Before i start, I have read the forum rules to see if duplicate topics are disallowed, and couldn't find anything please mods correct me if I am wrong in this as I did inadvertently break forum rules when posting a shitcoin giveaway thread and was sent a message warning me, this is in the forum rules so now i read these when im unsure : - ). This review was in the ALTCOIN section, but the ability to 'mine' bitcoin direct at a good rate even on UK power costs through nicehash makes this review a worthy idea, because current gen bitcoin hardware is just out of the question for profitable mining on UK power costs, especially once the halving hits. This is, until i found out about the KNC titan.
I wanted to buy an S7 last year, but my calculations on difficulty increases (as unlike scrypt it is not level) and the high price of over £1000 at the time left me to not purchase. I am glad I did not, the difficulty jumps made it certain i would not have ROIed in any reasonable time and may soon have begun mining at a loss. Note, i do not sell my coins, but HODL until price tops £600 a coin, then i will sell half and keep half.
With the titan and what you will read, this is an example of at the *present time* it looks to be more profitable than any other option. So when you spend £2000 on a titan, PLEASE, oh PLEASE spend £20 on a ledger wallet, or £90 on a Trezor. Protect your coins. Factor this into your ROI, secure the coins you will work so hard to mine. Too cheap for that? move your proceeds to a coinbase multisig vault, for which I will write a seperate review for. Now to end my waffle and get to business.
So I have been running a KNC Titan for a little while. I thought I would write a review of the KNC Titan, to let others know about the machine when mining bitcoin 'direct' through putting the rig on nicehash up for rental with payouts in BTC, this isn't mining bitcoin directly at all, different hashing algorithm, but what you see in your wallet coming in is like a good bitcoin mining income flow.
First, I ordered it from abroad. The KNC Titan is the best scrypt miner available currently. Got the machine, a total of 5 cubes.
A couple of the cubes had dead dies, one die was a little picky which was better when run at a lower clock, all other dies are at 325 with voltages tweaked by gens firmware mod to reduce them.
With gens firmware, the machine is stable. Mining on nicehash.com putting it up for rental among other things, i average 0.044 BTC a day with the machine. With an upfront cost of £2000 I paid, it worked out a very good deal based on this. Works out at 1.32 - 1.33 BTC a month. At current exchange rates thats nearly £400 monthly. Electric price is 0.11 pence kWh day, 7 hours at night is 0.4 pence, so this averages out at below 0.10 pence / kWh. My electric costs for this work out at roughly £70a month. Leaving £320 month profit. My earnings are based on 380 MH/S scrypt.
As litecoin is being added to coinbase, among other things I may be glad i got a titan when I did. But for mining bitcoin directly? Point it at nicehash and put it up for rent with #xnsub enabled and you will be able to 'mine' bitcoin directly at the rate at which I am. Maybe more if someone bids more for your hash. Payouts are automatically in BTC.
Without gen's firmware this machine can sometimes need a restart. With his firmware, this machine becomes the stable dream. It has not been restarted apart from to test different pools.
THIS IS NOT GOOD on clevermining or most multipools! The hashrate varies wildly as it ends up mining on stale work as the multipools switch coins. Nicehash it works fine with #xnsub specified. This feels like a dream to mine BTC directly at the rate I am mining it. much more than an S7 would, with 1,500 watts of power at the wall, an average of 380 MH/s.
The machine will have paid itself off by late winter, where its heat will become free. What the bitcoin halving will do to scrypt is yet to be seen. The price of bitcoin rising may reduce the BTC payouts, I am not sure how this is going to relate to the scrypt markets that nicehash multipool is working on, no other multipools worked well with this machine.
I plan to HODL this machine and keep it running until I hear word of the new imnosilicon chips actually having a solid date, to which I will time my sale of the unit and it's respective power supplies. By the time the imnosilicon machines are ready, I will have ROIed and will be in the green with this machine. If what i would sell my titan for cannot come close to the imnosilicon price and its hashrate/power math isn't as good as expected, I will continue to mine with the titan until it becomes unprofitable. This could take a long time, as i can switch to running at night only with 4p /kWh. As this will only happen AFTER new HW has come out.
I get the feeling though that even when the iminosilicon comes out, this machine will be profitable for many difficulty jumps,on on UK electricity if you shop around as I did. The difficulty will remain constant on scrypt until new hardware hits the market, thats what is good about scrypt mining, new hardware DOES come out, but it is developed slowly over time and seems to be released in waves, ensuring that jumps in difficulty even out until the next big hardware release, while BTC difficulty just keeps jumping, eroding your profits bit by bit by bit (pun intended) until you are in the red, solo mining for luck seems the better option at this point on UK power costs with current BTC HW.
