Is the Baikal Giant-A900 Miner ASIC Worth It? – Review
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So far I’ve been only talking about the Baikal Mini Miner and the Baikal Quadruple ASICs. As stated in previous articles, both of them give impressive results. They are small, power efficient and very profitable.
Today I’d like to review the Baikal Giant-A900, which is the biggest and most powerful miner in the series. It is designed to mine six algorithms, including the X11, X13, X14, X15, Qubit and Quark. Just like its smaller versions, this miner is tailored to mine DASH crypto coin.
In this review, I will go over the miner specs, then I will show how to set it up and finally I will elaborate on why I believe DASH is one of, if not the best coin to mine as for today.
Specs
The A900 main feature is the amazingly low power consumption. With a hashrate of 900 MH/s, the miner pulls only 216 W from the wall. This is one of the main reasons why people choose the A900 for home mining.
The package does not include a PSU, but a generic ATX one will get the job done.
Profitability
900 MH/s is a lot, especially because DASH price is going up lately. According to Cryptocompare and Coinwarz, you can expect an income of somewhere between $690 and $710 USD per month. This includes electricity costs with an average price of 0.10$/KWh. This is quite impressive considering that the miner costs $2,380.0.
All of this means that the Giant-A900 has probably one of the top ROI among ASIC miners, taking only roughly 4 months to break even.
Features
The Giant-A900 is a straightforward DASH crypto coin miner. It is really easy to configure and use. It does not have or require any additional tools to perform as it does. However, here are a couple of handy features that you might find interesting:
Multi-pool mining – the Giant-A900 supports most DASH pools. It offers eight pools to choose from plus it allows you to add as many custom pools as you need.
Smart algorithm switch – This is yet another handy feature of the Giant-A900. It guarantees you optimal mining efficiency since the miner will always choose the most profitable algorithm to mine. In brief, all you have to do is specify your mining pool and wallet; the rest is done automatically.
Cooling and Noise Levels
The A900 comes with two coolers, which keep it at a stable temperature even in summer days (though keeping the miner in a cool room is advisable). Now, this also is reflected in the noise levels, which are 65 Db for both the power supply and the miner.
Set-Up
One of the main things that set the Baikal Giant-A900 apart from its smaller counterparts is the assembly time. Due to a different architecture, the A900 requires some extra cable connections. The steps are not hard to follow; however I will try to be as detailed as possible here.
Before we get started, I’d like to quickly review all the elements we will be operating with.
As seen in the image, this is what is included in the box:
- One A900 miner
- One 4-Pin to USB Cable
- One 8-PIN PSU connector cable
- Two Five-pin blade cables
On the top part of the miner we got the Power Module and the Orange Pi One board:
The miner contains two fans, one from each side of it. One side has the fan alone, while the other one also includes 10 ports:
- Four 8-pin power jacks
- Two input jacks
- Two output jacks
- Two USB jacks
Step1
Connect the Power Module to the Orange Pi One board.
Step 2
Use the 4-Pin to USB Cable to connect the Orange Pi board to the 4-pin connector, as shown in the pictures:
Step 3
Now let’s connect the Output of the master board to the Input of the slave one. The picture might show it better:
Step 4
Next, we plug in the network cable:
Step 5
We’re almost set at this point. All we have to do is connect the power supply to the miner. Make sure to turn off or unplug the PSU from the wall first.
We’ll use the 8-Pin double PSU connector cable. The single side goes to out PSU, while the double side goes to our two miner boards. Once done, we just turn on the PSU and we’re good to go!
Software Configuration
Just like the other Baikal miners, the A900 has three LED lights. The red one turns on when the miner is running. The blue one starts to flash as soon as the miner turns on. This indicates that the miner is attempting to connect to the internet. This usually takes less than one minute, after which the blue light remains turned on without flashing. If by some reason it keeps flashing for longer than 3-4 minutes, it means that there’s an issue in the PSU or the internet connection.
Once established, all you have to do is go to your router configuration, check the IP of the miner, and use it to log in to the A900 control panel. Use the following login and password (Lower case “b”, both password and login are the same): baikal
Once you are there, make sure to configure your wallet address and your mining pools.
As I mentioned before, the miner supports multiple pools. You can add more than one to the list and establish priorities. If the current pool becomes inactive for some reason, the miner will instantly switch to the next one, according to the priority you’ve established.
That’s it – set up and configuration will take you only a couple of minutes, after which you can start enjoying the mining process.
A Little Bit More About DASH
Before I conclude today’s post, I’d like to elaborate a little bit more on DASH. According to crypto currency experts, DASH is one of the best coins to mine as for today. There are several reviews where people analyze the crypto coin development, its team and the progress that was made so far.
What I concluded from their analyses is that DASH is one of the few coins that have a highly-skilled team of programmers with a working plan. In addition to that, DASH community is supportive and active. Finally, the coin is being traded a lot – the amount of DASH transactions steadily increases from month to month. All of this gives me reasons to believe that the coin won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Where To Buy Baikal Giant-A900 Miner
In Conclusion
I could say that the Baikal Giant-A900 is one of the best miners available for home crypto coin mining. It is compact, power efficient and really profitable. 4 months ROI might seem a lot for those of you who are new to crypto coin mining, but do keep in mind that the usual ROI for ASIC miners is somewhere between 9 and 13 months!
