Topic: What ASIC manufacturer you choose if you were to buy one? (Read 1102 times)

Butterfly Labs. Because vapor is ecofriendly, apparently.

Thanks for your reply Crocko.

There's no way that I've made any return on investment from the two usb asic miners yet and I'm not entirely sure that I'll actually make any back on what I paid for them. I was more interested in getting started and as I don't factor electricity costs into my calculations, the way I see it is that any bitcoins I generate is a plus as I'm not looking at these as an 'investment', more a way to climb the learning curve.

If you go out to dinner and spend $100, you don't think, 'Hey, what's my return on investment for that $100?' You have a nice meal, probably a bottle of wine, hopefully some good conversation and you enjoy yourself. I bought the two usb asic miners for enjoyment, so anything I get back from them is pure upside. Like I said in my post above, I'm not mining as a form of investment, I'm mining for enjoyment and to learn more about the world of bitcoins.

However if you are looking for ROI information, check thegenesisblock.com here:

http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

Select the equipment that you are considering buying and it will give you a calculated ROI on the item. It seems that the calculator appears to work on how many blocks that you will actually find and that's probably ok if you are mining solo and not joining a pool. I'd imagine that the numbers would be higher if you mined in a pool.

Another ROI calculator is available from bitclockers.com :

http://bitclockers.com/calc

I'd suggest you be very careful and use the difficulty factor from thegenesisblock and make sure that the watts you type in to the calculator are correct. It seems that the calculator hasn't been updated in a while, but it's useful as you can change variables (like zeroing the electricity cost) to give a more personalised answer.

I started off cpu mining with 50btc using their 50miner software, it seemed to work ok but my cpu was so slow it was worse than watching paint dry. I made the decision to buy some specialised asic mining gear but what your find almost immediately is that although plenty of places advertise it, most of it is either available only to pre-order or you pay a very high price. I wasn't interested in paying a high price, so I pre-ordered a 7ghs Jalapeno from Butterfly Labs which will arrive sometime in the next year and to get started I bought two ASICMiner Block Erupter usb miners, one from Amazon and one from Ebay.

Right now I'm using two usb asic miners, each give a nominal 333mhs (very low I know), I'm using Bfgminer as mining software and I'm using  BTC Guild as my mining pool (www.btcguild.com) and it runs smoothly. I've another two usb miners arriving soon to double my hashing to 1.3ghs and will continue to buy more usb miners in the future. BTC Guild also sell usb asic miners for 0.24 BTC each and I've also seen them on this forum for as low as 0.2 BTC each for a minimum order of 50. Look around, see what's available but it's worth spending time getting a feel for prices, there's the usual scammers on ebay and amazon trying to sell them for 100-500% more than they cost, so know what you're doing and what you're prepared to pay before you part with your money or bitcoins.

It's worth keeping an eye on the news, I use these two news sites mainly:

www.coindesk.com
www.thegenesisblock.com

Take it slowly, do your research. Enjoy the journey

@OleOle

Have you achieved ROI with your USB Block Erupter ASIC Miners ?
How much hashing power they have ?
Please share with us more information, we are all here to learn how to do mining properly.

I'm also new to mining and the question about increasing difficulty is interesting as if it keeps rising at a similar rate like the last few months, there's not much value (for me) getting involved in it.

The way I see it is that if it's ROI that you're after it's probably worth considering buying a reasonably sized mining contract. Then the speculator in me kicks in and says something like, "If I'm going to buy a mining contract for a return on my money, wouldn't I just be better off in traditional investments like stocks?" And the answer for me to that is, "Yep, stocks for me!"

Everyone is different. I just cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on mining equipment that could be obsolete within a year or so. Sure the stocks might decrease in value but if I choose wisely I'll get some income from them and it's a 'devil I know' rather than a gamble on increasing difficulty which is a 'devil I don't know'.

But what's the fun in mining contracts? Probably not much and it doesn't really help you learn much, it's not hands on and it doesn't give you the satisfaction of personal reward like doing your own mining does.

So I haven't bothered with a mining contract and instead have decided to 'start small, think big' and have ordered a 7ghs Jalapeno from Butterfly Labs. I ordered that in August when BFL said that they anticipated to have their backlog cleared by September, but that looks increasingly unlikely and I might have to wait a few months or until next year to get it.

