Owners of A4 General Discussion and Help

[citronick]

Steve/Chris... seems my b3 v2.02 latest firmware fixed the issues -- do we still need the g=off and h=50 settings? I omitted them and seems working OK all the way to maximum MHs.

Tests results after Batch 3 v2.02 firmware https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic ... sg17116548

For Batch 1 and 2 owners -- please see note from Innosilicon in Bitcointalk:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic ... sg17109937

[citronick]

Hi Guys,

I am mining with an A4 (batch 3)and i see several drops a day.

My settings:

Speed: 1200Mhz
Diff: 4096

I tried at lower speed and also higher diff, but that doenst make sence.

If you have Batch 3 -- you are in luck v2.02 firmware fixed it for me.
See note from Innosilicon at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic ... sg17109937

[galixxx]

I see several versions of A4 on ebay between 136MH/s up to more than 200... can someone explain the differences between those?
And where did you buy yours? Thx

[fugju]

And where are you buying your A4?
Someone know an non-scam-shop ?

[CritterDog]

I see several versions of A4 on ebay between 136MH/s up to more than 200... can someone explain the differences between those?
And where did you buy yours? Thx

The ones you see at 136Ms are only one cube and one controller and you must buy your own power supply. The ones you see advertised as 280Mhs come with 2 cubes and one controller still you need to buy your own power supply unless seller is listing a power supply with them.

What the ebay sellers are not telling you is the A4 has major bugs in it that have not yet been addressed by the company. If I were you I would hold off on buying anything until all of the problems with the A4 are resolved.. Do not pay the full factory price because you would be buying a defective FACTORY unit. They all are defective with maybe the exception of Batch 3 but it is still to early to tell even with batch 3. I would wait and see how batch 3 performs as it is still very early in there release... But stay away from batch one and batch two.

[galixxx]

I see several versions of A4 on ebay between 136MH/s up to more than 200... can someone explain the differences between those?
And where did you buy yours? Thx

The ones you see at 136Ms are only one cube and one controller and you must buy your own power supply. The ones you see advertised as 280Mhs come with 2 cubes and one controller still you need to buy your own power supply unless seller is listing a power supply with them.

What the ebay sellers are not telling you is the A4 has major bugs in it that have not yet been addressed by the company. If I were you I would hold off on buying anything until all of the problems with the A4 are resolved.. Do not pay the full factory price because you would be buying a defective FACTORY unit. They all are defective with maybe the exception of Batch 3 but it is still to early to tell even with batch 3. I would wait and see how batch 3 performs as it is still very early in there release... But stay away from batch one and batch two.

Thank you @CritterDog for your valuable information. I will therefore wait. Are there any threads on bitcointalk or somewhere else where I can follow this story?

[excelerator]

Thank you @CritterDog for your valuable information. I will therefore wait. Are there any threads on bitcointalk or somewhere else where I can follow this story?

You can follow the 56 page drama series growing here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1523298.1020

Also FWIW, with the enormous influx of A4s into the market, even with profit switching pools, these machines will never ROI at current pricing with just mining. I've linked to an LTC calculator and adjusted coin price to reflect today's "coin price" for switching. Scrypt coins are loosly linked to LTC price overall as LTC is loosely coupled to BTC (halo effect). The purchase price excludes shipping or a PSU and assumes $0.1KwH.
This calculator assumes the difficulty will keep growing (in line with A4 sales) and thus insures the inability to fully recapture the investment. Your best bet to is mine until you have captured your "profit", then sell the machine to secure your return on investment.

People forget that without a growth in the price of scrypt coins, this is a zero sum game.
http://www.vnbitcoin.org/detailcalculat ... evel=68988

[Chris Sokolowski]

Also FWIW, with the enormous influx of A4s into the market, even with profit switching pools, these machines will never ROI at current pricing with just mining. I've linked to an LTC calculator and adjusted coin price to reflect today's "coin price" for switching. Scrypt coins are loosly linked to LTC price overall as LTC is loosely coupled to BTC (halo effect). The purchase price excludes shipping or a PSU and assumes $0.1KwH.
This calculator assumes the difficulty will keep growing (in line with A4 sales) and thus insures the inability to fully recapture the investment. Your best bet to is mine until you have captured your "profit", then sell the machine to secure your return on investment.

People forget that without a growth in the price of scrypt coins, this is a zero sum game.
http://www.vnbitcoin.org/detailcalculat ... evel=68988

I'm not advising reckless investment, but I disagree with your assessment that A4 miners will not even pay back their electricity costs after November 2017. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any more efficient scrypt miners coming out, and without any more efficient hardware, the profitability of an A4 will not go negative. That doesn't mean it will ever pay back its initial price, but on the other hand, over the past three years scrypt profitability never even came close to the point where the most efficient hardware with moderate electricity costs would lose money day-to-day.

