Topic: Spondoolies-Tech vs Bitmain for a larger operation? - page 3. (Read 7821 times)

Ack, no!!! Don't waste your time. There are no options outside of Bitmain and Spondoolies. None.

Put the S5 at 1.3 TH/s, and the SP20 at 1.6 TH/s. Those are more realistic numbers.

Here's a breakdown of what I've spent so far. This will become useful in a week or two after I've let everything run for a bit and then I can compare apples to apples.

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Antminer S5 build:  

5 Antminer S5 @ $449.99ea = $2,249.95     (I bought these on Amazon. I know I can get it cheaper, but this was state-side and easy.)
5 Corsair CX750M power supplies @ $79.99ea = $399.95
Total: $2,649.90

Expected Specs:

6,500 GH/s @ 590W (Edited)
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SDTech SP20 build:

3 Spondoolies Tech SP20 = $1,195.00
3 EVGA SuperNOVA 1300G2 @ $169ea = $507.00
Total: $1,702

Expected Specs:

4,800 GH/s @ 1,200W (Edited)
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For arguments sake, let's assume power costs $0.05 kwh.

I'm going to factor all this together and see where it lands. (I'm still trying to get my excel sheet to work correctly.) Right now it looks kinda like a toss-up.

If history is any guide, I would expect to see an announcement from Bitmain soon on the S6. The S6 should be more efficient than the S5, so I would not be surprised to see specs at around 3.5 TH / 1400 W (.4 W/GH).

Also, Spondoolies is a wild card since they have given no information about their next generation Pick-Axe chip. It could be available next month or months from now.

But, since your power costs and overhead are so low, I think a huge competitive advantage over 95% of the other miners out there, so loading up on current generation hardware would probably be very profitable for you unless the entire BTC mining market implodes due to low BTC value.

Mining hardware one generation old also has decent resale value, so reselling on Ebay is not too difficult when you want to upgrade.

Korbman: What an incredibly informative and thoughtful post. I appreciate it! I'd already started factoring quite a bit of that, so another "set of eyes" on this is appreciated.

I'd come up with similar numbers built using an excel sheet that I've been hobbling together over the last week. I'm used to dealing with headcounts, salaries, project scopes and timelines....getting down and dirty with the most basic of economics is a refreshing change.

That's why I wanted to start with a small operation...made up of two different kinds of gear. See which is easier to setup and maintain and take actual temperature readings to see what we need to do about cooling.

My friend (referenced earlier, and in a video link that someone else posted) just finished a 500TH deployment with the S5, and the older 150TH they decommissioned was only a year old. So I need to factor in a yearly hardware swap. That being said, I'm likely to be in a better position with a particular manufacturer if I am already buying/using their gear.

Just checked the order status, and it looks like I'll have my S5s on Monday...no shipping info for the SP20s yet.

EDIT: I noticed the equipment totals changed to 5 AntMiners and 3 SP20s. Though this changes the overall numbers, the concept is still the same.

This is actually kind of an interesting thread.

@OP - If you are legit, don't purchase any mining gear....yet.
With the 10 miners you've purchased for BTC19 (or the fiat equivalent), I imagine you're running at about 14.3 TH/s, generating BTC0.17394234 per day at the current difficulty (or $39.14 @ $225 per coin). Using roughly 9 kWh for the gear alone, you're daily electricity costs should be around $9.67 (since you hinted toward $0.045 per kWh), and that's fantastic! It means you're difficulty ceiling (the point where revenue is equal to expenses) is a bit over 167,042,141,322, or 4 times where we're at today.

Obviously you're in a good position given your datacenter setup (racks, cooling, power capabilities) and cheap electricity. The problem is the low price per Bitcoin. Recouping the initial test expense of BTC19 would take ~110 days...but only if the difficulty remains constant. There will be ~8-9 difficulty changes between now and your hypothetical breakeven point. So the fun, and challenging, part of researching a feasible setup is determining what the difficulty will look like after 8, 9, 10 adjustments and how that ultimately changes your breakeven analysis.

