My machines were no "Bed of roses" either, but you won't hear me complain...
I got them running just fine.
You could always decide to wait until they are perfected before you buy...
I, on the other hand, am glad to be a Beta-tester, Guinea pig; and fully
understand that there will be problems that arise in such a "rush to market"
circumstance.... IMHO, anyone with half a brain should realize that.
Yeah good points..though I will counter by saying it depends on what sort of issues one runs into as said beta tester. When you've had the luck that you and I have had with the machines (working as expected after extensive tinkering/testing/praying to the BTC gods for the perfect firmware to arrive) then it's easy to dismiss the problems as mostly trivial and surmountable. But, when you have had issues that have required physical RMA's to resolve due to aforementioned exploding capacitors, etc...well, I'm not sure even you would be quite so chipper about it given the time-is-money aspect of mining
I count myself very fortunate to have a machine that is working very close to intended specs (finally) that hopefully will fully break-even before the New Year...perhaps sooner if the current rise in BTC prices becomes the new normal. However, I think it's also important to take KnC to task on issues that they should learn from in the future.
Anyway...just so I'm not misunderstood....to all new prospective buyers of KnC gear: I can give a recommendation to the company as a whole and the gear has functioned as advertised (eventually). There is a lot of lessons that I *hope* they learned from this first go-round which will make future offerings that much better...though with the marked lack of direct communication from them it's hard to tell if that is the case so I guess just put down your money and hope for the best
Good luck!
Edit re: your edit
Yep, and the HX850's fall into that category yet were implicated as the cause of the catastrophic failures. It was a generic recommendation without specific brands/models mentioned...so to me that's a generic recommendation which led some customers to have issues that could have been avoided with a different PSU.
http://www.corsair.com/en/media/cms/manual/corsair-psu-spec-table-091813.pdfFurther, pointing to the FAQ as it now exists is a bit revisionist. Let's see what they told us "way back then", shall we?
https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-31
Power Supply Recommendation.
With our shipment date approaching this update addresses the power demands of our mining devices.
We realise we are currently being compared to our competitors with respect to power consumption and would like to clarify our position.
Today we can reveal that our maximal power consumption will be below 1.6 W/GH/s.
We understand the need for some of our more remote customers to be able to secure a purchase of a power supply (PSU) within the given timeframe.
So today we can reveal the following recommendations;
We recommend an 850 Watt PSU with a minimum of 4x PCI-E adaptors for our Jupiter model.
We recommend a 600 Watt PSU with a minimum of 2x PCI-E adaptors for our Saturn model.
We recommend a 400 Watt PSU with a minimum of a PCI-E adaptor for our Mercury model.
This recommended power wattage figure is calculated upon our max. power consumption of total device including all of its components.
We aim to ensure you use a power supply unit capable of outputting in excess of the current recommended wattage to prevent any problems caused due to insufficient power.
Note: Powers supplies must contain a sufficient number of PCI-E adaptors for each respective unit.
Thanks
KnCMiner Team
Seems REALLY generic...but maybe it's just me :p