So, even though I haven’t been seriously mining for awhile, I have been keeping up with Bitcoin mining news and ended up ordering a Jupiter miner (400 GH/s promised) in late September. It arrived yesterday, and I thought I would write up a review.

First, pics.

Shipping and Handling (4.5/5):

Besides the 10-day delay, shipping and tracking was very professional. The miner was packed nice and tight, and my only gripe here is that there wasn’t much redundant packaging. I had one loose fan to fix.

Communications (4.5/5)

Not much to gripe about here either. KNC support always responded to my e-mails within a week. My only gripe here is the change in specs such that a single 850W PSU would not suffice. I received no official communication about this, but was fortunate to read the forums. It’s also now specified on the kncminer website itself.

Power Overwhelming!

General hardware (3.5/5):

Speaking of the loose fan, I was very annoyed that KNC used Torx screws. I had the screwdriver in the closet, but what if I didn’t? KNC knew people would have to fix the fans after October shipped out, but chose to keep using Torx screws to secure the case. I hope no one has a traffic accident speeding to the hardware store in hopes of not losing mining time.

The only other thing to be aware of is the flimsy installation of the 4-pin molex. Just put your finger behind it as you push it in.

Excellent product other than that.

ASIC modules (5/5):

Excellent product here. Zero complaints. I’m most impressed that the engineering team was working after the October release to improve their product some more once they had the time. I knew the November product would have fewer issues than the October product, but I didn’t know they would be doing such good tweaking.

Usability (5/5):

The new Bitcoin mining hardware out there is getting easier and easier to set up, and props to KNC (and BTCGuild) for continuing this process. You don’t really need to know anything about firmware or software. You just log onto the browser interface and type in two fields. Done. I’m using a new mining pool, BTCGuild, and their interface is likewise simple yet powerful.

And pretty.

Price (N/A):

I’m not rating the price, but here are my thoughts on profitability. In September, Bitcoin difficulty was rising quickly and in a fairly unpredictable fashion. I judged there to be only three companies who had a high chance of delivering on their promises:

Cointerra – An Austin, Texas based company that is headed by industry experts, they are still my pick for having the most efficient and well built ASIC,

KnC – A Swedish company also headed by reliable engineering, promised to deliver earliest, and had CC payments as an option.

Hashfast/Uniquify – Uniquify is a company in the SF Bay area and I know they are competent chip designers (I once interviewed there), but I am not sure about HashFast itself.

I ended up going with KNC after looking at some numbers in the mining.thegenesisblock.com profitability calculator. I do cost-benefit analysis in Bitcoins, so my plan was to mark-to-market at the USD/BTC CampBX exchange rate the day before my CC was due. After deducting some bonus point and adding shipping and peripherals to the price, I marked the cost at 16.4 BTC. I was rather fortunate to hit the beginning of the bubble; I was thinking it would be marked around 30 BTC. My initial predictions of the revenue was 10-50 BTC, now it is between 12 and 30, with my best guess being 18 BTC.

Well, thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful and entertaining. Happy mining!