Being established in early 2016, Shenzhen Halley Cloud Technology Co.,Ltd. was headquarters in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of China, which recently launched its first product PandaMiner.

For a long time, some emerging products in the field of cryptocurrency with the same competitiveness as Bitcoin have tried to avoid the hashrate monopoly of professional miners by modifying the mining algorithm. The competing cryptocurrency developers modify the algorithm to make the existing professional miners incompatible, so that the cryptocurrency can only be obtained by computer equipment such as CPU or GPU and more people can participate in mining with wider distribution. Among most of the improved algorithms, the GPU mining has the highest efficiency, so the programmers develop the mining program to call the core of GPU chip for mining. The cores of AMD chip are more than that of computer CPU and NVIDIA series GPUs with better performance. Theoretically, the GPU miner supports the emerging cryptocurrency and new improved algorithms, so the GPU miner is the one which supports the most algorithms. The traditional GPU miner needs to be self-assembled with desktop computer accessories in complicated process. Since some hardware has nothing to do with the mining resources, the energy consumption and equipment cost may be wasted. Also, the issue of compatibility is also a problem. Under such a background, the PandaMiner came into being.

The PandaMiner was developed based on the mature industrial chain in February, 2016. By studying the advantages of existing GPU miners in the market, the development team comprehensively improved the GPU parameters and independently developed the miner with top GPU configurations.

The PandaMiner is integrated with customized 8 AMD RX480 video cards, which abandons some irrelevant hardware through reasonable design to save the mining cost and reduce power consumption for the same performance. Professional designs bring more convenience for the mining activities.

 

Product Parameters

Brand	PandaMiner
Algorithm	GPU miner.
GPU	AMD RX480 x 8
Hash Rate	ETH: 230MH/s @ 1380w
	Zcash: 1160 SH/s @1100w
	XMR: 5865 H/s @ 1057w
Power Consumption	1200w
Fan	9 x fan

 

Unpacking Photos

We adopt the mass-production version of PandaMiner (with customized power supply) for the evaluation.

The PandaMiner is packed in double-layer carton printed with manufacturer logo. The hard foam plates on the top and bottom effectively ensures the safe transportation. Carton size: L*W*H 93CM* 36CM*22CM.

With flat design, the PandaMiner case is made of metal material with black matt spray paint and miner logo on the top, which displays beautiful and elegant workmanship.

On the front side, there are five 8cm 4-line cooling fans (12V0.8A), air outlet on this side.

On the rear side, there are five vent nets by integrated cutting and four cooling fans, air inlet on this side.

On one side are seven PCI-E 6pin power interfaces.

On the other side are the peripheral interface, switch button and status indicator. ID number and password label for remote control software are attached in the lower left corner.

On the rear side, one small panel can be removed and we can see the memory and SSD inside. Such a kind of design is similar to a laptop for the sake of convenient maintenance.

On the top is a label with miner parameters.

Inside, we can see the miner consists of eight video cards which are evenly distributed in two layers, the socket design ensures convenient maintenance.

The GPU is equipped with ultra-thin metal cooling fins with lateral air ducts, which ensures better heat dissipation performance than thick aluminum fins.

Inside, on the control part of the mainboard we can see the chip and CPU.

Physical parameters of miner are as follows:

The official customized power supply is 1600w with 7 PCI-E 6pin power cords (wire standard 16AWG) manufactured by China Great Wall Technology Group Co. Ltd. The GW- BTX series have been widely used in various types of miners with stable performance.

Physical parameters of power supply are as follows:

The miner we received is the mass-production version with power supply. The net weight of miner is 7.7kg and the net weight of power supply is 2kg, the net weight of packing carton is 2.7kg and the total weight is 12.4kg.

 

Installation and Setting-up

The installation and test of PandaMiner are complicated. Please refer to Tutorial: PandaMiner Ethereum GPU Miner ETH Zcash XMR Supported for details.

 

Performance Test

The indoor noise in this test is about 38dBa and the indoor temperature is about 17℃.

Under the normal and stable mining of ETH, the hashrate is about 235M.

Switch off the monitor, the tested power consumption is 1295w.

In terms of noise, during normal operation the measured noise about 20cm away from the miner is about 81dBa.

In terms of temperature, the tested temperature at the air inlet is 21.5℃.

The tested temperature at the air outlet is 28℃.

Zcash Mining Test

Hashrate is between 1400sol and 1800sol.

Switch off the monitor and the tested power is 1192w.

 

Summary

• The PandaMiner is featured with exquisite craftsmanship and easy operation, and it also supports remote control.
• The actual hashrate and power consumption are very close to the official parameters, the miner operation is stable.
• In terms of temperature, the front and rear temperature difference is not big due to short air duct.
• With as many as nine high-speed fans, the noise seems to be a little high. The miner is equipped with high-speed fans for stability and adaptability in various mining environments. In fact, since air duct is not so long, lower-speed fans can be used if the room temperature is relatively low. In terms of noise, there is a certain space for optimization based on room temperature of mining fields.
• Many programs running on configuration page once the system (windows 10) is powered on. Theoretically, more running programs will affect the stability, so there’s a certain space for further optimization.
• The GPU miner supports a lot of algorithms, so the users can download the official mining software and configuration software for setup. Theoretically, it will also support the new algorithms in the future. With further official software support, there will be more elasticity for future operations.
• In the field of competitive coins, some new algorithms constantly come into being. In the case of no miner with corresponding algorithm, the PandaMiner is still a good choice for the mining workers who want to build GPU miners due to its costs, stability and renewability.