All you need to know about Asic Miners in simple words

In this article we will cover everything you need to know about ASICs and how they differ from graphics cards (GPUs).

Asik – what is it and how does it work?

In a broad sense, ASIC is an integrated circuit, which has a narrow range of applications, due to a rigidly defined set of functions.

An asic in mining is special equipment for mining cryptocurrencies of a certain algorithm.

ASICs have a lot of chips and a large amount of memory, and therefore the hash rate is higher, so ASIC mines more coins than GPUs. As soon as an ASIC appears for some algorithm, mining that algorithm on video cards becomes unprofitable: the GPU power cannot compete with the power of the ASIC.

Many coins try to protect their network from mining on asics, and as soon as an asic appears on their current algorithm, they immediately change it in order to remain available for GPU mining. Such coins are called asic stable coins.

However, coins do not always deliver on their promise to immediately change the algorithm and remain resistant to asics. An example of this is some Equihash coins.

It should be noted right away that an asic cannot be inserted into a computer and used as a video card, for example, for games or other work with a computer.

An asic is an independent piece of equipment. This is its advantage and disadvantage at the same time. The fact is that if the mining algorithm for which you bought an asic fails, then you will have nothing else to do but to throw your equipment in the trash. We will look at all of this in detail a little later.

The first asics appeared long before mining – in 1984 to work with graphics. Powerful microchips came to mining in 2012 to unravel the first digital currency – Bitcoin, running on the SHA-256 algorithm.

Types

ASICs are created for a specific algorithm, but there are still differences. ASICs are different:

• Hashrate

Manufacturers are trying to overtake each other or just improve their results, so with each new model asics become more and more powerful. At this rate, GPU mining may become completely unprofitable (it will remain only for stable algorithms).

• The algorithms for which the

Asics are coming out for all the new algorithms, and the old ones are competing in terms of performance.

• Cooling system

Since an Asik consumes a large amount of electricity, it can overheat. Accordingly, it needs a good cooling system to work well (just like the GPU).

• Producers

At the moment, there are several large companies supplying ASICs to the market – almost all of them concentrate their production in China. We’ll talk more about the manufacturers and their websites below.

Manufacturers – sites

The most popular manufacturer of asics is Bitmain https://www.bitmain.com

Bitman makes asics for the following algorithms:

• Sha-256
• Scrypt
• Ethash
• X11
• Blake (2b)
• CryptoNight
• Equihash

Note that Bitman is trying to create asics for other algorithms – they are in development.

An ashik for the Ethash algorithm is not particularly dangerous for Ethereum coin mining, because it is not much more powerful than a regular rig made of video cards (e.g. AMD RX570).

As for the Equihash algorithm, the ashik is much more powerful than the usual GPU farm, so it is not profitable to mine on video cards with this algorithm. Note that some Equihash coins have changed the algorithm to remain available for GPU mining.

The other algorithms have been mined on ASICs for quite some time, unlike Equihash and Ethash, for which ASICs were released in early 2018. ASICs displaced GPUs and monopolized the market on the algorithms listed above.

Bitmain Technologies was founded in 2013. The company is headquartered in Beijing, and has offices in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Tbilisi, Qingdao, Chengdu, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Next, we can highlight the company Innosilicon http://www.innosilicon.com

Innosilicon manufactures many computer components, including asics for different algorithms, such as Equihash, SHA-256 and others. Innosilicon is headquartered in China.

Another well-known company that produces asics is ASICminer Company https://asicminer.co

They only make asics, but there are not many models. Prices range from 4.5 thousand dollars to 20 thousand dollars. ASICminer Company is headquartered in China.

As you might have noticed, most ASIC manufacturing companies are located in China. There are quite a few manufacturers of ASICs, but they are either not that popular or their prices for equipment are very high.

The table below lists more or less major manufacturers of asics and provides links to their official websites.

The firm			Algorithms	Price
https://www.bitfily.io/product/snow-panther-a1/?lang=ru
SHA-256	From $900 to $2500
Ethash
https://bitfury.com

 

SHA-256
https://pangolinminer.com

 

SHA-256	From $200 to $4,000
Blake(14r)
http://miner.ebang.com.cn

 

SHA-256	From $700 to $1,000
https://halongmining.com/shop

 

SHA-256
https://www.baikalminer.com

 

Blake2B.	From $200 to $1,500
Lbry
Pascal
X11
Quark
Nist5
CryptoNight
https://ibelink.co

 

Blake256	From $1,000 to $4,000
X11

Best asics

 

It is very difficult to say which is the best ashik, because complexity is constantly increasing in all algorithms and new more and more powerful ashiks are coming out.

