Topic: ZTEX USB-FPGA Modules 1.15x and 1.15y: 215 and 860 MH/s FPGA Boards - page 27. (Read 182450 times)

Ztex told me via mail that it should be in the Shop by next week

Any estimates on a release date when I'll be able to order a quad FPGA board?

ztex,

if a company, here in Italy, buys something and this something is related to its core business, VAT gets returned, and the value of the goods reduces its earnings with a ratio of one fifth of the goods' price each year (there are exceptions and longer/shorter durations).

If a company, on the other hand, buys something which is not related to its core business (I don't think there are companies with crypto-currencies as core business; they could be considered hardware/computers, but if this company buys too much of them can get into troubles during a fiscal control) it pays VAT in the same way as a final consumer.

So, for example, I could buy your boards with my company VATIN, but as soon as they reach Italy I'd have to pay Italian VAT on them and I cannot ask this VAT back since they are not related to my company business (which is not even computers).

spiccioli.

Would mean: As more companies are involved in a product as more expensive a product would be because every company would have to pay VAT.

VAT is a consumption tax. In general (there may be exceptions) companies get it returned or do not have to pay it. (Even if they consume the good, e.g. if I purchase a pencil I get the VAT refunded (if I purchase in Germany) or I do not have to pay VAT (If I order from outside Germany and within EU).

ztex,

I'm not a fiscal consultant, but european companies, for what I know, have to pay VAT as well when they receive goods from another european state.

Your invoice will not have VAT in it, but receiving company has to pay it, using its national VAT fee.

There are some exceptions, at least in Italy, like a company which imports goods to transform into different ones and/or puts them into a customs deposit while it waits to resell them.


spiccioli.

See there for payment and shipping methods: http://shop.ztex.de/shipping.php. Prices are without VAT (which has to be paid by private customers from EU without VATIN)

It's great to see a quad board, but...

850 MH/s @ $5 per btc = $82/month (ignoring power costs).

$1355/82 = 16.5 months to break even...

but it gets worse, in 8 months the btc reward will drop in half. Unless the price of bitcoins doubles when the reward drops, this product will need roughly 2 full years to break even, even without taking into consideration power costs.

Guess you'll be hanging on to your Ztex order, then. BFL has just begun shipping their mid-January orders.

Give me BFLs within six weeks and I'll cancel my Ztex order .

Are there any layout optimization for heat transfers to the board?  I didn't check the papers but I guess with 10A@ 1.2V the BGA plastic package is near the limits.

Hpman

Completely agree with all points.

Give me Ztex Squads (lol) at 800 USD and I'll cancel my BFL order now.

Yes, there is: EldenTyrell's bitstream which squeezes three regular SHA algorithms (not double ones as the Bitcoin mining algorithm requires) into a Spartan6-150.
Assuming he ever sells it at a reasonable price.

But it also seems to have a higher power draw, and Stefan's 8 Amp VCCINT buck controller is not exactly helping in that department.

Elden, if you're reading this: What's up?

Stefan, if you're reading this: Have you thought about switching to 10 Amp buck controllers?

Individual 'group buys' make each board a damn sight cheaper than 309 EUR. I'm not paying that much for each of mine.

The first 'test' board *was* expensive though... then again it's a 1.15d with an extra Experimental Board, memory and microSD slot.

If you're intending on buying only one board from ZTEX and leaving it at that, I can see the value in a group bulk buy, because the 'single' prices aren't beer money. However, if you're going to invest in FPGAs at *all*, I can't see much point in only buying one or two - with the current bitstream you're only going to get the hashpower of a couple of shonky old 5770 cards, which can be put to more uses in a computer (you'll need *some* sort of computer to manage the FPGAs, after all).

However, if you're already invested heavily in GPU miners and power / heat management isn't free, you're going to either be quitting the mining game or running like hell to switch to FPGAs. And if you choose ZTEX (a sensible decision in Europe) then you'll need a fair number of boards to match a small dedicated GPU mining farm like mine... at which point you get the substantial ZTEX volume discounts.


What I'm trying to say is that there *already* is a 'bulk order' scheme. Having one individual pool up cash to make a large order (holding up the queue *completely* for bigger miners), only to then sell them on to others at a different rate than Stefan charges, could put Stefan under pressure to change his pricing (I don't want the prices going up, thanks). But more importantly, if a 'group bulk purchase' ends up being hundreds of boards, then it effectively prevents anyone *outside* the group from receiving any boards before they are likely to run the risk of taking FAR too long to pay off for some miners' risk horizons.

Put this way - if a 'group bulk order' was going ahead, and it was going to be hundreds of boards, taking Stefan's entire production for the next 3 months or so... then I'd want to put *my* volume purchase in along with the group, so I'm not shut out until the 'group' buy is fulfilled. This could take a long time, after all - and it's not great business for Stefan either...

