Antminer R4 Unboxing and Setup Video and Pictures
I just got a Bitmain Technologies Antminer R4 and APW5 power supply and I’m going to unbox and set them up. I’ve never seen one of these in operation before although I’ve operated many Antminer S7 and S9’s. R4’s sell out very quickly because they allow people to mine Bitcoin at home without deafening noise. If your electric rate is less than 15 cents per kilowatt hour then this box should pay itself back within a year. It’s made out of just about the latest semiconductor process technology of 16 nanometers and should be good for a couple years of mining at least.
That’s if the Bitcoin price stays in the mid $700 range. If it goes up this should only become more profitable.
The problem with the previous Antminers has been that they’re Extremely Loud. They’re like big hair dryers with loud general noise and screaming harmonic frequencies. They’re really only good in an industrial environment.
The R4 miners are different. They use the same semiconductor chips as the S9 miners and have a specially designed fan and cooling system to make them much quieter.
There are some people that pay very little for electricity. For these people especially it makes perfect sense to buy one of these and plug it in. In the winter, it also provides heat also. At my office at Block Operations I put a GPU Miner in each one of the rooms and it keeps the place warm in the winter and performs the dual purpose of generating crypto-currency and heating the place. If you are in an apartment or dorm room or country where electricity is free for you, this is a no-brainer purchase.
So here’s some pictures and a video of unboxing and taking a look at the Antminer R4.
One of the big differences between this and the previous Antminer is that the power supply that’s recommended is the APW5. It’s very flexible in that it can use just about any AC power that’s available.
One of the things that you need to know is that it does not come with a power plug from the wall to the power supply.You will need an IEC 13 plug at one end of the power cable. The cable I used in the video is a NEMA 5–15p to C13 wall plug.
You’ll also need an internet connection. And you’ll need to configure Antminer to mine to a pool. I’m not going to cover that in this post maybe some other time.
Here’s a picture of what the antminer are 4 looks like when the box is opened.
Here’s a picture of what the APW5 power supply looks like when it’s box is opened.
Here are some pictures of the APW5 and R4 Antminer together.
Comparison of Antminer R4 and S9.
Here’s a picture of the Antminer R4 exhaust. Hot air comes out here. Try not to point the hot air at the power supply intake.
This type of configuration works a little better.
If you want one of these right away, you can buy it on Amazon. You’ll need:
NEMA 5–15P to IEC 13 wall plug
LAN cable to plug into an ethernet port on your router — you can get these up to 320 feet long and they will still work…
Originally published at Block Operations.
