ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[itod]

S3 sales slowing down or production ramping up?

I don't know about the production, but you can bet the sales are slowing down. Counting current diff increase trend 0.66 BTC per miner may very likely never been mined out of them. Probably expect serious BTC miner price reduction for Batch #7.

Haha, wrong sir!

Interesting. If it's shipped Aug 20th, it means starting mining Aug 23-25th. Type that in any calculator as a starting date with 10% difficulty increase and tell me if the miner will return 0.66 BTC.

10% difficulty increase?!? You wish man.  Next one will be at least 20-25% possibly higher....

30 mil hash came into the network right after last difficulty adjustment.  I agree next difficulty will be in the 20-25% range if not higher.

Also, besides the 30 mil added it looks like more then usual small network hash is getting added.  The 30 mil bumped us up to 169 right after ( 7 mil more was added since that spike )  

I was going to buy some more s3, but looks to me like something new is coming or private placement deal is going on withs oem big manufacturer.  The price staying at .66 btc is not staying in line with bitmain customers at least having a chance to get ROI like in the past.

I for one am holding off on getting any additional s3 units without a coupon ( Not happy bought 12 units and no coupons ) or a significant price reduction.

Edit-  I was being conservative with 20-25% projected next dif increase.  This abnormal spike in network  hash right after last difficulty adj could bring is well well above even 25%.  Will see...

I was just being realistic, after this next diff increase scheduled for Aug 19/20th it's hard to expect next few difficulty increases will be that high. But you can bet that average of next 3-4 difficulty increases will not be below 10% taking into account this next bigger one. Even with that conservative 10% average increases it's guaranteed 440-480 GHs will not mine 0.66 BTC *ever*. As someone said this is not even getting into calculation the customs fees we in Europe have to pay for the S3's. Bitmain is probably counting on buyers usual aversion towards just holding the BTC, it's obvious that for majority of us those BTC's just collecting dust is for some reason unacceptable, people are always willing to risk 0.66 BTC even when it's rather obvious they will get between 0.5-0.6 BTC through mining. One thing it's certain, this price for batch #7 is the obvious sign that Bitmain is no longer considering the chance their customer's ROI into S3 price calculation.

[mazedk]

The issue is likely due to NTP problems like S1and S2 have...poor firmware  based on old buggy firmware and outdated cgminer
check the status/overview tab on miner does it show the correct time and uptimes?
If you hit save and apply on miner configuration then check miner status after 1 minute what is happening?
It is a known bug that the miner can show improper uptime/system time which results in wrong hashrate avg readings/etc which can only be fixed by hitting apply on miner config page...cold boot the problem is much worse always have to restart cgminer process

.. snip ..

Time looks correct.

trying the save and config and check status now.

[chunkyjunkie]

One thing it's certain, this price for batch #7 is the obvious sign that Bitmain is no longer considering the chance their customer's ROI into S3 price calculation.

That is the problem.

The reason I loved bitmain is chance to ROI, shipping from stock, previous customer incentives such as coupons, and them lowering their prices as time passed to give us at least a chance to achieve ROI.

Everything I listed above has started to change and I am a little concerned with the direction.  Until Bitmain gets a competitor that is on the same level Bitmain was a month ago we might see more of this trend from bitmain.  ( no coupons, increasing prices non stock etc.. )

Can hope..

[mazedk]

The issue is likely due to NTP problems like S1and S2 have...poor firmware  based on old buggy firmware and outdated cgminer
check the status/overview tab on miner does it show the correct time and uptimes?
If you hit save and apply on miner configuration then check miner status after 1 minute what is happening?
It is a known bug that the miner can show improper uptime/system time which results in wrong hashrate avg readings/etc which can only be fixed by hitting apply on miner config page...cold boot the problem is much worse always have to restart cgminer process

.. snip ..

Time looks correct.

trying the save and config and check status now.

Didnt seem to help much. Still the same status. Waiting for bitmain to respond.

Edit: It seems like its doing a loop of like 3 minutes untill it resets "Elapsed" in miner status..

[danny3614]

what is wrong with web page of bitmaintech?

[philipma1957]

One thing it's certain, this price for batch #7 is the obvious sign that Bitmain is no longer considering the chance their customer's ROI into S3 price calculation.

That is the problem.

The reason I loved bitmain is chance to ROI, shipping from stock, previous customer incentives such as coupons, and them lowering their prices as time passed to give us at least a chance to achieve ROI.

