Topic: Biostar BTC-24GH Bitcoin Miner Review (Read 8691 times)

Wow, so user "Biostar" was actually scamming this whole time hoping to get some shipping money in BTC's...

There's so many pitfalls and scam artists in this industry, you really got to weed out the shysters from the reputable companies.

The company Biostar is definitely legit, it's just so easy for a Noob or uninformed member to make a mistake and send money to a shady member online, thinking they're going to provide a service to the BTC community.

Thankfully, no ones been scammed this time..

Correct, but I haven't actually seen anywhere to buy one since I completed the review.

Well, that sucks that wasn't actually Biostar responding to this thread. I am still not affiliated with either Biostar the company, or Biostar the scammer. I was asked to do this review by a friend who runs a hardware review website and was offered a BTC-24GH unit to review from Biostar, which is one of his regular review partners. I posted it here for the community to learn about the device. I hope it was a helpful review for those that heard about the device and wanted to learn more information about it. Let's hope the real Biostar sees our feedback and makes a better device the next time around.

Wait... if I understand this right. $600 for 24Gh/s? What...?

I specifically requested an email a number of times.  When they deflected my request for escrow I told them I would be happy enough if they sent the btc payment request to me via email from a biostar email address (ie: [email protected] or [email protected])

Same exact thing here, just no email.

Dude, are you seriously retarded?! Take your scam somewhere else, shithead.

BTC-1T
and
BTC-5T

for Preorder*

Send Bitcoins to - 18WkUQnp2QzWJfNwB5WYrCXnKQjY61xPx3

Any amount of Bitcoins= Miner





































































*#BFL




































*Shipping 2019 maybe

Confirm -> user Biostar Scammer

Thanks for the clarification that he also contacted you  via PM.

User Biostar = Scammer.

the user Biostar sent PMs to me and dropt asking if we would be interested in testing/reveiwing dev batch units, and included a list of specs and claims of the upcoming device.

I asked for proof that they are with Biostar, and have not received any yet. I was offhandedly asked if id be alright paying the shipping for free units (no price given).
Dropt reports very similar experience, albeit complemented by a fake email pretending to be from biostar but actually an email anonymising service. IIRC he was quoted an actual shipping price.

I suspect Biostar is indeed at work on a second generation board - the first one reviews well and is inline with other 110nm efficiency. A drop to 28nm and some redesigns for modularity would allow Biostar to make a good gen.2 in theory.

however, the username Biostar appears to be a scammer, looking for people who might pay shipping costs for a review unit. tread carefully

I agree the posted mail is most likely a scam. But the OP looks genuine, and these boards actually do exist (seen on other hardware review sites).
Not sure about user 'Biostar'. What makes you assume that the scammy mails were originated by him?

Lets wait until biostar come out with 14nm...

I'm totally in agreement with you. Sometimes when I post it doesn't come out right. Sorry, amigo. This whole thread is a scam. My guess is that it's the same account. I'm so sick of the scammers inundating us with crap like this. I really appreciate you posting the headers and warning us.

Well, my humble opinion - take somewhere AntMiner S2 by Bitmaintech, disassemble it and explore it, and make something your own in the same form-factor and with better specifications (keep in mind that they promised to provide some easy and unexpensive way to upgrade S2s to 1.8 or 2 Th/s) for the same (or better for less) price. Standalone, web-GUI, 0.7 or less W/Gh, a possibility to overclock - it is a minimum of what we need from miner. We also need well-known supplier with wide dealer network, who make his devices in good faith and provide reasonable warranty time...

I do think so. 

No.  Please re read the thread with my statement in mind.  The user "Biostar" is not the same user that started this thread.  Further, if "Biostar" were actually an employee of biostar, he wouldn't need to use a well known email spoofer to send me an email "originating" from a Biostar domain.

But, you go ahead and pay that $200 shipping in BTC, without escrow.  Let us know when you receive the unit.

Yes, it does.  Half node die shrinks are pretty easy, but going from 110nm down to 28nm requires pretty much a redesign of the entire chip.  If your (Biostar) engineers have not done 28nm products before, they will have a big learning curve.  The licenses for the tools they need are also more expensive and complex, and the design rules are vastly different at the smaller geometries.

