The 11GH/S HexFury Is The Latest In Low-Power ASIC Bitcoin Miners
If you’re a bitcoin nerd, you’ll know that finding cheap, low-power mining hardware is pretty hard to do. USB “thumb drive” miners are traditionally woefully underpowered – the little mining rig under my desk right now is running three three BlockErupters and I’m essentially paying for the pleasure of mining bitcoin – but this 11GH/s unit seems to have what it takes to at least make a dent in the blockchain.
Confused as to what this does? Read my tutorial for a bit of context. Essentially this board runs the calculations that makes bitcoin work and, more importantly, runs them fast enough to earn you a little money.
It’s sold by ASICRunner and is in stock right now. At a little over $265, it’s affordable to the average miner and it can run on a standard USB hub and host machine, which seems to include the Raspberry Pi. It uses last year’s Bitfury chips, special ASIC designed for mining, on a “stick” board with a single USB jack. This means you can place a bunch of these on a hub and because they aren’t as power-hungry as a traditional ASIC you don’t have to worry about them overheating.