The ZeusMiner Hurricane X6 is the new lower power Scrypt ASIC miner from Zeus that is supposed to be offering 9-10 MHS hashrate with a power usage of about 230 Watt. The previous ZeusMiner Hurricane X3 that the new miner is based on provided 14-15 MHS with 460W of power usage according to the official specifications. So the new lower power X6 miner is supposed to offer 2/3 of the performance with about half of the power usage according to Zeus and this has been achieved by reducing the operating voltage and frequency of the chips in new miners with the number of Scrypt ASIC chips inside remaining the same. Now, if this has to been done with a significant reduction of the price of the new miners they might not have been so interesting, but the new price with the lower power usage does still make ZeusMiner an attractive choice for miners.

The case of the Hurricane X6 miner and the insides – two blades with 32 chips each or a total of 64 chips are also the same as on the previous Hurricane X6 miners. The main difference is that the operating voltage of the new Hurricane X6 miners has been lowered to 1.1V and thus Zeus recommends the maximum operating frequency to not exceed 248 MHz. You are able to set higher frequency though the software, however the results will not be very good as the level of HW errors you get will grow significantly. It seems that generally the ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs are prone to more HW errors than we are normally used to see in ASIC miners, but they do seem to work just fine with an average HW error rate of about 5%.

Here you can see the actual power usage of the ZeusMiner Hurricane X6 that we have measured with our unit running at 250 MHz operating frequency of the chips. The actual power consumption we got was 276-278 Watts with a slightly higher power usage measured at the wall due to the very high efficiency of the PSU we have used at the load that the miner has on the 1200W power supply. This is a bit higher than the officially stated 230 Watts of power usage, but at that frequency we are also getting slightly higher performance than the one stated at the official specs, though the HW error rate was a bit higher than what we would like to see as well. What actually worries us a bit is that the device is powered via a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector and a power usage so high is already way above the official ratings of these power connectors. Even though physically these connectors are normally able to handle power of up to 300W, the PSU manufacturers are not required to design their products to handle such high loads. So with high-end power supplies you will most likely not have trouble, however on not so good quality PSUs you may have the cables overhead and melt causing a short circuit and damaging your hardware. So we advise you to check the power cable by touching it after you start the miner and if the cable is just slightly warm to the tough you should be Ok, but if it quickly feels hot or even very hot, then you may have trouble and better go for a higher quality power supply.

Even though the power usage of the Hurricane X6 is not so high, the fact that the device uses a single powerful 120mm fan that pulls air though the case of the miner and the cooling radiators inside it makes the miner a bit noisy. Not as noisier as the larger and more powerful X6 miners, but still a noise at around 60 Decibels that we have measured makes the miner not suitable to be used in your living room or even as some miners do – place it in the bedroom. We are going to try to do a dual fan modification for push-pull type of cooling in order to reduce the noise from the cooling of the device while maintaining low operating temperatures, so stay tuned for more information on these experiments later on.

Here is the situation with the Hurricane X6 running at 250 MHz using the new cgminer 3.1.1 with ZeusMiner X6 support for Windows. The HW error rate we are getting at 250 MHz is about 5.5% average, a bit high than we would like, but apparently acceptable for the ZeusMiner. Going down all the way down to 230 MHz we have managed to reduce the level of HW errors we are getting to between 4.5% and 5%, so not that much of a difference, however the reduction in terms of hashrate is more significant as we go to lower operating frequency. So even with a bit more HW error rate 248 or 250 MHz seems to be the better choice, though you should test your miner as there could be some variation in the results you are getting.

These are the poolside results average at the LTC Rabbit Scrypt mining pool using the new fixed difficulty port with 1024 difficulty for Scrypt ASIC miners and the Hurricane X6 running at 250 MHz operating frequency. We’ve observed the hashrate reported by the pool varying between about 9.6 MHS and 12 MHs, but the good thing is that even with the higher number of HW errors an average hashrate of 10+ MHS is achievable with this miner.

Our conclusion about the Hurricane X6 is that it is a nice and more affordable device that works and performs well and meets the advertised hashrate, though the power usage may be a bit higher. We do have a bit of a warning regarding the actual power consumption and would preferred to see the device using two instead of a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector, but if you are careful enough about the PSU you use that should not be a problem. The only drawback that the Hurricane X6 already has is that at the performance level it offers and the current LTC network difficulty it will be making you less than 0.5 LTC per day if you are mining Litecoin directly. Still it is a more affordable solution for smaller miners to get into Scrypt ASIC mining without too big of an investment and you can possibly increase the profit you get with it by mining altcoins or selling hashrate if that turns out to be more profitable.

– You can currently get the ZeusMiner Hurricane X6 Scrypt ASIC miner at MinerEU for $380 USD…

The ZeusMiner Thunder X6 is probably the most interesting of the new low-power X6 series Scrypt ASIC miners from Zeus, even though with its 18-20 MHS hashrate it is already under 1 Litecoin per day as expected mined coins. The miner is rated at 18-20 MHS hashrate with 450 Watts of power usage using a total of 128 Scrypt ASIC chips and with a case designed to integrate the power supply inside the miner. At the right price this miner is very interesting if you are considering investing in Srypt ASIC miners with the “big boys” still not ready to start delivering.

Similar to the other X6 miners, here as well Zeus did lower the operating voltage and the frequency of the miner in order to achieve lower power consumption. The previous generation Thunder X3 was rated at 28 MHS with about 920W power usage, so we have about 2/3 of the hashrate with about half the power usage with the new Thunder X6 miner. That combined with the lower price of the new generation miner is what actually makes it an attractive option if you are moving to Scrypt mining with ASIC, though you should still do the math carefully.