I am very pleased to see a major, well-established vendor get involved in this space.  Please consider a partnership with one of the existing SHA256 ASIC vendors, and leverage your supply chain capabilities to bring cost and power effective products to the market.

I see did they patch up the simple machine ?  Why don't they use vbulletin  they can import the data over to vbulletin

From OP "For those wondering, I am an independent hardware reviewer and not affiliated with Biostar in any way." That's fairly obvious from the mail header - Received: from emkei.cz (emkei.cz [46.167.245.72]).

As a heads up to anyone who may have been "selected" to receive a review machine from "Biostar"....


It's a scam.

I found this address in the manual last time this was posted
http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/17V2jhDpwEEGLxDJgbKXfTgEtob9EScRT
http://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/17V2jhDpwEEGLxDJgbKXfTgEtob9EScRT
First payment last christmas. Maybe this address is setup on some demo units?

I'm not usually a fan of biostar but very interested in what btc hardware the may make. I would feel 100% confident ordering from a well-known manufacturer.

These have been around since at the least March of 2014.  But you're right, and they were still expensive then.

Avatars where disabled months ago because of a security breach. You need to have uploaded one before they where disabled.

Sorry how do you get the avatar below your username?

By the way  if they can produce something like s3

Great to see Biostar making ASICs! Hopefully they can get 20nm out the door ASAP and make a real impression on the market.

I am also curious about GEN2... it is very nice that company like Biostar is interested in developing ASIC devices. With their distribution and service it would be easy for a lot of people to acquire miners for themselves and support the network. It would be also ql if they implement some small quantity of ASIC chips on their mainstream products like combo devices and such 

That's 25$/GHash then. Current generation of miners is 1-3$/GHash. No one will buy this device. I wonder what's the point of taking it to market. Probably the increase in difficulty was not taken into account when calculating the business case for these. But still, I am curious about the next gen. Hope it'll be 28nm technology with a competitive price tag.

Woops, I meant to add the price and forgot. I have updated the post with price.

tl;dr = $599.99

For those wondering, I am an independent hardware reviewer and not affiliated with Biostar in any way.

It's great to see Biostar responding to feedback in this thread. My hope is that they take our feedback and make something that puts all the pre-order ASIC manufacturers to shame.

They have the technology. They can rebuilt it.

How much is it? if is cheap maybe someone with free electricity....

Amen to that. Do NOT follow these other ASIC manufacturers and go that business model. We hate it with a passion. For you all look into a smaller form factor and look into either it fitting into a PC case or designing a complete system case pcu etc. Most manufacturers in this industry are doing this.

We're a mostly good community willing to help. I'm glad to see you all branching out into this space. I love your motherboards and have several systems running on them

Sorry - I did not know you guys were well known in the industry.  I am not a tech guy.  I thought you were just some dudes working in some remote lab that had been working so hard on this without knowing it was going to be a hopelessly unproductive product.

Someone might have already said this, but I would you encourage you to buy a Bitmain S3 and maybe a one of the bigger Rockminers.  These are the latest miners to hit the market and they might give you some perspective.  As I said, I am not a tech guy, but I always want to know what my competition is doing.  And right now you guys could use some bench-marking.  IMHO.

Then you can play with a lot of formats, like a PCI Express 1x, I think you make a gread effort with this board, late to play the ASIC game, but a good starting point, I'm interest I your evolution of hardware, What do you think about a PCI Express raiser in a mini ITX MOBO for put your miners?, play whit the ideas, you have the technologi for it.

Sorry with my bad English

nice to see you guys in the mining scene

for me, a small time home hobbiest miner I would like something like this:

USB connections, multi platform software (or can use cgminer).

stackable, maybe with an ATX mounting layout (stack multiple boards in a standard ATX case to be cat/kid friendly).

individual units around 150-300 watts to easily use on non dedicated circuits, just add/stack boards to meet power capacity.

pcie power.

and do not do preorder

Very nice and detailed write-up. But honestly, I thought this was some kind of joke. The product is over a year late to market to be profitable in any way.
But now that Biostar as a renowned Mobo manufacturer got into the game, I am curious about the next generation. So, surprise us and keep up the good work!

