Topic: S9 or 841 or... (Read 603 times)

I ended up ordering (10) 841s from Blokforge and taking advantage of their buy 10, get 1 821 free offer.

Bought (2) L3+s from Bitmain yesterday just to burn my $450 coupons.  I haven't fooled with Litecoin since 2014, and the L3s obsoleted my idle Black Widows when the they came out.  So now I just have to wait a couple of weeks.  Litecoin seems to be a step ahead of Bitcoin in development, so figured I would SLIGHTLY hedge my bets.  By April 24th, I should have (2) Litecoin machines and (122) Bitcoin machines (I did say slightly).  Mostly it just helps keep me from getting bored.   I have one (6) 1070ti GPU machine as well churning on zcash.  Syncing Viacoin, Dogecoin, and Pesetacoin since they can all be merged mined with Litecoin.  Somehow that concept feels like cheating, but what the hell.  It will help keep my mind from stagnating, or at least from stagnating faster.

Regarding a 1 year ROI - I wouldn't bother calculating it.  Personally I like 100 day ROIs but those days are pretty much gone.  In reality, unless you can accurately predict both difficulty change and future coin price, any ROI calculation would just be a guess or otherwise meaningless number.  Cryptocurrency is pure speculation but a lot of fun along the way.

I have Kaiser, Chevy, Ford, International, Suzuki, Chrysler, GMC, Navistar...but I'll always be a Binder at heart.  

I'll buy whatever miner is available at the right price, but given the opportunity I'll want a Canaan from Blokforge.  Nick has looked out for me since I since I first bought from him and has proven that he is in it for the long, so that helps a lot.  When Canaan goes crazy I buy Bitmain.  

By management I meant cables and wiring.  I guess it isn't too big of a deal.

I ran 12 721s in my living room for 5 months and my wife tolerated it.  She is NOT happy about ONE S9 and 11 721s.    This is even with the S9 getting the coldest air intake at around 5-10C right in front of an open window.  I think I've mined more natural gas in the last month than bitcoin...  The Avalon miners sound like little hydraulic pumps and the S9 sounds (to me) like a large shop-vac (the "quieter" industrial ones).

I would think it would be pretty easy to quiet them down with some duct-ways shaped like a switchback and lined with fiberglass.  I'm getting ready to build some mining pods each capable of 35-36kW that will be located where they need to be nearly silent.  Hopefully my plans work out.  

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(Moderator's note: This post was edited by frodocooper to remove an off-topic portion of the post.)

Yeah, the noise has "dampened" my relationship with my neighbor a 1/3rd of a mile away.  I know at worst he can probably barely make them out, but he is still a bit pissed at me.  I've actually been spreading the word that I'm considering expanding with quieter miners - and that has been well received.  That said, if scaled to another 100 miners, and the cost difference was $100 each, I'm not sure I could justify spending an extra $10K just for a bit less noise!

Actually, Awesome Miner does a, ah, awesome job, helping me manage my farm.  Good software, fair price, great support (the developer usually answers e-mails within 24 hours).

Perhaps I won't need to worry about it with Avalons, but daisy chaining (5) machines together introduces greater outage risk than having (5) independent machines.  I've NEVER had an Ethernet cable that was plugged in fail on me since Cat 3 days, and network ports are cheap.  I use DHCP addressing (with Awesome Miner!) so IP addresses are not an issue.

Adding a PI controller also adds another point-of-failure.  They don't fail often - but used them to control my Gridseeds back in 2014.  They do fail occasionally, and when they do, all 20 miners connected will go off-line.  Fortunately for me, I still have those Gridseed Pis, so I'll probably just put 5 in a chain to distribute the risk.

On the flipside, not having to fuss with miners because of their inherent superiority will be refreshing.

"Jump ship" is a relative statement... kind of like someone who has always bought Fords and finally buys a Chevy.  Obviously I'm not going to throw away my existing S9s.  Its just that I've been buying from Bitmain since Antminer U1 days.

Support Canaan, they are by far the best ASIC manufacturer around

One other plus for Canaan is the noise is cut a little bit, as there is only one fan vs. two on your S9s.

I know you said your neighbors are sensitive. While it doesn't help a ton, every little db reduction when you have 100+ is an improvement.

If you switch to canaan you will have to buy some spare parts too. So consider that also since I suppose that you already have spares for S9.

If you have 100 S9s, you have 100 ethernet cables, IP addresses, configurations, etc.

If you have 100 841s you have 5 ethernet cables, IP addresses...!!!

Ease of management must also be worth something

Why do you have to jump ship?  Just get the 10 and see how they compare side by side?  The Canaan miners seems "better" in terms of design and performance.

