But yes one of the biggest players and affecting you mining profits is your power costs , cause in most of the cases your only cost is power. As lower you power cost as longer you can survive in this mining environment, as longer you can survive as longer you as bigger gains you can get.

My power costs is quite high here , I pay 13c which is about little bit more then average worldwide. Currently my gpus doesn’t make anything in mining , just costs me money. As there is big total market cap drop in last few days and bitcoin hovering now around 4500 usd mark. But luckily there is hardware which is still profitable for mining at my current electric rate which is few types of asic miners and also the new thing FPGa mining. You might seen it in my previous post on YouTube , my tests and setup on BCU1525. Which is still very new and there is very limited software that could be used to mine cryptos. At the time of the video I was running bitstream with mining nexus coin 3.5usd a day and probably a lot less now as the markets has crashed even more. So I got my hands on a private bitstream for the same dev whitefire, who developed Nexus bitstream. But the biggest issues im facing is to cool down this peace of hardware as it uses a lot of power and has only passive cooler, and air cooling with extra fans doesn’t help as much. So I have figured out to air cool this fpga in Antminer s9 case and running this fpga with 80% efficiency and mining 12usd a day. I just cannot tell yet which currency and bitstream im using as whitefire doesn’t want it to release it yet, before its not tested properly.

So this is what I did to cooldown :

1. Dissembled Antminer S9 and removed all the useless S*** whats inside.
2. Removed  BCU1525 cover
3. Attached all the cables and put in case.
4. Changed fans which where on to S9 to Delta QFR1212GHE

This got the temperatures down to 67c at all times.

So guys to answer you question, if mining is profitable. It is , but it is like a race whoever can do most efficient , of course the return of investment isn’t as high as it used to be but is still profitable depending on hardware and your running costs you are using. And if gpu mining will ever come back , im not sure how long it will take and maybe till profit on gpus returns there will be more efficient gpus out there. And if profits also stays like this, also I have lost money on buying gpus for mining. But its ok its part of the game.

So the things you have to know before you starting to setup, I tested this FPGA of couple different mining algorithms . And the FPGA im using is BCU-1525 , it has passive cooling which is not doing a great job. And you have to be very careful if you use it, as the board is very expensive and if you overheat it no warranty will cover it. :

1. You have to use additional cooling if you want to run these fpga at full performance. (still haven’t figured out how to cool down it properly. As for example I was mining Nexus coin with top bitstream from Zetheron the fpga overheated in about 1-2 after starting mining I did manage to get the temperature down to 80c with adding 2x additional Detla fans 5000rpm
2. You need Bit-streams and mining software to actually mine some algorithms , which are still very little available.
3. Its suggested that you use about 1cpu core per 1x BCU-1525 .
4. These things can use quite lot of power , about 350w per card
5. They do have only 1x8pin pci connection.
6. Also use good quality risers and don’t use sata cable as the will burn, use 6pin pcie connection and connect straight to riser card without any adapters.

So to start mining following steps are , as im still learning  about FPGA cards I was using Zetheron installation guide for setting up BCU-1525 . It was very useful and easy to understand :

1. Drivers : Direct download link: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM21228_Setup.zip Unzip and run the installation utility.
2. Install Vivado Lab Edition Direct download link: https://www.xilinx.com/member/forms/download/xef.html?filename=Xilinx_Vivado_Lab_Win_2018.2_0614_1954.tar.gz (you will need to create account on Xilinx before you can download it.
3. Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Redistributor Download and install the Visual C++ 2013 redistributor package: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=40784

4. Download FPGA Bit-streams Download your desired FPGA bit-stream from the Zetheron Website: http://zetheron.com/index.php/downloads/ You must download a bitstream that is compatible with your hardware. If you are using a BCU1525, you should download bit-streams designed for BCU1525.’ If you have a device to under-volt your card, such as the Zetheron Dynavolt or the Linear DC1613A, you should use a bitstream optimized for the low-voltage version ‘VCU1525-Low Voltage’. Performance varies quite dramatically based on the FPGA operating voltage. For the 0xToken miner, you can get 11.55 GH/s on a stock VCU1525, and 15.09 GH/s on a card that has had its operating voltage decreased from 0.85V to 0.74V. That is an increase of more than 30% in hash rate. Other memory intensive algorithms can gain a similar 30% increase by over-volting the card to 0.95V. For maximum profit it is strongly recommend to acquire a device to adjust your card’s voltage. I have tested both 0xtoken mining and Nexus mining Bitstreams.
5. Download Appropriate PC Mining Software FX-Tokenminer here: http://zetheron.com/index.php/downloads/ Unzip the mining software into a known directory on your computer.
6. Install & Connect FPGA Hardware Make sure your FPGA card has power to its PCIe riser (or is plugged into the motherboard), and connect an additional 8- pin PCIe power connector to the upper back of the card. Connect a USB cable from the front of the card to your PC’s USB port.
7. Program the FPGA with the Bitstream : Launch Vivado Lab Edition and select Open Hardware Manager. Right click on ‘Open target’ and select ‘Auto Connect’. Assuming your card was powered up, and plugged into a good USB port your card should show up in this window. If you have multiple FPGA you will try to run mark them with serial numbers on cards which will show up in you ViVado Lab . When you are ready, click ‘Program Device’, select the file, and then click the blue ‘Program’ button. Once you click the blue ‘Program’ button, Vivado will start programming the FPGA with the bitstream. Once the programming completes, double click on the Sysmon icon. Now click the ‘+’ icon to add VCCINT as an additional sensor to monitor. This will allow you to monitor FPGA temperature and also the voltage card is having.
8. Next thing is to launch the mining software you have downloaded, for this im using Nexus miner. Im have extracted this on desktop, and I have located into this miner folder trough terminal. When you will try to launch miner it will show you sample details how to launch it, so just fill out your pool and wallet address to launch miner.
9. When you launch miner monitor you FPGA temperatures which is very important to not get overheated. If you temperature goes up rapidly shut down miner and you will need additional cooling to run this. To stop zethereon nexus miner press ctrl+c , was also using 0xtoken miner which only way to turn off was shutting down mining rig power.

So this is the setup how to start mining with FPGA BCU-1525 on windows. These miners will include some mining dev fee which is normal, as ofcourse there is a lot of work to create such bitstreams and miners. Also there is few other bitstreams which are available on fpga.guide which does need also to buy license to use them. When I will get them tested I will let you know which one is the most profitable one. So click the subscriber button :