date announced as 15.09.2014 for the smaller Scrypt ASIC miners and “estimated shipments Q3 of Year 2014” for the first batch of devices from the more powerful units.

On 19.09.2014 MAT has released a news update stating that the after some delays the “shipping for our first customers will start on 26.09.2014”. On 08.10.2014 there was another news update saying that the company has already started shipping the previous week, however they have apparently found a software bug that they need to fix and are stopping the shipments meanwhile with a promise to maybe start shipping again next week. Now, why would they need to stop shipping if it is a software bug, it has been a while since all of the more serious ASIC crypto miners can be software (firmware) updated by the user. Furthermore how and why they find a software bug after a bit over a month of testing that they should have already been done since they got their first miners working. It all seems like they are buying some time as nobody has yet reported of receiving a miner from them, and if somebody did get a unit if it had a serious problem that needed manual intervention from MAT that would mean the device need to be sent back to them for a fix.

As you would expect from an ASIC manufacturer the communication with customers is lacking, we are used to seeing this, even though this is clearly not the right way to go and treat your customers that have paid you thousands up front. No wonder that people are not happy, but then again we are seeing a similar situation with other companies such as Alpha Technologies or even KnCMiner, not to mention BFL. Clearly if companies in this business want to keep their customers happy and returning for more they need to be more open and responsive to customer questions, not to mention that they should not give promises that they might not be able to keep. Keeping your customers in the dark, not keeping promises and delaying your hardware without a detailed and on time explanation is clearly not the right way to do business in the crypto currency world.

New Innosilicon A2 Scrypt ASIC Miners and Lower Prices

27, Aug 2014

new-35-mhs-a2-terminator-mini-scrypt-asic-miner

With September closing up and many new Scrypt ASIC manufacturers getting ready to start shipping their mining hardware things are heating up with the currently available miners and in order to keep the users interest we need to see new prices. One of the most significant things about the Innosilicon A2 miners, a thing we have noted in our reviews of their products, is that they are pretty expensive or actually were. We know that the company is using 28 nm technology for their chips and thus achieves higher performance with lower power consumption, but up until recently the price of the hardware did not justify the difference in power usage compared to other alternatives available with higher power usage. The good news is that apparently Innosilicon has finally decided to lower the prices by also making available new miners, making them a more attractive option and finally able to compete with ZeusMiner for example price wise for the same or similar hashrate while still offering lower power usage.

The new A2 MINI Terminator is available for $789 USD and offers 35 MHS Scrypt hashrate with a power consumption of about 350W. Unlike the old A2 Mini miner however the new model does not come with built-in power supply, though there is still a Raspberry Pi controller built-in into the miner, so you need to also buy a PSU for this one. The other new miner is the A2 MEGA Terminator currently available for $2499 USD. This miner offers 110 MHS Scrypt hashrate with less than 1100W power usage as the device comes with built in 1100W power supply and a RPi controller like the A2BOX miner that we have already reviewed. With the new A2 miners the price per 1 MHS comes at about $23 USD for a complete solution ready to be used out of the box (adding a PSU for the Mini miner as well). So if you are currently considering making an investment in Scrypt ASIC hardware that is currently available you might want to take a look at the new Innosilicon A2 miners.


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