Topic: Bitmain Announces the Antminer R4 and APW5 Power Supply, Designed for Silence - page 38. (Read 85112 times)

I believe it's an arrangement where power is a three-way split in a shared (and over-airconditioned?) office, so he's only paying one third of the miner's power cost but has practical draw and volume limits and benefits from the output heat.

 Where is he getting power that cheap?
 I've seen basic rates that low near where I'm at, but not overall TOTAL rates except perhaps for very very large industrial operations or perhaps on large contracts....

GPU mining wouldn't be that much better, it would drive the cost of equipment up (and hurt gamers who don't want anything to do with Bitcoin) and/or the profitability would settle somewhere around 5-year ROI or some such silly figure, if people keep doing what they're doing now, i.e. bad math and wishful thinking.

Let's face it, what's happening is as much the fault of pigopolists as it is the fault of those who keep throwing money at them. We don't need GPUs or POS to stop buying from Bitmain. We can just stop buying from Bitmain, can't we?

BMT:  But if your cat dozes off on it, that will void your warranty.  Thank you come again.

I still think that the best thing for bitcoin developers is to go back to the drawing board to GET RID of ASICs altogether and either develop around plentiful GPUs that are pretty much a commodity OR make a node-based POS scheme which alts are toying with. The first option is much more preferable to me.

Barring this , the conversation goes like this:

Miners: Can we get a 1 year (REAL) warranty?
BMT: No, but you can pay for the unit that will breakeven in 350-400 days (it is so pretty and quiet; your cat can doze off on the top of it).

Discount for R4 -Yes.  (About 100 USD per miner., 60 USD per PSU)
Coupons -No.

First days orders were calculated without   shipping costs.

Word

I agree it's basically impossible for them to lose money -- i was being generous with those statements while trying to be objective about the fact that they could easily offer a longer warranty. Candidly, my opinion is that they choose not to because they want to maintain the highest possible profit margins.

It's not uncommon for many industries to have 100% markup on products, especially new products. In fact, in some industries 1000% markup is considered the norm.

The reason why Bitmain won't do these things? Answer: No real competition aka, a monopoly on their industry segment.

Edit: To clarify the first part of your reply -- IMO - A manufacturer that produces products they care about would offer the best possible product with the best possible warranty while maintaining the highest possible profit margins based upon consumer demand. A manufacturer that produces products they do not care about would offer the least costly product with the least amount of warranty while maintaining the highest possible profit margins based upon consumer demand.

I think Bitmain realizes that Bitcoin mining is a niche industry and that their foothold won't last forever so they are trying to cash in while they can.

Are there any discount coupons for S9/R4?

I posit that, if they offered a longer warranty, they expect not to be losing money, but to not be profiting as grossly as they would prefer. You said it yourself:


It's basically impossible for Bitmain to be losing money on their miners. They have moved how many thousands of S9 at $1600-2200? The mechanical tooling costs are almost zero since they use the same extrusions as S7 for both housing and heatsinks. ASIC costs are high, but even if we assume $5 cost per chip (and they could profit from raw chip sales of BM1384 at $2.50, what's 16nm cost vs 28nm?) makes $945 per miner so let's be generous and give it $1100 in materials. First batches were 100% markup, now we're down to only 50% or so. Material costs on the R4 would be a bit higher in tooling for the new case and fan, but at $5 per ASIC we're looking at $630 and the engineering for boards is next to nothing since it's probably the exact same circuit as S9 but with a slightly different PCB layout. So if we generously assume $800 materials that's only 75% markup. At that point you could replace one board in every R4 sold and still draw about 20% profits.

With the rates of Bitmain product failure being reported recently, I believe one or more of the following issues are occuring:

• Poor packaging at the time of shipment preventing miners from arriving without damages
• Little or no QA being done at the factory
• Poor support from the manufacturer (Bitmain)
• Weak or poor quality pieces being used during assembly leading to pre-mature failures due to shipping or use

IMO these units should be bench tested for at least 72 hours before shipping but I doubt Bitmain can or would be willing to do that. If Btimain is doing this today, I'd love to hear about it and read about it.

To me, the quality of the product is contingent on the warranty offered with the product. Memory manufacturers frequently offer lifetime warranties on computer memory because they consider how often does memory fail vs how much memory is being sold. The ratio of failure is so low, they can easily offer a lifetime warranty and remain profitable.