I was under the impression from other EEs on the forums that shrinkage required quite an extensive redesign rather just switching the manufacturing process.  If it's not too involved that maybe a quick jump to 28nm with a good design would put Biostar into significant competition with the current ASIC leaders.

The BE200 (asicminer) is 40nm. That it is borderline-competitive with 28nm designs demonstrates the effect of a good design

you guys should take a look at BTCgarden's...
they're using AsicMiner's Chip
maybe u guys can do something...like copycat or make it better, well... thats how it should be when competing with other manufacturer...
take the best feature, add something, and TARAAAA u got ur own style

and FYI, BTCgarden's is 55nm, still it can competing with other 25nm
dont know how, but it works

if 110nm is shrunk down to 28nm (1/4 the size) it could theoretically be as much as 16x the efficiency, but other factors may mean something not as ideal. however, 1/10 the power usage could make a very competitive product, so I look forwards to what comes out in rev. 2

definitely hoping to snag a review/testing spot for this

Thanks for getting back to us.

We have been intrested in the idea of Bitcoin for some time now but we havent seen what us as a company could do. We released out Bitcoin Pro Series of Motherboards and got a positive response from the public. We now know that the Mining world has mainly moved away from PC hardware and towards Custom designed miners with ASIC chips. We have never developed any ASIC chip before so our "bitcoin" Division got funds to preduce a Mining Asic and board. We developed our 110nm Chip to keep costs down and wanted to see how the public reacted. We got alot of Negitive feedback due to the 24pin connector and Power usage and so on but we also got lots of good feedback for us as a company so our "bitcoin" Devision is producing REV 2. Your feedback is helping us lots as a company preduce something the average user wants and the Pro user needs.

Thanks

POWER
- PCIE connections, and possibly screw terminals. No 24-pin cable though since its extremely bulky/rigid, takes up space, and can be replaced with a paperclip for on/off. (perhaps include a seperate 24-pin peice that can plug to a mobo cable for on/off function (like this: http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzExWDk0OA==/z/o6YAAOxymnFSF8M1/$(KGrHqNHJEwFIH03lp5JBSF8M06jm!~~60_35.JPG))

SIZE
- stackable with little or no extra effort and hardware (slots together or include zipties)
- preferably two types: 1) small-scale which is less than 1 cubic foot and ~3kg  &       2) large-scale that is 2U-4U rackmount
- packaged in a way it wont bend or snap if thrown down a staircase by UPS/DHL
- able to be placed and run on a metal surface (ie: components electrically protected on the bottomside by a chassis or mounting feet)

EASE of USE
- MUST MUST MUST have its own ethernet connection. no new hardware should require a host computer - it should be self-sufficient with internet connection
- plug and play is ideal - see ethernet connection
- a Raspberri Pi is not a built-in solution, it is a host computer dangling off the side and should be avoided. build in a proper controller and network chip.
- include 3 not-too-bright LEDs for power status, network status, and hashing status. should be visible from 3-4ft away if looking at the device, without keeping the room lit up even at night time

FUNCTIONALITY
- access to settings, ability to reduce frequency, change network settings, and both DHCP and static IP options
- ability to adjust voltage (how difficult would it be to control the voltage of all the regulators with a single pot resistor?) This ensures your hardware can be undervolted slightly late in its lifecycle to make running it profitable for longer
- display stats (perhaps a basic and advanced view modes) for everything from individual chip status to reject/error rates and %

HASHING
- make the chips capable of individual adjustments and optimizations. For a good example, look at spondoolies-tech where each one is independantly driven to achieve ideal performance for each chip. For the BEST example look at bitfury, where the system had a file that saved and allowed users to modify the ideal settings for each chip. (like the SP-Tech method, but saves the best configuration to use after a reboot or miner restart, then adjusts automatically from there if needed)

please build units that are designed at the 2TH/1.5kW level with seperation of the 12V between sections of the system so that it could be easily powered by a pair of 850W+ power supplies. Preferably seperated into eight 250GH/180W sections with an individual PCIe connector for each with no 12V crossovers. Ideally a unit like this would be 4U rackmount

I saw these miners awhile ago,say 2-4 months I think.

