For the last day i have been working on some stats and ROI for 2 types of investment for 12xGPU RX5700 MineBox 12 mining rig and Innosilicon A10 ETH ASIC miner. My goal was to let the data speak about it self and then make a decision what is better investment for ethereum mining GPU or ASIC. Im compering 2 most efficient miners :

1. ASIC miner Innosilicon A10 , costs 3000usd(specs. 500mh/s at 860w)
2. GPU miner MineBox12 , cost 4487euro ( specs 700mh/s at 1800w)

Miner price is about the average would it cost to you 12xGPU mining rig might cost you 100-300 cheaper if you would build one yourself. Innosilicon A10 would cost you lot more if you would like to import it out of China. Price would be closer to 3500euro + you would need to buy power-supply for it.

I have created google spreadsheet and inserted the GPU data and performance by the current currencies price and mining profitability. Included also my thoughts about advantages and disadvantages using GPU or Asic miner:

Opinion based on mining profit data. We can see that MineBox 12 ROI if electric price is free or very cheap is faster then ASIC miner A10. And even at 0.10c a kw/h at current Ethereum price there is only 80day difference on Equipment payback time. But the biggest thing is for example when your miners are paid back your investment. You still are available to resell your MineBox 12 hardware for other use case or just mine different coins. Where with Innosilicon A10 you can throw it into bin as soon as ETHASH coins are not profitable to mine. This is the biggest downside of Asic miners. So to answer your question is ETH asic mining coin. My answer would be Yes ASIC miners are slightly more profitable , BUT they are not worth the risk you are getting by buying one. Also you can see clearly that GPU miners has lot more advantages then Asic miners. The difference on ETH miners are not so noticeable then like it was Bitcoin GPU vs ASIC mining. There is still profit to be made with GPUs mining ETH. If ETH switches to new POW ProgPOW , again another benefit for GPU rigs as the same GPUs are quite efficient mining ProgPow. Buying and Asic miner there is to much risk, saying from experience. Have lost a lot of money, my last adventure bought 5xAntminer S17 back in November and 4 of them hashing boards stopped working after 1st week. Not counting the previous purchases Antminer D3 etc..

Let me guys know what you think about this, would your rather use ASIC miner for mining ETH of GPU miner?

This is very important, even more when profitability is very low. Here are the steps we did:

Tools needed :

GPU-Z – https://bit.ly/32LonaI

flasher – https://bit.ly/2TlZlMl

BIOS editor – https://bit.ly/2IcYNSC

GPU BIOS collection – https://bit.ly/3crXCfV

So for test purpose we have had 2x RX5700 non XT version. We have edited timings and also upgraded nonXT version to XT.

Follow the steps:

• Download you gpu bios to backup with gpu-z

• Extract flasher to your C: drive

• Download Original XT version from GPU BIOS collection

• Open XToriginal.rom with BIOS editor and edit timing straps and save bios in your flasher folder. Straps edited copy 1500mhz to lower 1850…..etc (similar way as RX570 4gb cards) . These cards does have 2 bios, so edit both of them, after each time editing you need to save. This tool doesnt allow you to edit 2 bios at the same time.

• Now you need to upload these to your graphic card. Open command prompt as administrator . Navigate you you flasher folder  (cd => cd flash => amdvbflash -i ) this will give you information of the gpu connected in your system.

• Next you need to unlock gpu ROM to upload new BIOS type in cmd( amdvbflash -unlockrom 0 ) 1,2,3 if you have more then one gpu

• Last upload new BIOS to you GPU type in cmd ( amdvbflash -p -f 0 newBIOS.rom ) newBIOS is your saved .rom file name

After flashing, the computer must be restarted. We can already admire the new data in GPU-Z. In this case I had set the boost clock a bit higher. Now the value is no longer 1925 MHz, but 2104 MHz. In real terms the card reaches 2050 MHz with the right cooling.

Easy as that, reboot your system and your hash-rate should increase. If you have done everything explained here. Other flasher versions wont work , download links provided on top of the post.