Now a 90 day warranty tells me that the manufacturer doesn't believe their product will last long term or it has been constructed in such poor conditions and of such poor quality that they cannot reasonably offer more than a few months of warranty because they expect a high rate a failure. Simply put, if they offered a longer warranty, they expect to lose money selling the product. Since Bitmain is a "for-profit" business and not a charity, I can deduct this 90 day warranty is the limit of what they can offer while maintaining their desired profit margins.

• I suspect they(Bitmain) are well aware of this expectation of high failure rates and a sign of this is the fact they offer such poor support and will frequently refuse warranty repairs on items that are essentially brand new -- I could cite multiple examples of this found here and elsewhere on the web but this is not the point of my remarks here today.

In Summary, This type of business practice is not conducive of a company that will remain in business without consumer demand. The challenge the consumer has today is the fact that Bitmain is located in China where manufacturing costs are extremely low and regulation is extremely limited. The fact that Bitmain basically has a monopoloy over the SHA-256 mining industry is yet another reason why the consumer will continue to suffer unless things change in the world where they(Bitmain) have some real competition in their targeted business area. If such an event were to occur; an event where a company is able to release a *profitable* product that truly completes with a Bitmain product; that will then only be the day where the consumer will have some real power in the world of SHA-256 Asic's and Bitcoin mining. Until that day occurs, as consumers we have 2 options, either move on to Alt-Coins or bend over and take it when Bitmain throws their weight around.

• A recent example of this can be seen by listing the price at 1000 USD then increasing the price on the day of release
• A conspiracy theory: I too have seen the correlation mentioned by Phillipma1957 when it comes to product pricing and global hash rate just before release of a new Bitmain product ... it's unsettling and almost blantantly obvious

I haven't given up on Bitcoin mining but I have gave up on the idea that Bitmain actually gives a crap about the products they produce and the small scale miners of the world. "Bringing mining back home" again .... yeah right. Nice shiny piece of shit you got there Bitmain. Oh it's not a piece of shit you say? Then put a real warranty on it.

But Bach1 was better, as this todays S9 crap.
Yesterday I lost another CENTER hashblade from NEW miner.
Shipped 2016-08-18
The total count  is now 8 hashblade from 23 miner.
3 boards from 11xS9B1 , But one was D.O.A.  5 boards from following baches 12 miners.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=914354.20

Bitmain's early batches are always spendy.  When this doesn't move they will drop the price.

How many people overpaid for Batch 1 S9s?  Plenty!

Yeah this is a free power office heater.  my buddy is mining with an s7-ln in his office with 2.4 cent power.

this would allow a move from 2th to 7th    with an increase in watts from 440 to 700   pretty good  if you can get a decent warranty.

Accidentally release it at double the intended price? I was excited at the potential of mining at home again.. nevermind.

this isnt marketed to those who have a 10k budget. its for those who can only spare a few kw in a building were power is cheap/"free" but space and noise must be limited (such as a condo, dorm, etc)

if someone is looking for just buying a single miner to run in thier living room, the S9 is a horrible choice because of its noisy dB. even if it was underclocked to 8TH, the S9 would probably still be louder than this, and I think that's bitmain's target market on the R4

did you screen shot it?

the photo is gone

hot link to photo is not allowed but I think you mean this:

So looking at the specs - the R4 only requires an 850Watt power supply?

One of the PCIe looks burnt.

https://bitmaintech.com/bm_tech_admin_at_123/userfiles/image/antminer-r4-front.jpg

 The new PSU I think turned out to be $260. Not bad at all for it's capabilities, *IF* it proves to be reliable.
 7 *PAIRS* of PCI-E 6-pin connectors specified, dunno if that's supposed to be 7 cables or 14 cables but it sounds like it might be 7 cables with 2 connectors per cable? VERY VERY unclear.



 Folks that are shutting down S7s are probably in one of 3 situations (1) HIGH summer electric rates, a lot of utility companies bump the rates a LOT during "A/C season" for 3 months or so out of the year, making an S7 unprofitable (2) High electric rate in general, making the S7 marginal to unprofitable with recent difficulty and price (3) unit died.