Everything I listed above has started to change and I am a little concerned with the direction.  Until Bitmain gets a competitor that is on the same level Bitmain was a month ago we might see more of this trend from bitmain.  ( no coupons, increasing prices non stock etc.. )

Can hope..

  Well we only see some of the picture. the industry has some serious issues on a lot of levels.  right now the s-3 is the lowest cost miner available.  it has no competitor.

some say an sp30 but not yet not really.  So the s-3 is being priced at a level just a bit higher then it should be. 

This will not change until a .8 watt 1 dollar 1gh piece of gear is sold to compete with the s-3.

[Bitkoinzz]

what is wrong with web page of bitmaintech?

Bitmaintech.com is TANGO DOWN

[Bitsaurus]

No price reduction and 1 week wait.  Guess the S3 train has left.  I finally put in an order for 2 S3s in B6 to see what all the fuss was about but I'm pretty sure I won't ROI.  Either way will be nice to see some competent hardware replace my BFL Singles.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I wouldn't count on it.  I got 2 from batch 3 and both are lemons.  All kind of issues and tech support is a joke.  2 months and RMA for my S1 hasn't gone through yet.

[R4v37]

what is wrong with web page of bitmaintech?

Bitmaintech.com is TANGO DOWN

the same situation occured..
hope they just have some bad technical problem.. 

[MinersAnonymous]

Do any of you here know why the queue on the config is set so high? Is there a big gain from setting it to a lower number or why did they program 4096 as the queue. The discarded amounts are so high...

[Master One]

no you are better off using a site like gawminer.com buy the gear and let them host it.  I think you avoid the vat.

It's funny, I've never considered such a hosted service, and I just took a closer look, but the numbers don't add up.

Buying a S3 from Bitmaintech is ~ 390 USD, at GAW Miners it's 499.95 USD. Their hosting service is 0.9 USD a day after a free month versus 1.22 USD on engery costs for a day of running the S3 here at my place (calculated with 340W instead of the indicated 366W on the GAW Miner S3 product page). So the two prices including running costs reach equilibrium after ~ 256 days at a total of around 702 USD, which is way beyond the point to which you can make a profit. That calculation is done without VAT because it would not apply to my (one of the advantages having a company at hands), with our VAT of 20% for the hardware on import and on energy the picture would be different of course.

Calculated the other way around: The hosting service of GAW Miners for 0.9 USD equals a price of 0.11 USD per kWh. Combine that with the premium on the hardware purchase and you will never reach ROI anyway.

However you turn it, it will be a loss.

[1Neptune]

no you are better off using a site like gawminer.com buy the gear and let them host it.  I think you avoid the vat.

It's funny, I've never considered such a hosted service, and I just took a closer look, but the numbers don't add up.

Buying a S3 from Bitmaintech is ~ 390 USD, at GAW Miners it's 499.95 USD. Their hosting service is 0.9 USD a day after a free month versus 1.22 USD on engery costs for a day of running the S3 here at my place (calculated with 340W instead of the indicated 366W on the GAW Miner S3 product page). So the two prices including running costs reach equilibrium after ~ 256 days at a total of around 702 USD, which is way beyond the point to which you can make a profit. That calculation is done without VAT because it would not apply to my (one of the advantages having a company at hands), with our VAT of 20% for the hardware on import and on energy the picture would be different of course.

Calculated the other way around: The hosting service of GAW Miners for 0.9 USD equals a price of 0.11 USD per kWh. Combine that with the premium on the hardware purchase and you will never reach ROI anyway.

However you turn it, it will be a loss.

Which is a perfect example of a manufacturer pricing themselves out of the market.

It would be nice to see a price drop when their web site comes back up but I won't hold my breath. At 0.66 btc the price is too high. Sitting on hands and btc in wallets is the better option for now.

[MinersAnonymous]

no you are better off using a site like gawminer.com buy the gear and let them host it.  I think you avoid the vat.

It's funny, I've never considered such a hosted service, and I just took a closer look, but the numbers don't add up.

Buying a S3 from Bitmaintech is ~ 390 USD, at GAW Miners it's 499.95 USD. Their hosting service is 0.9 USD a day after a free month versus 1.22 USD on engery costs for a day of running the S3 here at my place (calculated with 340W instead of the indicated 366W on the GAW Miner S3 product page). So the two prices including running costs reach equilibrium after ~ 256 days at a total of around 702 USD, which is way beyond the point to which you can make a profit. That calculation is done without VAT because it would not apply to my (one of the advantages having a company at hands), with our VAT of 20% for the hardware on import and on energy the picture would be different of course.

