Kill your GPU, Bitcoin Mining with Block Eruptors

[YellowDragon]

This post is going to be a Review/Public Message of Bitcoin mining and ASICMiner Block Eruptors, as well as guide and links to help those interested:

 

 

This is going to sound like an AD, however i think the message is important enough to warrent it. I notice alot of people want to get into coin mining and the first they they hear is they have to go out and buy tons of high end GPUs and tons of powersupplys to run them. At this point and time mining on a GPU WILL cause you to lose money rather than gain it for the simple fact that you are consuming a large amount of power to generate coins. The name of the game in bitcoin mining is power efficiency, if you are consuming electricity at a rate far faster then your generating coins then you are doing it wrong. Power efficiency is everything if you hope to get the most for your inital investment in mining hardware.

 

Thats why if you are new to mining or just want to get started im going to be up and front with you, your going to have to get a form of ASIC miner. Now what is a an ASIC? Well to put it simply lets define it, an ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. It is a specialized piece of electronic equipment that is designed to do one task and do that task to the greatest possible efficiency. In the case of bitcoins you want an ASIC that can do SHA 256 hashes as this is the hashing algorithm that is used by the bitcoin network. These ASICs are far more efficient then a GPU or CPU ever could be as they are designed to do one task whereas a CPU or GPU is a generalized form of processor.

 

There are alot of different ASIC miners out there if you want to mine, however many are expensive ranging into $1000's of dollars and many more have long wait lists. If you want to get into bitcoin now im going to reccomend ASICMiner Block eruptors. Its a new form of ASIC that is powered through a simple USB port. The advantage with this miner is clear in that it is far easier to use in comparison to other miners and it is very easy to expand your mining power should you choose to do so, grab a USB hub and plug more of these in till your hearts content.

 

They are simply just very versatile and easy to use if you are just getting started in bitcoin and makes it easy to get started mining, you can even hook these things up to a Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone Balck development board instead of a normal PC. This would cut down power costs immensely.

 

For Example your average Dell PC has a 300W PSU amd a power draw of 50Watts, if you setup a miner using a raspberry Pi and 4 Block Eruptors you would be drawing 10 Watts MAX, while having a hashrate around 1400M/hash.One of these little guys runs you about $67 at current market value and nets you 330M/hash. 4 of them could trounce a 7990 for about $250 and you would have a total power draw around 10Watts compared to 375  watts with the 7990, also it would only take around $5 a year to keep them mining 24/7. Its just clear and straight forward why its nicer to use these over just simple GPU mining.

 

ASICs are the way of the future, this setup would be very upgradable as you would just need a large USB hub to keep plugging these things into. I actually run one myself with 4 of them linked to a Raspberry Pi, its dead silent and produces next to no heat.

 

 

Here is a general Spec Sheet of The Miner:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is an example of this system, this one pulls 11.8 GH/s, far more then any GPU farm and only draws the power of a very low end GPU:

 

 

Here is a guideif you want to use a Raspberry PI as your controller:

http://learn.adafrui...up-and-assembly

 

 

 

Setup and Install Guide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LnyQVLVWmE

 

( I am in no way affiliated to this seller, this is just the lowest price i could find on ebay)

Here is a link to one:

http://www.ebay.com/...=item27d648847c

[delet my acc pls]

the picture somehow makes me think of an evil wizard pumping the souls out of little children 

[Theo]

Very interesting, will check it out and maybe get one, i wonder if they can make this be able to fold, THAT'D BE AWESOME ( probably, dno how good it'd be or work ) 

[YellowDragon]

Very interesting, will check it out and maybe get one, i wonder if they can make this be able to fold, THAT'D BE AWESOME ( probably, dno how good it'd be or work ) 

These wont fold unfortunately, they are optimized for SHA 256 only as they are an ASIC chip designed just for bitmining with the SHA 256 algorithm.

[Theo]

These wont fold unfortunately, they are optimized for SHA 256 only as they are an ASIC chip designed just for bitmining with the SHA 256 algorithm.

fair enough, i wish someone would do this for folding but since theres no money to gain from folding i doubt someone will

[NinjaStyle013]

I still don't get how to turn bitcoin to nzd

[YellowDragon]

fair enough, i wish someone would do this for folding but since theres no money to gain from folding i doubt someone will

very true, the reason why these emerged in bitcoin was that there was money to be made. Someone sat down and designed a Chip capable of mining for bitcoins with the lowest possible power draw. The designing of custom specific chips costs millions of dollars so unless there was crowdfunding its unlikely to happen, also with folding you are doing a vast array of calculations far beyond what a specialized circuit would be able to do.

[YellowDragon]

I still don't get how to turn bitcoin to nzd

 

 

Your supposed to use Bitcoins like any currency and spend them, not transfer them.

 

If you want to convert to your local currency, google MTGox as they are the largest exchange of bitcoins where you can change your bitcoins into your local currency.

[Whaler_99]

Great post!

[RuecanOnRails]

Just a heads up for people considering to jump in with these usb ASICS. They are good for a starter set up but they are getting out dated rather quickly.

