Unboxing and Review of Bitmain Antminer S9

Dear Steemit Friends,

As most of you are aware, Bitcoin has been on a major Bull Run with the value of the cryptocurrency surpassing as much as $18,000 USD. I have been mining and investing in Bitcoin since early 2014 starting with GPU mining and slowly purchasing a number of ASICs as they became available. I recently received a new batch of Bitmain S9 Antminers which I pre-ordered from Bitmain 3 months ago.

These aren't my first S9s, but they are my first batch since the dramatic price increase and since I have always wanted to, but never had the opportunity, I wanted to post an unboxing article and review of what I think is currently the most efficient miner there is.

As you can see above, the packaging is fairly standard and ensures that the unit(s) are protected from any drops or damage during shipping. They are manufactured and shipped directly from China, so expect that you won't receive them overnight. This on top of Bitmain's new process of offering these and other miners as pre-orders only. What that means is that you will typically have to wait 3+ months before you will actually get your miner. Because of this, I would only recommend you invest only if you have money that you are willing to part with and are not in need of.

The Specs for this miner directly from Bitmain's website are the following:

In lamens terms, what the above specs mean is that this miner will hash at about 13.5 TH/s (13500 GH/s) consuming about 1200 W of power. These can change depending on several different variables and settings. With current prices and difficulty in mining, earnings are roughly $30 USD a day / $200 USD a week / $900 USD a month / $11,000 USD a year before considering electricity expenses. These earnings will also fluctuate depending on value.

Below is my earning expectations as of this writing based on variables at my location for 1 Antminer S9:

Unboxing the unit is fairly simple and carefree. As you can see in my unboxing video below, it really takes no effort aside from the care you will want to take to avoid dropping or damaging the unit.

At the time of purchase, my S9s cost around $1200 each ($1400 including shipping) but with the sudden rise in the value of Bitcoin, Bitmain currently has the current batches at $1400. This means at current earning rates, I will ROI on each S9 in less than 2 months.

Each minor weighs roughly 10 lbs. making them fairly easy to move around. This allows you to place them on shelves in order to easily manage the miners and the number of cables that are involved in setting them up.

In addition to my S9 miner, I also ordered the Bitmain APW3++ which arrived 3 weeks after my S9s. I'm not sure why they were shipped separately, but for those 3 weeks, my miners sat unpowered. I was lucky that I didn't have to pay customs or tax - I assume because I picked them up from the UPS distribution center. Just an FYI for everyone else to try if you want to save a little money. Previously I had to cut UPS a check for around $50 USD when they delivered it to my door. I had 3 shipments which I picked up and I just walked out without having to pay a dime.

I recommend purchasing the Antminer AW3++ not only because it is already configured and optimized for the antminers, but because they are also cheaper ($105 USD) and just as quiet as any of the more expensive PC power supplies.

The power supply itself is a little smaller and lighter than the S9 miner and has 10 PCIe plugs, which are all used to plug in and power the S9 Miner. One thing to note is that it does not come with a power plug to plug into the wall. You will need to buy that separately, so expect to pay an additional $4-$20 USD for a power plug. I'm not sure why it isn't included, but hopefully, most of you have extra power plugs lying around.

Below is the unboxing video of one of my new APW3++ power supplies.

The power supply itself is capable of up to 1600 Watts, however, at 120v it draws only 1200-1300 Watts. It is quiet and generates very little heat. The S9 however, is a different story. The miner ranges from 80-90 decibels and can be heard throughout the entire house. If you are easily annoyed by loud noises, this miner is not for you. I store my miners in an air-conditioned closet with noise dampening foam and I can still hear them throughout the house.

I am currently working on a project building an outdoor mining room in the backyard in order to eliminate the noise and separate the mining gear from my main house. Temporarily I have also built soundproof boxes which help to lower the overall noise for each miner by 20 decibels. I have and am video documenting my journey and hope I can post and share my solution with you all soon.

Connected, the miner looks like the below picture (you will also see an example of one of the unfinished enclosures I built for this miner.)

Each miner comes with a Bitmain warranty, which hopefully you will never have to use. My understanding is that it is sometimes challenging to get parts replaced or units repaired in a timely manner.

The miners themselves are well-built machines. They are very sturdy and have very little moving parts. There are 3 hashboards in each. If you are feeling adventurous you do have the ability to overclock these units to squeeze out more hashing power. This however, is at your own discretion and risk.

Setting up the miners is a fairly simple task. You can visit your routers DHCP table to identify the IP address that has been assigned to the router and then use that IP address to log into the GUI to update the pool and settings information.

To log in, you can simply type the default login and password "root" to access the GUI. I recommend you change these for additional security.

I also recommend setting up more then one pool to ensure that you are maximizing your miner(s) if your primary pool goes down. You can see all your miner stats as well as any failed chips or errors within the GUI.

With the current value of Bitcoin, I feel it is a good investment to order and purchase these miners. They are rock solid in build and design (with the exception of noise) and reasonably priced in order for a fairly quick return on your investment. Cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy stage and I think we still have a long way to go. This investment is still by far not a 100% sure thing, but if you have the extra money to spend, I consider it a risk worth taking which will hopefully continue to pay dividends.

I hope you enjoyed my review of the Antminer S9. If you have any comments, questions, inputs, or feedback, please feel free to post a comment below. I would also appreciate your Upvote, Follow, and Resteem if you feel this post will help others.

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