ASICMiner Block Erupter USB 330MH/s Sapphire Miner

Wonderful piece of bitcoin history and they work perfectly as designed and advertized. It is a shame I was not paying attention to this in 2012 but then again maybe it has saved me some money. Bottom line is do some homework. I am going to assume only a beginner would be looking here so let's get on with the beginner review.These ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) USB devices do one thing. Generate SHA-256 hashes at a rate of 336,000,000 a second. So it is a little faster than the 330 MH/s in the spec. As a comparison you can go to www.bitminter.com IMHO the easiest mining place to start with any version 7 or higher java. Using a Lumia windows phone gives me 900,000 to 1,000,000 hashes per second. 990 kH/s - 1.0 MH/s.On a 64bit core i3 it jumps up to 12 - 14 MH/s. Run this specifically on a GPU (graphics card) that has lots of cores you can jump this up to 30 MH/s up to 290 MH/s which seems awesome compared to the phone right, but check your system and you see it's sucking 80 watts of power and needing to run the fan at 95%All this elementary introduction aside lets get back to the ASIC here. It will run 336 MH/s and only use 2 to 2.5 watts of power.This would have been a mint in 2012. To bring this up to 2015 you need to jump up to GH/s, yeah a giga hash. 1,000,000,000. You would need 3 of these to average around that number.Time to wrap this up and not drag you into any more math which will only disappoint you. This calculation is my opinion based on what I have read in the last month and what I have actually done with my own hardware. A 1 GH/s seems to be the lowest rate to be able to calculate and this does not include SCRYPT this is for SHA-256. (still working on my scrypt testing)I estimate 1 GH/s running 24/7 would average 7 or 8 cents worth of bitcoin a month. But with pooled mining you have fees and there are transaction fees and like I said you need to do your homework. There are other crypto coins that may be more profitable. There is one other thing you need to take into consideration. How much does your power cost? For me even a small 20 watts costs $1.22 a month.So if you get free power or if you need some extra heat because these things do run very hot. (any small fan or air flow will cool them or add a small heatsink) go right ahead and buy these up and get a powered USB hub and with 10 or 20 of them mining a multi pool you will get some coin.VJ

This product did not come with any instructions for how to get it working, even though the description said that it would. It also isn't immediately clear what version of the miner I received, which leads to a decent sum of problems because apparently the version matters when trying to get it to run.I also made the misunderstanding of thinking that this could be used to mine litecoin, which it cannot. This miner only mines certain coins that use a certain algorithm. While that flub was more-so on me, I can't help but feel like that info may have been intentionally left off the description to make those used to mining altcoins think that the product is more powerful than it really is.At the end of the day, I can't recommend this product, even as a learning experience. You can turn your own computer into a mining rig and get the "learning experience" that this product offers for free, so why pay $40 bucks for this?

I bought nine of these through Jones Gear (great seller, great price) along with an Anker® USB 3.0 9-Port Hub + 5V 2.1A Charging Port with 12V 5A Power Adapter [VIA VL812-B2 Chipset and updated Firmware 9801], the ARCTIC Breeze Mobile USB-Powered 92mm Portable Fan, Portable Cooling Solution, Quiet Fan - White and Cosmos ® 8 PCS Aluminum VGA video gaming card RAM Cooling Heatsinks heat sink cooler + Cosmos Cable Tie as the Block Erupters can run hot.I got this product because I wanted to learn more about Bitcoin, and I thought it would be a fun hobby. I have not been disappointed. They're great conversation pieces and it's fun to watch the green lights go off when one delivers a Proof of Work. I run these through the BitMinter mining application and I think after installing the drivers it took me all of 30 seconds to get hooked up and hashing in the pool. They typically hash 333-335 MH/s when they're running at full capacity, so better than the advertised 330 MH/s which is great.I should state, however, that if you're looking to buy these as an investment in Bitcoin then you should just buy XBT directly. With the recent difficulty increases (typically ~30% every ~14 days), you will likely never make your money back on these. Even buyers of the heavy-duty ASIC mining devices (200-400+ GH/s) are looking at zero to negative profits by the time of delivery.Almost all of the mining calculators I have seen assume that the difficulty will remain constant for more than 14 days. This is flat out wishful thinking. Assume your XBT generation will go down by 30% every 14 or so days and you have a more approximate estimation.So in conclusion: if you want to learn more about Bitcoin, have something interesting to talk about with people and support the network, this is a great product. If you're trying to make money, I'd encourage you to stay out of mining entirely.