Topic: Newbie guide to ASIC vendors - page 4. (Read 7985 times)

Well stated di_xie, some great points there 

Bitmain should be 5++ their delivery time is fantastic (received in like 3 days even during holidays)

Technobit has basically scammed me; they should be marked down at a 1 or 1.5 with BFL.  They don't send hardware, refunds, or even customer service emails; if you are lucky you receive your hardware a few months late.

P.S. I suspect the reason that AMT is sucking so bad is because they are heavily reliant on Technobit....bad move to build your business model around scammers.

It is perfectly fine for both of us - you were satisfied with their service. I was not. I do my decision based on numbers, contracts, behaviour of my business partner and possible future outcome. You maybe have a different view/ threshold of what is acceptable and what not. Hosting situation mid Oct was unacceptable from my POV. KnC broke the ToS of their "Hosting" without offering me a proper compensation and/ or ETA. This brought me as a customer of KnC in a situation where it was economically senseless to stick with their offer.

You sticked with their hosted product in October - which is perfectly fine. You made a good deal. I used the refund money to buy BC instead. Even a better deal...  

I dont want to repeat myself to much here - it was pointed out several times by different people. Despite Hosting, some broken machines etc... KnC is still number #1

Edit: I want to go down even further on my argument above. This thread is majorly useful because we are all part of this unragulated experiment called Bitcoin. A lot of people here have good intentions and clever ideas and want to push Bitcoin to mainstream usability - but we also see so many market participants (not only in the mining business) abuse the unregulated enivronment. The major thing we can rely on is unfiltered & carefully interpreted experience of those who participate. We all want Bitcoin to be successful and as long as we have deficient global/ local legal frame the Bitcoin community itself has to find a way to protect itself.

Lets give credit where credit was earned and lets punish those who deserve punishment.

thats a comprehensive list. you basically covered everything!

Black Arrow - Their ticketing system is sloooowww. They delivered fpgas before but until they deliver a working asic, cannot judge them yet.

+1 it is all about the PERSONAL experience.

Here is how I see it. If you mess up and fix the problem then you are deserving of further trust think BuzzDave. If you mess up and do not fix the problem think Avalon / BFL / HashFast then you are undeserving of further trust.

Personal opinion matters as time passes and more opinions are collected you can see a much more clear picture of what is going on. If there are significant numbers of complaints and little or no resolution that speaks volumes. Whether or not people are polite or vitriolic in their complaints matters as little as does the patterns that develop. Can you really determine whether the company is good or bad based on a limited number of personal opinions? I think there is value in it if the experiences are first hand.

Avalon chip buy. I personally went through way too much drama and the excuses presented by Yifu and the lack of any proper communication for well over 9 weeks was more than enough for me and the members of a group that had raised 80,000 USD to buy chips to put me off EVER buying Avalon anything again. I would as others agree they are NOT nor should they ever be trusted again regardless of their ability to ship Batch 1.

BitFury chip buy. Was involved in a small order it was shipped on time without delays from Megapower BitFury USA.

BitMine.ch A1 chip buy. Involved in ongoing project getting 2 sample chips for the prototype we are building based on the fact we provided some support on the designs of the chip. 3 week delay there abouts as indicated by BitMine.ch. Has not adversely affected our prototype development. Fairly responsive team but they need to make sure they have a CRM system in place to handle potential issues with a very complex ASIC design.

Black Arrow Minion chip buy. Supported some of the documentation for the Minion we are currently waiting on some samples / full order when the chip fabrication gets done. No warning flags so far. Very responsive team that will need a much more robust CRM system as they were slightly caught out when they had a larger order volume swamp them. They seem to be delegating some of this work but we will see how this progresses.

That is the end of my list.

Now moving forward this should be STICKIED! This has to be the go to post for us in the community to guide and inform.



[Edit] Entropy-uc yes agree 100% with that

Opinions should be welcome, and self appointed censors should be ignored and / or deleted.

Puppet you should add a few dimensions to the evaluation:

Field failure rate: nothing sucks more than finally unboxing gear to find it doesn't function
Warranty coverage: 
Customer support:  is there dedicated staff?  what is typical response time?
Response time for RMA:
Refund policy for advance orders:
If you want to sue them, can you find them?:  a lot of these outfits make the mafia look accountable

I think your evaluation of Avalon is far too kind.  I actually think less of them than BFL.  They outright stole from Batch II customers.

We have had very good experiences with RMA'ing KNC hardware.  Positive responses, helpful advice on resolving problems, and a quick turn in the case where replacement was necessary.  The clip on design of the fan and heatsink isn't pretty, and forces every box to be opened and inspected but otherwise they have done well.

Cointerra customer support has been good.  They are clearly staffing a professional team and taking the right steps. I hope the next months confirm the positive view I have today.

wrong. state the facts and let people decide for themselves. this is an informative piece not your editorial. kk thanks.

I disagree. One's opinions on a company can't help but color one's review of a mfg.. These opinions aren't formed in a vacuum but come from our accumulated knowledge of a manufacturers actions, plans, and public behavior.