We’ve mentioned that the case of the miner is designed to take inside a power supply, however we do not consider that to be so wise of an idea due to the way modern power supplies are made to be cooled. The normal installation of the PSU will make the power supply take hot air from one of the modules with chips and blow the hot air at the back of the miner where the cooling of the chip modules takes in the air that goes through the massive aluminum radiators. And the middle fan on the case of the miner will not do much of a work, so we do recommend keeping the power supply outside of the miner case.

The operating voltage of the chips inside the ZeusMiner Thunder X6 has been lowered to 1.1V in this version of the miner in order to provide the lower power consumption along with the lower operating frequencies used. Zeus does recommend to not go above 248 MHz as an operating frequency for the new X6 series of miners, though you would probably want to go lower in order to get less HW errors. Zeus does state 450W of power usage for the Thunder X6, however we have measured a power consumption of about 542-546 Watts at 250 MHz or like 100W more and the miner uses two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. This means you need to be careful in what power supply you are using, we do recommend to go for at least 600W 80 Plus certified PSU and to check the temperature of the power cables going to the miner as if the load is too much they will get too hot and that can cause possible damage to the hardware – something that you will want to avoid happening. A good quality power supply should handle the higher load it gets of about 270W per PCI-E line, but some not so good PSUs might have trouble handling well such a high load on the PCI-E lines, so be extra careful.

Taking a look at how noisy the cooling of the Thunder X6 is, we have measured about 70 Decibels (dBA) in normal operating mode. This is quite noisy and you would not want to have the miner in a room with people, it is designed to be kept in a dedicated mining room where noise is not a problem and good cooling is what you need to have. The cooling that the powerful 120 mm fans provide is adequate enough even if the ambient temperature is not so low, so you should have no trouble with the cooling of the miner.

We have already talked about the fact that the ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs are prone to producing more hardware errors that we are typically used to see with most other ASIC miners, however this is not a problem for them operating normally. With the Thunder X6 we are seeing a bit less than 6% of HW errors with the miner running at 250 MHz with the hashrate going to about 20-22 MHs, about 5% with a frequency of 240 MHz and a hashrate of 19-21 MHS and about 4.3% at 230 MHz with 18-20 MHs. So going too low with the frequency will not help that much in reducing the number of HW errors, but will affect the hashrate you are getting, so you need to find the best balance starting from about 250 MHz and going down.

Here is a look at the poolside reported hashrate from the LTC Rabbit Scrypt mining pool using the new fixed difficulty port with 1024 difficulty for Scrypt ASIC miners and the Hurricane X6 running at 250 MHz operating frequency. We have observed some issues with the ZeusMiners running at some pools with vardiff enabled (getting mostly HW errors), so we do recommend sticking to pools with fixed difficulty and 1024-2048 dificulty seems to work very well with the Thunder X6.

Our conclusion after testing the ZeusMiner Thunder X6 Scrypt ASIC is that the miner is working well and performing as expected, delivering the performance that is advertised, though at a slightly higher actual power usage. With the hashrate delivered you are already sure to get less than 1 LTC per day with the current Litecoin network difficulty, but if you secure a good price for the miner it might still be an interesting option for people with not so big budgets for mining hardware. The price per MHS is not as good as with the larger Lightning X6, but is still decent enough to make you think after you do some math about the expected return of investment. It will not get you rich for sure, but the Thunder X6 is currently the option to consider if you are not going to be getting the hardware to mine just for fun or get used to Scrypt ASIC mining with something not so expensive.

– You can currently get the ZeusMiner Thunder X6 Scrypt ASIC miner at MinerEU for $500 USD…

ZeusMiner Blizzard X6 is the smallest of all new lower power usage Scrypt ASIC miners from Zeus, it is the successor of the previous Blizzard units, but unlike the bigger models this one actually has more chips running at lower frequency. The end result is higher hashrate of the new unit as compared to the performance of the older miner that also comes with higher power consumption. The old Blizzard units offered 1.3-1.4 MHS with 6 chips at about 50 Watts of power usage, the new Blizzard X6 uses 24 chips at lower operating voltage and frequency and should provide 4 MHS at 100W. This means almost three times the hashrate with just two times the power usage, so it does not sound like a bad improvement. It is interesting to note that the Blizzard X6 was initially announced at 3.6 MHS and now the official specifications state 4 MHS.

Unlike with the older Blizzard that included a PSU and USB cable in the package, the new ZeusMiner Blizzard X6 does not include these anymore. We have received our unit with just the miner, no micro-USB cable in the package or a power adapter, not even a 4-pin Molex or 6-pin PCI-E adapter for powering the device with an ATX power supply. This left us a bit disappointed, but was probably done to save costs and make the price of the miner lower. We could’ve gone easily without a PSU, but the USB cable and a connector for a computer PSU is something that must be in the package as not everyone will have these already available like we do.

The Blizzard X6 cooling design is not perfect, but apparently it works pretty well delivering enough cooling performance with not so loud level of noise. We have measured the power usage of the new miner to be about 106W with the device running at 235 MHz at the wall and the level of noise from the cooling fans was at just about 45 dBA. Looking at the board with the chips we have noticed that the Blizzard X6 also uses 1.1V voltage and the maximum recommended operating frequency is 248 MHz, though you probably would want to use a lower number to get less HW errors.

Here are two thermal images showing the operating temperature of the ZeusMiner Blizzard X6 during normal operation. The temperatures of the aluminum cooler used to cool the chips is just about 36 degrees at the hottest place, in fact the highest temperature we’ve measured was at the power connector of the device. Initially we’ve powered the miner from a 4-pin molex connector, but that got the cables too hot, so we’ve changed the power source to use a 6-pin PCI-E power connector as an input. So be extra careful what source of power you are going to use as a single 4-pin molex connector might not be able to handle well the ~100W load, preferably use dual molex connectors or a PCI-E one.

