Topic: Antminer S7 now officially obsolete? (Read 1719 times)

I was looking at possibilities for a datacenter buildout, not trying to colo with anyone

Texas colo data centers are annoying. I've used in the past and if you don't mind paying property tax on gear you send there. Too much paperwork and complication.

When I was researching power prices I found some areas in Texas that had so much wind power they practically had to give it away (3-4 cent on average). This was about 18 months ago. I guess it depends where you are looking and how close you are to a giant wind farm.

 Texas has more wind power than any other state, the last few years - though Iowa and California are still arguing the point.

 However, wind power is NOT all that cheap (it's amazing how much I picked up about wind generators from living less than a mile from the Clipper Windpower factory and talking to employees and ex-employees).

 It's JUST starting to get competative with coal generation, due mostly to the EPA "war on coal" over the last couple decades, and is close to natural-gas fired plants.
 It DOES beat oil, but oil for power generation has been dying for decades in the US due to natural gas stomping it into the ground on cost since the first Arab Oil Embargo.

 It's NOT close to "big hydropower", though it can argue well on the "green" front overall (run of river dams are greener, traditional "stored water" dams turn out to have significant CO2 emmissions though still a lot less than an what would be put out by Coal Oil or Natural Gas plants totalling up to the same power generation capacity).


 There ARE places in China, by report, that offer less cost of power than anywhere in North America - but I don't speak Chinese and wouldn't fit in well in those areas - and the difference isn't nearly enough to render the large North American farms in Central Washington unprofitable for a LONG time if ever.

Well of course if you halve the power it is 3x more profitable. So outside of Washington State and some data centers, it is getting long in the tooth.
If I was a home miner with >= 0.10, buyer beware. In Washington State, you can ROI in 4-5 months at $300 a unit.

I urge OP to redo your calculation at a power cost of $0.055/kwh and see for profitability.

Come out to the world:)

Also places like Texas have a ridiculous amount of wind power. There are lots of options, but for whatever reason people on this site cling to some strange notion that you can only get cheap power in China. Every time I mention that you can get cheap power in North America some fool has to come out and try to argue the fact.

Chelan and Douglas counties in Washington State, USA, both have RESIDENTIAL (and small business) rates that total up ALL UP to about 3c/kwh - and their large business and industrial rates are even lower (though not a LOT lower on an all-up basis).

 This is NOT new news - ask MegaBigPower and ZoomHash among other LARGE farm operators why their farms are located in the Wenatchee / East Wenatchee area.


 Grant county next door can also get to less than 3c/KWH power all up but you have to be a much larger user (200 KW or more) otherwise it's a hair over 4.5 cents at the small business rate and a bit more at the residential rate all-up.

 Ask Mickey$loth, Yahoo (soon to be Verizon), and Google among others why they located huge server farms in Quincy WA, which is ALSO somewhat old news now.


 All 3 counties own LARGE Columbia River hydropower dams

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_in_the_Columbia_River_watershed

 Douglas County PUD, which has about half the pop of the other two counties, owns one dam of 840 (peak) Megawatts.
 Chelan County PUD owns 2 dams on the Columbia totaling 1947 (peak) Megawatts and a small dam on a tributary that adds another 40 Megawatts or so. The Alcoa smelter near Wenatchee however was shut down a few years back.
 Grant County PUD owns 2 dams on the Columbia totaling 2047 (peak) Megawatts and some misc other small projects (including a little wind power generation) that might add another 200 Megawatts.

 All 3 County PUDs subsidize local rates to somewhat BELOW their cost of generation through the sale of "excess" power on LONG term contracts at quite a bit higher rates to power companies in outside areas, mostly the Seattle/Tacoma area but some of it makes it all the way down south to PG&E land in California.


 "USACE" on that list is the Western version of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Federal Government controlled, and sells power from the dams they own to power companies all over the West - specifically including the power output from the Grand Coulee dam which is the biggest power output dam in the USA and spent several years as being the most powerful dam in the world (I think it STILL makes the Top 10 list on power output, barely, depending on if you go by peak capacity or actual power generated in a year).


 There are quite a few places in foreign countries that have access to power in the 3c/kwh or less range - though some of those countries would be VERY risky to set a mine up in and others aren't noteably friendly to foreigners.

If you've got access to cheap industrial or even commercial electricity in a place with already cheap electric costs 3 cents a kilowatt is definitely possible. For reference, I get around 7 cents in the US and there's costs of around four cents nearby for industrial. It's hard to gain access to that power though. Price has also corrected a little bit and it's now at around 2000, but not a huge worry as most people including me have already expected this to happen. Should come right back up in a few days or less.

Well with Bitcoin rallying past $2200, there may be a little life still in the S7. But honestly, who has access to 0.03 KWH? what country is that?

They are not obsolete. With $0.03/kwh power they make $115/month after costs. You cant use residential power costs then declare something obsolete when it is far from the truth. On the open market they should be worth around $275 each and still have a 3 month ROI with the proper power costs.

An S7 under current conditions would still be profitable if your electric is in the 3c/KWH range - but I doubt you could ROI one even if you paid $100 for it unless you DO have free electric.

 I would count "electric included" a "free" and legal, though if you pull enough more than the norm the landlord might come talk to you about renegotiating the rent amount (or in my case, I negotiated it AHEAD of time with the landlord and with my last couple of utility bills in hand, since he KNEW I used a lot before I moved into one of his "other" places).

Usually if you're not the party paying directly for it doesn't mean it's available to you for free either. I don't know of anyone who has a low rent and electricity included as well. You're lucky if you live in a country with a market for rent that's so low in demand to have electricity included in a sense that it feels free. Liability is a whole other topic though, running miners this way isn't exactly reliable.

it make sense because what you are paying in that "included" bill is already accounting with the limit you can use, you are still paying it but you don't know how much you pay

actually if you don't use all the limit you are probably overpaying it, because in these case they charge you the rate for the maximum limit you are allowed to use

so if you have 10kw of power already included, and you use 1, you are still paying for the 10kw rate....if it is based on power, but the logic apply anyway

It's "free" in the sense that using more (within the limit) doesn't cost more. For that matter, while the space the mining equipment takes up is never truly free, it is rarely considered at the hobby scale since the space used is considered to be otherwise unused.

that isn't free it's "included" you know, real free electricity is always stealing, but there are case when you can have almost free electricity like 1 cent, that is the cheapest electricity you can have withotu stealing


the s7 is too old no matter at what price you can get it, it's always better to go witht he last gen , they can compete better, even the s9 will be obsolete if they don't release a new one in two years...

My pool fee is .09% not 2%. Also receive transaction fees split among a fairly small group of miners. The TX fees are nothing to sneeze at. Just recently we have been getting fees as high as 4 and 5 BTC per block on top of the block reward.

I run all S9's except for a single S7 (F1 model with one fan)

Using the Coinwarez calculator, that S7 provides a profit of ~$485 per year (for me) after all costs. Also, that calculator doesn't take into account any transaction fees as far as I'm aware. So I will continue to mine with that S7 until it's no longer profitable.

Even though they are old miners, they are still going for over $400-500

"Free" electricity isn't always stealing. Most notably apartments with electricity included, although a S7 is on the noisy side to run in an apartment. You do, of course, pay a premium over apartments without electricity included.

Used coinwarz. Even factoring 20% transaction fees, the difficulty bumps make it near impossible to ROI spending more than $100-200 to acquire. Still need power supply too.

Probably good for someone this coming winter to heat the house at break even.