Very cool,but even then the power consumption was too much  

Maybe look into the Scrypt miner market too,remember power consumption is the key selling point,keep it low & easy to use & you could have something!!  

Browse this forum,there is ALOT of info here on who offers what at specific power & hashrates.

Here's another section of interest:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0

Oh...DO NOT DO PREORDERS!!!!! Sell from stock only please  

Good luck Biostar!!  

We have done a very limited and final Production run on the BTC-24GH and havent been contacted by any Major retailers.

If you'll sell them in North America through newegg & tigerdirect, or any other hardware house that accepts BTC, they'll be a hit nonetheless Happy days!

Great Review.  Super detailed.
But the miner is a lost cause with today's difficulty and advances in ASIC chips.  You can overclock two Nano Fury 6 USB miners and get 24 Gh/s for a fraction of the watts.  I can't imagine a scenario where this miner would useful to anyone now.  A year ago you would have been rich selling these.  Today you could not pay me to run them.

Thanks for your input, I have taken note of them.






Yes... Thats all i can say at this moment and time but we will be posting info soon.

Do you plan to self design a lower nm chip with better performance?

Size = smaller if you aren't competing with the mid to large sized miners.  Something like the Yiazo if you're doing it for the entry level miner:

http://yiazo.com/2014/06/01/ybf-m-board-final/

Power hookup = Maybe consider a backplane design for a future revision, instead of spaghetti wires all over the place

Ease of use = If you could make a CGMiner build and use a web based GUI for config like the Antminer or Dragon web GUI it would be better than your proprietary software

Functionality = No need for other functions other than mine.  Use more efficient chips.  There's absolutely no reason a 24 GH/s miner is using up 130 watts.


My 2 satoshis.

Chuck

Our Chip was a 110nm self designed and self Produced chip.

Chip closeup -http://i1346.photobucket.com/albums/p683/Sandy_Bruce/BTC-24GH/DSC04480.jpg

Picture from - http://forums.pureoverclock.com/bitcoin-forum/25402-biostar-btc-24gh-board-closeup-testing-exclusive.html

