Bitcoin still grew 125% against the trend in 2016. On June 6, 2017, it broke through 20000 yuan. With the influx of capital, panic of consumer grade graphics cards and other phenomenal events, it, together with various derivative currencies such as Lite Coin and Ethereum, came back to the public again. In 2016, the mining machine responsible for "production/mining" of these digital currencies also approached or even exceeded the threshold of 10TH/s with its 14/16nm advanced process and stronger framework.
What is the concept of 10TH/s computing power? Take the GTX 1080 Ti, the most powerful game card at present, for example. The computing power of the public version is 1.88TH/s, and the full load power consumption is about 300W. The GTX 1060 with the highest price performance ratio and the widest audience, its public computing power is only 0.67TH/s, and its power consumption is about 130W. The former is a flagship product with a selling price of 5700 yuan, while the normal price of the latter starts at 1500 yuan. Mining machines, such specially customized hardware, not only have violent computing power, but also they are monsters with kilowatts of power on the wall.
This time we got the representative BitContinental Ant Miner S9 (13.5T computing power), Wingbit E9+(9T computing power) and Avalon Miner 741 (7.3T computing power) in the market for comparison. Now let's see the strength of these "monsters".
Product parameters and data
The developer of Ant Mining Machine S9 is BitContinental, which is the first batch of mining machine R&D enterprises, and is now the world's largest "mining" enterprise. Its businesses include the cloud mining platform Hashnest, and the world's most powerful mining pool "Antpool" (I heard it correctly, it is larger than any national fish pool).
The Ant Mining Machine S9 is the first mining machine to use 16nm process chips, which was released in June 2016. It is equipped with BM1387 chip independently developed by BitContinental, and its single chip computing power reaches 74GH/s. According to chip frequency difference, its S9 series includes products from 9.5T to 14T, mainly including core frequency and power consumption. Since its release, it is still the mining machine with the highest rate of return, and also the mining machine with the greatest computing power.
Wing Bit E9+is the work of Zhejiang Yibang Company. Its predecessor product E9 was released in December 2016, and 96 self-developed bitcoin mining chips WD1227 (14nm process) were first launched and built in. The overall computing power is 6.3TH/S, and the energy consumption ratio is 140W/T. In addition to increasing the number of chips and increasing the computing power to 9TH/s, this year's E9+has added a dual fan design and improved the appearance.
Avalon Miner741, with the lowest power and computing power, is the work of Avalon, an old miner. Contrary to your previous impression, Avalon is one of the few manufacturers that does not have control circuits in top products in order to reduce product costs. Avalon 741 is the one with the highest foundation threshold among the three mining machines. It needs additional controller or raspberry pie, and can only work with AUC3 converter and AUC3 data cable.
Comparison between appearance and workmanship: one cent for each product
Ant miner S9 adopts the design of double fans and three force plate miner. There are rails designed for layering around the body. It provides peripheral configurations such as Mirco SD card slot, IP address feedback button, RJ45 network cable interface, reset button and status indicator light. Its structure is more complex than the other two machines.
BitContinental has independently equipped heat sinks for S9 chips, which is a very rare cost free design in mining machines. The layout, workmanship and production difficulty of the original calculation board are the highest among the three machines. Each computing board has 63 bits of the BM1387 chip developed by Continental, and a single board almost has the computing power of the previous generation of S7.
The opening design of wing bit E9+is more regular than that of the previous generation E9. The force calculation board has independent fixing screws, but it is very "mining machine" both in shape and workmanship. The logo of the manufacturer is still reserved for the outlet fan. The power supply layout of the calculation board and the wiring of the circuit board are very neat and unified, but the heat sink and assembly are quite rough. There are hand torn glue pads between the heat sink and the circuit board, and a lot of silicone grease is squeezed out of the heat sink, which is easy to accumulate dust. It is not easy to manage, and in serious cases, it will affect the heat dissipation efficiency.
The Avalon 741 design is significantly different from the common mining machine, because it uses an additional independent control circuit board without any exposed wire outside. It is the only single fan mining machine among the three. The two force calculation boards are located on both sides of the fuselage. In the middle is a rather high heat sink with a large chamfer. Six 6 pin PCI-E interfaces are used for power supply.
