The new ASIC Antminer S15 and T15 from Bitmain run on the latest 7nm chips, are energy efficient and compatible with the SHA256 algorithm (Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash mines).
The new Antminer S15 and T15 models have two different modes:
- energy saving,
- high performance.
In power saving mode, the S15 consumes only 850 W , making it a good option for use in areas where electricity is expensive. In high-performance mode, the miner consumes 1596 Watts, but surprisingly, the increase in hashrate makes up for the additional power consumption, even if you have to pay 12 cents per kWh.
In fact, the only reasons why you can use an ASIC miner in power-saving mode are:
- reduce heat and noise,
- unless you have the infrastructure to support this increased power consumption.
Characteristics of Antminer S15
The S15 is more like a flagship, at least in price and hashrate.
- The mining algorithm is SHA256.
- Weight - 7 kilograms.
- Price: $1,475 for the first batch (December 20-31).
- Dimensions - 221 x 175.4 x 278.8 millimeters.
- The presence of an energy saving mode - yes.
- The hashrate in performance mode is 28 TH/s.
- Hashrate in energy saving mode is 17 TH/s.
- Power consumption in performance mode is 1596 W.
- Power consumption in power saving mode is 850 W.
- The fans are designed in parallel.
- Chip production technology is 7-nanometer.
The miner has two operating modes. The first is aimed at maximizing hashrate, the second is aimed at saving energy costs.
Planwrld.ru
If you buy an ASIC for yourself, especially from Bitmain, you should be prepared for possible problems. Your Antminer is not working!? Do hash boards fall off or have a lot of errors? Well, I hope this post will be useful to you. Now we will figure out how to diagnose your ASIC and find an obvious fault.
Often, it is the Antminer Bitmain line that is most often defective and has low-quality assembly.
Why do most of the failures occur with ASICs from Bitmain!?
For the most part, it’s the sales volumes, which are simply huge. The larger the conveyor, the more rejects there are. And in general, Bitmain has long been a monopolist in the mining market. I think the arrival of competitors will greatly change the situation in the future. This means that the build quality of the Antminer line of devices will only increase.
Also, it’s no secret that almost all new Bitmain ASICs are not gathering dust on warehouse shelves. All new models are tested in their racks and work at full capacity. And only then they start to sell out. They call it pre-sale testing of devices, but as for me, this is most likely additional profit for the company.
What to do if your AntMiner is not working? First of all, don’t despair, because you are the happy owner of an ASIC from Bitmain, and there are a lot of spare parts for them in Russia.
Main problems and breakdowns of Antminer
The batteries are damaged, the ASIC will not turn on. First of all, you need to check the power supply, if you have a spare one, great. But we are talking about failures of the ASIC itself, and most often this is either a failure of the power controller or the control board. And power surges are often to blame. I advise you to read on the Internet about meander voltage control relays or similar ones. Personally, I use the meander relay UZM-50ts 63a (not advertising) at the entrance to the entire apartment.
The hash board has fallen off, the ASIC does not see it. Probably the most common problem, sometimes related to the fact that some cables have poor contact, but often the problem is in the board itself. Of course, you cannot repair the board on your own, without the necessary knowledge and equipment. As a result, it will have to be replaced or repaired. But finding a non-working board is quite easy!
How to find a non-working hash board?
In order to determine if a board is not working, it is enough to run the ASIC with each board in turn (separately):
We leave the white bus that comes from the controller board in the first slot, and plug the other side into each board in turn. Accordingly, moving power from board to board.
The operating principle is as follows: stick the wires in and plug the unit into the network. After launching the ASIC, we look in the admin panel to see if the board has appeared. If the board works, then turn off the power and repeat all the steps with the second one. And using this method, we test all the boards in turn until we find the one we need, in our case the faulty one.
The ASIC can easily work with one or two boards. Therefore, it is not necessary to stop the operation of the miner itself. We found a non-working board, pulled it out and you can drive the ASIC back into the rack.
How to disassemble Antminer and remove the board hash?
