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Review: Spondoolies-Tech SP20 Jackson 1.7 th/s Bitcoin Miner Small and Powerful

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:41 PM
Scott Fargo
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:41 PM

time for reviewSpondoolies-Tech has been moving very steadily in the Bitcoin mining manufacturer race. CEO Guy Corem has built a top notch team and guided them to the goal of being the best manufacturer making Bitcoin ASIC miners. The introduction of the SP20 Jackson is a welcome change to their line up. The SP20 is a small bread box sized unit that can push out 1.7 th/s of hashing power. The previous miners from Spondoolies, the SP10 and the SP30, were larger and much louder miners.

While powerful, they the noise levels made them a bit too much for in the home use. The SP20 Jackson is much less noisy coming in at 51 dB at 4 feet. Spondoolies wanted to bring mining back to the home miners, and they have done so in a big way.

Specifications: Spondoolies-Tech SP20 Jackson
Hash Rate: 1.7 TH/s ± 10%, 200 GH/s per chip
Chips: 8x 28nm Spondoolies-Tech RockerBox ASICs
Controller: TI Sitara 1GHz (based on Beagle Bone Black) cgminer with custom plugins
Size: D 382mm x W 110mm x H 137 mm
Network: Single 10/100 Ethernet port
Fans: 1 X 120 mm
Power: 4x ATX PCIe
Power Consumption: 1200 W w/ a 0.9 Efficiency PSU
Ambient Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 35 °C

Also Read: Guy Coren of Spondoolies-Tech Talks next Gen Chips and Industry Trends

SP20 Jackson Power and Performance

Emerson 1050 PSU Custom SP20 Breakout Board
Emerson 1050 PSU Custom SP20 Breakout Board

The Spondoolies-Tech SP20 arrived by FedEx, and the shipping gods were again fickle. The Box was a bit roughed up but when opened the miner was all secure. Some of the initial SP20 shipments had some board shifting during shipment. Spondoolies has fixed that issue since then. I opened the SP20 to check out the hashing boards and I liked the custom Spondoolies-Tech controller. The boards are laid out with four chips per board and two boards total. The chips are staggered like a checkerboard. This design helps air flow over each chip for more efficient cooling. The SP20 has a 120mm Fan in the back pulling air over the boards and heat sinks. It is a bit louder than some but still not bad. The Prisma from ASICMiner still drowns it out.

For this review, an EVGA 1300 Watt Gold Rated Supernova PSU is used at first but Spondoolies-Tech surprised me with an Emerson 1050 watt Server PSU that is enhanced and used in the SP10. The PSU also comes with a custom breakout board and heavy 16 gauge PCIe cables. Overall, it’s a very robust PSU that powers the SP20 excellently. The SP20 Jackson requires a solid power supply. You can also use two 750 watt or higher Gold rated PSUs.

For this review, we used BTCPoolParty and BTCGuild for mining pools. At both pools, the SP20 Jackson ran nearly at 1.7 th/s with stock settings, pulling 1310 watts from the wall on 110v. BTCPoolParty is a new mining pool that has fully transparent audits and excellent uptime. They are in the process of adding more detailed stats to their pool. CCN.com will have some exclusive news on them in the very near future. BTCGuild has the full range of stats and is the most stable pool right now.

BTCGuild Stats
BTCGuild Stats

SP20 Jackson User Interface

ASIC Stats Page. Temps and Speeds Are Shown Here In Detail
ASIC Stats Page. Temps and Speeds Are Shown Here In Detail

The SP20 Jackson has Spondoolies-Tech’s normal excellent user interface. The main panel has all your stats, and the settings screen is where you will change everything from the PW, which we suggest you do immediately to voltage and performance settings. The ASIC stats screen is very helpful for seeing just how each chip is performing and if you need to adjust settings or disable one. Also, if you have a hot chip, you will see the temps there. Zvi, the Software Director at SP-Tech, also walked me through several different ways to set up the chips by tweaking the voltages in small ways to get the most out of the SP20. Taking his advice and what he showed me over TeamViewer I was able to OC the SP20 to 1.9 th/s at 1422 watts. We used 2 EVGA SuproNova 1300 watt PSUs to achieve those results.

The SP20 is again like the past Spondoolies-Tech miners and simply an excellent miner. SP-Tech has also cut the prices recently to $795. The lower price to performance level makes them an excellent buy as well. They are also going to have a Bitcoin Black Friday special that will bring the price down to $695 and run through Cyber Monday. Guy says they will ship from stock as well: Meaning it is not a preorder sale. With a .05% difficulty increase predicted or even a decrease coming up, it extends the lifetime of the SP20 even longer. The price cuts for the Holiday weekend in the US make them a steal. I have asked Gadi Glikberg, the VP of Marketing and Sales, about the other models Spondoolies-Tech has, and he said they were also going to have SP31s shipping from stock as well with some SP35s for December shipping. The sales from stock shows that Spondoolies-Tech is ramping up their production capacity as well beyond what it was. That is a good sign as the low BTC value has many miners turning off their older, less efficient chips. The turning off of the miners leaves a big gap for more efficient miners to fill. Spondoolies-Tech seems poised to do this, and with the VC capital coming in can do this and grow.

SP20 ASIC Board
SP20 ASIC Board

The SP20 is a miner that will fit in both homes and large deployments. While the fan is a bit louder than most would want in the living room, it is good for the basement and/or garage. With winter hitting in the northern hemisphere, these miners are a good choice as they run even better in the cooler temps. Spondoolies-Tech is making some serious moves towards becoming the top dog in the bitcoin miner manufacturer world. It is interesting to see how much the space has evolved and how fast Spondoolies-Tech is making some of their changes. The SP20 Jackson is a great buy and Spondoolies-Tech is a company to keep watching. Guy says there is more to come in both chip design software, and deployment.

Let us know what you think below of Spondoolies-Tech SP20 and more.

Disclosure: Miner and PSU was provided for review by Spondoolies-Tech