Wing bit E9+, ant S9, Avalon 741
The body shape of the three machines is based on the 12-14cm fan. The Avalon 741 with a single fan design has a short body, but the width of the body is the largest. The ant miner S9 with the same power level and the wing bit E9+are very similar in appearance and size, but the ant miner S9 is slightly smaller. The best work is the ant miner S9, which heaps materials violently on the heat dissipation and has rails designed for stacking. The Avalon 741 is simple in design, while the wing bit E9+is relatively ordinary.
System and use: each has its own characteristics
Although the mining machine sounds tall, after several years of development, it is much easier to use than before. In addition to Avalon's need to operate raspberry pie as an intermediary, neither Wing Bit E9+nor Ant Miner S9 requires additional control accessories. We only need to connect the 6pin PCI-E interfaces on the power supply to the mining machine one by one. Each of the three mining machines here supplies power to three 6pin interfaces, while the wing bit E9+and ant mining machine S9 need to connect power to the control circuit board.
All three machines have the DHCP (automatic assignment of IP addresses) function, and the mechanism of full operation only after access to the network cable. We power on the network cable, find the IP address of the mining machine in the router background, and directly open the corresponding address through the browser to enter the mining machine background.
Because the manufacturer of Ant Mining Machine S9 is Bitcom, the software maintenance is the most formal and up to standard. The official website and forum have a large number of instructions, videos, and firmware are also complete. It is also the only one of the three machines that retains the function of manual frequency control. However, the interface has not been translated into Chinese, which is a little pity.
The background home page of Wing Bit E9+is very intuitive, with such intimate designs as preset mine pool address. The frequency and fan speed on E9+are not adjustable, and the fan speed is up to 6000 rpm, which directly leads to the noise problem mentioned below.
After Avalon manually brushes firmware into the controller/raspberry pie, it is necessary to directly connect the computer to enable the DHCP function. The threshold is high. The home page information display is comprehensive, the UI is beautiful, and the expert mode has a lot of detailed settings, but it is still not Chinese.
Heat and noise
The test environment is consistent. The same account is used to dig the ant pond, and the PPS+mode is used. The test location is a conference room with an area of about 20 square meters, and the room temperature is 29-30 degrees. The APW3+power supply (1600W, highest conversion efficiency 93.5%) of BitContinental is used for power supply. It is characterized by solid materials, each 6pin interface can output 12V 13.3A, which can directly meet the requirements of the current 1600W level and below violent mining machine, without considering the cross interface problem of dual power supply connection. Temperature and noise detection shall be carried out after the mining machine runs for 3 hours.
10cm and 100cm away from the air outlet of Ant Mining Machine S9, the former is about 82-83 decibels, but the noise drops to about 71.9 decibels 1 meter away. The actual volume attenuation is faster than that of Wing Bit E9+, and the sense of hearing is not so exaggerated. There is no obvious sound when the door is closed, which is very skillfully stuck in the volume range acceptable for civilian use.
The highest temperature of the body of Ant miner S9 appears at the power connection of the force calculation board, about 48.4 degrees; The air inlet is only 35 degrees, and the air outlet is 59.7 degrees. The heat diffusion range of the air outlet is larger than that of the wing bit E9+. Considering that their power is around 1600W, it seems that the fan design with speed difference between the front and rear has certain effect.
10cm, 50cm and 100cm away from the wing bit E9+air outlet, the noise reached about 83.4 dB, 77.8 dB and 75.4 dB respectively. The power of the double 6000 turn fan cannot be underestimated. Its sound is similar to that of a vacuum cleaner, and the volume is very loud, which is the loudest of the three machines. Although it seems that the decibel value is not much different from that of the ant miner S9, the human auditory perception is a whole gear larger, and people who see it for the first time will surely be shocked by the volume, which is not suitable for residential or office use.
The hottest spot of wing bit E9+fuselage appears below the outlet fan interface, about 43.7 degrees; The hottest spot of the top circuit board is 42.7 degrees; The maximum temperature at the air inlet is 41.2 ℃, and that at the air outlet is 57.5 ℃. Except that the side of the fuselage is a little hotter than the Ant Miner S9, the heat dissipation performance is good.
10cm, 50cm and 100cm away from the air outlet of Avalon 741, the noise is about 76.5, 68.1 and 62.2 decibels respectively. In working condition, the fan score is around 4500 rpm, and the noise control is good.
The hottest spot of Avalon 741 fuselage also appears below the outlet fan interface, which is about 39.2 degrees, and the rest of the fuselage side is below 37 degrees; The highest temperature at the air inlet is 48.1 ℃, higher than that of the other two mining machines; The air outlet is about 50.6 degrees. After the power is reduced, the overall heating control pressure is much lower.
