ZTEX USB-FPGA Modules 1.15x and 1.15y: 215 and 860 MH/s FPGA Boards - page 30.

Turbor

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Quote from: uuidman on March 19, 2012, 11:19:45 AM

I have a question about the fan. Is it possible to get the spec, seems to be a 40mm and I hope that its not necessary to run it at full speed. Others have mentioned that their setup is silent. Anyone care to share their noise-levels and what you think.

I replaced all my fans with Scythe Kaze minis. One fan failed (got very noisy) because i blew air on the board with a 92mm fan, diagonal from above. Not very clever i know ! That destroyed the bearing in less than 2 months Grin

The minis are a bit quieter but they don't deliver the same airflow as the stock fans. Scythe is 14 dB/A, 4,11 CFM, Xilence (stock) 19 db/A, 5,28 CFM.

The stock fans are a good balance between noise and effective cooling for a stand-alone board. Since i use additional fans to cool my units and the noise was too loud, i went with the minis. Very happy so far.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: Dhomochevsky on March 19, 2012, 10:46:53 AM

Hmm. THE MOAR YOU KNOW.

This gets me thinking - so far the chips sold solely for mining boards I'm pretty sure are in the low thousands. When FPGA mining really takes off and various mining solutions will be available from an assortment of manufacturers, should we expect an increase in price due to demand? Seeing how the GPU market wasn't affected by bitcoin mining, I'd hazzard a no, but still...

Probably not. The FPGA market is in the tens of billions. Smaller than GPU market but still magnitudes larger than Bitcoin Mining. If Mining ever got so large that say annual says of mining hardware was $10M+ you likely would see sufficient demand for someone to take the risk of full custom ASIC and take nearly 100% marketshare. Once that happens no FPGA will be able to compete so even if Bitcoin is magnitudes larger it won't have any effect on FPGA pricing other than many short term supply disruptions but given how price sensitive miners are I doubt even that is likely.

Wandering Albatross

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Quote from: ztex

As far I know Icarus uses the FPGA's that are available on the gray marked.

Do you know of any gray market chip dealers? Govt. surplus?

uuidman

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I have a question about the fan. Is it possible to get the spec, seems to be a 40mm and I hope that its not necessary to run it at full speed. Others have mentioned that their setup is silent. Anyone care to share their noise-levels and what you think.

Wandering Albatross

member

Activity: 70

Merit: 10

Quote from: Dhomochevsky

When FPGA mining really takes off and various mining solutions will be available from an assortment of manufacturers, should we expect an increase in price due to demand? Seeing how the GPU market wasn't affected by bitcoin mining, I'd hazzard a no, but still...

Not a precise guesstimate "really takes off", but I don't think mining will ever come close to the kind of market that some FPGAs are designed for,
like consumer markets or large markets like network switches, etc. I agree, don't think prices will change due to BTC mining.

Dhomochevsky

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Hmm. THE MOAR YOU KNOW.

This gets me thinking - so far the chips sold solely for mining boards I'm pretty sure are in the low thousands. When FPGA mining really takes off and various mining solutions will be available from an assortment of manufacturers, should we expect an increase in price due to demand? Seeing how the GPU market wasn't affected by bitcoin mining, I'd hazzard a no, but still...

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: bulanula on March 19, 2012, 06:18:46 AM

FPGA on the black market ... LOL.

Nobody said BLACK. The term is gray market. BFL almost certainly got their super cheap chips via gray market channels.

Say a company orders 10,000 chips but turns out demand isn't there, a broker buys them below costs and then shops them around. Along the same line wholesales will often "unofficially" sell product to brokers below retail price. Sometimes manufacturer will sell chips below retail to a broker rather than discount them publicly.

Depending on connections, volume, and flexibility it is possible to find chips below retail sometimes significantly below retail.

ztex

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ZTEX FPGA Boards

Quote from: Dhomochevsky on March 19, 2012, 05:00:09 AM

Quote from: ztex on March 19, 2012, 04:06:14 AM

As far I know Icarus uses the FPGA's that are available on the gray marked.

What do you mean? Could you elaborate on that?

Since 2010 there are only two official Xilinx distributors, Avnet and Digikey.

Items that are are offered by non-official distributors / IC brokers (= gray market) are usually overstocks of manufacturers.

bulanula

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Quote from: Dhomochevsky on March 19, 2012, 05:00:09 AM

Quote from: ztex on March 19, 2012, 04:06:14 AM

As far I know Icarus uses the FPGA's that are available on the gray marked.

What do you mean? Could you elaborate on that?

Probably some anti-competitive BS rant that he wants to use to get more sales than Icarus. Most people will buy Icarus anyway because things made + designed in China are cheaper and lower quality than things made + designed in Germany etc.

FPGA on the black market ... LOL.

