Topic: Lifespan of Antminer S5? (Read 6751 times)

I think its an educated gamble.  I bought 8 sp20s in December and they've been mining 24/7 since then.  I'm fortunate enough to have a rack where I'm paying very little per kw/h so my sp20s have ROI'd at this point, anything past this is gravy, but the story could have been way different.  BTC could have dropped to 80 dollars or the .14 and .16nm fabs could have ramped up instead of had huge setbacks and I'd have thrown 5 grand in the toilet.

I think at this point we won't see 'next gen' miners until late q4 of this year at the earliest, so there's a good chance my s5s will ROI before any huge changes happen.  With the heat in india/china driving mining down, people who can continue through the summer have a chance to do a little better for the next 3 months.

I do consider it a higher reward with higher risk.  I would not say gamble though.   As you can do it with a educated gess on a lot.

Difficultly has slowed down which makes it nice for miners.  It's harder to do but with decent electricity it can be done.

I do find it funny the same things are being said in this thread that people were saying on the release of the SP20 and on the release of the S5, that the new chip is on its way, that you'll never ROI etc.

Bitcoin is a gamble.  Everything about difficulty is based on current price vs difficulty.  If the difficulty doubles and the price remains static, welp, current gen miners will be impossible to generate a profit from unless you're stealing electricity.  If difficulty doubles but BTC price goes up with it or we go back to the moon, who knows then?

If you like bitcoin as a technology, think of it as taking a shot.  It might pay off, it might not.

Unless you've got a good amount of money to invest in finding a space with solid power and cooling in one of the very cheap kw/h locations, its not going to recoup its cost most likely.

Well, decided to give it a try... talked to my neighbor who has the large workshop with geothermal cooling about it and he was very intrigued, so i bought 2 units and ordered a single 1300watt PSU to power both. We are going to set them both up on his property and run them like that for now.

The advantage is he's making more money off using then selling.  Lets say he put it all into buying coins, he does have a nice locked in amount.

But if hes able to run for  a little bit then sell for close to what he paid, he should get more BTC this way then straight buying.  Although something such as a price decrease could kill this.  So there are unknown factors.

i am not sure how this work.
Don't you need to spend BTC to buy?
what's this play advantage vs just simply buying BTC? One and done.

If the BTC price rises , you will not get your money back by selling Hashnest GH/s.

currently, S5 1155 GH/s costs Price: 1.63492467฿

I also purchased 1155 GH/s at a price:
1.41540542 ฿  2015-03-09  and    1.80835 ฿     2015-02-22

I bought a total of 251  Antminer S5 from Hashnest.   2015-02-12 - 2015-05-21

This would be  289905 GH/s .

Currently I have only 52 000 GH/s in Hasnest.
I've been selling out my Hashnest S5 miners   many times   and started again, buying they back a cheaper S5  price .

However, if the BTC  price rises back  to 275 USD, then I am still at a loss by selling GH/s.
0.2 BTC from each miner , makes 9 BTC. 

There is no doubt they have mastered the home sale market.   They were able to take the S3 and make the S5 weigh less, use one fan less, etc. That leads also into lower shipping cost's with it weighing less.   

I predict they stay selling home miners for quite a while, as they seem to have a very good model that equals profit for them.  Which ultimately makes more future miners for us customers.

Sure, I'm not arguing that coming up with a plan to create a more efficient miner is impossible. From what you're saying, it's probably already plausible with what's available. What I failed to make clear was that I meant that the hard part is the production of a miner. Bitmait seems to be awfully successful at that when compared to all the manufacturers that crashed and burned.

Until the next gen of machines comes out I would suggest just buying hash on hashnest.  You can keep it for only a day and sell it back it you want.  I feel it is a lot less risk than buying an s5.

