Quote from: vs3 on December 13, 2013, 09:01:28 PM

Quote from: bitly on December 13, 2013, 01:37:27 AM

Quote from: drinkmorecoffee on December 12, 2013, 11:29:49 PM

Quote from: Swimmer63 on December 12, 2013, 09:59:27 PM

Is it possible to do a USB miner with a BFL chip? I am guessing no since no one has done it and they are much more readily available than BF.

Might be possible, but with the BGA packaging they used makes them a lot harder to work with than the more hand-solder friendly packages like TQFP (with the leads sticking out the sides). Plus, BFL lists the chips as out of stock, so I imagine you'd have to buy them from someone who has them stocked up just like BitFury.

The BFL chips uses 3.2 W/GH/s so that's 12.8 W/chip for the 4GH/s chip. That doesn't fall within current USB specs but may be possible in the future.

yup - that pretty much sums it up.

As people already mentioned it - there are 2 major issues when considering it for a USB miner:
#1 - package is too big and cooling requirements are just too much of a pain for a USB miner (BF produces 2-3W of heat, BFL is well over 10W)
#2 - most importantly BFL chip consumes MUCH MUCH MORE power than the 2.5W that USB2 can provide.

Although it is probably possible to make an externally-powered big device that has fans for dealing with the extra cooling, etc, etc - that would sort of defeat the purpose of the simplicity that you get with a USB miner.

The external power is already available(plenty of 12v & 5v on one of these)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpjtcouau6ah0kj/2013-11-02%2012.41.13.jpg
and connected:-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8ho5djfthq0a7u/2013-11-02%2010.26.41.jpg