does anyone mine with the bitmain L3 +
If so what do you think of it?
My group has a modest farm of 20 x L3+ and 6 x A4 -- total hash of around 11GHs (small sized farm)
Bottomline, its profitable (mining direct and rentals ~ NH and MRR) and ranked second only after S9s in the farm.
Giant-B and X13/X15 Baikal farm at best 3rd in the ranking.
The group wants to expand on the Scrypt farm in 2017 but we didnt get a good deal from Bitmain, so we put the project on hold and bought more A741s instead.
The 504MH L3+ miner is currently the defacto Scrypt miner - tried and tested, and robust too in handling multi-coin mining. No RMAs so far, but I believe we got a good batch.
They are other companies doing 1GH and beyond using FPGAs but they are really unknowns and have not got a good sales track record.
A little bird shared with us that Innosilicon may come up with something bigger and better vs the L3+ but its all speculation again (not to be confused with the fused A4s bundle).
For 2018 and beyond, our radar is on Scrypt mining very closely because of profitability of the Scrypt coins.
The 2018 ASICS strategy - putting ASIC vs GPUs debate aside and avoiding AMD-NVIDIA dramas, simply because 1 ASICS = several dozens of GPUs = higher BTC accumulation -- as long as we dont have X11/D3 disaster anytime soon.
Yes, I admit that the LBRY, SIA and DCR has now been pulverized by Giant X10 & Bs, and A3s....
.... but the high price to acquire these miners has created a tall barrier of entry and the influx of too many miners and GHs may have neutralized the situation.
Well next 6 months we make the most of the solar array's power we can do 18kwatts for free.
The L3+ uses around 800-900 watts this may be good for us at the array. We can go to 18kwatts and be 'free' beyond that cost is 16 cents. If I get 5 dragonmints that is 6000 watts 3 s9's is 4200 watts we have 28 1080tis that is 5600 watts. This gets us to 15800 watts which means 2 or 3 more L3+ and we are at 18000 watts.
So
5x DragonMint 6000 watts
3x s9s 4200 watts
28 1080tis 5600 watts
3 L3's 2400 watts
total 18200 watts
So far the newer bigger array is bogged down with government rules and regulations. It is a six acre tract of land which would allow 2 acre array stage 1 then in a year or 2 up to a 4 acre array. 4 acres of panels would give us 50-70 kwatts of 'free' power.
It would be nice to get these arrays added but that is forum member buysolar's line of work. I try to mange the power he gets me to keep risk low and profits high. We did really well in Nov, Dec 2017 and even in Jan , Feb 2018
We made most profit mining in Nov, Dec 2017
We made most profit selling gear in Jan, Feb 2018