Video here:

The factory settings are standard, whoever is mining for while now. Knows that from some chips you can get better efficiency, just because quality of every chip is not the same. Lately there is been released an upgrade firmware and manual for Antminer S17 from hiveOS. HiveOS is gpu and asic miner monitoring/remote control. They previous firmware for Antminer S9 and T9 has been very successful. We have done review on this firmware also, and the best feature what Bitmain original firmware does not have is auto-chip tuning. It works very well, basically it finds the most optimal chip oc and the voltages to reach best efficiency.

We have now also tested the new firmware for Antminer S17, it does perform much better then Bitmain original firmware.On Antminer S17 53TH/s version , air cooled miner we where able to reach 75TH/s @3300 watts. It worked very well and setup is straight forward. It is possible to reach even better performance up to 85 TH/s , but you will need immersion cooling. As with air cooled at 75 th/s our miner chip temperatures where close to 80c at room temperature 15c. Also be careful , Bitmani stock power supply Antminer S17 max power usage is 3500 watts.

hiveOS asic miner the installation guide :

Notes

And now let’s go back to the installation process. There is no universal manual, for S17 and S17 Pro there are 3 versions of stock firmware. Therefore, every particular case has its own manual on the custom firmware installation.

Please note, that all the manual steps which involve using BTCTOOLS can be done via ASIC’s web interface (BTCTOOLS is usually used for a large number of devices).

Preparation Stage (required for all the options):

1 .Download and unzip the following archive: http://download.hiveos.farm/asic/repo/fw/Antminer/s9k-s9se-st15-st17-installer.zip.

2. Scan the network using BTC_TOOLS and export the list to csv. From csv, copy the IP list and insert it in ips.ini. In case you don’t have a lot of devices, you can make this list manually. Or use bitmain ipreporter tool.
3. Go to config.ini and check login and password for the ASIC’s SSH or web interface. If the password for the web interface was changed, the same would be for SSH. Set up FARM_HASH to connect to Hive or API, if necessary.

2. Download the firmware file (it has to have “Hiveon” in its title): http://download.hiveos.farm/asic/s17/

For S17 and S17 Pro, we offer the same firmware file. However, there are two options: “signed” and “nosigned” firmware. The signed firmware can be updated ONLY to another signed Hiveon firmware via ASIC’s web interface or BTC_TOOLS. Third-party or official firmware can’t be installed in this way. However, you can use the rm -rf /etc/bitmain-pub.pemcommand — send it to your ASICs via the Hive web. It will temporarily delete the certificate, but you can reboot your ASIC to bring it back. After this, you will be able to move to any firmware via the firmware update menu (in the Hive web). It will be possible to choose the firmware from the list or to use the URL.

The signed firmware can be downloaded here: http://download.hiveos.farm/asic/s17/Antminer-S17-S17pro-Hiveon-1.00-sign.tar.gz

If the stock firmware of your ASIC is released before 1 July 2019

1. Flash your devices with a file from the archive “remsigallbefore_2019–07–01.tar.gz”. This can be done via either ASIC’s web interface or BTC_TOOLS in case you have a lot of devices. You will see an error in status, but this is okay — it should be like this at the moment.
2. Flash the devices with the firmware file. Again, this can be done via either ASIC’s web interface or BTC_TOOLS.
3. Launch “3hashfarmforsigned.cmd” from the archive. The ASIC will get connected to the web.

Stock firmware released from July 2019 to December 2019

1. Launch “1openssh.cmd” from the archive and wait for the script to be performed. The devices will be rebooted. After the reboot, wait for around 3 minutes.

1. Launch “2upgradereplace.cmd” from the archive and wait for the script to be performed.

1. Flash the devices with the firmware file (via either ASIC’s web interface or BTC_TOOLS)

1. Launch “3hashfarmforsigned.cmd” from the archive. The ASIC will get connected to the web.

Please be aware you could damage your hardware by applying new overclock to your Antminer S17 .

Video guide: