The Best Litecoin Miner: ASIC and FPGA are HERE!

With the aggressive – and some say, unfounded – surge in the value of Bitcoin and other peer-to-peer digital currencies in recent months, many people are asking how they too can profit from this global craze, well we say get a Litecoin Miner. The deep popularity currently enjoyed by Bitcoin also means that its value has matured, making it an unsuitable choice for rapid growth, and rapid profits.

Therefore, we take a look at an emerging alternate cryptocurrrency: Litecoin and try to find the best Miner on the market.

Litecoin Overview

Litecoin minerThink of Litecoin as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Just like Bitcoin, there is no single governing entity that controls the value of Litecoin. Users are free to mine it, trade it and make instant payments online without anyone knowing the identities of the parties involved. And they also both share a fluctuation in recent prices per coin.

However, there are some important distinctions to remember between the two cryptocurrencies also. The founders of Litecoin decided to make their currency more efficient to mine using just consumer-grade hardware.

This ease in mining also means that Litecoin transactions are much faster to process. And whereas Bitcoin is limited to a production run of 21 million units of currency, Litecoin will up the ante with 84 million total units of currency.

What is Litecoin Mining?

One mines Litecoin by running free open-source software (cgminer is a popular choice) in specially-built low-power-consuming hardware. The software utilizes hardware to solve certain complex mathematical functions that are used to verify the authenticity of currency transactions. In exchange for providing this valuable service, successful miners are rewarded with a certain amount of Litecoin units.

Top Litecoin miners (ASIC and FPGA):

litecoin miner makes moneyAlthough anyone with a computer can begin mining Litecoin right away, the large amount of electricity needed to keep the power-hungry CPUs working 24/7 makes such mining operations a financially a limiting proposition as the mining difficult rises. Fortunately, low-power hardware designed just for solving these complicated mining calculations (measured in Million Hashes per second) is available in the form of ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit) and FPGA (Field-programmable gate arrays) chips.

As far as a new litcoin miner is concerned, the main differences between the two technologies involve power usage, hash speeds and the up-front cost of setting up the dedicated hardware for mass manufacturing. Luckily, as we will discover in the next paragraph, litecoin miners do not have to worry about this difficult step as there are many new Litecoin mining companies that already (or plan to) offer powerful dedicated hardware.

Major Update, 19 March, 2014: KNCMiner jump to the top of the pack, 100MH/s Scrypt MINER!!

 

KNCMINER: “Top dog” with Consistent delivery!!

Kncminer is the top Bitcoin ASIC device manufacturer and with the announcement of their Scrypt based miner; “TITAN” they have once again left the competition in the weeds. This miner comes in at 100MH/s….let me repeat that 100MH/s. Making it the fastest Litecoin miner (and all other Scrypt coins, like dogecoin) on the market (Amazing once again). KNCminer has consistently delivered all their miners without delay so you can rest assured that they are going to once again change the face of Virtual currency, don’t get left behind.

More details can be found at the KNCminer Website:

 


Other Top Manufactures:

 

Alpha Technology

This company offers the Viper (Scrypt) miner line of ASIC hardware at two price points. This company recently started taking pre-orders and expect to pay a down payment of $650 for the lower end hardware running at 5 MH/s and about $2,700 for the higher end 25 MH/s chip. Products are tentatively scheduled for shipment around the second or third quarter of 2014. 

CryptoIndustries

They plan to offer the custom Ra boards built using FPGA chips and come in 1, 5 and 10 MH/s variants. However, although the final designs for the products are complete, no prototype has been delivered yet. Additionally, there is no word on the cost to buyers for the different variants of the hardware. We also do not have a final date on when the products will begin shipping.

Sluicebit.com

They offer 2 separate products: The Sluicebit II and the Sluicebit IV litecoin miner. The Sluicebit II is capable of 2 MH/s while running at 100 watts. Expect to pay $2500 for this edition. Their second product, the Sluicebit IV is capable of 4 MH/s while consuming 115 watts. It retails for $4,500. They are already taking deposits now and are targeting March 2014 for completing product development.

TDC-CLOUD

This Australian company offers a variety of products for digital currency miners. Their offers include the Bitcoin ASIC-based TDC-CLOUD miner which can deliver hash rates at around 1 TH/s (for Bitcoin). Preorder is available now and the first batch is likely to be shipped in February 2014. Price is currently set at around $5,400.

They also offer an FPGA scrypt miner version of their TDC-CLOUD. This chip runs at 1.5 MH/s and retails for around $3,000. There is also a second, higher-powered version of the FPGA-based chip. It can run hashes at 3 MH/s and retails at $5,000. Like their ASIC cousins, the first batches of the FPGA chips are also set to begin shipping in February 2014.

FlowerTech

This Canadian startup has the ambitious goal of making the first ASIC chip designed specifically for mining Litecoin . A feasibility study on this proposal has already been started that will conclude sometime in late 2014 (they maybe a late to the party). The company claims the initial results so far have been very encouraging.

No word yet on how many millions of hashes we will be able to uncover per second, or even just how much such a dedicated hardware will cost. We also have no idea if, or when, the product will begin shipping. But one thing we can say for certain is that any ASIC chip designed specifically for Litecoin will get our attention when it is available in the market. Time will tell if this will be the best litecoin miner on the market.

Fibonacci Inc. (former LTCFPGA)

They expect to offer three different variants of ASIC miners: Recursion, Axiom and Epsilon. Each variant will differ in the number of on-board chips, ranging from just one chip in the lower model Recursion to 32 chips in the high end Epsilon.

The company believes its chips can reliably deliver hash rates of at least 960 KH/s. Fibonacci has not released figures for how much the different models will cost, but it is projected to be in the $0.9-0.81/KH range. The company does not know the exact date they will begin shipping but it is expected to be in the first half of 2014. They do say that they are not taking preorders.

ltcgear.com

ltcgear offers multiple FPGA based miners including the Scriptor Solo, the Scriptor 8X and the Scriptor 8X Light. Prices range from $50 for the single chip Scriptor Solo to $130 for the Scriptor 8X Light and $250 for the high-end 8-chip Scriptor 8X. Hash rates range from 25-250 KH/s depending on the model. Although shipment for these products began in late 2013, the website is frequently out of stock on these chips.

Open Source LTC FPGA Miner

This proof-of-concept open source litecoin miner is based on FPGA internal block ram, which means it is fully compatible with currently available Bitcoin mining hardware. The exact hash rates users can expect to see depends heavily on the type of hardware used. Figures from 2 KH/s to 45 KH/s have been reported. It is free and already available for testing.

So that is our round up of the current Litcoin Miners in development. We will be keep this list update and sharing new developments as they happen.
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