Antminer X3 Review

In March 2018, Bitmain, a well-known cryptocurrency mining machine manufacturer, launched a new machine - Antminer X3. This mining machine can be used for cryptocurrency mining of the CryptoNight algorithm. Recently, the overseas X3 has finally started shipping, which has made the miners wait for a long time!

I heard that this machine can be used to mine more than one kind of currency, and the returns are not low. In order to help you verify whether the rumor is true, the editor got an X3 and did a comprehensive evaluation for you. The specific performance will be revealed soon!

Basic product data

Unboxing photos

The outer box of X3 is not much different from other series of Antminers, so I won’t go into details. After unpacking, you can see the miner protected by pearl cotton board. Miners who have bought Antminers should be very familiar with it.

Appearance and workmanship

Next, let's take a look at the real face of the Antminer X3! This miner is very different from other Antminer series miners. The biggest difference is that it only has a front fan but no rear fan, so it looks very different from other miners.

From the back of the mining machine, you can see that the X3 does not have a rear fan, and you can see the details of the inside of the mining machine.

In terms of computing boards, the X3 miner also adopts a three-computing board mining machine design. From the top of the mining machine, you can see that the X3 has three computing boards and one control board.

From the front of the mining machine, you can see a series of buttons on the mining machine, including the IP address feedback button, network cable interface, reset button and status indicator light.

Installation and Debugging

The power supply used in this test is Ant Power APW3++, which can be purchased on the Bitmain official website. Because X3 can mine two coins, we choose two different mining pools to mine two different coins. We use X3 to mine XMC (Monero Classic) in Ant Mining Pool (antpool.com) and ETN (E-net) in Poolin Mining Pool (poolin.com). The installation method refers to the official mining tutorial of Antminer (https://v.qq.com/x/page/m0633uvfk2d.html). In fact, the method of use is the same as that of S9, except that the mining service address is different.

Noise and heat

The test location is a conference room with an area of ​​about 30 square meters and a room temperature of 25 degrees. The heating and noise tests are carried out after the mining machine has been running for a period of time.

The noise level of the miner was 64 decibels at 10cm away, but it dropped to 60 decibels at 1 meter away, and 77 decibels at 10cm from the air outlet. When the door is closed, the noise is almost inaudible. In general, the noise level of the Antminer X3 is lower than that of other miners, which may be because it does not have a rear fan, so the noise level is reduced a lot.

After running stably for a period of time, the temperature of the X3 hashboard is about 48 degrees and the temperature of the chip is about 56 degrees in the background of the mining machine, which are lower than those of other Antminers. The front fan speed is 3900, which is within the normal range. It seems that the mining machine is running normally!

Computing power and power consumption

The computing power curve of the Antminer X3 when mining XMC (Ant Mining Pool)

The computing power curve of Antminer X3 when mining ETN (CoinIn Mining Pool)

Antminer X3 background data diagram

Antminer X3 power

The official hashrate of the Antminer X3 is 220KH/S. In actual testing, from the data of the mining machine backend, the actual hashrate averages around 234GH/s, 6% higher than the nominal value. The official power consumption of the Antminer X3 is 500W, but the actual power consumption is 493W, 1% lower than the nominal value. According to the actual tested hashrate and power consumption, the power consumption per K hashrate is 2.1W/K.

X3 mining XMC 24-hour profit in Ant Mining Pool

X3 24-hour profit from mining ETN in Biyin mining pool

As of the press release date (May 7, 2018), the price of XMC is around RMB 60. According to the PPS mining revenue model of Ant Pool, the revenue of an X3 in 24 hours a day is 1.92 XMC, equivalent to RMB 115.

The test date was May 4, 2018, when the ETN price was around 0.18 yuan. According to the PPS mining revenue model of the CoinIn mining pool, the revenue of an X3 in 24 hours a day was 1,447 ETN, equivalent to RMB 260.

Calculated at 0.5 yuan per kWh, X3 uses 12 kWh of electricity a day, and the electricity bill is about 6 yuan. The daily profit from mining XMC is about 109 yuan, and the daily profit from mining ETN is about 254 yuan.

Evaluation Summary

In this evaluation, I tried to mine different coins with the same machine. In general, the difference in the income of different coins is quite large. In the short term, it is definitely higher to use X3 to mine ETN. You can choose which coin to mine according to your needs. The noise of the X3 mining machine is still quite small. I personally think that this mining machine can even be used at home. The heating of the mining machine is also much better than other mining machines. I strongly recommend that you buy one and try it!