Topic: NEW BFL RACK MOUNT MINER (230GH/S) - LOL (Read 8853 times)

Wow I just read somewhere that the power usage of this thing is around 1100 Watts!  

Holy Christ, that is something beyond terrible.  Feel bad for anyone running these power suckers.

Lets see if this delivers this year!!!

The good thing about BFL is that they fix my miner fast when it broke. BFL actually has decent customer service. I would call them 10-11AM EST in the morning. Its the best time to call them.

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Re: BFL Product Failures / Underperformance.
November 27, 2013, 20:05:45
Reply with quote  #69
Here's an indication of how busy they are with repairs.

I woke up one morning to find my unit dead.  I sent an email to support, and got no response.  I sent a PM to the employee in charge of RMAs and got no response.  I phoned them, and the phone system transferred me to voice mailbox that was full, so I could not leave a message.

I posted on their support forum, and other customers suggested ways to troubleshoot the problem.  I got no response from BFL support.

After 8 hours of attempting to get through to BFL, I shipped my unit back without a RMA number.  Three days later I got notification that they had shipped it back to me.  I was positively impressed with the short turnaround time.  I'm guessing all they had to do was replace the power supply.  I don't know, because they never gave me any indication of what failed.

I got the unit back about a week after I sent it out, and it worked fine.

Then, about a week after that, I finally got a response from the company telling me that they had fixed it and returned it to me.  So kudos to the repair group for the fast repair time, but clearly they lied about delivery dates, way underestimated the power usage, produced a poor quality product that died in less than a month, and are so swamped with repair requests that it takes them weeks to respond to customer emails.

Steer clear of this company.  They have the worst business ethics.

[–]rockkit 38 points 7 months ago
Doing business with Butterfly Labs is like dating a hot girl with a heroin habit.
Everything starts off well, then they...
1) Borrow thousands of dollars from you 2) Promise to pay you back 'in two weeks' for an entire year 3) Sleep around with other guys (https://products.butterflylabs.com/65nm-asic-bitcoin-mining-chip.html) 4) Then show up at your door one night saying they'll pay you ten times the original money back if you can just loan them another four thousand dollars for a couple of months.
Anyone can get suckered once, but if you loan them more money after seeing what happened the first time, you're a fucking idiot.
THE ASIC
It took BFL 14 months from when they started taking pre-orders for their ASIC line to when they finally started shipping them in any kind of volume to real customers. In terms of actual ASICs shipped (Jalapenos take one chip, Singles take 12 chips, Mini Rigs take hundreds of chips), they're still less than 10% through their backlog.
http://bfl.ptz.ro/
During this epic delay, two of BFL's competitors (Avalon and ASIC Miner) got their designs finished in less than half the time, then flooded the market with ASICs, absolutely crushing BFL.
http://thegenesisblock.com/asicminer-usb-bitcoin-miner-price-drops-80-to-0-175-btc/ http://launch.avalon-asics.com/
Avalon and ASIC Miner both have 28nm designs in progress. At least three new companies have also entered the ASIC market, and all of them claim to have 28nm designs in progress. One of these companies has substantial Silicon Valley venture capital behind it and former Intel chip designers on its team
http://www.cointerra.com/team/
And another has already demonstrated a working prototype
http://www.coindesk.com/a-look-inside-kncminer/
What this means is, from a "getting the ASIC built" perspective, its almost guaranteed that another company will be shipping 28nm products before BFL. Its very likely that another company will ship 4 to 6 months ahead of BFL, negating a huge portion of the BFL units' ROI.
THE HARDWARE
Butterfly Labs sucks at making hardware. Their designs look beautiful in promo photos, but the actual build quality is terrible. Users have been experiencing major reliability issues in production.
http://buttcoin.org/butterfly-labs-mini-rig-is-a-huge-broken-unstable-piece-of-shit https://forums.butterflylabs.com/jalapeno-single-sc-support/4275-another-jalapeno-fan-failure.html https://forums.butterflylabs.com/jalapeno-single-sc-support/4238-jale-dead.html https://forums.butterflylabs.com/jalapeno-single-sc-support/4201-design-flaw-heatsink-allows-chips-exposed.html https://forums.butterflylabs.com/jalapeno-single-sc-support/4288-singles-arrived-doa-psu-some-dead-fans.html
The fact that people are reporting significant amounts of "DOA" (dead on arrival) hardware means BFL probably isn't testing units before they ship them out.
BFL has consistently demonstrated utter incompetence throughout their hardware design process.
Right out of the gate, BFL's ASICs ended up using 3 times their projected power draw, forcing a complete redesign of all of BFL's boards.
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html#post43041 https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-3.html#post30481
Following this, had show-stopping problems with signal routing, voltage regulators, cooling, and practically every other subsystem in the design. Since all the design work was done by off-shore contractors, this caused massive delays in reaching a working prototype; and many of these problems would never have happened in the first place if they had used more skilled designers.
When BFL finally did get their hardware into production, they regularly ran-out of critical parts like circuit boards and power supplies. This caused major delays in getting units to customers.
BFL claims their new 28nm card will have a power draw of 350 Watts, which puts it squarely in AMD 6990 territory.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/03/08/amd-radeon-hd-6990-review/9
In case you're new to Bitcoin mining, 6990's run at pretty much the thermal limit for a PCI card. They come with scary warnings about damaging your system's motherboard and power supply, and have a dedicated "all bets are off if you flip this" switch on the back of the board used to enable "full power" mode. The 6990 was a difficult project even for AMD, and has had significant problems with reliability, especially in bitcoin mining applications.
The fact that BFL is planning to build hardware that runs at this temperature and power density is, frankly, terrifying.
A PCI card is a very different environment than an external box that plugs in via USB. They'll be up against all sorts of nasty power, signal timing, and compatibility issues. If a card fails hard, it could easily take-out the motherboard, and destroy other cards plugged in to it.
Its highly likely the finished product won't have anywhere near the hashing power BFL claims it will, and its almost guaranteed that BFL will run into epic delays during design and manufacturing, just like last time.
OVERALL
Within the next few months, there will be plenty of better, cheaper, 28nm ASIC mining rigs. They'll be real hardware that actually exists, and they'll ship on reasonable schedules.
Save yourself a world of hurt and don't send BFL your money.

I find Humanity cheap.

Maybe it is for April fools?

You should definitely lower the price substantially.  Your cost is the cost of 400 GH/s of Antminers.  That won't sell in Bitcointalk land.  

I find BFL expensive.

Well, how about something very close at a much lower cost. Or should I raise the price?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wts-200-ghs-butterfly-labs-chili-custom-chassis-psu-hub-cooler-rpi-525902