Seasonic to Power Hashfast Bitcoin Mining Equipment
by E. Fylladitakis on October 25, 2013 10:46 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Seasonic
- Bitcoin
- Miners
Seasonic and HashFast Technologies announced that they have signed an agreement for Seasonic to produce power supplies for HashFast’s Bitcoin mining systems.
Seasonic is one of the oldest and most reputable manufacturers of high performance PC power supply units, held in high regard by enthusiasts. Today, the company channels their products via their own retail brand but their designs can also be found behind many other brand names, as they also cooperate with many other companies as an OEM of high performance PSUs. HashFast on the other hand is a new company which has just been founded recently and is based in San Jose, California. HashFast currently plans to focus on the manufacture of Bitcoin ASICs.
HashFast is particularly excited about the Seasonic partnership, given the PSU company's reputation in the industry. In order to accommodate what appears to be standard ATX form factor Seasonic PSUs, the rack mounted HashFast Sierra mining boxes now feature a 4U chassis. HashFast currently offers two mining systems: the tower form factor Baby Jet with a single ASIC, starts at $2250, while the multi-ASIC, rack-mountable Sierra starts at $6300. Both HashFast mining engines feature, aside from Seasonic power supplies of currently unknown specifications, liquid cooling solutions. They are expected to be available before Christmas.
Although the higher efficiency of a power supply hardly makes sense in most applications, it is more than a logical choice for these high power Bitcoin miners, which will operate continuously under heavy stress. The savings from the cost of energy alone more than justify HashFast's choice, while quality is of paramount importance under such conditions. It's also a good move for Seasonic as seeking adjacent markets for its PSUs can help to somewhat reduce its dependence on PCs alone for sales.
It is interesting to note that a virtual currency, Bitcoin, despite the many hiccups and the extremely volatile value, became popular enough to allow for the founding of companies solely focused on the creation of "super computers", designed specifically for mining. High monetary investments on a virtual currency however are extremely risky; individuals should tread lightly, lest this whole thing becomes a 21st century "gold rush". Apart from the fact that the virtual currency is extremely volatile and might lose its value at any time, the generation of a Bitcoin depends on the hashing power of your system(s) against the total hashing power available globally. As ASICs are being introduced into the hashing power of the community, not only they will spell the doom of common home computers but the output of every ASIC will diminish as more similar systems are entering the community.
HashFast is one of a few companies founded this year and will be providing Bitcoin mining ASICs, therefore we expect hundreds if not thousands of such systems to be introduced into the Bitcoin community by the end of 2014. It remains to be seen if the investment of thousands of dollars on such systems is a viable economic investment, or if the massive processing power that will be introduced will make the generation of a Bitcoin a tedious, time consuming process, ultimately without a reasonable economic benefit; or, worse, result to a loss. HashFast does offer a Miner Protection Program for a large fee (nearly double the base cost of their mining hardware) to attempt to offset the risk, but it's still a risk.
To put things in perspective, the hash rate in January of 2013 was around 23.25 THash/sec, with a difficulty of 3,249,550. The current hash rate for the Bitcoin network is now 267,731,249, with a hash rate of 1916.5 THash/sec. Put into ASIC mining rates, the much-delayed Butterfly Jalapeno ASIC rated at roughly 5 GHash/sec would have generated around 23.5 BTC/month in January; with a Bitcoin value of $13-$21, that works out to $300-$450 per month. Today that same 5 GHash/sec hardware generates around 0.30 BTC/month, or $50-$70 depending on what Bitcoin price you want to look at for the past ten days. In terms of efficiency, the Jalapeno is still generating more money in BTC than it uses in power (45W means a power cost of $3.25 per month at $0.10 per kWh), but with the network difficulty skyrocketing we're only a few months away from the break even point for BFL's Jalapeno, and other ASICs will inevitably follow suit. (The HashFast 28nm ASIC appears to be ~10X as efficient as the BFL Jalapeno.)
Source: Seasonic USA
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
29 Comments
View All Comments
ShieTar - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Yeah, because money tends to flow from speculators to consumers in the long run. As long as the value of the bitcoin is rising, it will be of interest to speculators. Since the overall amount of bitcoin is restricted, but the overall amount of real world currencies is growing exponentially, it has a natural tendency of rising in value. Its the same thing with gold, and real estate, and every other object in reality that can't be created as quickly as money.Unless people decide to no longer be interested in it, in that case the bitcoin value starts falling, but no reasonable business-person will trade his goods and services for bitcoin in that situation.
Sunsmasher - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
And once the speculators are done with their manipulation of the market, Bitcoins will crash in value, and the poor goofs that had faith in them will lose their shirts. There will be no bubbles alright, and also much less value in Bitcoins.Shadowmaster625 - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Is there any rough estimate on how many bitcoins could be mined in one month from one of those $6300 Sierra system? Assuming it was deployed right now...And if 500 such systems were deployed exactly what effect would that have on the bitcoin mining rate of one system?
JarredWalton - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I updated the text with an example, but you can run your own calculations here:http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator
tipoo - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I had wondered whether more known manufacturers would get into this field. I guess this will be good for the space.I've always had a vague curiosity about bitcoin mining dedicated hardware, but the problem was always that ship dates seem to always be pushed back, and by the time they are shipped mining may not be economical anymore. See Butterfly Labs, 200 dollars a long time ago would have been a steal for a 5GH/s miner, but they're STILL not shipping in mass and by the time they do who knows how much mining difficulty would have risen (and their shipping itself would raise its difficulty).
kingpomba - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
What the */!#? is happening to anandtech lately? I don’t like where this site is headed. :-(tech.kyle - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Yeah. I remember the good ol' days when it was all just fantastically in-depth and thorough reviews of hardware.martyrant - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I find it rather funny that Anandtech has put the spotlight on Cointerra and HashFast in the Bitcoin arena but has left out the obvious winners in this game: Bitfury and KnCMiner customers made out pretty well. Neither of the companies you covered have anything working currently and are admitting to delays (HashFast in particular). Not to say Cointerra may be the miner to buy in 2 months, but HashFast is certainly not. The fact they were selling "insurance" for their miners was a red flag for anyone with a brain--they're running late on purpose no matter what.The Von Matrices - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I think this article was created because it involved SeaSonic, a major manufacturer if PC Power supplies, not because of Bitcoin.twindragon6 - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Bitcoin mining is f*****g retarded! I love ASICs and all they can do but why not just use all that awesome power to better the world and put it toward something like BOINC and the World Community Grid? A little modification to the BOINC code and bam, pow, zowie, boom; fastest distributed cancer research grid ever!If I could buy one of these bad mammer jamers and use it to help cure AIDS and cancer from home I would totally buy one. Otherwise what a f*****g waste of time, money and resources.