Ant Siacoin Miner A3 Review

Siacoin, also known as cloud storage coin, is a blockchain project for decentralized cloud storage. In the SIA system, people who store files need to pay Siacoin, and the party that provides storage space receives Siacoin as compensation.

Bitmain, a professional mining machine manufacturer, officially launched the Siacoin mining machine A3 in January 2018. This is a new ASIC mining machine launched by Bitmain for a single encryption algorithm after the Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dash mining machine series. A3 can be used for currencies with the Blake2b algorithm, the most representative of which is Siacoin. A3 was snapped up by miners as soon as it was launched. Fortunately, the editor was quick to grab one. How does A3 perform? Let's take a look!

Basic product data

Unboxing photos

The outer packaging of the Antminer A3 is the same as that of other Antminer series miners. It is packed in a five-layer industrial carton with logistics and warehousing graphic labels, product barcodes and QC marks. When you open the outer box, you can see that the miner is protected by pearl cotton board, which ensures that the miner will not be damaged during transportation.

Appearance and workmanship

Antminer A3 adopts front and rear dual fans and three computing boards. The body is one-piece and uses precision die-casting design and aluminum alloy materials to provide strong protection for the computing chip and improve the overall heat dissipation efficiency of the body .

From the top of the mining machine, you can see that A3 has three hash boards. Each hash board has three PCI-E6pin interfaces, and three data cables connecting the hash board to the controller. In addition, you can also see the interface of the control board.

From the front of the mining machine, you can see the IP address feedback button, network cable interface, reset button and status indicator light (as well as the Antminer A3 logo and qc label). The front fan of the mining machine can be seen from the front, where the air enters.

From the back of the mining machine, you can see the rear fan of the mining machine, and the air is discharged from this side.

Installation and Debugging

The power supply used in this test is Ant Power APW3++, which can be purchased on the Bitmain official website. The mining pool uses Siamining. The installation and wiring methods are the same as other Ant ASIC miners. Miners who can use S9 will definitely use A3. After connecting all the power cord interfaces to the mining machine and connecting the network cable, you can power on the mining machine!

The miner will start as soon as the power is connected. Wait for a few minutes until the green light starts flashing, then start looking for the miner IP and enter the miner management backend. (The method is the same as S9. For specific steps, please refer to the previous mining tutorial video of Antminer https://v.qq.com/x/page/l0560u1kh9z.html)

It should be noted that the background settings for Siamining mining are slightly different from those in other mining pools. The worker column is filled with your Siacoin receiving address, the mining service address is filled with asia.siamining.com:3333 and asia.siamining.com:7777, and the password column does not need to be changed.

If you have multiple mining machines, please add .001 after the address to distinguish different mining machines, as shown in the figure below. (For example, if you have two mining machines, add .001 and .002 after the address respectively)

Noise and heat

The mining was conducted in Siamining’s PPS mode (the mining pool charges a 3% handling fee). The test location was a conference room with an area of ​​about 30 square meters and a room temperature of 15 degrees. The heating and noise tests were carried out after the mining machine ran for 24 hours.

At 10cm away from the mining machine, the noise of the mining machine was measured to be 74dB, but at 1 meter away, the noise dropped to 65dB. In general, the noise of the Antminer A3 is relatively low, which shows that Antminer's noise reduction technology is getting better and better.

After running for 24 hours, you can see in the background of the mining machine that the temperature of the A3 hashboard is about 55 degrees and the temperature of the chip is about 80 degrees, which are all within the normal range. The speed of the front and rear fans is about 4,000, which is also within the normal range.

Computing power and power consumption

Antminer A3 hashrate curve

Antminer A3 power

The official hashrate of the Antminer A3 is 815G. During the 24 hours of actual testing, the actual hashrate averaged about 824GH/s, 1.1% higher than the nominal value. The official power consumption of the Antminer A3 is 1275W, and the actual power consumption is 1316W, which is also slightly higher than the official nominal value. According to the actual tested hashrate and power consumption, the power consumption per G hashrate is 1.61W/G.

A3 24-hour operating income

As of the press date (January 30, 2018), the price of Siacoin is 0.25 yuan. According to Siamining's PPS mining revenue model, the revenue of an A3 in 24 hours a day is 1,070 Siacoins, equivalent to RMB 267. Calculated at 0.3 yuan per kWh, the daily electricity bill of A3 is about 9.5 yuan, and the daily revenue is about 257 yuan.

Evaluation Summary

The overall performance of the Antminer A3 is very satisfactory. The power consumption per unit of computing power is as low as 1.61W/G. The computing power remains stable after long-term operation. In addition, the A3 has low noise. As long as the door is closed, you can hardly hear any noise.

Antminer A3 continues Bitmain's precision quality. The mining machine runs stably and can mine stably once it is plugged in. The installation process is also very smooth, and even a technical novice can use it easily. In addition, decentralized cloud storage has a huge market value in the future. As a leader in the current decentralized cloud storage blockchain project, SIA has huge room for growth in the future. While the difficulty of Siacoin mining is not very high now, it is also very good to buy an A3 to mine some Siacoin!