So in the meantime I've started with two USB Block Erupter ASIC Miners and have ordered another two and will slowly build them up so that I can hopefully get a meaningful hashing rate over time.

I'd rather start mining now with a couple of usb miners than wait months for something more substantial to arrive. At least this way I've learned about configuring mining software, found a favorite mining pool, chosen a wallet that will hopefully be secure, found a few websites that keep me up-to-date, earned some fractions of coins and generally enjoyed the fact that in a very small way, I'm part of the mining community and doing some actual mining.

That's my thinking on it for now 

@Nancarrow

+1

You cannot mine coins that use the scrypt algorithm, with ASICs that use double-SHA256. All bitcoin ASICs use double-SHA256, Litecoin is scrypt. There are no scrypt ASICs at the moment, nor have I heard of any serious proposals for their development. I don't know much about how scrypt works, but apparently it is hugely memory intensive and also highly variable in the amount it uses at any instant, and these aspects mean it's much harder to develop ASICs for.

@ CryptogenicBullion
" BFL = number 1, they are so serious     "

You little troll !  

BFL = number 1, they are so serious 

I made the horrible mistake of pre-ordering from BFL and now I have lost my job and they will not give me a refund. I've been waiting almost 5 months which is nothing compared to many who pre-ordered initially. They have been waiting for well over a year meanwhile me and my family have been evicted from our house. I am trying to sell my BFL pre-order some how. If you want to deal with a company that cares about you as a customer then stay away from BFL. KnC has customer service figured out. It looks like they are even on track to meet their production schedule.

Why not keep on getting the ASICs and mine for LTC and return to BTC if becomes easier ?!


As for shipping times, i really wonder where is the problem. So many producers there and much more who would have the potential,but no one serious .
Is it some strategy to impact the market or they are just overloaded

the weird thing that i don't understand why did KnC made their products more expensive, for example the KnC Jupiter 400GH was a Month ago for about $3,995 but now it is for $4,995, that means $1000 more expensive though the Difficulty until the Shippment Date which is now from 15. Nov will increase a lot, and that machine won't be profitable as it's now or was before 1 month .. the prices had to decrease and the company had to upgrade their products to something like 800GH+ and sell them with the old prices or they also may increase the prices in that case ...
Hash-Power should increase while difficulty increases and prices should kept stable ..

I'm buying vmc 24THs machine. 

I believe Avalon just scrubbed all their pre-orders.

Yep, many months :/  Up to 12 months I think...

i have heard butterfly labs makes the best miners, i do not mine. but i heard the wait for their items is ridiculous

As a newbie looking to get into BTC mining i placed and order for the baby jet from hashfast.

So far im not impressed their customer service sucks i could get a quicker answer from a rock.
im starting to get the feeling ive been fleeced out of my money.

Should of gone with KnC and Asicminer

you left out the only real ASIC company, ASICMINER.

Hello !

I am new in BTC mining, please don't jump on me

According to this site ( http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ ) a BTC miner will not achive ROI at all because of the increasing difficulty

True, we just had some huge jumps on difficulty scale, but that is because a lot of ASIC miners just produced  were turned on.
And this increase will continue with every new delivery.

My question is: so much will increase the difficulty?
Estimate was something like:  Difficulty Increase / Month = 77% 
Is this for real ?
I ask this because even with the fastest ASIC miner (from Cointerra - 2 TH/s !) a person will never obtain the ROI..

Another question:

If you were to buy an ASIC, from whom would tempt most and why? (eg.: price, hashing speed, trusted manufacturer etc.)
What do you know about each one? Who are trusted and who aren't ?
I know only these ASIC producers:

Cointerra - TerraMiner IV
VMC (aka Virtual Mining Corporation) - Fast-Hash-Base-Units Silver /Gold / Platinum Edition
KNC  - Saturn, Jupiter
Bitfury (aka Bitfurystrikesback)  - Full Kit, Starter Kit
Krater - KraterMiner
BFL - Jalapeno, Monarch
TerraHash - BabyJet
HashFast - Klondike, DXLarge

All suggestions are welcome !
My regards !