GekkoScience Compac USB Stick Bitcoin Miner 8gh/s+ (BM1384)

Ok, first off, let it be said that these things are FAST for USB stick miners. As in, 20 GH/s (with tuning) fast. Here's the catch... They are NOT for novices (as I learned the hard way). You can get plenty of support in their forums and they even have a few example setups to work with but those of us that ARE novices, but let me try and make this as idiot proof as possible for setup purposes and maybe save you some headaches in the begining.1st. These are USB 2.0 devices and as such, they WILL work in a USB 3 hub, so long as it's backwards compatible (I'm looking at you, Anker).2nd. If you make NO adjustments, they still run REALLY well at around 8-10 GHs. They also will run fairly hot without a fan, but at stock, you'll be fine. If you plan on adjusting your voltage and squeeze higher rates out of these, get a fan. If you don't... well, let's just say that you won't want your face (or anything else) close to these when they "pop".3rd. Do NOT skimp on the power. IF you're going to do your mining on a Windows box, go with the Anker hubs as they supply lots of juice, but if you want to mine on a Raspberry Pi or a Linux box, do some digging to find a USB 2 hub that supplies good power rates.4th. These will NOT start mining right out of the box with CGMiner. You'll need to get the Zadec drivers (Google is your friend) and PLEASE don't make the mistake I did here... READ the instructions and ONLY install the Win driver for the stick... NOTHING ELSE!!!!!! Well, that is, unless you get off by reinstalling your OS. :)5th. Do not expect these things to turn a profit. Seriously... Just don't. You MIGHT break even if you have access to free power, tune the hell out of them and mine round the clock, but otherwise, just expect to do it for fun. Incidentally, I am turning a profit... But that's me.6th. Do yourself a favor and buy a fan. Doesn't have to be a super fan or anything, just something to blow some cool air over the heatsink. Do this and you can turn up the sticks quite a bit but again, do NOT go above .9 Amps as you're very likely to just kill the stick in the process.7th. Don't get greedy / stupid. Don't try pushing 1.5 amps into one of these. They weren't made to be miniature explosives, and only YOU can prevent idiot fires. If you push it to .9 amps, that's all you really should be shooting for. (Some go higher, but I suspect there's a magician involved).8th. If you're going to mine, go for the pools. They tend to at least give you something in return for the low hash rates and remember that as of this writing, they're measuring the hash rates in Peta hashes.... So, these sticks... Giga... Their network... Peta. See the issue? Many pools will sneer at you for trying so do some hashing at less than a Tera Hash, so look for a more open or forgiving pool to mine with *cough*Zpool*cough* before you settle on one.Hopefully this hammers out a few headaches and if it doesn't... well... head to their forums and ask away... they seem pretty friendly. Bring soda and they'll let you yammer on for days about all of the crap you don't understand. :)

I purchased 8 of these sticks back in June of 2016. I knew back then that it would never make enough to return the investment but I wanted to learn about mining. After reading a ton and playing around I was able to get all 8 over clocked to 300 Mhz and get a combined average around 100 Gh/z hash rate. They have held up well and are all still running a year and a half later. I would earn 0.01 (my pools minimum payout) every 5 or 6 months prior to the halfing. Now its more like 10 -12 months. With the spike in Bitcoin prices lately I actually have made enough to pay for my initial investment but only because of the price spike. Bottom line, you never know what crypto will be worth in the future. If your looking to get rich this is not what you need, but if you want an affordable way to start mining; grab these up.

Just bought one to play with, running it on a raspberry pi 2 and a amazon basics powered hub.For software I'm using the cgminer from this forum:bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173963.20I zip tied a small fan (~25mm, not sure on exact size) to the heatsink set the frequency to 250MHz, and dialed the voltage to 640mV.Averaging 12.5Ghps, underside of the board feels warm\hot to the touch, the heatsink is cold.Pretty sweet, not that bad to setup, took me a couple hours.- 4/22/2016:Setting the frequency to 333Mhz with 720mV yielded 18.9ghps, but it would error every so often and ran really hot.Seems like any voltage over 670mV is going to require a different heatsink and thermal compound, which is more effort than I'm going to put in on this.Settled for 300Mhz at ~660mV, running consistently at 16.5ghps.

One cool little miner. Great for experimenting and not really making a profit. Like everyone else here don't expect a return investment on these. You'll need one of those 1Th/s+ systems, and even then you still will get very little turn around. This little thing introduce me to the Raspberry pi, and now that's something new for me to tinker with. I love to tinker and these little gadgets are fun to play with.

works great after I figured out it did not like my USB 3.0. The seller was very concerned and replied several time to problem with getting errors. I am getting between 12 - 16GH/s (avg = 13.28GH/s)

The $45 that I paid in 2016 was a fair price for this miner. The enjoyment wore off after a week or two though.If you want to mine BTC, the GekkoScience is rather pointless. You're better off playing the Powerball lottery.The 2017 price of $124 is quite ridiculous.

I mean personally you are better off just buying bitcoin for whatever you planned on paying for this item... it is outdated and you will eat more in electricity then you will ever recieve in BTC and there is not much support online for this thing anymore. i tried everything i can and it still wont connect to a pool properly so this is now for nestaliga purposes

Used gear. Works as expected. OEM working on new design with faster chips.Did not come with docs, but you can find them at the URL below. Note: remove the spaces.https : // bitcointalk.org / index.php ? topic = 1173963.0