So! I noted "yet" above because it may be better to wait for the price per coin to increase (not guaranteed of course) or to wait for the next generation of more efficient hardware to come to market (which is, unfortunately, also an unknown). Waiting on the latter is usually my preference because most massive mining operations will have already implemented the gear by the time smaller operations can even begin purchasing it. That usually gives me an opportunity to see how the network reacts and how the difficulty rises, allowing me to readjust my predictions as necessary before making the purchase (if it's still feasible).

It was placed in spec  thread due to guessing which machine is better.

As least that is my guess.

Rent is already covered...and we have plenty of space available for this. I've got plenty of people...utilities are way less than average and this kind of power load is already budgeted.


That's precisely what I did last week. I bought at $217 with the plan to use that for the farm we're looking at building. If we don't buy a thing, I can sell the BTC and make $. If we end up buying gear, we're buying at a better price.


Yeah, I tend to "go big" quickly. I actually ended up buying 1 nano farm. I had it in my head to buy 5...but we bought 3 because the TH/s of the 3-node SP20 was roughly the same as the 5 S5s. So I'll be comparing 3 SP20s to 5 S5s.

I see the thread got moved...hope I didn't do something wrong.

Thanks for the opinions and help guys. It really does help and keep things in perspective for me.

southern California is over 30 cents

Heck My power is 16 cents in the summer. I am in New Jersey   less then 900 miles from op.

Yeah that's what I was getting at [but $0.045]. There's probably a lighter/denser way to palletise 'heat' [super heated steam?] but even with water its not far away. Which is so, so, so stupid. For reference most residential power in the UK is about $0.22. If you could find somewhere in the US with high power costs, you'd only have to fill containers with insullated baffling and train it across the country.

@OP, I chuckled a bit at your enthusiasm, buying five of each to "compare the two." 

Is there any reason you didn't just get two SP20 Nano Farms?

I'll wait a bit and buy a used farm and/or mini farms. With the price atm, some will give up and sell low just to get out from mining!

In my opinion, right now is a terrible time to invest in a lot of new mining hardware. Current generation mining hardware (.5-.6 W/GH) has been available since October, and next generation hardware with twice the efficiency is right around the corner and should be available within the next month or two.

If you buy now, your .5-.6 W/GH farm will be quickly obsolete. Also, given the current price of BTC, best case you're looking at at least 9-12 months to get your money back depending on your overhead costs. If your overhead costs (rent, electricity, utilities, labor, ...) exceed 10 cents / kwh, you have no business running a mining farm.

If you believe in BTC, and since the price is currently low, you could buy some BTC directly and hold it as a hedge against rising prices and use it to buy more efficient gear once it is available.

If the BTC price spikes, your hardware purchase just got less expensive. Hardware manufacturers will charge as much as the market will bear, so a spike in the price of BTC will make all mining hardware more expensive.

If the BTC price tanks further, it makes zero economic sense to invest in mining hardware and you dodged a bullet.

I'd buy it if it were shaped like a donut.

Oh, I don't know...thinking about 120 of them or so?


Looking at the Hashcoins Uranus is interesting...gotta run the numbers on that one too.

He's probably looking at the efficiency of an electric water heater vs the cost of shipping that much mass across five time zones/Atlantic ocean. Wherein it'd cost pretty much the same to heat water at $0.45 in Ohio, palletize it and send it the several thousand miles to a British man in need of a shower (or tea?), as it would for said British man to heat the water locally using the same equipment at a much higher power cost.

Which... that's an interesting way of looking at power cost distributions.

Is there a large market in the UK for "hot bottled water"?  In the US we sell room temp or chilled bottled water.

lot of SP20s .... what's large?

I'd sell bottled hot water at that price Running the numbers if you could insulate them excellently, its not far off break even to ship pallets of hot water to the UK. So fucked up.

yeah at $0.045  a kwatt

 I would buy some gear.