For example: my opinion is that AMT and BFL offer awful customer service. This very well plays into my own decision making process when community fund raising hundreds of BTC on the behalf of trusting miners that join our co-op.

No offense but trying to discount or to not include our opinions on an ASIC mfg. review thread sounds protective of one or more of these mfgs.

Edit: HashFast is at the bottom, because that's my opinion of them changing TOS for Batch 1 and 2. Partial BTC refunds from them aren't going to cut it.

Good thread   bump

AMT:
Avalon:
BFL:
Bitfury:
Bitmain:                                               
Bitmine:
Black Arrow:
Cointerra:
KnC:
Hashfast:

Love the information posted based on personal experience. Great idea to post in this format. However, try to keep your "opinions" out of it or you will destroy the good this thread could bring. Facts only and check your emotions at the door.

You missed the first ASIC company to bring a product to market - ASICMiner.  Sells overpriced outdated technology at prices where the only one seeing ROI is ASICMiner.

I appreciate the feedback. Ill let this run for a while longer and then make some adjustments based on what I read. But so far, it seems we are all broadly in agreement, which is a good thing .

Excellent idea Puppet. You win 2 internets for one day.  

I'll only give feedback with mfgs. I've personally dealt with. I have a unique perspective as someone that deals with manufacturers directly, is hardware neutral and represents both buyers and sellers. These are my own opinions and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the rest of the co-op leaders I work with. Our Team hashrate on BTC Guild currently outranks Poland and the Russian Federation teams and we only have about 20% of our ordered miners online, FWIW.  
==


AMT: I've gone out of my way to try to help them as an American mfg. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3322382

I told them over 2 months ago that their CSR rep on this forum was *not* cut out for CSR among this mix of battle hardened and complete noob miners: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3457819

They resell Technobit Bitfury miners in Lian cases. The tech support that I saw for the two known miners in the wild seemed to have arisen from the community and not the company.


Avalon: Once he came out of "mafia" hiding, I once naively offered to help Yifu out of his hole via patient and dogged Customer Service for him. He ignored me. As someone that went on to found the largest BTC Miners Co-op in the English speaking world: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4370190

suffice to say: I could've turned his customer issues around 180 degrees if he would have let me. I *saw* him blithely ignore people begging him to either ship them their machines or refund their BTC for months. Avalon is permabanned from the DZ MC.


BFL: Late, late hardware and mean, vitriolic customer service. BFL is permabanned from the DZ MC


Bitfury: Missed out on the August batch which sold out in hours. Just as well, was delayed like most others. This chip is amazing and its from a 1st time chip designer! Dave in the US provides top notch customer service too. It is a bit overpriced though IMO.


Bitmain: Thumbs up guys! I rank this my #3 #1 ASIC mfg. at this time. They basically came out of left field and took everyone by surprise. EDIT: bobsag3, mentions he's seeing only a 2% hardware issue rate with our dozens of Bitmain miners as opposed to 100% hardware issue rates with KnC; reviews adjusted accordingly.


Bitmine: You seem like a nice guy Giorgio but you guys are late man. We've got two full Rigs awaiting delivery. They're supposed to add hashrate based on how late they are (up to a point, before a refund is triggered). If they can deliver soon with extra hashrate, they'll move up to the #2 spot on my ASIC mfg. list.


Black Arrow: These guys are awesome. Our Round 17 is the Exclusive Group Buy for X-3 Prosperos (paused at the moment). We also did an exclusive Bullet Run of Prospero Bitfury prototypes about 4 months before the February launch in Rounds 9-12 thanks to my business relationship with Miner Hosting LLC and Minersource.net, owned by bobsag3, one of the DZ MC co-op leaders. They are my #2 ASIC mfg. at this time. They still appear to be on track for a late February launch, and being based in Hong Kong does help in cutting down production and shipping times for mfgs. themselves.


Cointerra: I've entertained partnerships to do GBs for Cointerra but somehow our co-op didn't end up doing any Cointerra Group Buys in 22 Rounds of ASIC rig fundraising. They're late too, but I'm wishing them well. Almost did a big deal hosting for this mfg. with a 3rd party that contacted me (we went on to form a company together instead).


KnC: I know they've had problems setting up their first facility. We've experience some of the same growing pains recently with facility #2 a 6000+ square foot facility our co-op has set up just for crypto miners and manned by crypto miners. They were a little late with their delivery but it was a matter of weeks instead of months (or even 1 year+). They are my #1 #3 ASIC mfg. at this time. EDIT: bobsag3, head of our mining ops and owner of Miner Hosting LLC, mentioned that we've seen a 100% problem rate with every one of our Jupiters (over 10).


Hashfast: Besides lying to us as to how bad the production issues were and violating our privacy via a recent email link, they tried to basically trick their Batch 1 customers out of trying to get a full BTC refund by giving Batch 1 full USD refunds and making them sign a waiver that protects them from further legal retribution from you, the buyer.

Look at it from our POV: if you gave someone a bar of gold 3 months ago for a shipment and they didn't deliver for whatever reason, would you be happy with 1/10th of that gold bar being given back to you? This refund issue is faaaar from being over. They promised us FULL refunds, else we wouldn't have bothered doing fundraising for about 280 BTC worth of HashFast miners.