I can imagine with the upcoming bitcoin halving there is going to be interesting happenings in the market, if BTC price goes up and scrypt coins stay relatively close to BTC, with their difficulty relatively level (there isn't much scrypt hardware yet to up te difficulty) then this would be a dream, if the BTC price goes up after many months, I will be in the black sooner, if BTC price somehow fell, i would probably cash out at £280 a coin to prevent loss of profit.
The free heat in the winter from this machine is potentially great, thats a significant winter cost removed right there, freeing up more cash. In the summer my flat is averaging at 30 degrees with the windows closed <3 I usually kept my thermostat high and paid a fortune for it, i cannot stand the cold in any way.
With the windows open around 22. Even better : - )
The dangers of mining with an S7 at this point (financial danger) is the crazy ebay prices, upcoming halving, and bitcoin difficulty that is like chasing the dragon the more it rises, unless your power is free, an S7 is nowhere near a powerful investment as the KNC Titan. Soon, the difficulty will have made the S7s pointless to ROI at all. I hate to say this, but it is just hard numbers and minus the titan, you ARE better off buying coins with fiat. The 14nm stuff may change this once its available to the public. Do not bother at all with the Neptune, The KNC titan's bitcoin brother. It is practically worthless unless you use it as a heater, unless power is free. Once the 14nm hardware comes out in the summer, several more hundreds of petahashes will be added to the network. Do not touch these rigs unless your power is free or cheap, or you wish to have a higher chance of luck lotto mining, or you are mining for fun.
Overall:
GOOD:
Profitable? Yes, quite much so. 6 months ROI at current levels. This is based on UK electricity costs with scottish power in the midlands.
Stable? Yes, with gens firmware mod - THIS IS A MUST! 60 quid, you can't go wrong. Factor this into your ROI costs. £20 for each additional titan i think
I feel based on LTC being added to coinbase, this might be a good investment. I like the concept of litecoin and the coin.
Heat (in a cold climate)
Many cubes, the chances of all cubes popping their clogs at once is very very low, so you have your money hedged ageinst HW failure to a degree, minus the controller. As you can sell cubes individually.
Quite quiet. Unlike the antminer s7 which can sound like a jet engine.
BAD:
Can be awkward to set up, the cube cables are not long enough (can be negated,
http://at.farnell.com/3m/3365-10/flachbandkabel-10-pol-per-m/dp/297288 , thanks Tupsu for the suggestion)
YOU MUST USE THE Y SPLITTER CABLES! cables cool to the touch when using these. EVGA 1200 PSUs.
Heat (in a hot climate)
EXPENSIVE (higher capital needed, most expensive miner on the market)
Ensure you query the seller about the dies.
You MUST use GENS firmware mod, this isnt a bad thing as such, but factor in the additional cost, but it is damn worth it. The KNC firmware sucks.
1500W of power can be a problem on some 120V circuits.
Factor customs duty in order from abroad, do not ask for this to be underdeclared to avoid it, illegal and you are not insured for damage.
COST TOTAL: £1900 titan, £100 shipping insurance, £200 customs VAT (i bypassed this by shipping it to an EU friend with lower duties, who then forwarded it on), £60 Gens firmware.
For me: total £2060
For most: Total: £2280 (with the ledger wallet, please do not underestimate a hardware wallet for the quantity of coins you will mine, use of HW wallets, vaults etc stopped me loosing thousands)
If my review helped you make a good investment, drop a tip (hope this doesn't come under the begging rule, no tip is wanted but i give people the option if i helped them make a good investment ; - ) I will however, beg and plead that anyone holding a large quantity of coins use HW wallets, offline wallets, or multisig vaults
For newbies who may read this, i cannot emphasize enough, the use of these wallets for large sums.
1JacobtFpSMx15iKNR2xmPuDLqRVYM9NWc - BTC (One Coin to rule them all,One Coin to find them,One Coin to bring them all,and in the light free them)
LXG8KNLctYyxqbK8MuStQfQwCCvJW2zApY - LTC (Great coin, silver to gold anology is nice, secure blockchain)
HT8z4mCVQn9TvnnqUpiLxYrJ7iYATe4ahT - HODLCoin (a nice coin in my opinion, good concept and i like squirrels)
BLqPUZKQfpvwP6gLUFcsQJah4p4yssf3S1 - SHT (Shames most but not all altcoins, gotta put it there, this is the shit)
P.S I am a lord of the rings fan. Bitcoin is one step to helping free humanity from the banking cartel. So rather than bind, i say free.