We have tested running the ZeusMiner Blizzard X6 at different frequencies and the one that seemed to provide the best results with our unit was 235 MHz, though you may have varying success with lower or higher frequencies, so we do recommend to try going up to about 250 MHz. At 235 MHz operating frequency the Blizzard X6 was able to provide about 3.8-3.9 MHS with about 4.5% of HW errors. We already know that the Zeus Scrypt ASIC miners do actually have higher number of HW errors compared to most other ASIC miners, however we do not like to push our hardware too much and get like 10% of HW errors – something that is easily achievable if you try to push the new X6 miners to about 250 MHz.

A look at the average poolside reported hashrate from the LTC Rabbit Scrypt mining pool using the new fixed difficulty port with 1024 difficulty for Scrypt ASIC miners and the Blizzard X6 running at 235 MHz operating frequency. We’ve seen that the actual pool hashrate has varied between 3686 and 4164 MHS for a 24 hour period of time, but the average should be about the advertised 4 MHS rate.

The ZeusMiner Blizzard X6 Scrypt ASIC miner is not the best choice for investment, especially now with the current low LTC price, at least not for people interested mostly in the fast ROI. In fact the Blizzard X6 is intended for the people that are mining as a hobby or just for fun, it is also a good way to get some experience with Scrypt ASIC mining, if it is something new for you, without having to invest too much into hardware and only focus on the profit. The Blizzard X6 is also a great choice for the modding community, just like the previous version of Blizzard – doing experiments with overvolting and modifying the cooling solution. It is a fun little and affordable Scrypt miner to play with and experiment with, but not something that will get you quick return of investment or even make you profit. So think carefully what you are getting this miner for and should you really invest some cash into it or not, though the same applies for the larger ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs as well with the current market situation.

– You can currently get the ZeusMiner Blizzard X6 Scrypt ASIC miner at MinerEU for $150 USD…

The user who has previously released an RPi OC version for Innosilicon A2 miners that did not work properly due to the fact that the official cgminer provided only accepted a few fixed operating frequencies has updated the image to version 2.0 and now it works. The new version adds support for 1000 MHz and then from 1080 MHz to 1400 MHz in 20 MHz steps and now the cgminer accepts these values due to a modification done to the A2 driver. So if you are an owner of an A2-based miner using 28nm Innosilicon Scrypt ASIC chips you might want to try the image out, we have already checked it and can confirm it works well.

– To download the new overclock Raspberry Pi image for A2 Innosilicon miners by Emdje…

Zeus has just announced their third generation of Scrypt ASIC miners and has started taking pre-orders for end of Q4 delivery. For the moment the only Gen III miner is the ZeusMiner Volcano that should be capable of 300 MHS with just 1000W of power usage. The next generation of Scrypt mining chips should be capable of 1.2 MHS per chip and with a per chip power usage of less than 4 Watts, so a 256-chip device should be capable of providing the advertised 300 MHS hashrate. The standard price for the new ZeusMiner Volcano Scrypt ASIC is $1699 USD, however the first 500 units will be sold for a discounted price of $1599 USD and existing customers also get a $50 USD discount code in their accounts for use on Volcano orders. Furthermore if you use BTC or LTC for your payment, then you will get an extra 5% discount from the price of the miner.

Zeus does provide a guarantee that they will deliver the Volcano by the end of Q4 2014, and they even back that promise by offering the customers to give an extra Volcano miner if the shipment is delayed by 1 moth or the power consumption is 50% higher than initially promised. Not a bad offer for something that you need to pre-order and pay in advance, but you should still be careful and consider well should you decide to pre-order mining hardware. As we’ve seen with the more recent pre-orders for Scrypt ASIC miners offered by companies such as KNCMiner or Alpha Technology by the time these are shipped there is a high probability that they will not even be able to ROI let alone make profit and the reason for that is the very long time it took from announcing pre-orders to the release on the market. The case with the ZeusMiner Volcano is not such however as the hardware is not so expensive and the time for delivery is not that far, furthermore Zeus has already delivered Scrypt ASIC miners. Nevertheless be careful with pre-orders and do the math carefully when deciding should you invest in a Volcano miner or not.

– For more information about the ZeusMiner VOLCANO 300 MHS at 1000W Scrypt ASIC miner…

ZeusMiner has officially announced that they are canceling the Volcano project for a 300 MHS Scrypt ASIC miner that was supposed to be released by the end of the year. This announcement does not cover only the Volcano miner, but also the GEN III upgrade boards that the company was offering as an option for December upgrade to customers with existing miners that were supposed to be based on the same new hardware. While pre-orders for hardware miners are something that has become quite risky and not many people are still interested in making such because of the lot of uncertainties about the price of LTC. Still the Volcano looked Ok, but the upgrade boards were actually more interesting for many people that have already bought older ZeusMiners as they were a good means to bring your old hardware up to date in a few months time when the initial hardware you bought may not be worth mining with anymore. However the people that actually did pre-order hardware were the ones wanting to get their hands on the Volcano miner sooner, the ones interested in the upgrade boards would probably have waited until they were released to order them directly.

The reason that ZeusMiner gives as to what lead to the decision to cancel the further development of the Volcano and the new chips is that apparently most of the people want to start mining now and not wait for hardware for about two more months. The current not so favorable market situation with crypto prices keeping low and the difficulty continuing to rise is apparently why they have decided to halt the production of Volcano and GEN III Chip Blades. The good news is that unlike many other ASIC manufacturers they did not use the money from pre-orders to fund the research and development of the new chips as according to ZeusMiner all funds, which had been required for the R&D and production of Volcano, have been taken out of their own pocket. The money which they have received from the Volcano pre-orders (USD, BTC, LTC) had been set aside in secured accounts from day 1 and is still available to be returned to customers. So there should be no problems with getting a refund, should you decide that is what you want, something that is way more important than to give false promises and intentionally delay or refuse to return money to customers even after failing to deliver on promises like we’ve seen from some companies already.

