KNC Miner for LTC, GRLC, X11...

[catdog]

Hi Prohashing community,

I've been mulling over the idea of getting few KNC miners since I stumbled upon them in your help website (https://prohashing.com/help.html) but I am in doubt because as far as I am concerned, they were a Sweden-based start-up willing to decentralize BTC mining back in the days but failed for energy consumption problems. Point being, if an ASIC unit is supposed to mine for an algorithm (SHA-256) in this case, it'll work for that algorithm only, right? How do you have a section for these? Perhaps they'd only mine the SHA-256 coins your mining pool has? I'd like to clarify this... because I'd love to mine Scrypt with LTC or GRLC instead of SHA-256. Is there any mod to change the algorithm? I'm running Fedora here and more than willing to learn and hear from others.

I apologize if this question has shown up in the past, but before I make an 'investment' I'd first like to double check with people who know better than me.

Best,
-C.

[alim]

Hi, I'm going to try and tackle this one on behalf of all us newbies...

1. Every Coins is associated with 1 or more Algos
2. Every "Miner" is capable of mining 1 (or more) Algos
2a - ASICs** - generally only mine 1 algo (thus SHA-256 miners can't mine Scrypt; Cryponight miners can't mine Cryptonight7 -
at least until someone write a way around the limitations)
2b - non-ASIC miners' algo range is generally dependent on the miner software to determine which algos they mine

3. Prohashing will pay you in the coin you want rather than "being stuck" with the one you can mine - so you if you have a SHA-245 miner, you can be paid in a Scrypt based coin (or any other coin). Currently Prohashing supports miners with SHA-256, Scrypt, X11 and Equihash. They are looking at bringing in a few more algos shortly.

**Other Points to note: ensure you have the electricity range, understand the noise and heat generation.

As with all things, ensure that you understand the investment cost (fixed price, running costs).

[CSZiggy]

why bother, no one cares.

[catdog]

Hi, I'm going to try and tackle this one on behalf of all us newbies...

1. Every Coins is associated with 1 or more Algos
2. Every "Miner" is capable of mining 1 (or more) Algos
2a - ASICs** - generally only mine 1 algo (thus SHA-256 miners can't mine Scrypt; Cryponight miners can't mine Cryptonight7 -
at least until someone write a way around the limitations)
2b - non-ASIC miners' algo range is generally dependent on the miner software to determine which algos they mine

3. Prohashing will pay you in the coin you want rather than "being stuck" with the one you can mine - so you if you have a SHA-245 miner, you can be paid in a Scrypt based coin (or any other coin). Currently Prohashing supports miners with SHA-256, Scrypt, X11 and Equihash. They are looking at bringing in a few more algos shortly.

**Other Points to note: ensure you have the electricity range, understand the noise and heat generation.

As with all things, ensure that you understand the investment cost (fixed price, running costs).

Thanks for your succint response - it's been of great help.

Does it sound crazy if I can have up to 3.0 TH/s of SHA-256 to be paid in Scrypt - LTC or GRLC? I wonder how this would pan out, because mining at 3 TH/s for BTC is nonsensical, though if payments are processed in LTC, that might change the forecast. Better yet, imagine those 3 TH/s in Garlic. It's a matter of studying further coin by coin offered by Prohashing to find out which would be most profitable over others. I still feel hesitant because although the payments are cleared with the coin of my preference, I am still mining SHA-256 only. I guess I'd do Peercoin, just to avoid Bcash.

KNC made a few type of miners, most of which were totally unsafe. You had to supply the power, and they were dev kits, so DIY and you were on your own. The input for power needed to be double what they provided on most of their units so a lot of burnt out plugs and power issues.

Since originally this was a scrypt-only pool....X-11/SHA/Equihash were added later on as were more mining servers to spread the load...I think that help section is referring to the KNC TITAN miners when mining scrypt.

They were basically 1st gen asics and the firmware/software program they used wasn't the best. They fixed it later with some firmwares, and one of the people on this pool made his own firmware and sold it for the KNCs. Gen Tarkin.

The issue I've had with the KNC titans, they don't seem to switch coins very well/fast, they take time to ramp up. If you plan to mine a single coin all day or static or solo mine you might be OK with them, also understand they are less effecient than the current bitmain generation of asics going around. KNC TITAN is like 1200 watts for 500 hash? Compared to 750 watts for 550 hash now, so expect to pay more in power costs for the same hashing from the older tech, They do not make as much noise, but I do think they generated more heat on average.

Due to power I hope they are about half what you could just get a L3+ for or it might be a losing situation. Only benefit of the TITANS might be you can split the power needs up across multi power sources, so if you are limited by wiring, you might be ok to run a titan where all the power rom 1 line on the L3+ might be too much of a load. Only positive I could see.

What have you heard about this KNC Neptune Cluster? Allegedly it's a series of boxes that are intended to pull up to 3 TH/s for you in total? I believe it's ~1900W in total.

I can still mine Peercoin which is SHA-256 and be paid in Scrypt (LTC-GRLC), correct? Isn't KNC Neptune ~5-6 Titan miners working altogether? How come Titan mines Scrypt if, as far as I know, these ASIC were for BTC only? Apologies for my novice questions... I'm trying to give deprecated hardware a shot to kill spare time and earn experience.

What would you suggest for cooling of the Titans you have had?

Thank you both for your input!