Unboxing and Review of Bitmain D3 Dash Miner

Dear Steemit Friends,

All cryptocurrencies are experiencing a huge growth and a great amount of media attention thanks to the meteoric rise of Bitcoin. I previously posted an unboxing and review of the new Bitmain S9s I just received. Along with that shipment, I also received my Antminer D3 which is the newest ASIC which Bitmain built and sold for mining DASH.

Like most current products from Bitmain, I pre-ordered my unit 3 months prior to its ship date. Since it is a new ASIC, I figured I needed to try it out. At the time of ordering, the earnings were the most competitive and AMAZING returns that I have ever seen. I got in on the Batch 3 order because the batch 1 and 2 order sold out so quickly.

Below was the earning potential at the time I ordered (considering that batch 1 and 2 had not shipped yet)

The specs for the Antminer D3 from Bitmain's website are:

• Hash rate: 15 GH/s (Variation of ±5% is expected)
• Power consumption: 1200W (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temp).
• Dimensions of the miner: 320130190mm
• Hashing algorithm: X11

My order price was $1450 USD (not including shipping, which was an additional $200 USD) which means I could potentially ROI in a little over a week. (potentially being the keyword - given I had a batch 3 order)

As the 1st and 2nd batches arrived, the difficulty began to skyrocket and the earnings started to drastically reduce. Those who received their units first, quickly ROId and discussions began to rise on forums with concerns about the skyrocketing difficulty.

When my unit finally arrived, it was very unlikely that I would ROI in the short time I had predicted. Not only was this due to me being a 3rd batch recipient after several thousands of units were shipped from Bitmain, but also because other ASIC manufacturers also shipped 10s of thousands of other ASICs out as well.

This quickly became less of a goldmine.

Below is the unboxing video for my Antminer D3:

The first thing that I noticed about the Antminer D3 was that it was a little bigger and heavier than the Antminer S9. It is about 1 inch taller and about 3 lbs heavier at a total of 13 lbs. Unlike the S9, the PCIe ports are recessed into the chassis.

This ASIC as well has 3 hashing boards and 11 PCIe connectors. It has 1 Ethernet port for connecting your router or modem. With the D3 Antminer I also ordered the APW3++ from Bitmain to ensure I had adequate power to run the miner and for easy setup.

As with the S9, the power supply itself is smaller and lighter than the D3 miner. It has 10 PCIe plugs, which are all used to plug in and power the D3 Miner. Again, I must warn you that the power supply 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 unless you have extra power plugs lying around.

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

The miner itself will use about 1200 Watts of power similar to the Antminer S9. Upon powering it up though, you will quickly notice that it is even louder than the S9 - close to 95 deafening Decibels assuming you are running at cool room temperatures. I would definitely not recommend this unit for home use unless you plan to build and place this in a soundproof enclosure that you would again place in another heavily insulated enclosure.

This miner like most products from Bitmain are built very sturdy. The unit itself feels very solid and durable as you can see in the pictures below.

There have been many posts on forums mentioning failures and issues with the hashboards after running the miner for long periods of time, but from my experience, I have not yet run into any issues. The miner itself has been running for weeks with no issues and has even maintained an average hashrate over the specified 15GH/s.

Like the Antminer S9, you can log in to the D3 GUI by going to your router and finding the ip address assigned to it. From there you can type the IP into a browser and log in to the GUI by using the default username and password "root." As usual, I recommend you change these defaults for security reasons.

Within the GUI, you can update, manage, and monitor your miner's progress, stats, and settings.

I decided to only purchase 1 unit of the Antminer D3 because of how new it was. I'm actually glad I did not buy more, because, by the time I received it, the earnings were nowhere near what I had initially projected them to be.

Below is an earnings estimate based on today's difficulty and variables.

As you can see, earnings are very disappointing vs what they were initially when the D3 was first announced. This is primarily due to the dramatic increase in difficulty and amount of hashing power currently in the network. Bitmain and various other ASIC manufacturers flooded the market with units killing the overall earning potential. The earnings fluctuate daily, but the only real way you will ROI anytime soon is if the price of DASH dramatically increases.

Because of the low earnings, I switch between mining various x11 currencies and plan to hold my DASH until it one day MOONs in price - hopefully something similar to the price increase we see in Bitcoin.

As a recommendation however, I cannot rightfully recommend anyone purchasing this miner unless they are holding for a long time because they believe DASH is currently undervalued and has a lot of potential - which I do. If you intend to buy this you also need to be willing to put up with the ear-piercing noise that comes with it.

I hope you enjoyed my review of the Antminer D3. If you have any 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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