We have never been too keen on pre-orders of mining hardware and we’ve liked the fact that most of the Asian manufacturers of ASIC miners who were actually announcing products when they are already available for sale, unlike such companies from Europe or USA that love to take pre-oroders. Lately however we have seen that many of these Asian companies have also been tempted to offer pre-orders for hardware that is not yet ready for sale and that usually does not lead to good things as we’ve already seen. Companies usually tend to not fulfill their initial promises due to hardware production delays, issues with software and so on when they take pre-orders. So even if we are not too happy with the decision of ZeusMiner to stop the development of the new chips, they are at least doing it the right way – coming clean to users and offering an alternative or a full refund in a timely manner.

The people that have pre-ordered have two options now:

1. Transfer your Volcano/GEN III Blade order to ZeusHash with 10% discount and ZERO maintenance fees for 2 week. Discount is applied based on our Halloween Special. For example if you purchased 1 Volcano for $1,600 (plus shipping), you will be able to convert it to INSTANT ZeusHash HASHING POWER at $0.503 (1T – 9.99T range, $0.559 originally) per GHS or $ 11.691 (>1G, $12.99 originally) per MHS.

2. Refund of the FULL AMOUNT (USD/BTC/LTC) in the same way we have received your payment + 10 or 5 GHS on ZeusHash as FREE GIFT FOR YOU. All Volcano and chip blades customers will get an email from our CS team to confirm your option. If your order contains at least 1 Volcano, we will put 10 GHS into your ZeusHash account. If you ordered only Blades, 5 GHS will be given. All the transfers and refunds will be done within 2 WEEKS. If you purchased from one of our distributors, please contact our distributor for conversion/refund.

Reinvesting the money you might have spend for a pre-order into the ZeusHash cloud mining service may sound like a good idea to some people, but to others it seems it is not as they will be limited to mining only either LTC or BTC directly. With a physical ASIC miner in hand you have the options to mine many other alternative crypto coins and that is one of the biggest advantages compared to cloud mining with most such services. The good thing is that you can get a full refund of what you have actually paid and maybe invest the amount in another of the announced Scrypt ASIC miners available for pre-order as an alternative option, that is if you still want to give money ahead of time to someone else.

We already know that ZeusMiner is not making Bitcoin ASIC miners, however the company is also offering Bitcoin cloud hashrate for miners. To realize this feature they have partnered with some other ASIC manufacturers to supply them with the required hardware to back up the hashrate they sell to users. The same approach will probably be implemented for the LTC hashrate as well now that the company will not be finishing their next generation of chips as they have initially planned. We have asked ZeusMiner how they plan to back up their cloud service over time with faster and more energy efficient hardware and the answer we’ve got is that they are working with some partners using their expertise in chip and product design to further reduce cost as well as power consumption so that ZeusHash wouldn’t be affected. So we may soon see some more announcements for partnerships with other companies making Scrypt ASIC miners, and we are going to continue following the further development. Feel free to share your thoughts on the subject even if you have not pre-ordered a Volcano or an upgrade board with GEN III chips in the comments below.

– For more information about ZeusHash and their cloud mining prices and services…

With the current situation on the crypto currency markets and especially the low exchange rate of the Litecoin it is no wonder that we are seeing another ASIC manufacturer cancelling their plans to release a new Scrypt ASIC Miner. The problem with these kinds of actions is that manufacturers are loosing users trust, even though they may try to compensate their customers in some way. Back when BitMain announced the pre-order for the L1, something new for them back then, we weren’t that happy and now we are also not very happy with the fact that BitMain waited up until now to announce they are cancelling the L1 when they were supposed to actually start shipping the finished product. Below you can find quoted the official announcement from BitMain about the discontinuation of Antminer L1 along with what options they offer to customers who have pre-ordered the miner:

Dear loyal customers,

The decision has been taken not to continue production of the Antminer L1

In response, all customers will be able to choose one of three options:
1) The original order value of $599 will be refunded at 105% value [$629] by bitcoin at current market rates. Customers will receive bitcoin payment.
2) The original order value of $599 will be refunded at 110% value [$659] by bitcoin at current market rates. This will be credited against any new S3/S4/C1 order placed in the web store.
3) The original order value of $599 will be credited at 115% value [$689] against an S5 order placed in the web store. This will be issued in the form of a 15 day coupon, each coupon valued [$344.5].

Please await an email info@bitmaintech.com for further instructions.

Though we are sorry that we do not deliver this time, it still turns out that buying L1 from BITMAIN is a very best way to earn more Litecoin.

Data Analysis: In the beginning of L1 sales, you only need to pay 115.86LTC to buy one L1 per the LTC/USD exchange rate 5.17 in the early September. However, you will get 193.22LTC under current LTC/USD exchange rate 3.1. And then plus extra 5% value, a total amount you get is 202.88LTC per unit. Return on investment is 75%. If you choose coupon compensation, Return on investment is 91%.

It is not very clear weather BitMain has already finished with the development and has actually produced some mining hardware or they are cancelling things before they have actually been finalized. The problem is that after ZeusMiner cancelled their Volcano miner and 3rd generation Scrypt ASICs and now the same happening with BitMain and their AntMiner L1 Scrypt ASIC things do not look that good for Litecoin and other Scrypt crypto currencies. The low exchange rate of LTC at the moment makes older Scrypt ASIC miners not very profitable to run due to their high power usage and with no newer generation more efficient miners announced to be coming soon things could get even worse.

SFARDS Technology has successfully developed and produced the first FD-SOI 28nm SHA-256 (Bitcoin) and Scrypt (Litecoin) dual-mode mining chip SF3301, as we have previously reported. After more than one month evaluating, prototyping, and extreme-condition pressure testing, the first 28nm dual-mode miner, SFARDS SF100 is about to start mass production.

SF100 dual-mode miner has 24 SF3301 chips that support the following modes:
1. Dual mining mode, Bitcoin hashing power 1700 GHS + Litecoin hashing power 47 MHS, the power consumption at wall of whole miner is 960W.
2. Bitcoin single mining mode: Hashing power 1700 GHS, power consumption 770W.
3. Litecoin single mining mode: Hashing power 47 MHS, power consumption 180W.

