Mining hardware

Futurebit Apollo LTC Pod Asic miner and full litecoin node for scrypt algorithm

Futurebit has been manufacturing ASICs since 2016, the first product was USB scrypt Asic miner MoonLander. In 2020, the company offered for sale the Apollo LTC Pod ASIC miner with a hash rate of 100-135MH/s using the same scrypt algorithm. In addition, Apollo LTC Pod can operate as a FULL NODE Litecoin cryptocurrency, for this the device supports USB drives of various sizes. Apollo LTC Pod is by far the most energy-efficient Scrypt asic miner since its energy efficiency parameter is 1W/MH in economy mode and 1.4W/MH in Turbo mode.

The current hashrate of video cards for 2020

In 2020, as before, new cryptocurrencies with "revolutionary" mining algorithms for the GPU continue to enter the market, but like in previous years, the leader remains the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm - Dagger Hashimoto or simply ETHash. Mining algorithms based on Equihash, MTP, RandomX are also very popular. Of the new algorithms that have appeared over the past year and have gained popularity, it is worth noting variations of Cuckoo, BeamHash and ProgPow. These are the cryptocurrencies GRIN, MWC, SWAP, Beam, Sero, BCI. The remaining new and revolutionary cryptocurrencies could not interest miners in the long term.

New ASIC Miner Models: MicroBT WhatsMiner M30S + 100 THS and M30S ++ 112 THS

MicroBT has announced new models of ASIC miners for mining Bitcoin (BTC): MicroBT WhatsMiner M30S +, which offers a hash of 100 TH/s and M30S ++ with a hashrate of 112 TH/s. In doing so, MicroBT added competition to the previously announced Bitmain devices, the Bitmain Antminer S19 and S19 PRO devices.

Presumably, 100 Terahash/s WhatsMiner M30S + will have an energy efficiency of 36 J/Terahesh, while consuming 4300 watts, while a model with a higher price and improved energy efficiency with a hashrate of 112 TH/s - WhatsMiner M30S + will show 31 j/TH and 3472 watts.

4GB AMD Radeon RX 4xx / 5xx ETC mining problems on Windows

Miners using AMD Radeon RX 4xx/5xx GPUs to mine Windows ETC in the near future may start to get weirdly poor performance on the first video card in Riga, while the rest of the GPUs will work as usual. The reason for this is quite simple, although we are still quite far from 4 GB of DAG file size, since in the current 337 ETC era a DAG file of 3.63 GB in size is required (for the miner from Claymore), the first GPU in the system uses more video memory, since it needs display the operating system interface. As a result, when using Windows, the first GPU consumes approximately 140-150 MB of additional video memory. Therefore, the actually used memory is approaching the maximum size of 4GB. As a result, instead of 20-30 MH/s, you can start receiving 1-2 MH/s for the first video card in the system, and soon it may even stop showing any hashrate at all.

HashAltcoin Blackminer F1 FPGA now with Tellor (TRB) support

HashAltcoin recently announced that its FPGA miner supports BlackMiner F1 FPGA Tellor(TRB) algorithm, so now this algorithm is officially included in the list of algorithms that can be mined on FPGA. Recall that previously it was possible to mine on Tellor only using the GPU, using software similar to the latest NBMiner, although in the current situation with the FPGA algorithm, Tellor could be mined on video cards even at GTX 1080Ti, which can provide a hash rate of about 750 MH / s, it gets pretty pointless as the BlackMiner F1 FPGA offers about 10 times higher hashrate.

Testing video cards and miners using the KAWPOW mining algorithm

As previously reported, the cryptocurrency RavenCoin RVN plans to switch to the new mining algorithm KAWPOW in the coming month. A new version of the wallet and several miners supporting this algorithm are already available: kawpowminer, Gminer, NBminer. Now RavenCoin on the current X16Rv2 algorithm is mined on ASIC and FPGA devices, so all GPU miners are waiting for this RVN hard fork, because KAWPOW, built on the basis of PROGPOW, will automatically eject everyone except the GPU from mining. Due to the increased interest in this algorithm, we publish testing of video cards and various miners for the KAWPOW mining algorithm for you.

