Topic: Cheap board for beginner (Read 1781 times)

How hard of a mod is that going to be for the rest of us without having your experience? I have done the voltage mod on the S1, but that seamed relatively easy compared to what I was reading in your hacking thread.

#1.China

#2.Ukraine/USSR

#3.Iceland or Washington state

How close did I get  

So, if the consensus is that you need super cheap electricity, where is all the PH/s coming from geographically?

If I work this summer I will buy one of these toys

The S3 is probably the best miner made by anyone yet. Those things were solidly built, versatile and reliable. Probably the only way to make 'em better would have been power jacks on one end like Ava4/6/SP20 to improve stackability, but that's a secondary concern.

Also, getting the S7LN to work that low required board-level firmware hacks. I'll have code and efficiency charts up tomorrow.

No, not yet. That's pretty impressive. I might actually consider buying a S7LN, if that's possible.. 20% fan? DAMN. The S3 was probably the most moddable miner Bitmain ever made, and i'm glad somebody else appreciates them like I do

Have you seen what I've done with S7LN, running 2TH at about 400W at 20% fan speed? It's not S9-calibre but a lot better than an S3 for efficiency.

I really like the S3 with software-adjustable voltage. Too bad there weren't many built like that.

Just overclocking. S3s are pretty limited, where some units barely hold the 441gh/s advertised, and some can reach over 500gh/s. It really depends, but S3 is just a reliable miner for people who want a quiet miner that does the job. Sadly, there's never been one quite like it. I would pay hundreds for a quiet miner that hashes well, and uses a current generation chip. There's a support + OC guide at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitmain-antminer-s3-support-and-overclocking-thread-699064 if you'd like tips and tricks. I still run 3 just because they run and are so damn quiet!

Wow, any trick to an S3?

S5s are okay if you don't mind something FREAKING LOUD. I guess if you underclock it to about half speed you can keep the fans reasonable, but then it feels bad to be running 200MHz at 800mV when you could do the same at 650mV and save about 40% of your power.

S1 is super obsolete, the S3 goes for around the same price.. shoot I am starting to find S5's for close to S3's..

I would highly recommend finding an S5.

OR  buy a USB miner stick, one of sidehack's sticks, they work great and draw very little power.



At  $.16 / kw you will ONLY mine for fun you WILL NOT profit at that electrical cost. 

Grab a sidehack USB IMO, it is a great "toy", I have 3 that are mining my fav altcoin LOL.  Well.. protecting the altcoin really.  Although at this BTC price I might just point them at a pool lol.

Ok, thanks, I will check all these boards / solution.

Video cards break pretty easily with mining, though, and with a broken gpu, oftentimes the only thing you can even scrap out of those is the heatsink. FPGAs do have some coins that they can mine, but not really a lot. Generally, any coin that has some algorithm to stop ASICs will work with FPGAs. If you really do just need a beginner ASIC or GPU for mining and you don't care about its hashrate, check out the AMD series of cards. R7s do the job, R9s do it better. For a cheap ASIC, check on eBay or in the marketplace for Block Erupter USBs. They truly used to erupt blocks, but now their low hashrate and 2w power usage is perfect for learning about bitcoin. I still have a few, and they work just fine. U1-3s also work, are portable, and have a reliable hashrate with more modern ASIC chips. The u3 has the highest hashrate out of them all, with the u1 being the "worst" although a U2 is basically a U1 with a better heatsink. Gekkoscience Compacs are the most efficient miner for beginners, and boast a semi-current BM1385 asic. They're very tunable and use low amounts of electricity and people have gotten them up to 20+GH/S from the base 11 or so. There are many options, but truly if you want a good start with mining, just check out the antminer S9 or S7-LN. They feature the newest ASIC chips, although the S7 wont make you anything and the S9 is still debated about profit.

Yeah,FPGA days are LONG gone,at least for bitcoin,I had a few from BFL before their 65nm fiasco back in 2012 or 2013.........  

I think there is a altcoin or two that you can mine with em,have to use Googlefu to find em 

You could try getting a few video cards & mine altcoins,the cards do hold their value fairly well & you can browse this section in the forum to see what's worth mining:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=160.0

You won't make a whole lot in most cases but the power consumption & resale value is better than BTC mining ATM.

And you have a pretty big learning curve with all the diff algorithms using diff mining software to figure out & play with,lots to study & think on  

Thanks very much for your replies, I've understand now.
As I'm a FPGA specialist, I would had programmed something, but even here, the Asics are more powerful  
And the algorithms seems not to be optimizable...

Well,even the "latest & greatest" stuff won't ROI at .16 cents kwh...maybe a year or two 

I don't think ROI will work on any miner until about .5 cents kwh or lower,so there is nothing that will ROI in BTCland........unless BTC hits $1000 or more in the next month or two.

So if you just want to try mining,look at what I posted & get one & play with it 

No, it just means that two-year-old gear is too electrically inefficient to earn anything especially if you're paying 0.16/KWh. You need to look at the expected earnings in BTC/GH (based off the current network difficulty), BTC exchange rate, then look at a miner's W/GHs electrical efficiency against your price per KWh to see if anything is profitable.

So that means that only firms can earn with something like bitcoin farms in iceland ?

Don't expect to earn money (not even ROI) with inefficient (outdated) hardware, and especially in places where the electricity is that expensive. I had access to 0.08 USD per 1KW and even with that price it would not be profitable to mine with that device. Mining as a hobby is not possible anymore unless you want to slowly lose money over time.

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So I've used this website :
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

with this on Ebay : 136USD - AntMiner S3+ 445 GH/s 350W

The result is : 19.4 USB/month
In France, it's 0,165 USD for 1kW/h

So 1 month with 350W is 260kW/h => 42,9USD

It means that it's impossible to earn money in France ?