With 0.45W/GHS + 3.8W/MHS, the power efficiency of SF100 is showing really good potential. It is also possible to overclock to certain extent (Sha-256: 2 THS, Scrypt: 55 MHS). Based on recent Bitcoin and Litecoin price, a dual-mode SF100’s revenue is similat to that of a to a 2.8-3.2 THS pure Bitcoin miner, which makes it equivalent to 0.3-0.34W/GHS power efficiency when it is dual mining. Taking June 19th price for instance, one SF100 generates 4.2 USD from Bitcoin and 3.8 USD from Litecoin, or a total 8 USD per day (without the costs for electricity deducted).

SFARDS Technology will start selling the SF100 dual-miner to public in July, though there is still no official end-user price announced and the first batch quantity is limited. The SF3301 dual-miner ASIC chips will be available for sale on August to people interested in using them in their own miner designs, again no pricing has been announced yet.

The exchange price of Litecoin (LTC) is still on the rise with the alternative crypto currency already testing the $8 USD target and this has caused a lot of speculation about the reasons behind this recent rise. Some people say it could be due to the recent high load on the Bitcoin blockchain and transactions processing slow due to a lot of unconfirmed ones in the backlog. Other say the reason could be just another pump and dump scheme by a big player with a lot of coins. Another plausible possibility is due to the upcoming fist halving of the LTC reward at the end of August, or the unfavorable situation in Greece at the moment or that on the issues with the China stock markets and the list goes on and on…

Regardless of the reason behind the jump in the exchange rate it is already causing increased demand for Scrypt ASIC miners and services offering Scrypt cloud mining, however nowadays these are scarce and had to find. The best thing you can probably get at the moment is an Innosilicon A2 Scrypt ASIC miner at a discounted price if you manage to find yourself a good deal for a SilverFish Scrypt Blade miner. With Bitmain Tech and ZeusMiner canceling their Scrypt ASIC projects last year (maybe they can restart them if the trend continues) and KnCMiner stopping to sell their Titan Scrypt ASICs and any other ASIC miners to end users there is just one new interesting option coming up. The new SFARDS SF100 Dual-Miner ASICs that are supposed to be available later this month, though SFARDS is still keeping silent about their pricing and expected availability is said to be July.

In the end it is good that we are finally seeing some movement surrounding LTC along with some other Scrypt crypto currencies as nothing much has been happening around Litecoin in the last few months, so the recent price jump and revived interest is definitely a good thing for people that are into altcoins. Especially now that Bitcoin mining is moving away from home miners and more and more towards large mining farms, whereas Scrypt mining is still at a phase where it is still focused mostly in the hands of small mining operations. So we are keeping a close eye on the development around Litecoin and so should you…

The SF100 Dual-Miner ASICs from SFARDS are expected to start arriving in mid-August 2015 to the most eager miners that have ordered some fromt he first batch of devices, or at least that is what the manufacturer is claiming on their website. The SF100 BTC and LTC Dual Miner has been listed briefly on the official SFARDS website with a price of 8000 RMB (about 1288 USD) last month and is since labeled as Out of Stock. This price however seems to be for larger quantities, some other websites have since listed single units of the SFARDS SF100 miners for pre-order and their prices are for example $1699 USD on AliExpress, ~$1700 USD on Asic Trade and $1999.99 USD on ZoomHash or with other words significantly higher than what was listed on the official website. Note that these prices are for the ASIC miner only and you need to add the shipping cost, extra import taxes and then you would also need at least good 1KW power supply for the miner, so the total price will easy go over $2000 USD. Even if these prices are higher because of the limited number of available units in the first batch they are way too expensive to consider them as a good investment with the current market conditions. Not to mention that we are yet to see if the miners will be able to perform as promised by the manufacturers in terms of performance for both mining SHA256 and Scrypt algorithms separately and at the same time. Another thing that may not be very much in favor of the late availability of the SF100 miners is the expected Litecoin Block Reward Halving from 50 to 25 coins by the end of August…

Last year there was some information about the upcoming next generation of Scrypt ASICs from Innosilicon as the company was looking for investors. Back then they already had apparently designed and taped-out the A4 Dominator chips and needed sufficient investment to start making the chips using 14nm production process. Now, about four and a half months later Innosilicon comes with an official announcement of the final specifications and additional details of the upcoming A4 Dominator Scrypt ASICs that are apparently now entering into production.

The next generation Innosilicon Scrypt miner using 14nm ASIC is code-named A4 Dominator as already expected. This is a full custom optimized LTC mining ASIC with a focus on efficiency and cost, that should be capable of delivering up to 4 MHS per chip with as low as 1.5W of power usage per MHS efficiency in a DCDC less daisy chain configuration. This should allow for next gen Scrypt miners to offer 400 MHS to 500 MHS hash power per box, with easily over 300% better power efficiency over the previous generations. Initial batch of A4 ASIC chips is expected to be available in May for miner developer to design PCB and software, mass produced A4 ASIC/Miners should be available in June/July 2016 based on pre-order sequence.