[excelerator]

Also FWIW, with the enormous influx of A4s into the market, even with profit switching pools, these machines will never ROI at current pricing with just mining. I've linked to an LTC calculator and adjusted coin price to reflect today's "coin price" for switching. Scrypt coins are loosly linked to LTC price overall as LTC is loosely coupled to BTC (halo effect). The purchase price excludes shipping or a PSU and assumes $0.1KwH.
This calculator assumes the difficulty will keep growing (in line with A4 sales) and thus insures the inability to fully recapture the investment. Your best bet to is mine until you have captured your "profit", then sell the machine to secure your return on investment.

People forget that without a growth in the price of scrypt coins, this is a zero sum game.
http://www.vnbitcoin.org/detailcalculat ... evel=68988

I'm not advising reckless investment, but I disagree with your assessment that A4 miners will not even pay back their electricity costs after November 2017. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any more efficient scrypt miners coming out, and without any more efficient hardware, the profitability of an A4 will not go negative. That doesn't mean it will ever pay back its initial price, but on the other hand, over the past three years scrypt profitability never even came close to the point where the most efficient hardware with moderate electricity costs would lose money day-to-day.

These calculators can spin whatever ROI story you want as they are imperfect models, but the basic crux of my argument is that as long as new A4s continue to ship, difficulty will continue to increase and profits will decline if there is no increase in the overall price of scrypt coins regardless if there are other newer scrypt chips entering the market. Additional and new miners will just make the situation worse (including obsolete scrypt miners used temporarily as winter space heaters).

Also, we haven't had any new entrants for large hash rate scrypt miners since 2014 so we've enjoyed a period of largely slow growth in difficulty and steady profitability. that has come to end, evidenced by your own charting.

Check out http://poolpicker.eu/table for scrypt - you'll see there's a been a ~27% drop in profitability for both Nicehash & Clevermining since just November 10th. I don't have data for Prohashing going back that far.

What could sway all of this to the positive is a very large influx of new scrypt coins during the A4 production cycle to mine and a growing demand for those new scrypt coins (or just have existing scrypt coins increasing in value).

[Chris Sokolowski]

Also FWIW, with the enormous influx of A4s into the market, even with profit switching pools, these machines will never ROI at current pricing with just mining. I've linked to an LTC calculator and adjusted coin price to reflect today's "coin price" for switching. Scrypt coins are loosly linked to LTC price overall as LTC is loosely coupled to BTC (halo effect). The purchase price excludes shipping or a PSU and assumes $0.1KwH.
This calculator assumes the difficulty will keep growing (in line with A4 sales) and thus insures the inability to fully recapture the investment. Your best bet to is mine until you have captured your "profit", then sell the machine to secure your return on investment.

People forget that without a growth in the price of scrypt coins, this is a zero sum game.
http://www.vnbitcoin.org/detailcalculat ... evel=68988

I'm not advising reckless investment, but I disagree with your assessment that A4 miners will not even pay back their electricity costs after November 2017. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any more efficient scrypt miners coming out, and without any more efficient hardware, the profitability of an A4 will not go negative. That doesn't mean it will ever pay back its initial price, but on the other hand, over the past three years scrypt profitability never even came close to the point where the most efficient hardware with moderate electricity costs would lose money day-to-day.

These calculators can spin whatever ROI story you want as they are imperfect models, but the basic crux of my argument is that as long as new A4s continue to ship, difficulty will continue to increase and profits will decline if there is no increase in the overall price of scrypt coins regardless if there are other newer scrypt chips entering the market. Additional and new miners will just make the situation worse (including obsolete scrypt miners used temporarily as winter space heaters).

Also, we haven't had any new entrants for large hash rate scrypt miners since 2014 so we've enjoyed a period of largely slow growth in difficulty and steady profitability. that has come to end, evidenced by your own charting.

Check out http://poolpicker.eu/table for scrypt - you'll see there's a been a ~27% drop in profitability for both Nicehash & Clevermining since just November 10th. I don't have data for Prohashing going back that far.

What could sway all of this to the positive is a very large influx of new scrypt coins during the A4 production cycle to mine and a growing demand for those new scrypt coins (or just have existing scrypt coins increasing in value).

I agree with you that the future outlook for profitability is not positive. The only question I have is do you know if there's any reason why net profitability (i.e. after subtracting electricity costs) for an A4 would go negative? The only way I could see that occur if if there was some more efficient miner, and as far as I know, there is nothing better planned at the moment.