Don’t forget about the price of electricity in the place where you want to place the ashik, because they consume a lot of electricity. The more expensive the electricity fee, the less profitable it is to mine an ashik.

In fact, Russia is the most favorable country for mining on ashcas, because electricity here is noticeably cheaper than in other countries.

An example of electricity prices:

Country	The price of electricity
Russia	from 2-6 rubles
Ukraine	2 to 7 rubles
Belarus	From 3 to 9 rubles
Poland	10 to 15 rubles
USA	From 8 to 30 rubles
Germany	from 22-30 rubles

In general, we can safely say that the price of electricity is the lowest in Russia, which means a greater number of asics will be available to citizens of Russia.

For example, let’s take the average price of electricity in Russia – it’s 4 rubles.

Below is a screenshot of the asyk calculator with the electricity price we set:

As you can see, a lot of asics are profitable for mining with this power fee.

The green color indicates the best (profitable) asics at the moment. The other colors are less profitable asics.

Now take Poland, where the average price of electricity will be 12 rubles.

As you can see, there are fewer green (profitable) asics, and 2 times fewer yellow (average profitable) asics.

Now let’s take other countries in Europe, where electricity costs an average of 20 rubles (the U.S. would also go with this example).

We see that now the yellow color is almost completely gone. Also, there is a large number of asics, which mine with a small profit, we can say almost on the rosette – they are marked in orange. And, most importantly, there is a red color, indicating the asics, which mine not even on the rosette, but immediately in the negative.

With this example, we wanted to say that the concept of “the best asicic” is stretchable, because it depends on the most important factor – the price of electricity.

But in any case, the most profitable asyk will most often be the newest (or just released), because its task is to outperform competitors and its own previous models.

The best asics are made by the following companies:

• Bitmain
• Pangolin
• ASICminer
• Baikal

Note that manufacturers often resort to the fact that they release a new ashik, do presales for 1-2 months, and as soon as the shipment of ashiks purchased during the presales begins, the same company releases an improved (read: more powerful) model for the same algorithm.

Again, it’s hard to name the most profitable and profitable ashik, because this market is an arms race. That’s why you can’t guess which one you are buying: the newest one or not, because while it’s on its way to you, a more powerful model may come out.

But there is another important factor: not only power, but also reliability and assembly play a big role in the quality of an ashik. Here, again, everything is not so happy: apart from beautiful words from the manufacturer, you will not have any guarantee that the ashik will not break in 2-3 months or faster, that it will not burn out or just all the major coins of this algorithm will not go to a new algorithm to protect GPU mining.

We advise to focus on the rates of return calculators (taking into account electricity prices), feedback from users who have already bought this ashik, as well as the news of coins of the selected algorithm, if this is the first ashik for this algorithm: whether coins are going to switch to a new algorithm to become ashik stable.

The main companies that you can trust, we have listed, but as you can see, the best asicic is chosen based on your individual needs and, like any product, based on the reviews of pioneers who are already using this asic.

Novelties

New asics come out all the time and much more often than graphics cards.

Novelties can be distinguished:

1. In terms of power – the new asics are more powerful than their previous models or competitors
2. Algorithms – asics, which came out for the new algorithm: previously coins of this algorithm were mined only by GPU mining.

All new products are covered by the Bytwork team in our news articles and in a separate section about asics (hash rate, profitability, consumption): as soon as a new asic appears (more powerful or for a new algorithm), we will inform you about it. So follow our news!

2. Connecting

Connecting an asicus is not much different from connecting a GPU farm.

The first thing to do is to power the ashik itself from the power supply – plug in the PCI-e connectors and power the board itself. Next, connect the power supply to the socket.

After the ashik is powered up, it needs to be connected to the Internet using a LAN cable.

That’s it, the ashik is assembled and working. Now we need to find it on our computer to connect it for mining.

To do this, we find the asyck in our local network using any ip-scanner.

After you find an ashik with the ip-scanner, copy its IP address and paste it into your browser. This will allow you to go into the ashik’s web interface to configure it for the mining pool.

Next, we register on the asyk’s website (in our case, the Bitmain website).

Then go back to the ashik configuration page, which we got by entering the IP address of the ashik. Go to the configuration settings, and enter the name you used when you registered on the Bitmain site (or any other site), as well as make up and enter the password in the “Password” field.

