How to choose and buy a mining machine

There are many different types of Bitcoin mining machines available from various manufacturers, but how should you choose one?

There are many factors to consider when choosing a Bitcoin mining machine, but the most important are (a) the power consumption per mining machine and (b) the hash rate (calculation power per second).

(a) Power consumption

Most modern mining machines consume around 3,000 watts of power per unit, but some equipment can consume as much as 4,000 watts.

A powerful hair dryer consumes 1,200 watts of power, so you can imagine how much electricity a mining machine would consume if you left two and a half hair dryers on for 24 hours.

(b) Hash rate

Hash rate refers to the number of calculations per second. Many of the latest machines exceed 100TH/s (100 trillion calculations per second), and particularly high-performance machines (such as 140TH/s models) tend to be expensive. Therefore, it is important to consider cost performance.

Let’s look at the relationship between (a) power consumption and (b) hash rate for some specific mining machines.

The table below lists the models we have handled in the past, as well as the release dates and performance of models currently on the market.

Mining Machine (Manufacturer)	Original release date	Hashrate	Power Consumption	Power Consumption / Hashrate
Antmoner S9 (Bitmain)	May 2016	14TH/sec	1,350 watts	96.4
Whatsminer M30S (MicroBT)	April 2020	86TH/sec	3,268 watts	38.0
Antminer S19 Pro (Bitmain)	May 2021	110TH/sec	3,050 watts	27.7
Whatsminer M50 (MicroBT)	April 2022	114TH/sec	3,306 watts	29.0
Antminer S19 XP (Bitmain)	November 2021	140TH/sec	3,010 watts	21.5
Antminer S19 Pro Hydro (Bitmain)	January 2022	198TH/sec	5,450 watts	27.5

As you can see from this table, many of the recently released models consume just over 3,000 watts of power per mining machine and have a hash rate of over 100TH/s.

One indicator for measuring the performance of a mining machine is "power consumption divided by hash rate." The lower this number, the better the performance of the mining machine. On the other hand, the higher this number, the more expensive the mining machine will be. If the price is too high, the initial cost will be high and it may take longer to recover the investment, so be careful not to buy a mining machine with good performance. Popular new machines are often exorbitantly expensive, so you need to be especially careful.

The Antminer S9, which was released in 2016 and became a huge hit, has only about 1/3 to 1/4 the performance of the latest mining machines.

Now, based on our experience with Bitcoin mining, we would like to introduce some points to consider when choosing or purchasing a mining machine, in addition to its performance.

(c) The expected life of the machine

A mining machine has two lifespans: its economic lifespan and its physical lifespan.

(i) Economic lifespan: As the difficulty of mining Bitcoin increases, the amount of Bitcoin that a mining machine can earn as a reward decreases. Therefore, if you operate a mining machine in an area with high electricity costs, you may not earn enough Bitcoin to justify the cost of electricity.

On the other hand, in areas with low electricity prices, the economic life of mining machines may be longer. A few years ago, I was even impressed when I found some old machines operating on household electricity rates in a rural area of Russia. After some research, I found that there was a lot of activity in the Russian countryside selling used mining machines that were about three generations old. We also sell our older machines on that second-hand market.

We manage and operate our mining equipment in countries and regions where electricity costs are among the lowest in the world, which allows us to extend the lifespan of our equipment, and we can eventually sell our old equipment because of the used mining equipment sales market.

(ii) Physical lifespan: Physical lifespan refers to the mining machine being physically broken and no longer working. If the mining machine is placed in a hot place, its lifespan may be shortened. It is also important to have engineers who can repair the mining machine. If there are no engineers who can repair the machine, the mining machine cannot be restarted even if a breakdown occurs that requires repair, and as a result, the machine may reach the end of its lifespan early.

We place particular emphasis on physical demands and the lack of breakdowns when selecting and recommending mining machines.

(d) Market share of machine manufacturers

The market share of the mining machine manufacturer is also an important factor. If you purchase mining machines from a manufacturer with a small market share, you may run into problems such as a lack of engineers who can repair the mining machines or being unable to procure spare parts.

In addition, mining machines from manufacturers with small market shares are less likely to be sold second-hand. Even for older machines whose economic lifespan has expired, some parts such as fans can be used to repair recent mining machines, but since there are few mining machines from manufacturers with small market shares, they are not very valuable as spare parts for repairs. Therefore, it can be said that you can't go wrong investing in mining machines from Bitmain, the largest company, and MicroBT, the second largest company in the industry.

(e) Shape and size of mining machine

The shape and size of the mining machine are points that are surprisingly often overlooked. As explained in "(7) Where is the best place to place and operate the mining machine?", when managing and operating mining machines at a large-scale mining farm, standard shelf space is prepared, so you need to be careful when a mining machine with a different shape appears.

As an example, let's look at the shapes of the blockbuster Antminer S9 and the latest generation Antminer S19. The S19 has two fans, so it requires more space. Since the S9 was a big hit, many large mining farms designed shelves for the S9, but after models with two fans came in, there were many cases where there were not enough physical shelves.

Antminer S9: One cooling fan

Antminer S19: Two cooling fans

(f) Protecting yourself from fraud

There has been an increase in scams involving the sale of mining equipment, so you should be cautious when making your purchase. It is important to buy from a reputable seller, and doing the proper research will help protect you from scams.

For example, we ourselves had the opportunity to purchase mining equipment from a company that claimed to have a large inventory. However, after checking the company's information, we found that the executives' addresses were in faraway countries and there were many suspicious points, so we decided not to do business with them. (We will explain how to protect yourself from scams in a separate blog, so please stay tuned!)

We also hear of cases where people have paid money to purchase mining machines, only to be told that they cannot operate them at all for various reasons. We provide our customers with the serial numbers of the machines they purchase, and we carefully manage each machine, so please invest with peace of mind!