Check out my buddy's new Bitcoin mining setup

Honestly, I was a bit bummed that he didn’t give me a heads up, especially since I helped him with his ETH rigs before. But after hearing his explanation, I kinda get why he did it. Or maybe not everyone will agree? He decided to go for this Bitcoin miner because it looks a lot like a GPU. His reason? He’s got a ton of leftover parts from his previous ETH mining setups, like motherboards, pricey power supplies, and even some risers just sitting around. I swung by his place and was pretty impressed. This miner is super easy to set up; it's basically plug and play. I helped him get everything going, and it fired up right away. Do you guys think that if you already have a bunch of PSUs and risers, opting for these GPU-style miners is better than the usual ASIC miners? I also measured the power usage with my own gadget, and it’s pulling about 177 watts from the wall, while the specs say it should be around 150 watts. Is that extra power draw just from the PSU? Would you say having your own PSU and risers is a good enough reason to choose this BG02 miner over other brands? What are your thoughts?

177÷7.2= 24.5 watts a th If it is quiet it could be a space heater. Also if he had 2 of them and a good efficient psu I think he could do better than 24.5 watts. What did it cost? I would buy 1 or 2 if they were not costly. Psu units are tricky. They have sweet spots for being efficient. A 750 watt psu platinum is most efficient at about 400 watts or two of these miners. So if he has a 750watt gold and is doing 150watt pull from the miner it will not be that efficient. Last I looked at these units they were costly.

The miner is very quiet, I was surprised and impressed. He paid a supplier in China for $210. The PSU I choose was a 850watt Platinum, he bought almost all those PSUs specifically for efficiency because he was rocking 1660s on ETH using solar panels before, I specifically advised low power consumption graphics cards at the time. Of all the six PSUs there is only one Gold PSU, that's why I said he has expensive PSUs.

That's pretty cheap for 7th/s compared to NerdQAxe++, which is around $300+ for 4.8th/s. This Magicminer BG02 seems to looks like a GPU but doesn't need a PCIe connection and can also be connected wirelessly. How does your friend turn the PSU on? are your friends use a jumper wire to connect the green wire and ground to keep the miner on?

I know of a lot of plat psu's If he ran a second unit it would do 10% lower than it does with one. I would buy 2 cards for 420 if they took a credit card just to demo them. I have endless well a ton of mobos and the like that could run 2 of these.

$210 for 4.8th/s is pretty solid if it holds up. The issue I'd have with it is longevity... these cheaper Chinese units can be hit or miss on build quality. Would be interesting to see how it's doing after 6 months of continuous running. The 177W vs advertised 150W thing is normal, specs are usually measured at the wall under ideal conditions with a perfectly matched PSU. 18% over isn't great but isn't terrible either. At 24.5 w/th and current difficulty you're not making money unless electricity is basically free, but as a small quiet unit that reuses old ETH mining PSUs it's a decent hobby setup. Way better than trying to run a full ASIC in a house, anyway.

Yeah, that’s a fair take — upfront numbers look good, but with these budget units the real question is always MTBF and how they behave under 24/7 load. Power overshoot is pretty standard, and honestly 177W vs 150W isn’t shocking, just needs to be priced into the ROI calc. As a low-noise, home-friendly miner it makes sense, but like you said, this is more a hobby box than a serious profit machine unless power is dirt cheap.

If you need a space heater and run two of them to give you the heat you need its a good deal. Since the power was going to be spent running the space heater. There are places that need spaceheaters. I would think a good 750 plat rated PSU would do two at 310 watts. I found these miners on ebay but closer to 400 each not 210. https://www.ebay.com/itm/397326742898? . .

Based on the miner design and hashrate, it's probably BG02 miner that already discussed on Bitcoin GPU mining is back, indirectly. . With such inefficient W/TH, don't expect to make any profit unless you take risk of solo mining.

I think this miner can work without a motherboard? All you need is the PSU to power it and they will start mining on their own without the motherboard, can OP please verify this or someone ?

Based on a few YouTube videos that I watched, they can run it without a motherboard and access it via laptop or mobile phone on the same network. It only needs a PSU to power the unit and connect it to Ethernet to set up via your mobile or laptop and set up the Wi-Fi if you want to run it wirelessly. It's weird, isn't it? It looks like a GPU, but you can run it without a motherboard. It looks like it is just a design if you want to plug it into the motherboard.

They can mount on a pcie extender. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HHSPPBD/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A22JOEKCFS25T0&psc=1 You do not need the wires just the slots/riser. And you can screw the riser to a piece of wood. Actually these would be good at the right price. And at better efficiency. But they are over priced and not efficient

Magic Miner BG01 4,5 TH/s 120W 280$ Magic Miner BG02 7TH/s 150W      320$ https://www.ebay.com/itm/397042687010 https://www.ebay.com/itm/376736793696 This sounds more like a good gift for an IT geek. However, it's very expensive and has very little chance of making a profit in solo mining. I'd even say the result will be zero in 99.99% of cases.