The only downside that comes to my mind is the noise levels of the miner. 65 Db is not a lot, but it still can be annoying, especially for those who live with you. 2300 dollars is also rather a big investment. However, good news is that you can always purchase the Mini Miner first and then switch to something bigger.
Anyway, what are your opinions on the Baikal Giant A900 ASIC miner?
Baikal 900Mh/s Giant-A900 Miner Review
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Performance
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Assembly and Set-up
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Hashrate
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Power Consumption
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Noise
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Price
User Review
( vote)
I got 2 of these babies, and I don’t even know what other coins they mine they come without any dock’s. Anyway very happy with the results I’m getting with dash not to be confused with dashcoin
niceee 🙂 from where?
I’m wondering where i can get one as well. hbhale, would you mind sharing?
They release a newer version Baikal miner Giant+ Computing power: 2000MH/s please do a review on this one. thanks
checking now.. thanks!
That must be old school pricing because the new D3 does 15 GH/s for $2800. Giant+ is not worth more than $400.
Pretty much all current DASH mining contracts will be dead within two months. It’s almost unethical selling .5 GH/s for $2250.
the numbers are just insane…
Why will DASH mining contracts be dead in 2 months?
You will have 15 GH/sec * 1000 and 30 GH/sec * 500 of so mining rigs hitting nearly all at once (assuming they ship in Sept as promised). So the difficulty will skyrocket and the profit will plummet. It could be like when Litecoin was killed by ASIC’s in just two weeks.
If Dash, Bitcoin, Litcoin are all maxed out and Ethereum reaching terminal velocity in 2021 combined with its Iminent moved to PoS what coin do you think has the greatest potential to mine? Once ETH goes PoS will ETC be worth while? I also like the look of zcash. What are your thoughts?
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At this point ETC looks very promising from a team standpoint. I haven’t been keeping up with ZCash. I also intuit that DASH could be the next Bitcoin in terms of mainstream adoption (which is why I bought a 2-year contract as the A900 was sold out). BTC has a lot of issues to work through and it looses valuable ground in the interim. How Core vs BIP91 will play out is anyone’s guess and then there’s the hard fork in a few months.
But, I guess there’s nothing wrong with just mining any of the other 817 or so coins as long as converting to BTC can provide a daily net profit vs how much GPU heat you can tolerate. Hitting it big with a mined coin is another matter. You need to be clear on what your objective for mining is: yield or capital gains, because the latter can be done carrying a loss.
To me, rig mining is a way of building up a portfolio of different coins via indirect dollar cost averaging as long as you rotate to whatever is most profitable at any given time. It doesn’t really offer anything beyond that intrinsically. If you’re going for capital gains, buying the coin directly is superior, though not necessarily as passive or as lazy as rig mining. The exchanges are really underdeveloped vs miner control software so it is far easier to mine than trade.
Very interesting. Do you have any recommendation regarding cloud mining companies. From what I understand there have several fraudulent companies exposed in the cloud mining sector. I have looked in genisis however they no longer of Dash. Can you recommend any alternatives? Also what hash rate did you opt for on your 2 year contract?
Just Genesis and Giga-Watt. I went with the 500 MH/s contract about four months ago. Genesis is very limited in what you can mine with the same algorithm so its not very good as a mining rig replacement. Giga-Watt promises more control over that. Genesis also very behind in being competitive with pricing and hash power, which makes me question if they mine themselves with the newest hardware first then offer it to their customers later. I’m sure they have plenty of L3’s since it first came out last year and yet…
The bigger question is if it is even worth mining any of the top seven coins vs directly investing in them. It seems to me the way to make mining as safe as possible is you’ve got to be the very first in on the next order of magnitude hashing rate increase, e.g. the arms race. Any later than that and the perpetual difficulty increases will make sure you have a net loss or break-even at best which is very pointless for the time, stress and money involved. Keep in mind that a minimum wage job produces about $80 a day which is about 15 GTX 1070 cards on the best coin atm (if the pool price isn’t actually B.S.). I do wonder exactly how much of a net profit there is if you are among the very first. Those lucky bastards that snapped up the D3 will find out shortly. And what about the $9999 InnoSilicon A5 eating the $2800 D3 alive or both eating the $6750 IBeLink alive? It’s just an endless black hole.
The rest of the coins are just for shits and giggles. There are ancillary benefits to rig mining… you have a new geek hobby, there’s a social group subculture, you can OCD on optimizing your mining control, etc..
I have the option of getting an A900 for $1500
Do you think its a good price? I see the return per month as we speak is about $200, so about 8month ROI. Is it a good pickup?
How well do you think 900 MH/s will fare against the new 15 TH/s ASIC miners? That $200 will be $25 or less in no time. If you can’t break-even within a year max with difficulty increases factored in, forgetaboutit.