Curious as to who manufactured the ASICs on your 24GH board, or rather, where did you guys acquire them from?  I think I make out "Cobra" on there and I can't find any information about that chip.

~~~ Quote to this ~~~

What you want as miners from a miner. For example Size, power hookup, Easy to use, lots of fuctionality? You tell us.

Thanks for the great Review.

This was our first take at a Bitcoin mining board. Our chip is simular to the Asicminer BE100 chip and the BitcoinGarden Blade miners chip. This was a experimental project to see how the public would react to a known Computer hardware manufacture get into Bitcoin mining Hardware. We have stuff under the cover at the moment for our mass public release of our REV 2 miner code named Tasha.

more info on the Biostar BTC-24GH here - http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/event/bitcoin/page2.htm

Contact us via PM here for info on how to get a DEV REV 2 miner for Testing and Review.

It is made ​​exclusively for collectors only.
Keep it in the box, never use and after years the value is bigger, if it ever can be mined.
Where can I buy it?

Agreed. Very nice effort writing this for us. I appreciate another honest vendor/manufacturer entering the market. It may not be competitive nonetheless it adds to the diversity.

if this is 110/130nm technology efficiency doesnt matter much - consider it as a small-batch test of thier design. If they go and replicate into 28nm they could catch up to the market quicly, and the review indicates a stable unit once mining. For a company like biostar playing catchup will be easier than it was for bitcoin manufacturers to oranise and fund thier first die-shrink


who knows - maybe a BTC-240GH is on the horizon at the same power draw (would require 28nm assuming this was 110nm)

Very nice review, thanks for share your experience

At 5W/GH/s they're running more expensively than Avalons and BFl 65nm gear - which can had for more or less free nowadays.  Thanks for the review but this item is dead before it even hit the shelves.

I love that biostar or any motherboard company is looking into market.   I just wish they would do a little more current.  Like that BTC pro motherboard would have been amazing if it was produced a year before they did.  This seems like another product like it.

I applaud them for getting into market, just with with all their backing they would have done something a little different.  Where did you get this at?

It seems they're a year behind.  Hello! It's 2014!

Make it mine 240Ghash at 130watt
We will buy it

+10 to this comment. 5W/Gh is insane. Most other ASIC companies are pushing 1.5W/Gh or less now. This is incredibly inefficient. Its like buying a motorcycle engine to power a bus.

If your power is free, and have a lot of old PSU available .. maybe they want to get rid of the stock .. If the sale points are not advertised .. there's no business out there

Not sure i'd take one, even free.

Where can I find these products for sale?

Yeah, after I read the power readings and did the math it was quickly apparent that it was not what it was hoped to be. Hopefully Biostar can take the constructive criticism and make a better product for round 2.

Over 5W/Gh. Useless product is useless. Too little too late.

The BTC-24GH is Biostar’s first venture into the ASIC market, after already releasing special motherboards for GPU based mining. The BTC24-GH is a 24 GH/s device, or GigaHashes per second. This puts them in about the middle of the pack as compared to some other ASIC manufacturers with regards to their hashing power and their price.

About the Reviewer

I have been Bitcoin mining for about a year on and off with a Butterfly Labs Jalapeno, and some powerful GPUs before that. The speed of my Jalapeno and the speed of the BTC-24GH differ by about 17GH/s, but there are a good deal of other factors to compare such as ease of use, efficiency, and time to break even on the purchase that will be the deciding factor in my review of the BTC-24GH. In any case, it’s exciting to see a major hardware manufacturer like Biostar getting on board with creating some Bitcoin hardware.

About Biostar

Biostar, Biostar Microtech International Corp, is a Taiwan based motherboard manufacturer founded in 1986. Biostar, an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer, and is probably most well known for their motherboards, but have also branched out into designing and manufacturing other computer hardware such as video cards, barebones computers and industrial computers. They were actually the first GPU manufacturer to allow users to modify the voltages and frequencies to overclock their cards. Biostar has the manufacturing capabilities to take Bitcoin mining to the next level much faster than any other ASIC manufacturer out there, especially if they introduce overclocking to the hardware capabilities. We will have to see how their devices progress over time. Proclockers has been given a chance to review their first ASIC device, the Biostar BTC-24GH.

Biostar’s Take on the BTC-24GH

The "BTC-24GH", with 64 ASICs on-board that offers 24GH/s performance which is equivalent to more than 30 ATI 7970 graphic cards. ASIC mining solutions are good at solving mathematical hash functions; and their strong hashing power and low power usage, making it very efficient to use.

Packaging