I want to buy an s1 just for fun, not really to make money.  If you want an s5 for money wait for the new gen, they will be cheaper then.  But who knows when the next gen will come out?  Could be weeks, or months.

ya, i plan to pick a few brains along the way.. i am not in a hurry to buy and might even wait tell the summer to see if that new miner comes out... I know my buddy has his woodshop already cooled year around in the 70's on the hottest days of summer.. maybe i could bug him into doing it in his shop or partner up with him on it, because the back 1/3rd of his shop is completely empty.. since selling off a few peaces of his old woodworking equipment.. idk.. he is just a retired old wood worker.. who has plenty of money already LOL... Im just a young veteran in college doing a career change trying to figure out another source of income for myself.. i already own 3 rental properties in real estate investments i picked up while in the military and should be picking up a 4th here in a few months when i graduate college from someone i sold one of my houses to and they have orders to go to europe..... my current home has 8 acres of land, so i have room to put solar and such on it to make my electricity cheaper or near 0.....but i am doing the research to see if its worth it.. i will most likely continue to add solar to my house in the near future as its nice seeing my electric bill shrink from the current setup i already have setup on a temp platform/frame install....

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

That will help you with difficulty, and there are some projections for what it will be, but I'd say at a minimum consider the last year X 4 in your calculations for difficulty. Companies want to put a miner in every phone, toaster, and POS device. It will get even bigger, even faster.

If you figured out a way to get free power, or even power that was .03 you can do it, but you have to consider all of the incidentals. Power Distribution units - I build my own and I still have several hundred dollars in parts. I took a dining room table, mounted a sub panel to it, and mounted receptacles all around it. All 240 except a 4 plug 120. I made all of the cables going to the PSUs, and run all server units with B/O boards purchased from people here, sidehack I get 2000 watt units from and Finsky I get 2880s. Cables going form the PSUs to the miners. I couldn't build them as cheap as they can. I buy all of those. You have to deal with the heat. Think exhaust, dont think AC, but more like exhaust fans in some kind of tunnel or duct-work from the exit side of your miners. Don't keep anything flammable around your miners, and do keep a fire extinguisher. You need a 100 base network switch with enough ports so you don't have to buy another one right away. You can find deals on used ones in the marketplace here on the forum. You will need racks for your miners, get metal ones. The wire racks everyone has pictures of are less than 100 bucks at Lowes and that is the largets they sell. For only 3 or 4 miners or even 8-10 look at shoe racks. They are great, actually "boot racks".

do more reading than you ever have in your life and never stop asking questions

There have been "kits" from another company for S5's aswell as some that have taken C1 parts and turned it into a S5 watercooled.

So there have been some that have done it.  Just adds a decent cost on amount you have to get to ROI.

Couldnt you run the S5's off watercooling? i know i have my personal PC running off of watercooling and it runs way cooler than it did on air cooling... and its dead silent..
Heck if you had a big enough bitmining operation, you could use a waterhose to frack a hole in the ground a good 10 or so feet a few times and use mother earth as an cooling medium, buddy of mine did this for his woodworking shop.. he used water hose just outside the side of the shop to basically hydro drill about 10 holes about about 15 feet in the ground straight down, then ran a radiator in the shop with a small water pump with a fan pulling air through the radiator.. on a 95F degree day here in Florida.. running that little setup 24/7 keeps his workshop around 75-78F without running the ran at any crazy speeds.. he origionally only had it going in 5 holes, but he doubled it to 10 holes and it dropped the room temps in the summer from 78-82F to 75-78F currently.. i think the water pump is only like a little 10watt unit..

To show how the S5 can be a good long term miner.  Here is a current screenshot of mine.  It has ran for over 30 day's I consider that a win.  That is a long time to not have a single issue on a miner.

FYI, I can beat that.  See sig link

Speaking of, if anyone knows someone with Dragons, I might know a guy with a cheap electrical location...

When it comes to tanks, don't forget the S1. I just turned off the last of mine a month ago, and that was because I didn't feel like undervolting them again to run fanless at 0.8W/GH board-level. It's too bad the S5 doesn't work properly when undervolted. One of these days I'm gonna have to find time to test that and see if there isn't a solution, because those things could be run around 0.3W/GH instead of 0.5W/GH and extend the service life substantially. In theory.