New Asic miners Antminer S19 from Bitmain went on sale

At the end of February 2020, Bitmain announced a new generation of its Bitcoin mining asic miners called Antminer S19 and S19 PRO. It is worth noting that the S19 Pro model for the first time for Bitmain exceeded the hashrate on the SHA-256 algorithm at 100TH/s and amounted to 110TH/s at 3250W. With such indicators, this model is currently the most energy efficient on the market with an indicator of 29.5 J/TH. The manufacturer set the price of the new product at a significant 20.770 yuan or almost 3000 USD, despite the recent strong drawdown in the price of Bitcoin cryptocurrency. But despite this, the first batch of S19 Pro has already been sold out. A simpler version of S19 (95TH/s, 3250W and 34.5J/TH) costs 15.495 yuan or 2200USD and is still available for order on the Chinese version of the company's website. If you count on the Profit-mine.com website, the payback of new Bitmain ASICs will be about 400 days for both models at an electricity price of 0.05USD/kWh.

Bitmain Antminer S19 and S19 PRO - a new generation of SHA-256 ASICs introduced

Bitmain, the leader in the production of ASIC miners, has introduced its new generation of SHA-256 ASIC miners - Antminer S19 and S19 Pro. In this generation, not only hashrate of devices increased, but energy efficiency also increased significantly. Therefore, we can assume that asic miners Bitmain 2020 model year are made according to the most modern tech. 5nm process. Bitmain does not indicate  this,  but judging by the leaks, ASIC manufacturers were the first customers of 5nm chips.

Actual ASIC miners at the beginning of 2020

Specialized devices for mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are called Asic miners and have only one purpose: mining bitcoin. Compared with video cards, such devices have a much higher hash rate with less power consumption, while configuring and maintaining ASIC miners is also much simpler. In addition to the obvious pluses, asics have a big minus - this is a short equipment life span, which rarely exceeds 1-2 years. Because With the new generation, much more energy-efficient ASICs are released, thereby making cryptocurrency mining unprofitable on ASICs of past generations. Although this process slowed down to a 30-50% improvement in performance with each new generation (in previous years 2014-2016, the difference reached 10 or even 100 times a year), but still this is a noticeable increase in performance per watt, which cannot be ignored. At the beginning of 2020, you can find on sale asic miners of different generations, but still it is better to consider only the latest models released in 2019 for purchase. Actually, we will continue to deal with Asic miners of the latest generation.

MicroBT Whatsminer M30S - a new generation of ASIC miners (8nm, 88TH/s, 3345W)

MicroBT has announced a new generation of its SHA-256 ASIC miners called WhatsMiner M30S. According to the manufacturer, the new product will be produced at 8nm, but despite all this, WhatsMiner M30S will be better than competing products from Bitmain, Innosilicon, Canaan, made using 7nm technology and significantly.

Specifications MicroBT Whatsminer M30S

AMD Radeon RX 5600XT Ethereum first mining test (hashrate and power consumption)

Starting January 21, 2020, AMD launched a new mid-range graphics card - the Radeon RX 5600 XT. Because AMD video cards are traditionally strong on the Dagger-Hashimoto (Ethash) algorithm, which is why testing on this algorithm is of the greatest interest. In our previous article, where we tried to predict the hashrate of the RX 5600 XT video card, we were both right and wrong, because we guessed the predicted hash rate, but only for stock values ​​of the memory frequency and GPU. Given the high overclocking potential of new products, the results in the Ethereum mining video card showed much better than our expectations for hashrate and energy efficiency.

The announcement of AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT and its prospects in cryptocurrency mining

January 7 at the CES 2020 Consumer Electronics Show announced another AMD NAVI graphics card called the Radeon RX 5600 XT. On sale, we will be able to see this video card only at the end of January, but already now, knowing its technical characteristics, we can speculate on the prospects of the novelty in cryptocurrency mining. To get a more complete picture, compare the RX 5600 XT with the Nvidia and AMD video cards of the current and previous generations, as a result, in the end we will try to predict the video card hash rate on the currently popular algorithms.

MorePowerTool 1.1.1 - extreme overclocking of AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT video cards

Earlier, we already mentioned MorePowerTool as an alternative way to overclock RX 5700 video cards to RX 5700 XT frequencies without flashing the video card BIOS. In the latest update of the program, a similar possibility of extreme overclocking appeared for Radeon RX 5500 XT video cards. Using the MorePowerTool program, enthusiasts were able to increase the frequency of the GPU from standard 1607Mhz (Boost 1845Mz) to an impressive 2200Mhz. Which is 37% higher than the standard frequency at which the video card from AMD works.

