KnCMiner has started shipping a 3 TH/s Bitcoin mining box, the largest single Bitcoin ASIC miner in existence at the moment. The unfortunate part, though, is that none of these KnCMiner Super Jupiters arrived at their destination in one piece.
KnCMiner has responded promptly on their forum, promising to ship new, properly constructed, units to affected customers, free of charge. KnCMiner also emphasized that customers needing to RMA their Super Jupiter would not have to pay return shipping on the existing $10,000 “machine” that was shipped to them; they could just keep the broken one.
KnCMiner first announced their Neptune 20nm Bitcoin ASIC many months ago in 2013. The product was originally slated for Early 2014 release, but KnCMiner has missed its self-imposed deadline. In response, KnCMiner planned to offer Neptune Preorder customers the option to receive a KnCMiner Super Jupiter, which would have the desired hashrate but 28nm power consumption levels instead of 20nm. KnCMiner offered 400 of these units to their existing Neptune customers, and many ROI-minded individuals took KnCMiner up on their offer. Now… said customers are wondering if they made the right decision.
Two separate loyal KnCMiner customers have taken to KnCMiner forums to express their displeasure. J-J received five separate KnCMiner Super Jupiters, all of which were unusable. Another forum member, freakingcat , also reported deliver of his Super Jupiter today. Both KnCMiner customers report the same situation: KnCMiner Super Jupiters showing up un-assembled and with loose pieces. The specific issue seems to be the mounting system for the heatsinks on the ASIC chip. J-J reports that the only thing holding the KnCMiner provided heatsink to the ASIC chip is the thermal paste. Furthermore, the only thing holding the fans to the heatsink are rubber bands. As such, in the normal course of international shipping, the heatsinks and fans have come loose and destroyed certain parts of the ASIC board. Loose and broken capacitors and other unidentifiable parts of the PCB combined with warranty warning stickers have prompted both customers to not even attempt to power on their devices.
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KnCMiner’s prompt responses:
We understand your concern and we are in contact with UPS regarding the shipping and we are also looking at procedures internally to ensure that this does not happen, we know that this is not acceptable and will make any required changes to ensure that it does not happen again.
Really sorry to hear about this issue you have with the miner. This appears to be due to incorrect packaging and extremely bad handling of the boxes. What we will do for you in this case is ship you another complete miner free of charge. There is no need to send the broken miner back to us in this case. We have passed this issue on to our manufacturing facility and they will send out the replacement miner as soon as physically possible. Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience that this has caused.
Best regards,
Med vänlig hälsning
Keith Gurnett
Kncminer
The good news is, KnCMiner customers will eventually be receiving working 3 TH/s Bitcoin miners. The bad news is that someone, somewhere at KnCMiner OK’d the shipping of these shoddily assembled miners knowing full well that they would never arrive at their destination in one piece. The entire KnCMiner Super Jupiter ordeal was concocted to help KnCMiner save face in light of missing their Neptune deadline; however, with this latest turn of events, KnCMiner should probably count the entire publicity stunt as a failure. All eyes are still on KnCMiner, as their focus is now mass shipping of their 100 MH/s 250 MH/s 300 MH/s Titan of a Scrypt ASIC Miner before the end of this year. The mining community at large, both SHA 256 and Scrypt miners, hope that KnCMiner will establish proper assembly procedures and quality checks in their manufacturing facility. Heatsinks need more than thermal paste to stay attached, in my experience at least.
If you’re interested in Bitcoin mining, check out CCN’s Bitcoin Mining section!