Even older ones are still running in some cases.  I mean look at Dragons.  Those things have been put through the ringer with running in many places. 

I know a lot of them that have had hard lives in data centers, and kept ticking.  Only miner I would argue was more tough is S3... they are tanks in my opinion. 

I predict both of those running for a while yet in cheap electrical locations.

Nobody can tell you a true timeplan. Could be as long as one year or could be as short as 3 months.


That;s pretty much what happened to most ASIC buyers in 2014. Most ASIC buyers in 2013 made great money.

You can't predict what will happen in the future.

the warranty is void if you remove the original fan.  but if you remove it and add a delta as a push and a silverstone 141 as a pull it runs cooler and much quieter.

For it you really need a area noise will not be a issue for it unless you do fan mod.

I have had one since batch 1 it still runs great.  It runs hotter and louder then I would like but it's never failed me.  It keeps on going and going.   So overall I call that a pretty good miner.   

as stated by others, but i will repeat, 

you will end up unpluging it and selling it or putting it away in a closet long before it burns out unless you abuse it,

from what i understand s5 should be run with only original fan, and can actually be overclocked with good results too -- i however do not own one,  was thinking of getting a few at one time but where I am I think the noise would be an issue, 

@ op I would get the psu from newegg for 85 after rebate and 1 s-3  for 85 outlay = 170 usd or less

when side hack gets the low power gear rolling   you could add some of his in.

In the meantime  with the s-3  you can put in 3 pools :

 Antpool  ⅓
 f2pool    ⅓
 ckpool solo ⅓

about 133to 150gh at each

 the first two pay like the sunset everyday on time

the last one is an all or nothing 25 coin 1 block pool (you could get lucky)

then in a month add the real low power gear from sidehack.

 your plus side the first out of pocket is well under 200 bucks more like 175 usd.

you learn to mine .

you could get really lucky and hit a block.

you will get back  a little coin while you the ins and outs of the game.

let me check the psu  two of them.  not worry with the prices I need to see it they will run an s-5


http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8894490&CatId=5433
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8894486&CatId=2533

those two thermaltakes are borderline  (due to cables only 2 with 2 plugs a bit risky)  I would not use them  unless I down-clocked to 1050gh.

this evga is 85 after rebate and has power to spare note the pcie cables 4 with 2 plugs much better to run.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438034&cm_re=evga_psu-_-17-438-034-_-Product

 but 85 + 383 =  488  not 430

which is why I would not buy in your case.


the miner :

with shipping it is 383

On the Antminer site it says $360 for the miner...

I was at Tigerdirect over the weekend they had Thermaltake toughpower 750watt 80plus gold PSU's for $59.99 after rebate... so i figured with taxes about $430.. am i wrong?

no one really knows.  I run 3 s-3's using 2.4 to 3.6 cent power   I underclock them they will earn money until 2016.  I started using them in july 2014

your problem is you live in FL.   the heat miners make is bad  for you as almost never need it.  So  OCT to MAY no bonus heat benefits.

next 12 cents is border line worthy to mine with.

I tell most people don't mine with power that costly.  Especially in a hot place.  If you were in Upstate New York  you would be getting a heat benefit from Sept 1 to late May.  Not your case.

 However if sidehack does develop the tunable .3 watt miner in the next 30 to 50 days it will bury the s-5's .52 watts.  His gear would be ideal for you.

BTW do you have a psu on hand?

How fast does the mining difficulty increase? i ask this because i was looking at this as more than one possible idea...

Firstly, i am always looking to make another buck.. so a little extra hash every year would be nice....

Secondly, i was thinking if the miners paid themselves off in 13 months, then it could generate an $900-1,000 USD after it paid itself off.. just going off the 0.12cent power rate...