Today I am analyzing my AntMiner D3, for the most part they are all the same. The first step is to remove the cooler. To do this, unscrew 4 bolts on each side:
We pull out all the wires from the connectors and remove the controller board. Be careful at this point; it is held in place by a pressure clip.
The hash boards themselves are placed in ordinary sleds. We pull out the non-working board and put the device back together. As you can see, there is nothing difficult in disassembling an ASIC!
The board does not see its chips
This is also a common and quite bad problem. Many masters shrug their shoulders. Although sometimes the problem is poor soldering (this is often the case with Baikals).
Sometimes it can take a lot of time to get the miner to work, I remember about a year ago, we spent about a day with one ASIC, it simply refused to work for no apparent reason. Rebooted, turned it on and off, reconnected the wires, even flashed it, it started working on its own. When buying a miner, be prepared for the fact that this is a fancy piece of equipment.
PS- If among you there are those who provide repairs to mining equipment, I allow you to advertise yourself in the comments to this post. Just one request: write something more informative
Characteristics of Antminer T15
T15 is simpler. The performance and cost are lower, while the chips are still 7nm.
- The mining algorithm is SHA256.
- Weight - 6.6 kilograms.
- Price: $913 for the first batch (December 20-31).
- Dimensions - 205.15 x 175.4 x 278.8 millimeters.
- The presence of an energy saving mode - yes.
- The hashrate in performance mode is 23 TH/s.
- Hashrate in energy saving mode is 20 TH/s.
- Power consumption in performance mode is 1541 W.
- Power consumption in power saving mode is 1200 W.
- The fans are designed in parallel.
- Chip production technology is 7-nanometer.
Miner profitability
There are a huge number of services that allow you to calculate the profitability of a mining farm based on the cost of electricity, computing power and type of equipment. However, if you use a specific model of ASIC, the easiest way is to use asictrade.com. The site automatically calculates the power and profitability of a miner based on the current Bitcoin exchange rate and displays this in a dynamic graph. All the user needs to do is indicate the cost of 1 kW of electricity in dollars.
For example, in Russia the cost of electricity is 5.47 rubles per 1 kW (for MSK) - this is approximately $0.084. Enter this value and get:
Profitability of Antminer S15 taking into account electricity tariffs in MSC
Not very profitable, however, we took the highest cost of electricity in the Russian Federation, so mining may be more profitable for residents of other regions.
In Ukraine, electricity at a daily rate will cost 1.68 UAH, which is equal to $0.067. With this indicator, the income of Asic Antminer S15 is:
Profitability of Antminer S15 taking into account electricity tariffs in Ukraine
If we take the average cost of Antminer S15 - $1200, then it turns out that for miners from Ukraine it will pay off in 1 year 8 months, and for miners from the Russian Federation (in particular, Moscow) in 2 years 10 months.
However, profitability and payback are floating indicators (which can be seen in the graphs above) and depend primarily on the Bitcoin exchange rate, so if the first cryptocurrency starts to rally again, the payback period may be reduced several times. Although we note that such efficiency for devices with 7 nm chips is not the highest.
Profitability of Antminer S15
As of today, the Antminer S15's income is $ 50 per month if you pay 12 cents per kWh. (in high performance mode).
The cost of electricity per month is $140 , which means that those who have free electricity can earn an income of $190 per month. Even with the cost of electricity at $0.08 / kWh, the income from the device is still $95 / month at current rates and the complexity of cryptocurrency mining.
Payback of Antminer S15 in high performance and energy saving modes
Bitcoin miners typically pay for themselves in about two years, and the S15 is no exception to the rule. If the mining difficulty remains the same, then we can expect the investment to return in about 10-14 months. But the complexity of production will undoubtedly increase, therefore, in reality, the payback should be about 20 months.
Now let's consider how much the mining difficulty will increase? Since the S15 is based on new technologies, we expect the complexity to increase significantly. We know that large companies (especially Bitmain) own the majority of the Bitcoin network hashrate. We also know that their hangars benefit from cheap electricity.
The S15 replaces the older S9 series. This means that instead of 14 TH/s, Bitmain will start adding 30 TH/s to its farms. This is not so much, given the existing colossal hashrate of the Bitcoin network.