Calculated the other way around: The hosting service of GAW Miners for 0.9 USD equals a price of 0.11 USD per kWh. Combine that with the premium on the hardware purchase and you will never reach ROI anyway.

However you turn it, it will be a loss.

Your calculations are not including the fact residential electric has utility, fees, taxes. You may be charged for many things so what is $1.22/day in energy costs for you might add an additional $30 of taxes and fees.

Hosted units are flat rate. You can host 10 S3 for $0.90/day and $270 month for 10 of them. Your home may run 10 S3 for $1.22/day and $366 month but you might end up seeing $50-100+ extra for fees and taxes after energy cost.

Combine that with the premium on the hardware purchase and you will never reach ROI anyway.

However you turn it, it will be a loss.

You are  right, especially at home you will barely see ROI, those energy costs won't help when the difficulty goes up you earn less and your margins are pressed against the wall.  

Do any of you here know why the queue on the config is set so high? Is there a big gain from setting it to a lower number or why did they program 4096 as the queue. The discarded amounts are so high...

I can't be the only one can I? I saw all my units with the same high queue, I don't know what to make of it! 

[twib2]

Do any of you here know why the queue on the config is set so high? Is there a big gain from setting it to a lower number or why did they program 4096 as the queue. The discarded amounts are so high...

If you want, you can change the queue in /etc/init.d/cgminer

I use 32 and it seems to be a good compromise.  Some people use 1, others have kept 4096 - doesn't seem to have a huge effect, but can save you some CPU cycles if you make it lower.

[-ck]

Hi BITMAIN.

As you're an official representative of bitmain, may I ask you to please provide the source code for your modifications to cgminer in the form of the driver for the S3. cgminer is provided under the GPL version 3 license which means you are obliged by law to provide the source code to any modifications you do if you distribute binaries and you are distributing modified cgminer binaries with every S3.

Provision of the source code would allow us to aid the development of your driver and help bring your version to sync up with the latest cgminer to derive the benefits of newer versions along with its many fixes.

[Master One]

It would be nice to see a price drop when their web site comes back up but I won't hold my breath. At 0.66 btc the price is too high. Sitting on hands and btc in wallets is the better option for now.

I totally agree, and I won't hold my breath neither. It's an impossible situation right now. Bitmaintech could make a difference by lowering the price each batch to accommodate the loss in time to reach ROI, but with sticking to 0.66 BTC for Batch 7 it's a clear no-go.

Without a new generation of ASIC chips with a higher hash rate at lower power consumption (looks like the 20 nm chips would be the only option for the foreseeable future) home mining has already hit a dead end. The SP30 would have been an interesting alternative to a couple of S3, but with $3895 and ETA of the next batch earliest in September (if at all, not to speak of the ridiculousness of full payment in advance, something I'd never do!) that device will never reach ROI if you are having to pay for energy.

Best bet right now is to buy a couple of BTC and wait for something to happen to the S3 price or a S4 appearance.

Your calculations are not including the fact residential electric has utility, fees, taxes. You may be charged for many things so what is $1.22/day in energy costs for you might add an additional $30 of taxes and fees. Hosted units are flat rate. You can host 10 S3 for $0.90/day and $270 month for 10 of them. Your home may run 10 S3 for $1.22/day and $366 month but you might end up seeing $50-100+ extra for fees and taxes after energy cost.

The mentioned price of $1.22/day for a S3 running here at my place already include all the additional charges, which equals $0.11/kWh excl. VAT, so the shown calculation is correct and exact for my particular case. However I turn the coin hosting like at GAW Miners would not make any sense for me.

[MoreBloodWine]

The one page in the admin area where i shows dropbear port 22, that's what allows putty to connect right so if I changed hat to say 2013 I would use 2013 in the port box on putty to connect via ssh ?

[MinersAnonymous]

Do any of you here know why the queue on the config is set so high? Is there a big gain from setting it to a lower number or why did they program 4096 as the queue. The discarded amounts are so high...

If you want, you can change the queue in /etc/init.d/cgminer

I use 32 and it seems to be a good compromise.  Some people use 1, others have kept 4096 - doesn't seem to have a huge effect, but can save you some CPU cycles if you make it lower.

Okay thanks, I will search. Does the 4096 and large amount of discarded not affect the overall hashrate and work submitted? Also, is 32 equivalent to 32shares or a share in that size?  I ask because I did not know if 4096 was 4096 shares or a share/shares added for a vardiff of 4096

[JennaK]

Anyone want to post on here their Antminer s3 setup? I want to replicate some sort of rack.
Thanks.