Pre-Order users of batch 1 and 2 of the A4 Dominator miners, the latest Scrypt miners have been experiencing problems with their machines. According to many forum users, the problems range from coin switching problems in multipools to bad firmware. Rather than repairing the new miners, they have shipped out a single expensive jig to one person to enable them to reflash people’s rigs at great time and expense.
There has also been attempt, according to the forum posts to blame pool operators. Innosilicon had before this a good track record of delivering a working product. The said pools have worked fine with all other Scrypt hardware up to this point, although the KNC titan needed tweaking for the best hashrate.
It is unknown if this affects the next batch 3 of miners, but with the increase in Litecoin difficulty with the price remaining static and faulty miners, profit margins seem slim with these units. Rather than trying to get users to fix a potentially dodgy product, they should be accepting and repairing them at their own expense, which would be the acceptable thing for any large company to do in this case.
Based on the electricity usage of the KNC titan miners compared to the A4 dominator miners and given the lack of warranty service, the KNC titan is a more cost-effective choice, as with GenTarkins’ mod these miners can hash well.
This is yet another example of were pre-order of mining hardware has caused issues for customers, and it is unwise for customers to assume the full risk in these events, however a company the size of inn silicon should have offered to repair units free of charge which were affected.
Pre-Ordering of miners has caused many problems, history has cointerra, black arrow, KNC Neptune delays, and butterfly labs. The losses to users / customers was in the millions and this is yet another example as to why pre-orders are a problem, although they actually released a product, and have a proven track record.
Will this be like KNC, who had a proven track record of delivering the Jupiter miners before the KNC Neptune delays? The cryptocurrency world is dangerous to invest in pre-orders and never invest what you cannot afford to lose especially where pre-orders are concerned.