The packaging of the BTC-24GH is very similar to how you would receive a Biostar motherboard. It even has the familiar sticker with the specifications on the side of the box. The box is just a bit smaller, perhaps the size of a Micro-ATX board or similar form factor. The board was fairly well padded with a static resistant bubble wrap bag inside the box. The special USB 2.0 connector that connects to the USB to COM adapter for the BTC-24GH board comes in it’s own small sealed static resistance bag.





Features and Specifications
24 GH/s (+/-10%)
130 W (+/-10%)
Interface by COM to USB 2.0 Cable
Flexible Mining System can stack up to 50 Board totaling 1200 GH/s hashing power.
64 ASIC mining chips per board.
Dimensions: 244x244 mm

System Requirements
Efficient, external cooling system
External 24 pin power supply with additional 4 pin.
USB 2.0 connection
Supported OS: Windows 7 or Windows 8
Motherboard standoffs (Suggested 5 cm)

Packing List
1x BTC-24GH
1x Power cable (board to board)
1x Quick Installation Guide
1x COM to COM cable (board to board)
1x USB to COM cable (PC to board)
1x Setup DVD

Please Note: The COM to COM cable and USB to COM cable will be connected in the package. Make sure to check that the pinouts match those in the following photo, or your miner will not start. I ran into this issue out of the box, which is a big factor in my overall rating of this product.

A Closer Look at the BTC-24GH

Here we take a closer look at the hardware for the Biostar BTC-24GH.








Configuring the Mining Software

The BTC-24GH comes with a special mining software called BMminer. The BMminer software can only be used on Windows, sorry Mac and Linux users. Hopefully they release drivers and software for each major OS, as many serious Bitcoin miners run Linux. The BMiner software was included in the setup program included on the DVD. It allows you to take screenshots of your current speed and that is about it. I could not find a log of any sort, which is lacking compared to the freely available CGMiner, BGMiner, and other open source mining software available. The fact that you must use BMminer to mine Bitcoin with the BTC-24GH is limiting it’s audience, as CGMiner, BMiner, and other applications run in Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Adding the COM to USB Driver

The manual suggests that you run the installation of the COM to USB driver as an Administrator. The screenshots in instruction manual do not really follow the software that was included. It shows that there is an actual driver file that you need to install, but you can actually just run the setup.exe that is included on the DVD now instead. I am guessing that the DVD was updated after the manual was printed, which is understandable with brand new hardware. It would be great if they could update their online PDF though.



Installing the Software

As I mentioned previously, the BTC-24GH has a proprietary mining application that is required to currently mine for Bitcoins. The mining software requires Microsoft Windows to install and run your BTC-24GH ASIC miner. The instructions for installing the mining software are fairly vague in the instruction manual. In fact, most of the instructions in the manual were fairly vague in general. They are actually wrong, as the whole software installation can now be done, from what I can tell, through a much easier setup application than what is actually described in the manual.

Editing the Mining Config

The manual said to start the install as Administrator, but apparently you cannot edit the Mining Config files directly in the mining software from what I found, even if you launch the mining software as Administrator. I ended up just starting up Notepad as Administrator to edit the files manually. The software updates immediately with the values that are saved.

The previous install process installed the mining software on my Desktop in:

C:\Users\Public\Desktop\BMminer.

You can find the mining worker config to edit in the C:\Users\Public\Desktop\BMminer\apps\miner\save\worker.txt file in that directory.

Testing - Let’s Start Mining

After fixing a fairly major oversight in regards to the manufacturer’s pre-assembled COM to USB adapter, and configure the mining software, I was able to finally start mining. The pinout was backwards from the factory, which is an honest mistake, but not something that I was expecting on a review unit. Once I switched the pinout, all LEDs lit up properly as per the instruction manual, the mining software started recognizing the chips, and we were registering shares on BTC Guild.

While the mining software runs, it appears on the screen in various background colors depending on what I can tell to maybe be the heat of the board. I’ve taken some important readings during operation that have opened up some new issues about the BTC-24GH’s operation. While the temperature of the board ran within it’s thermal range nicely, the Wattage readings were giving me some concern.

I ran the system for around 7 days, but on day 5 I had to power it down for a major electrical storm in my area. After initial burn in testing for a few days, I finally set up both of my Kill-a-Watt wattage readers to get some actual wattage specs. I was kind of shocked at how many total watts it was using even idle. It quickly became apparent that this device needed quite a lot of power once it actually started mining. The total was approximately 278 Watts including the external fan and the mining computer I have tweaked to be very low power usage at only 67W average. The BTC-24GH ASIC device itself failed to meet it’s own power variance of 10% by an additional 30W. That means the BTC-24GH is actually 173W, almost 25% over the advertised power rating of 130W, or even close to the 146W variance. One of the biggest factors in Bitcoin mining is the cost per MegaHash or GigaHash to actually mine the Bitcoin. The BTC-24GH has a 76.98 MH/s/W efficiency rating. The Butterfly Labs Jalapeno I own gets a 205.71 MH/s/W efficiency rating. The BTC-24GH device fails to meet it’s own factory specifications for it’s power usage and fails to receive a passing grade for MH/s/W, the standard in Bitcoin power usage.