They could close that gap by making the Bitstream faster Or isn't there some improvement space left?

Yes, sorry, a single quad-fpga unit

I agree with you in that if a bulk order can be created, at 830 EUR/unit it is a viable/fair price (given better availability, less power used and longer warranty).

But this requires collecting requests, receiving and re-shipping units (if ztex does not split the shipping himself), which makes them a little bit more pricey given the double shipping.

spiccioli.

Why?

BFL Single = 830 MH/S
ZTEX Squad = 850-870 MH/S

You are getting roughly the same amount of hashing power per usb port or power plug.  Now the BFL Singles do use ~2x the power which is an advantage but the pricing as listed is a non-starter.   The largest issue w/ BFL is their abysmal delivery track record.  Still even if ztex can have new boards delivered in two weeks I am not sure it is worth the premium charged.

BFL Single - $600
ztex quad - $950 (as part of bulk buy 50+ units)
To keep the math simple lets assume roughly the same hash rate.

Pure and simple the the ztex quad costs $350 more.  

It does use half the energy but even at $0.15 per kWh that is only ~$70 saved annually.  So the turning point is 5 years.  After 5 years of continual mining the total cost of ownership (purchase price + all electrical consumption) between the two products will be roughly the same.  Hard to justify choosing A when it becomes cheaper only after 60 months.

While the ztex boards don't need to be cheaper they do need to close that cost gap.  The quad @ $800 in bulk (and $1000 individually) would have been impressive.  Between the $50-$100 annual power savings and the ~$80/mo opportunity cost* it would have been a solid competitor.  At $950 it is hard to make the math work even under most optimistic scenarios.


* By oppertunity cost I mean the delay between delivery of ztex board and delivery of BFL Single.  850 MH/s is worth ~80 per month.  So IF delivery of ztex boards are 2 months faster it is like having $160 lower capital cost.

Well I just got Test Board 1 modified to test my 'tunnel' theory - enclosed it with a cardboard tube and stuck an 80mm fan at one end blowing across the board - and it spent a *little* more time at 212 MHz but settled down at a safe 208 MHz. Remember that this is a 1.15d board, not the 1.15x - so the heatsink is a tiny 25mm thing stuck on with thermal tape, which we all know is rubbish.

And then I had a total systems failure - my Open Directory got corrupted. This contains all my email and my entire company login structure (it's only small, but it's critical) so I've been fighting that since.

@ztex - if you've emailed me saying my boards are ready, and the email bounced - I *haven't* disappeared, I *still* want the boards and I *do* have the money. Please don't cancel the order... bad timing or what??? If there's still a wait for my boards then no problem. Will hopefully be back up and running by the end of today - been working 24 hours rebuilding the server (OD backups aren't the one-click restore you'd hope for, and restoring using Apple's Time Machine on its own server is dangerous as hell with Kerberos).

All my data is safe, as are all user home folders and metadata. Figured it'd be safer to rebuild the directory *properly* this time, keeping the UIDs the same, and importing the existing folders for each user. Wouldn't want to do this on an enterprise level though... having 11 users is bad enough...

1st: Its not a single, its a quad.
2nd: When will an order of BFL be processed?! Can you point us to some bulk-order already in progress?! Why not start one?

I think I'm good with 2 years and better price/performance with these quads. Also colling, powering and building will be more easy than with singles (less y-adapter, usb-hubs etc.). And still I can invest less than 5k EUR / USD and have some Hardware soon.

Sadly it is written in German...

Anyway, just a back of the envelope calc gives, for a 50 units order ( a 40K EUR value ), a single unit is 831 EUR using German VAT (19%) plus expedition (which could also be free).

One BFL single, for reference, sent to Italy is:

599 USD + 80 USD (expedition)
Italian customs rights 8%
-----------
Tot. 733 USD

Italian VAT 21%
----------
Tot. 887 USD

Converted into EUR (at 1.25) makes a final price of 709 EUR.

So, a bulk order of 50 units is still more expensive than a single BFL single (sorry for the pun).

I know that ztex boards have a two years warranty and that they use 50% less energy, but a single unit is 1188 EUR VAT included (without expedition).

Sadly.

spiccioli.

PS. maybe if someone here speaks german he could try to collect requests for that bulk order...
I think I'd pay 130 EUR for two years of warranty given that this makes me feel a lot safer than the 6 months only warranty of BFL.

edit: 130 EUR for two years for a product which has a price of 830 EUR is around 8% per year of warranty, not bad.

-

One question - how much does shipping in the EU cost for these quad boards? Also, is VAT included in the prices you quoted?