Computing power and power consumption PK: Ant Miner S9 is unique
Ant miner S9 force calculation curve every 10 minutes
Ant miner S9 hourly force calculation curve
The official standard calculation force of Ant Mine S9-13.5T version is 13.5TH/s. In the actual 10 hour test, the minimum frequency is 550M for the first 4 hours, the theoretical calculation force is 11.85TH/s, and the actual average calculation force is about 12.1TH/s; In the following six hours, the default frequency is 627M, and the theoretical calculation force is 13.5TH/s, but the actual maximum value exceeds 14.11TH/s, and the average value is above 13.8TH/s, which is higher than the nominal value.
The standby power consumption of Ant Mine S9 without networking is about 90W, the peak power reaches 1625W, and the power is about 1583W after stable operation.
Wing bit E9+force calculation curve every 10 minutes
Wing bit E9+hourly force calculation curve
The frequency of wing bit E9+cannot be set. The calculation force fluctuates for 40 minutes and starts to stabilize around 9TH/s after 1 hour. The average calculation force for 8 hours is about 8.9TH/s, slightly lower than the official standard value of 9TH/s, but the deviation is small.
The standby power consumption of Wingbit E9+without networking is about 170W, and the peak power reaches 1651W. After stable operation, the power is about 1606W, with little fluctuation. Surprisingly, its official power is lower than that of Ant Mine S9, but the actual power consumption is about 20W higher.
Avalon 741 force calculation curve every 10 minutes
Avalon 741 hourly force calculation curve
The average value of Avalon 741's actual 10 hour calculation force is about 6.8 TH/s, which is far from the official standard of 7.3 TH/s. There is obvious fluctuation in the minute statistics, and the overall performance of Avalon 741 is a little weak in front of the first two machines. The actual standby power consumption is about 100W, the peak power is 1298W, and the power is about 1291W after stable operation.
The actual calculation force and nominal calculation force of Ant Mining Machine S9 and Wing Bit E9+are relatively close, while Avalon 741's performance is not very good. The computing power gap is very obvious. The computing power of Ant Mining Machine S9 is 1.55 times that of Wing Bit E9+and twice that of Avalon 741, which is already the degree of one machine top two. This computing performance gap will lead to a great difference in revenue when the unit price of Bitcoin is high.
Although the price of Bitcoin dropped before the deadline, it still reached 17890 yuan/Bitcoin. According to the income ratio of 103.41% in the PPS+mode of Bitter Mainland Ant Mine, the daily income of 1TH/s on July 1 was 0.00036689BTC. The income of the three mining machines was exaggerated after being discounted into RMB.
summary
In terms of appearance and maintenance, Ant Miner S9 is a very authentic enterprise level product, which is durable from materials to workmanship; Avalon 741 is simple, more like consumer electronics; Although the circuit board of Wingbit E9+is well made, its assembly style is very "miner" and still stays at the level of the previous generation of mining machines;
In terms of use and system, Ant Miner S9 is the simplest and has the most complete information. Although the background is not Chinese, the maintenance information of the official website forum is complete, and the firmware update is also the most timely. Wing bit E9+has a good background home page, which can easily observe the machine status, but the official maintenance information is lacking. The main problem of Avalon 741 is that it needs other accessories to work, the threshold for use is high, and the cost saved is not reflected in the price.
Calculated according to the price of 0.6 yuan/kilowatt hour*
In terms of computing power and power consumption, only Ant Miner S9 can slightly exceed its nominal value. Both Wing Bit E9+and Avalon 741 are lower than the nominal value, and the latter is still far from the nominal value. Surprisingly, the wing bits with lower nominal values can not open the gap between the total power and the ant miner S9. The computing efficiency of Ant S9 is 8.72G per watt, which is much higher than that of Wing Bit E9+and Avalon 741. Neither of the latter two can cross the threshold of about 5.4G/W.
The computing power advantage of Ant Mining Machine S9 is too great. With a performance gap of 1.55 and 2 times, it is easy to break the cost of computing power back. Even the bitcoin quotation after a small decline can return more than two months earlier than the other two mining machines. It is still the mining machine with the highest efficiency and the fastest return.
While the power and output per watt of wing bits E9+and Avalon 741 decrease in turn, the main problem of wing bits E9+is brutal noise, while Avalon 741 is the core of relatively weak computing power. Energy efficiency and cost recovery speed are also the same as workmanship. It's really a penny for a penny.
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