Another important factor in Bitcoin mining is the actual overall SHA-256 hashing speed of the device. The speed of the BTC-24GH is a bit confusing, as it has 2 different hashing speeds displayed in the mining software at all times. One is System Speed, and the other is Share Speed. The Share Speed is consistently lower than the System Speed by about 1 GH/s, and the reported speed on BTC Guild is around another 1 GH/s lower than that. When I have used a Butterfly Labs Jalapeno, I had much less variance between what CGMiner, an open source virtual currency mining software, reported and what was being reported on BTC Guild’s charts.




When it comes down to it, the most important factor of mining Bitcoins is the overall cost of the mining hardware vs. it’s potential earnings. As of right now, 1 Bitcoin is equal to approx. $574. With a hefty 278W power usage and a 21.34 GH/s the BTC-24GH I am losing $0.24/day at the default kWh rate.  Source: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit

Performance and Operating Specs
Temperature
25C-80C varying on chips across the board.

Software Reported Hashing Speed
Avg 23.93 - 23.94

Wattage
External Fan (Honeywell DB-100) = 45W
Low Power Windows PC = 60W approx.
BTC-24GH Idle USB Unplugged = 4.5W avg.
BTC-24GH Idle USB Plugged In = 67W avg.
BTC-24GH Mining = 173W avg. (30W over the 10% threshold)
Total Wattage to Mine = 278W approx.

MegaHashes/second/Watt Efficiency
76.98 MH/s/W

System Speed vs. Share Speed
System Speed = 23.94 GH/s
Share Speed = 22.5 GH/s

Mining Pool Earnings
0.00078418 BTC in 24 Hours
BTCGuild is reporting an average speed of 21.34 GH/s based on averages per 12 hours and 7 days of mining.

Price
$599.99 Retail

Comparison With Other ASICs

The BTC-24GH was quite a bit more work to get setup and start mining than the Butterfly Labs Jalapeno I purchased last year, but is quite a bit faster by design. Once I got the pinout issue figured out was fairly simple to get the hardware setup. The Jalapeno was essentially a plug and play unit, and did not require external cooling, or an external PSU. The BTC-24GH has “some assembly required” to get your miner running. You may even have to purchase an ATX power supply to run it if you don’t have a spare. This will definitely be a deterrent for some Bitcoin miners, as the ease of use of some of the newer ASIC devices on the market is quite noticeable. I believe the intention for the BTC-24GH is to appeal to hardcore modders like our audience here at ProClockers, but I’m not sure what the warranty is on this device, or the warranty implications for trying to overclock it. Biostar has always been a friend of the overclocking community, so possibly some day we will see either factory overclocked or the ability to customize your own overclocked ASIC chip settings out of the box. That would be a game changer..  

Conclusion

Overall I think that Biostar is a little late to the punch with the BTC-24GH, but I’m definitely not counting them out of the later rounds due to their manufacturing capabilities. It’s a little bit slower than I would like to see from a new ASIC unit at this point in the bout, but many other manufacturers have sold out of all of their original units. If Biostar can come down in price a little on these boards and include some additional hardware like the standoffs, the BTC-24GH could sell well to Bitcoin enthusiasts chomping at the bit to get new hardware.

Many of the ASIC manufacturers on the market also today take pre-orders for devices that don’t ship for months, or never ship. In many cases those orders that do eventually ship have been delayed multiple times before they are eventually delivered. During that time, the miner loses out on a serious amount of profit from their mining venture, especially if they purchased the device with Bitcoin. This is where Biostar can make up some serious ground on the competition. If they can beat the major ASIC manufacturers to market with the next big Bitcoin ASIC technology, and maybe even find a way to accept Bitcoin for their devices directly, then it will be a good day for Bitcoin miners everywhere. No more waiting for pre-orders and losing out on the Bitcoin gold rush.

I think that Biostar has done just the right thing by providing these devices for review. Designing and manufacturing Bitcoin mining hardware is a new venture for them, so these reviews should provide them with some excellent feedback from miners like myself that will help them make more competitive devices in the future. Watching major hardware manufacturers enter the game is exciting to say the least. Biostar could very well use the feedback from these reviews to create the next great advancement in ASIC technology, and I think at a much more affordable price than it’s competitors due to it’s manufacturing capabilities. While the BTC-24GH might not be the best ASIC on the market, the next Bitcoin ASIC from Biostar could be a serious contender in the ASIC marketplace.