 

They are not good for long term profitability. With the constant release of ASICS which have faster and cheaper hash per watt/$ and ever the increasing bitcoin difficulty. These 330 mhash usb asics will get you currently 43 cents per day each. That works out to 167 DAYS before you see any sort of profit buying at $70 each. That's assuming the bitcoin difficulty does not increase and current trends point towards an ever increasing difficulty http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

 

 

On the other side of things for $180 you can get a 7950 which can do about double the hash, and the flexibility to mine using both SHA-256 and Scrypt. If you jump blockchains (coins) you can stay on top of the highest profitability and trade various coins for bitcoins. You will spend more in electricity per month but you can be mining coins upwards of 2 - 5 times more profitable than bitcoin which can make up for power costs. http://coinchoose.com/index.php

 

Your GPU miner on scrypt will last a lot longer than a bitcoin usb asic in terms of the difficulty increase curve. ASICS are not available for scrypt at this time and likely wont be for anytime soon. There are some being worked on but there is still a lot of time before it's released

 

 

As for these USB miners not getting hot, that's not, true they get very hot. They are small so they wont heat up a large area like a gpu farm. But if you were to touch them after they've been on you may get a little surprise.

[YellowDragon]

Just a heads up for people considering to jump in with these usb ASICS. They are good for a starter set up but they are getting out dated rather quickly.

 

They are not good for long term profitability. With the constant release of ASICS which have faster and cheaper hash per watt/$ and ever the increasing bitcoin difficulty. These 330 mhash usb asics will get you currently 43 cents per day each. That works out to 167 DAYS before you see any sort of profit buying at $70 each. That's assuming the bitcoin difficulty does not increase and current trends point towards an ever increasing difficulty http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

 

 

On the other side of things for $180 you can get a 7950 which can do about double the hash, and the flexibility to mine using both SHA-256 and Scrypt. If you jump blockchains (coins) you can stay on top of the highest profitability and trade various coins for bitcoins. You will spend more in electricity per month but you can be mining coins upwards of 2 - 5 times more profitable than bitcoin which can make up for power costs. http://coinchoose.com/index.php

 

Your GPU miner on scrypt will last a lot longer than a bitcoin usb asic in terms of the difficulty increase curve. ASICS are not available for scrypt at this time and likely wont be for anytime soon. There are some being worked on but there is still a lot of time before it's released

 

 

As for these USB miners not getting hot, that's not, true they get very hot. They are small so they wont heat up a large area like a gpu farm. But if you were to touch them after they've been on you may get a little surprise.

I will play devils advocate here as I want to point out all fronts for those who are interested.

 

First of all yes you are correct there are always new ASICs on the horizon that have a higher hash rate per watt, the problem being that most of those miners are on far back order or are so expensive that it is really risky jumping onboard with say a $5000 dollar miner only to find that it might not pay itself off. plus you have companys like butteryfly labs who have a preorder list 2 years long and are just starting to ship that ledger filled with backorders. So I find these little USB wonders to be a quick, cheap and easy way to get into mining even if it turns out that they are quickly outdated, dont let it dissuade you though despite what it may seem you can make more money with bitcoins through trading then you do mining, The United States just recently declared Bitcoin a legitimate currency and we have yet to see the repercussions of this stement, I think we will see a price increase per bitcoin and thus a skyrocket increase in value for bitcoins already obtained. Also whos to say if you do wait for an advanced ASIC that the difficulty is so high that the returns are not worth it, opportunity cost is one of the big things you need to pay attention to as well.

 

 

You are correct you could get a graphics card to mine bitcoins, however as I stated for bitcoins in particular it is foolish, especially if you are a casual investor. There is profit to be made through scrypt mining, however you will have to weigh your options, a graphics card does not run on its own and unless you want to make a dedicated mining rig your main computer will be rendered unusable while mining. This is the downfall of a GPU based miner the rest of the hardware that is needed to support it from a power supply to adequate cooling, not to mention your powerbill still takes a big hit. Where as if you just want a taste at cryptocurrency I would pick up one or two of these and plug them in to say a raspberry pi and let them go and you power draw would be around 8 watts. The upfront costs of this setup is around $180 in comparison to buying a $180 dollar GPU and system to support it would be around $500, not to mention you have to be comfortable with the radiant heat and noise a GPU produces.

 

 

Finally, yes these little miners do get hot to the touch, I was referencing "Hot" as in radiant generated heat and you will not feel an increase in room temperature. When I got into Bitcoin I did so with 7970 GPU cards, they are hot, loud and made the room feel like a boiler room, not to mention they sucked down power, for me where I run a rig in a dorm room Quiet and Cool is the name of the game as I dont want my roommates complaining about the temperature or the eardrum offending noise. To keep these little guys cool throw a novelty usb fan on the and they are right as rain.

 

It all comes down to what an Investor wants to do if they are fully into the bitcoin game or just want to do it casually, though I cant advise going full force I feel if you just want to dip your feet in this is a good way to do it as at most you will be out $70 if something does go wrong.