After entering the data, save the settings and the ashik will automatically restart.

Next, go to the “miner status” section to make sure the asyka is active.

Go to antpool (or another site, depending on the manufacturer of the ashik) and enter your registration data. Here you can see all your statistics about Bitcoin mining (or other coins – depending on which algorithm your ashik was made for).

That’s the end of the setup. All that remains is to wait for the cryptocurrency to accumulate.

This is a rough breakdown of the ashik setup. From the technical point of view it will be 90% of the time correct. And in terms of tuning for the mining pool may be different – the pool depends on the algorithm and your ashik, our example is the tuning of Bitmain and antpool ashiks.

Power supplies – what kind of power supplies are suitable

Power supplies for asics are most often produced by the companies producing the asics themselves.

For example, the Bitmain website always offers a power supply for the selected model.

You can also buy several ordinary power supply units, that is, the ones used to power mining farms of video cards or home computers. You can buy such units at any store, the main thing is to find a unit with the right number of cables.

Don’t forget to take a power supply with 15-20% extra watts for stable operation.

Our website takes an in-depth look at power supplies suitable for mining: their efficiency, drawdowns, ripple, internal equipment, and more.

Asics can also be powered by server units – their power must be from 1000 to 2500 watts, depending on the consumption of the asicic respectively. They have disadvantages – high cost, small warranty and difficulty in finding a new, not used, unit.

Good reputation have such server blocks from IMB, Dell, Bitmain and others.

When selecting a power supply unit, focus on:

1. Brand (reliability of the manufacturer). On our site you can read about the most reliable manufacturers of computer units with which you can power your asics https://bytwork.com/articles/kak-vybrat-blok-pitaniya-dlya-mayninga.
2. Power and equipment. The power should be with a small margin. The number of wires should be sufficient for power.
3. Guarantee
4. Price
5. The unit must not overheat.
6. Reliability. The unit must be reliable, with good reviews.

Temperature and cooling

The optimal operating temperature for asics is 70-80 degrees. The smaller the room and the worse it is ventilated, the hotter they will be. This is due to the fact that asics consume a lot of electricity, and therefore give it back in the form of heat.

It also happens that just 1 asik can heat up to 80-90 degrees. This is already a critical temperature, although many experts say that the operating temperature of such equipment can go up to 110 degrees, at a higher temperature the parts will start to melt.

Therefore, it is best to try to keep the operating temperature between 70 and 85 degrees.

There are several ways to cool the asics:

1. Ventilate the room. If possible, keep a window open so the room can cool down.
2. Use regular fans. They will blow the remaining hot air off the asics, making it cooler. The fans should be directed straight at the asics.
3. The third method is the most budgetary and almost no result, but some home miners resort to it. Place basins of water and ice around the room: the ice will evaporate and the cold air will slightly cool the apartment.
4. Using humidifiers. Since asics dry out the air, a humidifier will bring freshness back into the room and cool it down a bit. Remember that they should not be used near the asics!
5. The fifth way is expensive, but the most effective in terms of cooling – air conditioning.
6. Make an exhaust hood in the room or room. This method is also very effective, but also costly.

Guarantee

The warranty on an asicle is a very far-fetched notion. As such, there is no warranty at all. Buying equipment from resellers, more often than not you are buying a pig in a poke.

Even by ordering an ashik directly from the manufacturer, you also have no guarantee as such.

However, in 2018 Bitmain opened a service center in Russia. Now the owners of damaged ashiks just need to write to support on the official website and wait for instructions, after which they can send the ashik to the specified address of the repair office in Russia.

So far only Bitmain has done this. Yes, many other manufacturers have offices in cities around the world other than China, but they do not affect Russia.

In fact, before this service appeared in Russia, Bitmain or any other as such did not have a warranty.

As for repair, everything is a little easier: in many cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, special shops for repairing asics have opened (there is even a possibility to call masters at home). However, such services are not cheap at all.

Mining

What’s being mined – algorithms

More and more asics are trying to capture new algorithms. Now we will look at the current algorithms for asics.

• SHA-256 is the first algorithm. It is the basis of Bitcoin
• Nist5
• Scrypt
• X11
• Quark
• Skein
• Groestl
• Lbry
• Pascal
• Blake(14r)
• CryptoNight
• Blake(2b)
• Qubit
• Myr-Groestl
• Equihash
• Ethash
• X11Gost
• Decred

It should be noted that asics for the Ethash algorithm do not particularly threaten GPU mining of these coins, as literally 10-15% more powerful than a regular farm of RX570 4GB video cards.