Every purchase is a decision.  My spouse and I spent well over an hour tonight debating the timing to buy 10 Canaan's now that the price has dropped.  Still didn't come to a conclusion.  Jumping ship from Bitmain to Canaan is NOT a small decision and anyone who has 100 miners and thinks they are an expert that couldn't use outside opinions is a fool.  

I have 10 more coming soon, perhaps Monday, so if you have ones that work for free, I could handle about 90.

ps.  Perhaps you missed the comment about having Batch 1 S9s from June of 2016 - almost 2 years ago now.  I had S7s prior to that, and S3s & S4s prior to the S7.  We have been working on this since 2014, living through the good and bad of GAW, publishing (3) coins (YACCoin, 1CRedit, and IMACredit - two of which shutdown awhile ago when I couldn't figure out how to defeat with a mass attack).  So what you mean by "100 S9s ALREADY???"?

You HAVE 100 s9's ALREADY???

I don't think you are still asking for purchasing advice here?
Rather just bragging.
If I was to give you as many S9's as you want for free? How many would you ask for?

Ah, BlokForge dropped their prices more!  Now $1999 with free ground.  What a difference a few hours can make!

So even using a pair of $450 coupons and (10) $220 coupons, and using BlockForges number of 13.6 TH/miner, the cost basically wash out:

(12) 13.0TH S9s for 156TH come in at $20,720 after shipping
(10) 13.6TH 841s plus (1) free 11TH 821 come in at 147TH for $19990 with free shipping
(11) 13.6TH 841s plus (1) free 11TH 821 come in at 160.6TH for $21969 with free shipping

I can get still get the S9s a few weeks sooner, but that is basically offset by the better power consumption of the 841s.

Raymond_B's raises a valid point there.  Yeah, today its a wash (with Avalon having a better rep),  but that could quickly change if we have a price war - and Bitmain has a LOT of room to maneuver in that battle if it happens.

I do not have an operation anywhere near what you have. But I have put all my mining hardware purchases on hold because I feel the ASIC manufacturers are taking their time in reducing the costs. To me the prices will need to come down considerably to make me want to buy. I also feel (and this is nothing more than that, a feeling) that there's new hardware/software coming from Bitmain on the BTC front.

Personally I feel like it might be a better time to watch alts and either speculate or mine them then sell in to BTC rather than buy new BTC mining gear.

100% opinion

With the new pricing on the 841, it is basically cheaper than the S9.  It also has a longer warranty.

You can get the 841 delivered and duties paid for $1999.  With a $220 cupon and DHL shipping you can probably squeak out at around 1800, but if you add in a 10% hash death rate you are back up to around 1980.

Like you said, the 841 will have a longer life as long as it is hashing because it is more efficient.  I also assume the 841 is better built by looking inside my 821 and 741s through the grill.

I'm a Canaan fan boy as long as they are relatively sane, and it appears they are at the moment.  : )  The Canaan miner is an iMac and the Bitmain an eMachine?  ; )

I run a farm of about 100 S9s currently.  I'm looking to do a purchase of a dozen or so more miners and am really torn on what to do.

Price/TH wise, especially with the coupons Bitmain has been providing, the S9 is still the winner.

However... the Avalon 841 has a lower power consumption/TH, worth about $100/year/miner to me in electrical savings/miner.  But they are more expensive, even with 2 years of running factored in.

However... adding more S9s now to add to the S9s I have been accumulating since June of 16 (yeah, I have a few Batch 1 S9s...)... well... they are feeling a bit old, architecturally.  Top that off with paying anywhere between $1296/S9 last April to $2725/S9 last December, and remembering them for around $1145 back in October, I have to believe that Bitmain will substantially drop their prices when they come out with their anticipated 14nm S11.  That would, of course, reduce the resale price for whatever I bought at todays relatively high $1915 (Even with $450 off coupons they are still more expensive than most in my farm).  Just looks what they did with T9s recently:  dropping from ~$2000 to $1400.

But... if I order S9s soon, I'll probably get about 20 more days of computing time.  At todays price & difficulty, thats about $6/day/miner after power cost.

And...  The next Canaan product, the 861, is close - but its just an 841 with an internal power supply - so no tech change.

Of course, if Bitcoin jumps to $25000 this December, anything bought now will appear to be a brilliant move.  But we are living in an $8500 bitcoin world today.

So.  Speculators:  Is anything coming in the next couple of months that will shatter the current price/performance/consumption curves?

What SHOULD I be worried about, given that I tend to buy about a dozen miners at a time as I fill my data center?  (e.g.  I re-invest as I go, so won't take a loan to buy 60-80 841's directly from China, although I keep thinking about that.)  FWIW:  The advantage of growing incrementally is that even mistakes get moderated out over time.  Of course, no quick riches either.

Your thoughts?

Oh, just to share on speculation:  Most of my Bitmain coupons expire in June.  Therefore I expect a major announcement and price drop on S9s shortly after expiration.