Innosilicon A4 Dominator ASIC and Miner Specifications:
– A4 Miner: 400 MHS per 1 KW power supply in one standard miner box
– A4 ASIC: 3.5 MHS per chip performance at 2.5 W/MHS nominal
– Extreme Low Power: ASIC with large memory running at single rail 0.6V
– One Start and New PCB: eliminate the need of DC-DC components and enable 14 to 20 A4 chips – running off the single 12V DC supply
– PSU Requirements: common PCI-E 8 Pins/6+2 Pins with 12V output
– Included: Raspberry Pi running the user friendly A2 Terminator software
– Server Grid Reliability: Built-in high-procession temperature sensor for automatic chip protection and variable frequency operation to maximize chip life time

There is no word about pricing at the moment, but it seems that Innosilicon is finally going to beat the KnC Titan Scrypt ASIC miners in terms of performance and power usage as the king in Scrypt mining efficiency at the moment. Unlike KnC however whose miners are no longer available and were problematic as hell and quite expensive when launched, based on our experience with previous A2 miners we know that we can expect a more affordable and reliable product from Innosilicon that should not give you a lot of headaches like many Titans did. There is no word on pricing yet, but a somewhat acceptable price would be in the 2K USD range, otherwise there might be not much demand for it with the current market conditions. With the high expectations we had and the total failure that SFARDS turned out to be in making available their products our hopes for Innosilicon finally starting to do something on the LTC and Scrypt crypto currency mining front are high, but let us see what will happen this summer…

– The official announcement of the upcoming Innosilicon 14nm A4 Dominator Scyrpt ASICs…

We have been keeping track on the development of the new Innosilicon A4 Dominator Scrypt ASIC miners since the initial announcement back in November last year and it is time for another update. It seems that Innosilicon is starting to take pre-orders for the final ASIC miners with shipping expected to start in September and there is already a thread on Bitcointalk about a group pre-order that you might want to check out if interested. In the past we have tested the previous generation of Innosilicon A2 Scrypt ASIC miners in the form of the 86 MHS A2BOX Innosilicon A2 Scrypt ASIC Miner that was consuming about 1000 Watts of power, so we can see what the development is and how good actually the new generation is going to be. A solid first generation Scrypt ASIC miner that was built well and performed really good when it was released with the only drawback being the very high initial price of the device, so we were anticipating another good solid product with much better specs when the first A4 details surfaced.

The initial announcement from last year claimed that the A4 Dominator is so efficient that it should be able to deliver about 850 MHS for Scrypt mining with 1020W of power usage. This was really impressive number and really caught our attention, especially considering that the first generation A2 Terminator miners were able to achieve just about 1/10 of that hashrate with the same power usage. A little bit later, in March this year, there was an update on the power usage and efficiency of the new A4 ASIC chips that has significantly lowered the initial numbers – down to 400 MHS from 850 MHS per kilowatt of power. Although the expected performance was lowered more than half it was still a pretty impressive number, but unfortunately this was not the final change and now we have a new number available. Apparently the final product will only be capable of about 260 MHs per 1 KW of power and be available for about $1800 USD without shipping and with power supply not included in the price. While the final performance per KW of power usage is not that bad either, we are not as excited as we were with the initial announcement or the March update. At 260 MHS per 1000 Watts things aren’t that bad, but with these specs we are not going to be pre-ordering one of these miners for sure. Maybe we are going to try to get one unit to test when they come out if it is not a pain in the ass to secure a single unit order.

– If you are interested in the A4 Dominator ASICs group pre-order thread on Bitcointalk…

Litecoin (LTC) is one of the oldest altcoins and it is still alive, although soon after the first wave of Scrypt ASIC miners appeared the interest and numbers of users mining the crypto has started diminising. You can say that LTC was in a bit of a slumber pretty much everywhere besides China at least until a few months ago when Innosilicon has finally released their A4 Dominator Scrypt ASIC miners. So the last few months things have started to move a bit once more and the development of Litecoin has also been a bit more active with SegWit support getting ready to be implemented as well.

The early Innosilicon A4 Dominator Scrypt ASIC miners apparently had some issues according to users that got the devices and they are still being offered, though with the upcoming Chinese new year there could be some delays if you purchase now. The A4 Dominator is supposedly offering 280 MHS hashrate with 1000W power usage and is available for a price of $1800 USD. You will need to get a power supply for the device separately as it is not included in the purchase price of the miner.

Interestingly enough with the increase of the interest in Litecoin (LTC) you can now again purchase Scrypt cloud mining hashrate for mining Litecoin from Genesis Mining. The cloud mining company has been offering Scrypt cloud mining contracts before, but stopped doing so quite some time ago and it now brings back the contracts again. One can easily assume that their new offers are most likely based on A4 Dominators and the pricing is pretty good as an alternative to purchasing the hardware yourself.

You can get 2 MHS Scrypt cloud mining hashrate for $28 USD, 50 MHS for $650 USD of 200 MHS for $2400 USD as a preset packages or any custom hashrate in between. The Scrypt cloud mining contracts are with a duration of 2 years and there is no maintenance fee, everything is included in the price you pay for the hashrate. You can also use our special discount code CryptoMiningBlog5 to get some extra discount and get even better price should you decide to purchase a Scrypt cloud mining contract.

– For more information about the Scrypt cloud mining offers available from Genesis Mining…

Another interesting piece of information about the popular ASIC manufacturer Bitmain as apparently the company is planning to launch their first Antminer L3 Scrypt Miner. Some of you might remember that back in 2014 Bitmain was planning to launch Antminer L1 Sctypt ASIC miner, but that one never came into existence. Apparently back then the company reached a stage that allowed even without launching a product to continue working and get an even more efficient solution and here comes the L3. There is some information available about the device already, even though it is not yet officially listed on the English website of Bitmain (you can find a product page on the Chinese one).

You can find some photos and even some early performance results online from peopel that managed to get some early units apparently, including a tweet from charlie Lee who created Litecoin (LTC) about getting one of these devices. More general availability is expected sometimes in February probably because of the incoming Chinese New Year, so we are going to have to wait some more time. What is the most interesting thing about the Bitmain AntMiner L3 Scrypt ASIC miner is the efficiency that the device not only apparently promises, but also delivers – 250 MHS hashrate with just 400 Watt power usage. This makes is significantly more power efficient compared to its only competitor with a recent generation of Scrypt ASIC hardware available – Innosilicon A4 Dominator (280 MHS at 1000W). The price listed on the product page is 1.825 BTC or a little over $1600 USD at the current exchange rate. Do note that the Antminer L3 ASIC does come without a power supply, but with the power usage the device has it does not require expensive and harder to find power supply, a decent 500W PSU should do just fine.

