The question here is, sound or heat?
I have rigs that are 13 gpu’s putting out 75c (each) and taking a lot of power… I’ll go with the one ASIC at 72db
The noise is a much bigger problem. The heat can at least be used for productive things, and it’s easy to make GPU rigs run cooler by power limiting. On the other hand, 72 decibels 24/7 is unbearable and probably bad for your ears. These things are meant to stay far away from where people live.
Here are two solutions:
-
Adjust Equihash to make it more memory hard, but do not support any further forks. ASICs will still be developed, but they will compete on a more even playing field.
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Change Equihash into a dual algorithm proof of work model, with one algorithm being the current one and the other being a memory-hard one. This would allow for the security and decentralization that neither algorithm can provide on its own.
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The guy with the Z9 mini didn’t adjust his fans yet as it seems.
After the temperature is only 33C, he has plenty ot room to reduce the fan speed and mostly will bring it down even into the range of 65 dB, mostly around the range of 60 dB. Just as comparison, gpu mining rigs are as well in the range of 55-60 dB.
These heavy duty industrial fans bitmain uses are indeed very noisy when they run on 100%. While you have to run them on 100% on the S9 for example, on all others you can play plenty with the fan speed and reduce noise. Even more on the newer models that have real low electricity usage as they don’t generate heat at all.
From these 33C it’s visible that there is a lot of room for reducing the fans, or even replacing them with custom silent fans with higher airflow, many are doing this on other models allready to reduce the nois they run at home…
As most things, i double check a lot. While i questioned this site bevor as it did not have any contact info, whois info or whatever other than a reference that it’s a UNICEF page it is indeed a UNICEF page.
I wrote them and asked if it is their page and below i got the answer:
Dear Alex,
The Hope Page is a website that gives hope to millions of children in need by mining cryptocurrency to support UNICEF’s work for children.
The HopePage uses your computer’s spare processing power to mine cryptocurrency. First you open The HopePage on your web browser. You agree for your processing power to be used, and then your browser automatically starts mining cryptocurrency in the background, for as long as The HopePage is kept open. All the cryptocurrency that is mined is donated directly to support UNICEF’s work for children. It’s an entirely new way to donate to a charity in Australia
The money supports UNICEF’s life-saving work in some of the largest humanitarian crises.
At the moment, UNICEF Australia’s biggest appeal is to support Rohingya refugee children and their families. A surge of violence in Myanmar has forced 720,000 children to flee from their homes and search for shelter in Bangladesh. Just by being on The HopePage, people are raising funds that will go towards buying food, water and vaccines for the refugee children in Bangladesh.
What makes this website so powerful is that it raises funds and raises awareness of the most urgent humanitarian emergencies that UNICEF is responding to and provides Australians with a new way to donate.
The money goes into a Crypto-wallet owned by UNICEF Australia.
Warm Regards,
Donna
Donna Dormitorio // Supporter Relations Representative
UNICEF Australia
Level 19, 320 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000
PO Box 488, Queen Victoria Building NSW 1230
P 1300 884 233 F 1300 780 522 E support@unicef.org.au W unicef.org.au
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And, supposedly 8GB RAM per board, 24GB rotal
It’s not posible to integrate two algorithms? One for gpu mining that is asic resistant and one for asics(this one)?. This will make everybody happy I guess
Adjust Equihash to make it more memory hard, but do not support any further forks. ASICs will still be developed, but they will compete on a more even playing field.
I actually agree that this is a good solution if the dram part is possible - something closer to Ethash. This also limits the ability of older graphics cards though.
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8Gb seems a lot - do you have a source for that info?
I’m a fairly active forum member here. When I get my Z9 I will tear it down and post hi-res photo and video. I have access to a board inspection xray machine as well if people want to see copper layer count etc.
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I asked on the safecoin discord where those pics came from, I have no idea if its actually true
FYI, Bitmain has competition
50Ksol/s 620W, Innosilicon announces Equihash miner A9 ZMaster ready for shipment
Shipping 300 units in batch 1.
MOQ 100 units.
$10k US each.
If Bitmain had kept their original $1999 this would be actually be better due to the power draw of only 620W.
They seem to have a very quick ship date so if a farm wanted to jump in sooner than later this would be the way to do it.
Wonder how long Inno had these under their hat.
It definitely looks like hashrate spikes can be pointed in even more directions now. I honestly believe Bitmain is in the mining and selling hardware business. Not the hacking business.
The opening line of the sales pitch is quite amusing…
“Innosilicon A9 ZMaster offers fantastic mining experience for all to protect the network against the potential 51% attack from the elusive GPUs and hash monopoly.”
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With these hashrates and now the official announcement i think we know now who is in charge of the unknown miningpool we have guessed the last day.
While my bet was set on the Asicminer 40k by Asicminer it turned out it’s a 3rd player in game which was another possible option anyway …
Now there are 3 producers/manufactores competing on equihash …
I admit i’am a little bit shocked with all these 40k/50k miners to be honest, that’s more as i personally have awaited in such short time.
At least every bitmain hater can be happy now after the equihash flagship is made by a bitmain competitor… 
Talking about the smaller coins. Do you think devs should be mining to offset 51 attacks.
Don’t want to seem looking in slinging mud, but one of Co founders of zen wrote that he himself has 95% of his equipment to be Asic with the remaining being GPU.
How do miners feel about devs mining their own coin.
Pretty sure you are talking about Zen here. My eyebrow as well went up when i readed that he has 600 mining Rigs…
These are twice as expensive as the Z9 mini. Further, the Innosilicon is more likely to have been pre-mined for many months, considering they have them right now, just announced them and are shipping them in a few days.
This is what I was referring to when talking about the danger of a secret ASIC stealing shares from GPU miners without them knowing. It’s a real danger for all GPU-based coins.
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This is only because Equihash isn’t memory hard. This problem could easily be fixed with a proof of work tweak. It’s very hard to imagine ASICs having major efficiency advantages over GPUs if Equihash requires 4gb of ram.
So you could easily argue that we are seeing ASICs simply because of a design flaw in the choice Equihash parameters. A fork could be seen not as a fork to get rid of ASICs, but as a fork to correct the Equihash parameters.
The thing is, what if bitmain didn’t announce the z9. Would we be getting anything from Inno. I’m betting no. I feel Bitmain kind of forced Inno in to only now begin selling to market.
I rather all of this be in the open as opposed to forking or changing parameters in the algo. ZEC is at the value point where if those things happened it would still be advantageous to develop another Asic.