As for the other algorithms, they are all taken over by the asics and GPU mining goes into minus there. We should also add that many major coins changed their algorithms as soon as an asic came out for them, so they abandoned the asics in favor of mining on video cards.

It’s always great news for GPU miners when coins hold promise and remain asic stable.

However, for people who have placed pre-orders for these algorithms, this news can be disappointing because almost all of the companies that produce these algorithms make pre-orders and send out the asics only in 1-2 months. In this case, the companies do not give an opportunity to return the money, and the main coin, for which the ashik was purchased, went to another algorithm – in this case, the ashik simply does not pay off.

This is an example of a Monero coin: originally it was based on the CryptoNight algorithm, and as soon as the asic for it came out, it immediately changed it to a new one – CryptoNightV7.

Pools

There are quite a few pools for asics. One of the largest is https://antpool.com.

, owned by Bitmain.

The following pools are also very good:

https://zpool.ca

– suitable for both GPU and ashik mining.
https://www.suprnova.cc/ – differs from most in that registration is required.
https://zergpool.com – for GPU and ashik mining.
https://unimining.net – has only a couple of algorithms for mining on asics.
https://bsod.pw/ – large pool for GPU mining, only a couple of algorithms for asics.
https://www.f2pool.com/

– only asic algorithms.

Income – how much they bring per day

This question can be answered approximately, as the income depends on two factors:

1. Ever-increasing difficulty – as more and more new players come into mining every day, the difficulty of mining increases, and thus the number of mined coins decreases.
2. Exchange rate – since cryptocurrency prices change every day, the profit per day is constantly changing. Today, for example, you can get ~$4 per day from 1 asic, tomorrow $2, and in a week already $16 per day. Or it could be the other way around.

Let’s take a look at how much you can earn from one new latest asic at the moment. All calculations are current at the time of writing (August 2018).

One S9j on the SHA-256 algorithm yields Bitcoin coins a day:

• 0.000598 BTC per day
• 1.96 $ – net profit, minus electricity charges (the average cost was 7 rubles / day).

The cost of this asicic is $575.

Consider asics for other algorithms. For example, Scrypt and its Litecoin coin. From one Antminer L3++ a day comes out:

• 0.032873 LTC
• 0.40$ – net profit minus the electricity fee (the average cost was 7 rubles).

The cost of this asicic is $289.

As of today, the price of cryptocurrency has dropped a lot. It can be calculated that the payback of these asics at the current rate will be almost 2 years, but that can change as soon as the price of cryptocurrency increases.

When buying an asic, you must understand that there is no guarantee that you will pay off at all. However, you should not be afraid of falling rates due to constantly changing cryptocurrency prices, but you need to have free money to pay for electricity.

If you decide to take an asic on credit, always count on the worst outcome, because its payback can last up to two years or more. And the lifetime of an asic is often no more than 1-1.5 years.

Differences between an asic and a GPU

Asic or video card? – is one of the frequently asked questions among miners and crypto-enthusiasts. Let’s break it down in more detail.

Connecting and configuring the ashik and GPU

To build a GPU farm you will need:

1. The system assembly is where the video cards are plugged in: the motherboard, the CPU, the hard drive.
2. A power supply, which can be purchased at a regular computer store.
3. Risers for connecting video cards.
4. Drivers
5. Setting up for mining (finding pools, creating batons, etc.)

Connecting the ashik, as mentioned above, is much easier: you just need to power the ashik with the power supply, insert the Internet wire into it, and configure it for any of the pools you like.

It turns out that assembling and connecting an asic is much easier than assembling a mining farm from scratch, largely because the asic is an independent piece of equipment.

Power consumption

Recently, more and more cost-effective asics have been released, consuming less power than their older predecessors. On average, 1 ashik consumes 1,400 watts.

Some modern asics, such as Antminer E3 for the Ethash algorithm, are more profitable in terms of power consumption than a farm of video cards, giving the same hash rate.

Antminer E3 consumes only 800 watts, unlike a farm of 6 video cards, which consume almost 1000 watts and give the same power as an asic.

Note that quite a few asics continue to come out with enormous power consumption. Sometimes these figures can go up to 3000 watts.

As for video cards, things are a little worse here, since the increased power on video cards is compensated by increasing the power consumption of the video card itself.

It comes to the fact that 1 GPU for summer 2018 can consume up to 350 watts. It turns out, a farm of 6 such cards will require ~ 2100 watts + system + possibly additional cooling system.