Bitmain Antminer L3 Specifications:
– Scrypt mining hashrate: 250 MHS
– Power consumption: 400W ± 10% (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3-1600 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temperature))
– Power efficiency: 1.6J/MH ± 10% (at the wall, AC / DC efficiency of 93%, 25°C ambient temperature)
– Rated voltage: 11.6 ~ 13.0V
– Chip Type: BM1485
– Chip quantity per unit: 144 chips
– Number of boards in the whole machine: 4 pcs
– External dimensions: 230 mm (L) * 135 mm (W) * 158 mm (H)
– Machine weight (without packaging): 2.5kg
– Operating temperature: 0°C to 40°C
– Operating Humidity: 5% RH-95% RH, non-condensing
– Network connection: Ethernet
– Noise level: 60dB

The crypto currency mining ASIC maker Bitmain is getting ready to launch a new Scrypt ASIC miner with shipping expected to start a bit later this month. The new device capable of mining Litecoin (LTC) and other Scrypt-based crypto currencies is called AntMiner L3+ and should be capable of delivering a hashrate of 504 MHS with a power usage of 800W. With the recent jump in interest and the price of Litecoin we are seeing a bit of a revival of the interest in Scrypt-based coins and this is apparently also the reason why Bitmain has prepared a new more powerful device.

The new Antminer L3+ is essentially double the performance and power usage of the regular AntMiner L3 model announced earlier this year. It offers essentially doubled performance by doubling the number of BM1485 ASIC chips from the 144 units in the L3 to 288 in the new L3+. The English website of Bitmain still hasn’t got the product listed, but their Chinese one has the device already listed with a price of 1.686 BTC per L3+ device that does not include a power supply. The shipping should start sometime in between April 15th and April 20th based on the data on the website. Early May deliveries (May 1st – May 10th) are also possible with a lower price of 1.261 BTC per L3+ device.

Bitmain AntMiner L3+ Scrypt ASIC Specifications:
– Scrypt mining hashrate: 504 MHS
– Power consumption: 800W ± 10% (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3-1600 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temperature))
– Power efficiency: 1.6J/MH ± 10% (at the wall, AC / DC efficiency of 93%, 25°C ambient temperature)
– Rated voltage: 11.6 ~ 13.0V
– Chip Type: BM1485
– Chip quantity per unit: 288 chips
– Number of boards in the whole machine: 4 pcs
– External dimensions: 352 mm (L) * 130 mm (W) * 187.5 mm (H)
– Machine weight (without packaging): 4.4kg
– Operating temperature: 0°C to 40°C
– Operating Humidity: 5% RH-95% RH, non-condensing
– Network connection: Ethernet
– Noise level: 75dB

The recent return of interest in Litecoin (LTC) and the growing price has apparently also sparked interest for more up to date ASIC miners and there is one more contender now available apparently. Here comes the BW-L21 Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner from BW.com promising to deliver up to 550 MHs with 950W of power usage. The ordering process for these devices however is not that easy apparently, there is a minimum order quantity of 100 units and the price is about 2500 USD. You need to contact BW by email in order to arange an order and make the purchase, though with 100 units MOQ this is hardly interesting for small home miners. Bitmain’s AntMiner L3+ Scrypt ASIC miner is still much more attractive to small miners that want to get just one or a couple of units, that is if you manage to buy one when new batches are being released.

BW.com BW-L21 Specifications:
– Hash rate: 550 MHS +/- 10%
– Power consumption: 950 W +/- 10%
– Power efficiency: 1.727 J / MHS
– DC voltage input: 12 VDC +/- 5%
– ASIC chip type: 28nm LTC ASIC chip by BW.com
– ASIC chip quantity per unit (miner): 144 chips
– Number of hash boards per unit: 4 hash boards
– Cooling: 2x 120mm x 38mm fan, 3000rpm (front and back, in a push-pull configuration).
– Weight: 4.8 kg
– Dimensions: 329mm (L) x 127mm (W) x 159mm (H)

– You can read a review of the miner on Bitcointalk here for more details…

Last year we have tested and reviewed the FutureBit MoonLander USB Scrypt ASIC Miner and have found it to be a well-designed and working miner. Unfortunately with hashrate maxing at just about 1 MHS at that time it was not very up to date for practical use with mining profitability in mind. The good news is that there is a new version of the miner in the works – FutureBit Moonlander 2 and the new device will be more interesting specifications wise.

The FutureBit Moonlander 2 USB Scrypt ASIC miner is supposedly offering an efficiency of about 1.3 Watts per MHS and the device should be capable of delivering between 3 and 5 megahashes for Scrypt mining (depending on settings). With the recent peak of the interest in Litecoin we could be seeing increased interest in these devices as well. The new version of the USB Scrypt ASIC should most likely be available for orders in October with deliveries starting at the end of October or early November. The price is not yet fixed, but it will most likely be in the range of $40-$60 USD per miner.

