Quote from: Korbman on January 31, 2013, 03:21:25 PM

Quote from: debianlinux on January 31, 2013, 03:03:11 PM

Quote from: Korbman on January 31, 2013, 02:53:07 PM

I'm not entirely sure my house is laid out to supply 3600watts over an outlet (though I know zip about electrical engineering, so maybe someone could enlighten me here).

Power, measured in Watts can be expressed as Voltage multiplied by current in Amperes. So, if you know that you will be generating 3600W over a 120VAC (nominal) circuit then you can figure you will be drawing around 30A. That is not an outrageous number of Amps for a home circuit. Typical daisy-chained outlets in a room are supplied through a 15A or 20A breaker at the box. Knowing that you will be drawing at least 30A one would need to wire for likely a 60A breaker with the upgraded wiring to handle that much current. Optionally, one could spread the loads over multiple 15A or 20A circuits which would mean ASIC boxes in every room of the house but no reconfiguration of the wiring and an intimate knowledge of which outlets were on which breakers.

Ah! Good to know, thanks for that.

Thankfully I didn't order 9 Avalons, or else I might be in an interesting electrical situation haha.

If BFL customers consider that Avalon is upgradable (to what extent remains a question), then they may take a second look.

Assuming all modules in an Avalon case are exactly identical to each other. Then I can start mining at 65Gh/s~70Gh/s.

When the upgrades are released by Avalon, I'll have an upgrade path. With BFL none, except buying a very expensive second unit by comparison.

I can put in an order for (possibly) $350 and upgrade my units up to 90Gh/s. Do you think BFL will ramp up their small box/clamshell configuration to run up to 90Gh/s?

I don't think they will.

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Here is the kicker though. Some Avalon users will not upgrade their internals. So as Avalon slowly moves from 110nm to 90nm or however low they need to in the future. The power draw will decrease and the GH/s per chip increases.

Assuming they have 25 chips in one unit. A small additional capacity change multiplied by (let say) 25 will result in a huge increase in speed and higher efficiency per box.

I can then sell off my old Rev1 modules to other miner who want to upgrade their 65~70Gh/s stock unit up to 90Gh/s.

I only need to pay the difference in price between the used modules and the newer Rev2 modules. Depending on the market price that could be, perhaps, 150$ extra out of my pocket for each Rev2 module.

If the current (REV 1) modules are 22Gh/s each, and the second gen (REV 2) modules jump to 30Gh/s or more. Can you guess how much I saved vs buying another BFL unit priced at $1299?

Lets say 30 x 4 = 120Gh/s for an upgrade path.
Lets say I had to pay a difference of $150 for each additional module.
So that is about $600 total to double the GH/s capacity.

What will BFL do? Slash prices?

Ouch, their first run customers would be screaming at the top of their lungs if they did that.

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The silence "sounds" to me like BFL is in the backroom talking about the "issue" before them.

Expect promises to come quickly, and actual changes very slowly.

Heh.

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They have 8 chps and they can only overclock them so much before they seriously cut into the thermal headroom for normal operations. Lets see how big a jump they go to after 60Gh/s.

With more money and time, Avalons upgrade-able units will eventually drop in power use I'd bet.

What you should worry about is having to pay a whole $1300 + Shipping for an entirely different unit from BFL to keep up. Either way, competition is good.