Thirdly, i have been contemplating upping my solar system to 3-4kW system to offset my entire house cost a month in electricity.. since summer months here in sunny Florida are killing us and every year they have been pushing to raise the solar cost and its only bound to increase soon.. they are proposing to jump it from 0.12 to 0.15 by 2017... So i would like to get ahead of the curve, but the time of payoff on such a size system takes longer the larger it is.. due to invertors and wiring cost increasing as size increases to accommodate it all, so if anything if i ran enough bitcoin miners to use the solar installed it would drop the payback to 1-2 years instead of multiple years... so if anything it could be a way to pay off solar install much much quicker..

Fourthly, after the solar has been offset by profit from bitcoin mining, the electricity at that point would be relatively cost-less to run if i kept them within the production range of the solar system.. so in my mind that equals profit.. or would the profit depreciate so much in the future to not really let this all work out?? Florida does offer net-metering even though i dont utilize it currently, so grid usage at night would be offset by solar production during the day if i went that route..

Like how long will miners off the shelf like the S5 last before its not good enough to make money anymore aka trash it??

Sidehack has a very good rep and has done good deals plus services for many of us.  I never used his psu's but many here have.  They would be decent for you.

I will be reviewing his new gear soon.



I just don't see buying the s-5 as a good idea.
BTW it is really crazy loud need fan mods or the noise will drive you nuts.

I uh, I prototyped a USB stick miner a month ago that's 60% the per-unit power of an S5. ASICMiner tested a chip whose full-range efficiency was about 20% better than Bitmain's chip before Christmas. Bitfury claimed 0.2W/GH about three months ago, SFARDS' dual-miner chip on SHA256 has at least a 20% better bottom-clock than the BM1384, and Bitmain's approximate six-month cycle for new chips is coming right up. Spondoolies is overdue on their next gen, whose previous gen (released five months before the S5) was competetive with S5 clock/volt setpoints, and let's not count out Canaan-Creative probably cooking up a fifth-gen Avalon chip. There is A LOT of room for improvement and A LOT of it is happening right now.

I sell 750W server PSU kits for $50 that would run an S5 - not as efficient as gigampz's Platinum unit (from what I understand it's pretty sexy) but still pretty decent.

Also, a lot of miners get resold to people with cheap power or poor math skills, so that's one way to recoup the cost.

You will most likely throw the miner away before it burns out due to the difficulty increases.

  you can't pay 430 for an s-5 with power supply that easily.  you need a 750 watt psu with decent  pcie cables.

you can pay 300 to 310 for 2 s-3's with a psu   this psu.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gigampz-power-supply-kits-adapters-for-bitcoin-mining-industrial-grade-622783
http://www.gigampz.com/store/p21/Gigampz_80Plus_Platinum_Efficiency%2C_1200_Watt_Kit.html


this could be better deal  136 for a psu plus 170 for 2 s-3's

The mining difficulty is what gets us brother. I feel you, it would be great, but I doubt we get 13 months out of the S5s. The next-gen gear is either already being mined with by manufacturers or it is almost ready. The mining difficulty is going to go high, very high, and the people who gamble on next gen to make money, well they will gamble.

Bitcoin mining is not for a profit at this point. It is for people like me and others who want to help keep something going, enjoy this crazy sometimes spastic community, and see it as a hobby. Building your dream car, or overclocking PCs, or etc type of hobby where you spend. Some people trade their power bill for BTC through mining.

In my opinion, unless you have about 200 - 500k, make a deal with a reputable MFG company like Spondoolies, and move to the right place for real cheap power do not expect a profit. Do not mine for a profit only buying a few units.

Don't get me wrong plenty of people told me the same thing and hear I have with more than many and I guess less than anyone making money, but the only people making money from mining have either done what I said (which is still a huge gamble) or, they have free power.

If you want to be in bitcoin and think the price is going to go to the moon, buy coin. Make sure you can trust people you deal with. Watch who and where you buy from depending on your needs and keep in mind Bitcoin is not anonymous. That is a myth.