Preliminary specifications of the miner:
– Hashrate: 3-5 MHS Scrypt performance per miner
– Power usage: about 1.5W per MHS for most of that range
– Operating frequency: core clock from 500 MHz to nearly 1 GHz!
– Operating voltage: fully customizable core voltage range from 0.6V – 1V
– Fully redesigned 5v->core voltage stage with about 95% efficiency
– Heavy duty/over speced parts were used to ensure wide range of operation (stick can be pushed to nearly 6mh if you can cool it)
– Status LEDs for power, TX and RX transmission
– Uses latest bfgminer 5.4 for control
– Will work with all Mac OS, Linux, and Windows based PCs, as well as RPi’s etc (and I will be offering easy to use pre-compiled binaries)

– For more information about the FutureBit Moonlander 2 USB Scrypt ASIC miner…

If you remember a while ago we have talked about the 550 MHS BW-L21 Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner as an interesting alternative to Bitmain’s AntMiner L3+ Scrypt ASICs. Unfortunately back then these were hard to order as there was a minimum order quantity of 100 units and not an easy and straightforward way to order them. This is apparently about to change as the manufacturer of the devices Biwang Electronic Commerce Co. (BW) has appointed the Australian company Block Assets Limited trading as HyperBit as their Worldwide Retail Distributor for the L21 ASIC miner. So finally some competition for BitMain in the home mining segment and more options for the small miners to get back into the Litecoin mining…

You can currently order the 550 MHS BW-L21 Litecoin ASIC miner from HyperBit at a price of $2690 USD in single unit quantities and get it delivered worldwide with a shipping set to start on 30th of November for the current batch of miners. The L21 is apparently the current leader in terms of performance Litecoin Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miner on the market with 550 MHS hashrate and with just 900W of power usage. It is not clear what the situation with the power supply is at this point however, is there one included (no mention), but a PSU does appear on one of the product photos. Most likely you would need to buy the PSU separately, one that does provide at least 1000W of power and comes equipped with at least 6x 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. Do note that all orders are being shipped directly from the manufacturers location – Shenzhen, China.

BW-L21 Scrypt ASIC Specifications:
– Hash rate: 550MH/s (+- 10%)
– Power consumption: 900W (+- 10%)
– Cooling: 2pcs @ 3000 RPM
– Dimensions: 329mm * 127mm * 159mm
– Network connection: Ethernet
– Technology: 28nm ASIC chips
– ASIC chips quantity: 144 chips
– Operating temperature: 0 to 40 Degree Celsius
– Warranty: 6 months
– Weight: 4.8kg

– Visit the HyperBit website for more details about the BW-L21 Litecoin ASIC Miner…

Innosilicon has put up for pre-order their new A4+ LTCMaster Scrypt ASIC that should be capable of delivering 620 MHS hashrate with 750W ot power usage according to the official information. This is an update from last year’s Innosilicon A4 Dominator Scrypt ASIC whih was capable of only about 280 MHS and had higher power usage, so a nice improvement for sure. The new Innosilicon A4+ LTCMaster is available for pre-order at a price of $3200 USD (60.355 LTC,　0.631415 BTC) with delivery scheduled for November 30th to December 10th for the current batch. The price is only for the miner with a minimum order quantity of 3 devices and Innosilicon also has offers available with a 1050W 110V PSU or 1600W 220V PSU, depending on the region you live in and the electric network you use. Payments can be made via LTC, BTC or Bank Transfer, there is 6 months warranty and shipping is only with DHL.

INNOSILICON A4+ LTCMaster Specifications:

– Hashrate: 620 Mh/s (+-8% performance, can be over-clocked at user’s risk)
– Power Consumption: 750W (+/-8%, normal mode, at the wall, with 93% efficiency PSU, 25°C temperature )
– ASIC chips: 288 pcs
– Size: (L)350mm*(W)125mm*(H)155mm
– Gross weight: net weight 3.83 KG (without PSU)
– Required rated PSU: 1000W or above, 8 * PCI-E 6-Pin
– Power supply connection: 2 PCIE port per power board (4 boards)
– Cooling: air-cooled with 2 fans
– Internet connection: Ethernet

– Check out the official Innosilicon website for more details on the A4+ LTCMaster Scrypt ASIC…

An interesting new project from the developer of the FutureBit Moonlander and FutureBit Moonlander 2 USB Litecoin ASIC miners jstefanop called FutureBit Project Apollo. The new device called the FutureBit Apollo LTC is trying to be the world’s most efficient Scrypt ASIC miner, using WiFi and actually being silent… and if it is available at a good price point we are sold. It is targeted at home miners that want to get into mining and/or play around with ASIC miners and not large scale mining operations and mining farms, though it might be interesting for bigger miners as well thanks to the promising specifications announced.

FutureBit Apollo LTC miner Prototype Specifications:
– Compact Stand-alone Pod Style Miner (4x6x4in).
– Very wide range of operation modes with preset ECO (quiet) mode and TURBO mode.
– 100-140+ MH/s of Scrypt performance per miner.
– Industry leading 1W/MH in ECO mode, and 1.4W/MH for TURBO (100-200 watts).
– Powered by a fully integrated Quad-Core A7 ARM based controller.
– First miner to be fully controlled over wifi, only cable needed is power! (this will be a Beta feature on launch..backup ethernet port is available as well).
– Clocks and Voltage is fully customizable by user with easy to use interface (no more pots!).
– Industry leading 97% efficiency 12v power-stage, with 27 ASIC chips powered in a 3×9 parallel/serial power arrangement.
– Custom designed cold forged hexagonal pin heatsink with leading thermal performance for the quietest ASIC miner in operation!
– 2k-6k PWM High Static Pressure Dual Ball Bearing Fan with automatic thermal management with onboard temperature sensor.
– Controlled via local connection on a web browser similar to antminers. You can simply set it up via smartphone browser. No crazy driver installs, hard to use miner software or scripts needed.
– Two Six Pin PCIE power connectors for wide-range of power draw (only one is needed in ECO mode).
– New future platform features including full-node/peer to peer fully decentralize mining, full stand-alone solo mining, cloud/app based controls and more in development.

According to jstefanop the device is ready for mass production and it will be available in pre-order batches just like the previous Moonlanders. The first batch will be a VERY limited run (under 1k units) in order to fix any production issues with expected price range of $200-300 USD (it is not easy to beat large scale manufacturing in China) with better price and better efficiency. The first batch will probably be available for October delivery to people that pre-order the device in a first come first served basis. All of the initial sales for the Futurebit Apollo miner will be handled through the official Futurebit project website, though later batches will probably be available through resellers.

– For more details about the initial announcement of the FutureBit Project Apollo…