Topic: Antminer S9 questions and data (Read 196 times)

Bingo - it was the k version I was thinking of. corrected post.
I stopped running s9's before they changed from batch numbers and moved to using letters for version control. Last one I bought and still run (and in fact also the last Bitmain gear I've bought) is from batch-25 which makes it ancient in miner lifetime

it's $400-500 now in China, depending on the quantity and your resources, so I think that is a good buy? I don't know!


Not a huge difference, the ones with higher hashrate have slightly better chips overall, but the difference is too small to be considered.


Lifespan for all miners is really random and luck-based, it could be 1 month or 5 years, I usually take 6 months or less into account, I assume they will break and die by then, although I have some gears hashing just fine for 4 years, some died in 2 days, you can't really tell.

We create a whole topic for difficulty predictions, we all have different things to say, my prediction is a slow and steady increase in difficulty until year-end, no skyrocketing what so ever, check the topic by NFW to see my predictions and the reasoning behind it,  keep in mind, I made more wrong predictions than I remember.  


If you can find an S9 for $300 ready to ship, that would be a deal given the current market price, at 6 cents you need this price mania to keep going, once things cool off you won't be profitable with an S9 at 6 cents, but until that happens, you should be good.


BraiinOS, Vanish, and the mods that thierry4wd make are the only ones I would trust.

And, forget about liquid cooling, it's economically useless, unless you get it for free it makes 0 sense unless you want a very quiet set up or plan to make some youtube videos or to impress the fellow ladies miners then anything except the default air cooling will come at a cost which will put you at a higher risk of losing more money, in plain English, ditch immersion cooling all together if you plan to actually make some profit.


NFW probably thought it's the K version which is indeed a terrible gear to own, you can see me "nag" about them here, the S9j is a robust gear, nowadays it's even better to buy the J than the original S9 because the latter is a bit too old, the problem is, some resellers will swap the old S9 hash boards into an S9j miner or simply change the sticker, and you can't really tell the difference, this is why if you don't trust the seller you should go for the S9i which is as robust but has different dimensions and thus can't be faked.

I do not have any immersion experience. As you say make some money back for a while.

At day 100-140. Sell ten and  immerse ten. My logic would be you get to learn about immersion and how much it works or does not work.

Maybe down the road you get a better deal on better gear and you already have experience  with immersion so you know you can do it or you know it is too much of a hassle.

You are the man . Thanks a lot, crystal clear and concise.

Would you trouble to overclock them with immersion cooling? I understand that immersion has to come after 100th day since if I decide to sell there will be no value for them if they are immersed.

They would run good with brains +

down clock to 13th and lower power.

or auto tune at 1100 watts a miner.

They simply don't break at 1100 watts and they do break at 1400 watts.

If you can get them with psu's for 300

1 unit doing 12.8  or 13 will earn 3.80 a day before power

1100 watts = 26-27 kwatts or 1.62

so 3.80-1.62 = 2.18 a day you need 138  days.  you could start to sell them at day 100 in lots of 10 if you could still get the 300 for them. it would hasten over all roi.

If I had the power and could afford to lose 90 x 300 = 27k - 15k = 12k I would take a shot.

as I think worst case would be a 10k to 12k loss and a huge fail has to happen to go that bad.

From what I have read on other posts I think the same. S9 and j versions I think are ok, but I NotFuzzyWarm has a different experience.

Philipma1957 what is your view on the above questions as someone who has mining experience and knowledge?

all my 9k's struggled until I pulled the middle boards and ran 2 boards.  they are fairly good doing this.  Note this is a sample of 4 units.

Yes the S9k has had a huge failure rate, the other S9 variants work better.

I think you mean the k version is bad not the j

thank you for your answer. The S9j is a horrible version or both?

Please read the various s9 support questions about the s9j k -- it is a horrible version....
Edit: corrected bad version to k

Since the price of the new miners are ridiculous high I was thinking to buy 70-100 S9 Antminers  that I have sourced.
I have the following questions regarding the Antminers S9's:

1) What is considered a good price for the S9?
2) What is the most stable version? Is the 13.5 THz the 14THz S9J?
3) What is the life expectancy that see those miners will have, since the coming months there are tons of S19 and other modern technology miners arriving in the market and the current difficulty skyrocketing?
4) I have calculated the break even point at around 110 days in a price around $300 and the price of 0.06 cents. Does it make sense to purchase with that ROI?
5) Is there a trustworthy overclocking firmware? I have read all the relevant topics from the forum but I didn't found anything that seems trustworthy. Does is makes sense to immerse cool them?

Any other advice is highly appreciated and thank you in advance.