You could always try renting some hash, see the link in my sig. I like doing business with these guys. I think they are fair, and do their best to be straight up with customers. I sometimes want to gamble, very rare but I call it gambling bc it all is and I rent and throw it at Kano or CKs pools. I may even rent to grab some of an ALT that seems to have good technology, but still, I do not do it to make money. I go into it knowing I've lost that money and anything I make is awesome!

I wish it wasn't this way, and maybe one day things will be different, but I have to think the true "glory days" of mining are past us.
Even if you mined strictly to have the coin, you will have more coin by simply buying the coin. Today's prices are a perfect entry point to bitcoin. I believe it is going up to 270, 300, 320, etc and will find another floor about 90 dollars higher than where we are now, and another year or so the same.

I would love for everyone to run a full node and keep no less than 3 or 4 miners running forever, but I am not a fool, at least not in that wishing department

By the way, nicehash is the UK service and westhash the US one. Same company as far as I know. If you see posts from Kano, CK is a mod, and PhillipMA you can trust them.
Don't tell anyone your personal information and never give someone coin. There is a guy named OGnasty who has an amazing reputation for handling escrow. You give him money, the other person sends you product, once you are happy with product OG releases the money.
Do not do it any other way because there are sharks here man, people who make there living stealing from honest folks. No matter how street smart you may be, there is trash around who can take it to another level.
Be smart and don't tell anyone exactly what you have, especially financial information, where you live, etc.

Good Luck!

*Significant Edit*
Sidehack who replied to you is also someone who shoots straight. He sells good products, and is a good guy even when grumpy with my nubish questions
If I was making a list of good people here it would be a decent size one, so don't think everyone is a scammer, but there are enough to where you should always be safe.

The s5 holds it's place as the most efficient miner for some time now. I don't think it'll be easy for anyone to create something equivalent.

Consider that network difficulty will go up over time, meaning your share of the take will reduce.
Consider that in approximately one year the block reward will be halved.
Consider that, within a few months, there will likely be mass offerings of miners much more efficient than the S5 is currently. The chips on the S5 itself are actually already running at almost the least efficient operating point possible, so there's plenty of room for improvement even without the next generation of chips three or four manufacturers are probably going to be releasing this summer.

I am very new to bitcoin mining, i actually don't even have a setup to run yet, but after talking to a guy at work who is always talking bitcoin this and bitcoin that about it some my interest was gained, I am trying to understand how feasible or profitable it is to do as an investment....

I was crunching the math on some of the miners i found easily on google and from what i have read the Antminer S5 is the most efficient miner currently on the market in mass production.. If this is true, then what is the life span on these units??

I ask this because the math i was working out came out to about 13 months of mining for each unit before it pays itself off.. if these units are reliable enough to run for much longer than 13 months and make profit then i am thinking about investing into a few.

My electricity in my area is 0.12/kW, but i have 6 x 290w solar panels i recently bought and installed in a self installed grid tied configuration to offset the cost of charging my Chevy Volt i picked up earlier this year.. I picked up the 6 panels from a solar wholesale warehouse about 4 hours from me for $887.40 after tax  and a 2 x 1,000watt grid tie true sine wave invertors for $270 off amazon and its been happily been running full tilt pumping out as high as 1920watts into the circuit i have them plugged into on really nice days..

So if my math is coming out correctly, this is what im coming out with....

Antminer S5, $430 w/powersupply producing $2.83 per day income before taking out $1.70 in electricity for a profit of $1.13 per day
So in about 13 months its paying itself off... at current rates..thus needing to mine for 12+ months to make any profit...

If i invested in more solar, i have read most people are seeing closer to 500watts consumption on them with the latest firmware running factory settings... the math still comes out to about the same, paying off the miner and solar equipment  in roughly 12-14months then profit...

So i want to know if these miners would last long enough to pay themselves off and produce profit for multiple years preferably..