But there are also quite a few advantageous cards that consume only 150-170 watts. Such as the AMD RX 570 or, for example, the Nvidia 1070.

It is safe to say that so far there is a draw in this area. There are a lot of asics with high power consumption, and there are plenty of video cards with no less power consumption as well.

Comparing ASIC and GPU: pros and cons

What is an asic, the principle of its operation and structure we discussed above.

Let’s see what the difference between an asic and a video card is.

	ASIC	GPU
Power	Several times more powerful than the GPU	From 150 to 750 h/s
Number of mined coins	Depends on the algorithm	Depends on the algorithm
Algorithms	1 (maximum 2)	Anyone
Versatility	Under 1 (maximum 2) algorithms	Under multiple algorithms
Temperatures	70-85, but can go up to 90 degrees Celsius	Depends on the model of video card and its own cooling system. The average normal temperature is up to 70 degrees Celsius
Noise level	Very high	Noise from 1 card is almost inaudible
		A farm of 6-8 cards equals the sound of a working vacuum cleaner
Dimensions	Compact (average 400mm*130mm*330mm)	Rig of 6-8 cards takes a lot of space (the average size of 1 such rig is 1000mm *400mm *400mm)
Guarantee	There is no guarantee	Warranty from the manufacturer (store) 1-3 years
Lifetime	“cat in the bag”: from 1 month to 1.5 years	2-3 years
		Most often works by warranty period
Method of purchase	To order from China or resellers	At any hardware store
Price	$150 to $20,000	From $180 to $1,300

Is it possible to assemble an asik with your own hands

Is it possible to assemble an ashik with my own hands? You have to answer this question yourself. If you know a lot about electricity, have skills in soldering and programming, as well as the selection of computer components, then theoretically you will be able to build your own ashik. Otherwise you will have to hire specialists, which will be very expensive.

In order to assemble an asic, it is necessary to create a chip – the integrated circuit board itself. To do this you need:

1. Preparation. It is necessary to accurately represent the mechanism of operation of the device. At this stage, diagrams of the device are created to visualize the interaction between the nodes of the chip. It is also necessary to make performance calculations, build temperature charts and calculate other aspects.
2. Preparation of materials. At this stage, you need to select the appropriate materials (they must be able to withstand the load placed on them) and prepare the ready-made elements (resistors and capacitors).
3. Creating the printed circuit board. This is where all the parts are soldered – the board itself is made – the ASIC. It is also tested and debugged, if required.

Next, you need to create your own chip, but it is very expensive and takes a lot of time to develop, so it is easier to buy ready-made.

You can already draw a small conclusion that it is almost impossible to assemble an asic at home by yourself: it requires too much versatile knowledge and money.

Let’s break down the assembly of the ashik in more detail:

• First, you need to assemble the chip or buy it from the manufacturers. And here you will face a problem, because you are unlikely to be able to buy ready-made microcircuits in Russia, which means you will have to negotiate with foreign manufacturers, most often China.
• Secondly, it is necessary to create a program for the asik to mine the desired cryptocurrency.
• Third, you need to choose a power supply.
• Fourth, assemble the cooling system and housing.
• Fifth, solder all the parts and install the software for mining.

All of the above is just the basic work to be done to assemble an ashik at home, on top of that there will be many more small purchases and installations.

If you have one of the skills we discussed earlier, you are unlikely to be able to build an entire asic, because it requires a huge amount of versatile knowledge, which means that you will have to resort to outside help.

Writing a program for mining a certain algorithm from scratch will take a lot of time. In fact, the entire assembly of an ashik from scratch will cost a lot of money, because you will still have to build several trial models to make sure that the ashik is assembled reliably, does not pose a risk and plus it brings more profit per day than the electricity costs.

Conclusion

Does it make sense to buy an asic? – This is a question that many miners face, especially now, when the capacity of coin mining is constantly growing.

Of course there is a point, especially if you have your own room and inexpensive electricity. Recall that because of the high noise level you should not assemble a farm of asics (and 1 asic) at home.

You can buy asics if you have free money, because when you buy an asic, you can’t say exactly how long it will last: You may make a lot of money on it, or you may not even pay it off.

Pros

• High power = high hash rate
• Small dimensions
• Mining some of the most popular coins (Bitcoin, Lightcoin, and others)

Minuses

• No warranty
• Lifetime is unknown
• High electricity costs
• High temperatures
• High noi