In fact, for a Chinese farm (with almost free electricity) the Innosilicon T2 turbo 32 (32TH/s) may be a better investment than the S15.
Payback of Antminer S15 in high performance mode:
Payback of Antminer S15 in energy-saving mode:
The obtained figures allow us to draw conclusions about the payback of the device. It is more logical to calculate based on maximum productivity. We divide the $1,475 price by the maximum profit of $4.58. We get 322 days or almost 11 months. The result is relevant if the network and exchange rate are stable.
About Antminer S15 and T15 on the forums
The news from the Chinese flagship did not greatly excite the miner community, although Bitmain’s high-profile new products for SHA-256 mining have been awaited for a long time. The community was divided into two camps: S9 versus S15+T15. Quite a lot of forum users express the opinion that now is a good time to buy a used Antminer S9 for $280, given the new AsicBoost firmware (+20% efficiency). On the other hand, new ASIC miners in 2022 will take S9 beyond the profitability limit.
The best option would be to wait for ASIC Antminer S15 and T15 prices to fall, and then draw conclusions about purchasing specialized devices. A large number of forum users believe that December may be marked by a BTC pump due to sales of new ASICs. This assumption raises speculation about whether the price of new products from Bitmain will increase in December. If you hope for an increase in the exchange rate, then it is easier to buy cryptocurrency and not worry about it.
Final conclusions about new miners will be made only after reviews of working models and inspection of devices by independent specialists. Bitcoin recently turned 10 years old; we examined its future prospects in an analytical article.
Profitability and payback of Antminer T15
At top performance, the ASIC will produce 23 TH/s and 1541 W.
$3.49 profit per day at the same outlet cost. We evaluate the energy saving mode with 20 TH/s and 1200 W consumption.
3.2 dollars per day in Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Cash mining result is slightly behind - $3.15.
Payback for Antminer T15 - $913 price divided by $3.49 profit. We get 261 days or almost 9 months.
Of course, the rental of premises is not taken into account as a result. You will have to consider this factor yourself.
Price
Prices are current as of August 2022.
Let's start with the cost, from less expensive to more expensive models:
Antminer S9j 14.5th 25479₽
the most budget model presented, released in August 2018. Still relevant today. Brings 0.003BTC per month or 6500r at the current rate. Consumes relatively little electricity - 1.4 kilowatts.
Avalon 1066 50th 143553₽
A miner from the manufacturer Canaan, you may be hearing about it for the first time, but it is a fairly widespread model that has shown a low percentage of breakdowns throughout its existence. It has quite high consumption for its power. 3250 watts per hour. For its 50 terahash, it brings 0.010BTC per month or 22332.10 ₽ at the current rate
Antminer S17+ 73th 290000₽
The most powerful model from the S17 series. The maximum number of ASIC chips in this case. The miner generates a lot of heat and requires good external cooling if it is located in a closed room. Consumes 3000 watts. Earns 0.0148BTC or 32463.2₽ at the current rate
Whatsminer M32 60th 341749₽
Miners from the manufacturer MicroBT Whatsminer are famous for their reliability and highly efficient cooling system. M32 consumes 3.5 kilowatts per hour. Mines 0.0126BTC or 27418.25₽ at the current rate
Now we come to the most expensive miners from our list. Miners who mine altcoins have fairly high profitability rates due to the low complexity of the network of cryptocurrencies they mine. This is what accounts for the high cost of these devices.
Antminer Z15 420ks 749387₽
Consumes 1.5 kilowatts per hour. Produces 9.605ZEC or 64146.76 ₽ per month at the current rate
Innosilicon A10 720mh 1255420₽
It also runs on exactly the same 1.5 kilowatt power supply. Brings 1.2 ETH or 155,726 rubles at the current rate
In general, we can say that the payback of equipment on average tends to be about 1 year, and in moments of sharp upswing it can be only a few months. However, it is worth considering that with a strong fall in rates, the payback goes somewhere into the vague future and an unpleasant situation develops.
