A 5 GH/s Bitcoin Miner is running at around 270 Watt. I tested it with an Wattmeter. Is that a reasonable amount of Watt? In the comparison list on Bitcoin.it it says that those devices are running at 30 Watts! What is wrong with this miner?

  • mine are runnning around 70-80º celsiuis – user12561 Jan 22 '14 at 17:48

If you can hold your hand on the Bitcoin Miner for an extended period of time without burning it, I doubt the cube is consuming 270 Watts. What does your mining software indicate the temperature is? My two cubes run at temperatures between upper 30s and low 50s Celsius. (These cubes do make nice winter hand warmers for cold typing hands:-)

Once you rule out the cube is not sucking the power, the question then becomes what about the associated power brick or the integrity of the meter. Again, imagine the heat a sixty Watt indecent light bulb puts out. If your brick can't be held for an extended period of time without burning your hand, you got a bad brick that mightbe a fire hazard. Otherwise, you got a bad meter or your house may need capacitive power factor (PF) correction where you plug your cube into an outlet.

  • The temperature (according to the software) is between 37 and 44 degree Celsius. It is "hand" warm. So I'm really wondering about the power consumption. The power brick is a Chinese one and it also gets warm. – powtac Dec 23 '13 at 14:56
  • The cubes shouldn't consume more power than a typical Dell laptop PC. The temperature of the power bricks should feel about the same as a laptop brick that drawls a comparable amount of power. – skaht Dec 25 '13 at 2:03

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