The use of small-sized touch screens to control mining rigs

Experienced miners have often come across situations when servicing GPU mining rigs required connecting a monitor, keyboard and mouse to each computer, which is not always convenient, especially with a large number of equipment being serviced. In order to simplify the monitoring and management of problematic computers that cannot be accessed over the network, the practice of expanding the functionality of mining rigs by connecting touch screens developed initially for Rasbbery Pi mini computers and the like began to spread among miners.

Such screens are connected via HDMI, touch control and screen power via USB. However, for Windows 10 and Linux, you do not need to install additional drivers. 

AMD Radeon RX 5500XT - mining test Dagger-Hashimoto (ETHASH) Ethereum cryptocurrency

Yesterday, AMD announced its next-generation budget graphics card with RDNA architecture called the Radeon RX5500XT, which replaced the RX560, but in terms of gaming performance it can compete with the more powerful RX580 graphics card of the past generation. Due to the use of a new generation of GDDR6 memory, even taking into account the 128 bit memory bus, the memory subsystem bandwidth is 224Gbit/s. For comparison, this indicator for the RX580 is 256Gbit/s with a 256 bit memory bus and GDDR5. As we know, when mining Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies on the Ethash mining algorithm, this parameter is very important, and since the RX5500XT and RX580 practically coincide, therefore the hashrate of the RX 5500XT video card should be very close to the results of the RX580. Let's check these guesses in practice.

Hashaltcoin Blackminer F1 Ultra - updated FPGA miner

Hashaltcoin announced a new FPGA miner model called Blackminer F1 Ultra, which, according to the developer, is 20% faster than the previous Blackminer F1 + model. The cost of new items is 2000USD with a shipment date of December 25, 2019. If we compare the declared hashrate of the new and previous models, then the benefits of the Ultra model are not reflected in the hashrate of 20%, and on the contrary, a lower hashrate is declared for the newer model. Obviously, a mistake crept in somewhere on the site, but what exactly the developers made a mistake in filling out information about the new product is most likely to be clarified only after the start of sales.

BittWare CVP-13 - FPGA miner with support for 50 mining algorithms including X16rv2

FPGA cryptocurrency miners are no longer something exclusive, because You can buy such devices on sale from several manufacturers. One of these manufacturers was BittWare (a division of MOLEX) that has been manufacturing FPGA devices for 25 years. BittWare's specialized FPGA cryptocurrency miner is called CVP-13, made on the basis of the Xilinx FPGA chip - Virtex UltraScale + VU13P. This is the maximum power in the FPGA line made by 16nm technology with 3780 logic cells. A distinctive feature of this FPGA miner is the support for the mining algorithm X16rRv2, to which the RavenCoin cryptocurrency has recently switched.

Videomemory increase from 4Gb to 8Gb for Nvidia P104-100 videocards

At the peak of the popularity of cryptocurrency mining, video card companies released special versions of video cards for mining, which were essentially a rejection of standard gaming models. One of these video cards was the Nvidia P104-100 model with 1920 Cuda cores and 4Gb GDDR5X memory. T.e. some hybrid GTX1070 and GTX1080 went on sale, in which the number of Cuda cores is like that of the GTX1070, and the memory is from the GTX1080, but instead of only 8GB soldered on the circuit board, only 4Gb is available. In 2019, enthusiasts found an easy way to activate all 8Gb of video memory using the firmware of a special BIOS version, which will allow them to mine GRIN cryptocurrency and others that need 8Gb of videomemory.

Nvidia Geforce GTX1660 Super - cryptocurrency mining testing with NiceHash Miner

A few days ago, to replace the GeForce GTX1660, Nvidia released an improved version of the GTX1660 Super, which received the same TU116 GPU with 1408 Cuda cores, but it works with GDDR6 memory instead of GDDR5. Moreover, in the GTX1660 Super GDDR6 memory is faster (14Gbit/s) than in the more expensive GTX1660ti (12Gbit/s). If you focus on these numbers, then the novelty in GPU-dependent mining algorithms will be at the level of a regular GTX1660, and in the memory of dependent algorithms it should show the result even better than the GTX1660ti. We will test it.

Blackminer F1 mini + - updated FPGA miner

HashAltcoin updated its single-chip FPGA miner called Blackminer F1mini +. The previous version of Blackminer F1mini was released only half a year ago in April 2019. The updated version at a price of 189USD, only 10USD more expensive, but at the same time 35% -100% more powerful. But the energy consumption of the novelty also increased from 50W to 110W. At the moment, for the new version, only 3 mining algorithms are available instead of 15 from the previous version

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