Dhomochevsky

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Quote from: ztex on March 19, 2012, 04:06:14 AM

As far I know Icarus uses the FPGA's that are available on the gray marked.

What do you mean? Could you elaborate on that?

ztex

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ZTEX FPGA Boards

Quote from: Dhomochevsky on March 18, 2012, 09:32:45 AM

Quote from: rjk on March 17, 2012, 06:30:50 PM

Ztex uses speed grade -3 chips, and Icarus uses speed grade -2 with industrial thermal ratings.

Does that mean that the Icarus is more durable in time/at higher temps? Or is it the other way around? Or is the Icarus more durable as long as you keep it under 200 MHz?

I'm using -N3 chips. As far I know Icarus uses the FPGA's that are available on the gray marked.

The absolute maximum junction temperature for all temperature ratings is 125°C. The difference is the operating temperature range, i.e. the over temperature protection trigger (based on error measurement / frequency) may be triggered earlier.

ztex

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Quote from: Beaflag VonRathburg on March 18, 2012, 08:30:56 PM

Ztex, is there any way you could add a running total for the amount of orders placed in the past 10 weeks? If we knew the number we could colaborate to place a large order to achieve the maximum savings. I'm not sure if having 100+ units ordered at the same time is something you'd like versus having them slightly spaced out. My ability to maximize the amount of units I could order given Y funds could potentially increase and you're probably still making $X / unit regardless of the run due to bulk ordering. Just something to consider.

I do not post quotations in the forum.

Please contact me per email (

) or using the contact form at http://www.ztex.de/contact.e.html for availability / reservation requests.

Beaflag VonRathburg

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Ztex, is there any way you could add a running total for the amount of orders placed in the past 10 weeks? If we knew the number we could colaborate to place a large order to achieve the maximum savings. I'm not sure if having 100+ units ordered at the same time is something you'd like versus having them slightly spaced out. My ability to maximize the amount of units I could order given Y funds could potentially increase and you're probably still making $X / unit regardless of the run due to bulk ordering. Just something to consider.

rupy

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Quote from: neuronics on March 18, 2012, 11:57:36 AM

Another Atom driven FPGA-miner. One 12V single source - UPS via FET-Switch directly from 12 V accumulator.
Diskless (USB Stick) Ubuntu OS. Works very well, silent & stable.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/66700729/PHOTO/fpga10atom.png

Silent? Hm, I run my D510MO and 5 x 1.15x passively. That's silent! You just hear the chips chirp as they meet hard work. Wink

You can actually hear what the CPU is doing... actually very useful when you have a server and it's getting lots of load; you hear it... specially when you wrote the software, performance tuning by ear! Cheesy

neuronics

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Quote from: TheSeven on March 18, 2012, 12:13:46 PM

Quote from: neuronics on March 18, 2012, 11:57:36 AM

Another Atom driven FPGA-miner. One 12V single source - UPS via FET-Switch directly from 12 V accumulator.
Diskless (USB Stick) Ubuntu OS. Works very well, silent & stable.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/66700729/PHOTO/fpga10atom.png

What kind of UPS is that? UPSes that use 12V batteries usually don't provide all that much charging current, so the current draw of these boards might overload that or at least confuse it.

Its drawing from switching power supply or, in case of power failure, from accumulator (directly connected). FET-switch to prevent
return current damaging power supply. Actual current not more than 12 Amps - no problem at all.

TheSeven

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FPGA Mining LLC

Quote from: neuronics on March 18, 2012, 11:57:36 AM

Another Atom driven FPGA-miner. One 12V single source - UPS via FET-Switch directly from 12 V accumulator.
Diskless (USB Stick) Ubuntu OS. Works very well, silent & stable.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/66700729/PHOTO/fpga10atom.png

What kind of UPS is that? UPSes that use 12V batteries usually don't provide all that much charging current, so the current draw of these boards might overload that or at least confuse it.

Turbor

legendary

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Cool setup Wink

neuronics

newbie

Activity: 39

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Another Atom driven FPGA-miner. One 12V single source - UPS via FET-Switch directly from 12 V accumulator.
Diskless (USB Stick) Ubuntu OS. Works very well, silent & stable.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/66700729/PHOTO/fpga10atom.png

Turbor

legendary

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C = Commercial (Tj = 0°C to +85°C), I = Industrial (Tj = –40°C to +100°C). Would be nice to know what exactly makes the difference between a commercial and an industrial rated chip. I guess not much Tongue

Dhomochevsky

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Quote from: rjk on March 17, 2012, 06:30:50 PM

Ztex uses speed grade -3 chips, and Icarus uses speed grade -2 with industrial thermal ratings.

Does that mean that the Icarus is more durable in time/at higher temps? Or is it the other way around? Or is the Icarus more durable as long as you keep it under 200 MHz?

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