Check out the latest quiet consumer miner from GekkoScience, the R909, which joins the Terminus pod-miner lineup.
At first glance, it might not seem like a big deal, but it’s actually a solid upgrade from the R606 in almost every aspect. The R909 keeps the same dimensions as the R606, so if you've got setups around it, they're still compatible. The airflow ducting is identical, and it uses the same 80mm fan. The key change is that the ports and jacks are now located at the exhaust end instead of the side.
This change makes it easier to stack these units since you don’t have to leave space on three sides just two for airflow and one for cables.
Also, we managed to increase the circuit board size by 15%, allowing for a better main regulator and improved heat management. The heatsink area over the chips has been boosted by 40% compared to the R606, and we added extra mounting legs for better stability, especially during shipping.
This miner runs on the S17’s BM1397 ASIC, the same one used in our Compac-F USB stick miner. Kano has been busy enhancing the driver and has included several features that tuning fans will love, although the stock settings are already pretty impressive.
This miner is guaranteed to hit 1.5TH at under 100 DC watts with stock voltage and does it almost silently. While we can’t promise better performance, it seems possible. For instance, the test unit I had was running at 1.8TH with just 70 watts, and the one in the pic was pulling nearly 2.1TH at 88 watts (on stock voltage, without any tuning) for over a week.
BETA release of cgminer for the new R909
The 'beta' comment is that there's quite a few changes, so we'll see how it goes,
I've moved this, since it allows me to edit it more easily, and also gives me full HTML markup to make it easier to read.
Here: https://kano.is/gekko.php
I'll comment here when there are any major updates.
2022-12-11 R606 performance issues have been resolved.
2022-12-13 Windows binary for v4.12.1 is available now at https://kano.is/cgminer.php
2022-12-17 Git updated to add per chip tuning information. Windows binary updated. https://kano.is/gekko.php updated.
2022-12-21 Update to improve performance and tuning. Windows binary updated. https://kano.is/gekko.php updated.
2023-01-14 Update only necessary for the old R808 miner.
a very good news to finally present the r606 successor. i had been waiting for this release for a long time and will definitely order at least 1 exemplar.
@sidehack can you perhaps tell us the range in which the new r909 will be priced?
BM1397-based pod miner, amazing! The efficiency of these chips is so much better than what's in Futurebit's Apollo; depending on pricing, I can see the R909 making the Apollo 'Standard Unit' obsolete.
I'm definitely going to pick one up. (for mining and tinkering.. )
That depends on what you are planning to do, mining on your own bitcoind or not.
IF this CGMiner version is not reduced in its original function, it will be a good replacement, if not, not worth to buy.
Please avoid spreading FUD for your own personal agenda, and at least word it truthfully.
To correct his FUD, what o_solo_miner is saying is that if I don't fix the bug in ck's code, that o_solo_miner insists I must fix for him, where it wont currently solo mine directly to a local bitcoind, then for some reason that is somehow relevant.
Sounds like a lousy attempt at coercion to me.
I do know how to fix it since I've already done it myself to ckpool ... but fixing it in cgminer hasn't been a priority since I'm also unsure about suggesting people do something that could easily lead to losing a block and then having them blame me for it.
While this may or may not seem likely to some, even o_solo_miner's attempt at coercion above makes me wary of such things.
I will also point out that someone put up a pull request to my git to fix this but that pull request can generate work that the miner will never get the reward if they find a block, in certain circumstances.
As I have made clear many times, I don't trust people's code that isn't tested properly.
Especially when it's involved with bitcoin blocks.
--
Edit: I will also point out that I have attempted to get core to simplify block testing for developers.
I've raised an issue quite a while ago and discussed it as can be seen:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/22119
I also explain there how I do full block testing at lower difficulty and the non-testing related issues with doing that.
First, there is no FUD, and there is no personal agenda.
You better word it truthfully:
There is no bug in ck's code, there was a change from core after ck stop the support of cgminer and that stoped cgminers ability to mine
on the bitcoind.
I pointed that out here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5253096.msg54839526#msg54839526
There is no coercion by me!
You pointed it out the last time, and I get it, you won't do it, for obvious reason.
For me (and not only for me) it is a vital point of having the freedom of choice to solo mine on a bitcoind or a pool.
If all trustfull pools/solopools went away, I still got the opertunity to solo mine directly to core.
End of story
Unfortunaly not, it is a cgminer problem, and because there is no alternative to it for running this miner it belongs here.
Sorry, you did a great job on developing this miner and I am sure it will sell like "hot cakes" even without real solo mining.
Yes there are various ways to do it, just a certain person wants to make a deal out of me not directly fixing the problem that's in cgminer
The flags were deprecated in bitcoin core 0.12 in 2015 (it's now empty)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/d449772cf69c01932fc5d72c46054815d6300b3c
And remove during 0.19 in 2019 (since it is empty)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/e9a27cf338dc618b8ecab8984abc54d588de8a05
He seems to want to make it an issue for sidehack for some reason - no idea why.
Again, as before, I'm doing a driver that's opensource and free for everyone to use - with a couple of miners sent to me so I can write it.
Yes as I also stated clearly, cgminer still cannot mine directly to bitcoind, it fails to work, which is called a bug.
(since those changes above in core)
Wouldn't even call it a problem (even though it can classify as a bug); separation of concerns is actually usually a pretty good idea.
Have one process for Bitcoin Core: bitcoind
One process for running the miner: cgminer
One process for connecting the two: Local Stratum server