Hashfast is permabanned from the DZ MC.

Technobit has good technology and terrible management and customer service. They claim to have a decent number of boards in stock on their site. However, they claim the boards to be "too expensive to produce in small quantities". Their customer support is very hard to catch and get the answers. Currently, there is a backlog since SEP-20-2013 for HEX16A (avalon1 based design).

BFL - were pioneers who first came up with an idea of ASIC implementation for bitcoin. They were not the first ones to deliver. Horrible customer service. Previous generation hardware was almost a year late. I have a 60Gh/s Single - very power hungry unit (283W) and very loud too.

Avalon - First to deliver ASIC machine to the market. Since then - royally screwed up customers for the batch 2 and 3 and almost all of bare chips delivery. Now selling gen2 chips which are worse than bitfury. Not sure what current delivery time frame.

Bitfury - everything on time as promised. No problems at all. No real customer support, everything is community driven. Chips can be chained together to archive desired performance, that makes board design easier. There was at least 3 different batches of chips, all had different labels. Initial batch was sold by Metabank in Russia, I met some of their staff personally - exceptional bright and talented folks.

Minerfactory - Selling boards for bitfury chips. My order was almost a month late. Actual value of the board on the customs form was 15 Euros when I paid almost $200 US. No instructions or cooling advice was provided. Did not reply any of emails I sent to them.

CanaryInTheMine - ASIC hardware reseller. Sells the USB sticks and sometimes other mining hardware, always upfront with his customers. I've been buying from him for the past 6 month and never had an issue. Very flexible.

KNC - I would rate them 7.5 of 10. They screwed up shipping instructions provided to them, resulting to a delay on customs. Package came beaten up, with missing corner. One of 4 modules was missing thermal compound. All modules were loose and could get damaged in shipping. BBB used as primary controller for SPI bus, not the best implementation of. October units could be overclocked. Unit design 3/5.

Hope that helps.


EDIT: added KNC

I bought a hosted Juptier, and now that all is said and done, I'm perfectly happy with the way they handled the situation.  Was there issues?  Yes.  But did they do their best to make up for it?  Yes!  They were about 10 days late getting my hosting online, but for the first 10 days of hosting, they had two (2) Jupiters hashing for me (and check their forums, I was not the only one).  I'd say they did very well by their customers, and for whose who didn't get their panties in a knot over every little details, it paid off big-time.  For people like de_ixie, you need to consider ventures like this as a very risky investment, which means you have to be able to stomach delays and fluctuations in the market.  If you can't handle it, then you're playing in the wrong game here.  I'm currently waiting on two CoinTerra miners (early January batch), and again, I'm not sweating the delays we're currently facing...it's all part of the game :-)

The situation when I stopped following KnC hosting debacle:

- First: They advertised premium price "hosting" with "hashing a few hours after production of your rig" - this is why ppl bought it -> big fail  
- They hosted day1 / day 2 customers almost in timely manner (late, but with somewhat fair compensation)
- After that: They delivered *postal* and *pick-up* orders following the order chain
- They skipped order chain for "hosted orders", around mid of Oct I saw people after me in the order chain presenting their rigs here in the forum
- I called KnC and asked for clarification. Answer: We dont know when our hosting will go online and no it was not possible to transfer "hosted" orders to "pick up" or "delivery" due to different design of "home-product" and "hosted-product"
- They offered me USD refund. I ended up with giving them a 4 month free loan and around 10% financial loss due to USD -> EUR currency change
- After that dunno, I heard they compensated "hosting" after day1/ day2 as well
- Overall a big mess for me - 10% financial loss and had to cancel my order. I funded KnC in early June and got screwed. Just my sad meaningless story - but still I know there were others in the same situation. Treat KnC hosting with caution and expect delays and skipping of order chain

Thats an excellent point I had overseen/forgotten. Indeed, their hosting service was quite a disaster (and way overpriced). Whats the situation on that now? Are they at all hosting for customers ? Did they refund the hosting and allow you to self host your miner?

Depends how you define better. Bitmain isnt taking preorder "investments" and is instead selling from stock, that has to be an advantage, since there is basically no risk of long delays or missing specs. Of course what they deliver is less impressive than what KnC has done and might do, but the point of this thread is not to assess how good those vendors offers are in terms of price or efficiency or whatever, just how likely they are to deliver on their promises. In that sense, its going to be difficult to do better than Bitmain.

Good start. From private experience - despite everything positive KnC achieved - they majorly screwed up hosting and forced me into refunding my Oct Jupiters mid of October - and I know that I am not the only one who paid for their "premium" hosting upfront and received second hand treatment. They skipped order chain and delivered "postal" and "pick up" orders weeks before hosted. I suspect this is also the reason why they do not offer hosting for Neptune atm - Never ever, ever I would recommend KnC hosting... never... period. I would not deduct any points in your rating - they did an amazing job overall. Maybe just mention to treat KnC hosting with big caution.

I wouldn't really say Bitmain are better than KnC, I'd give them both 4.5 really.