Testing the New and Improved Fluminer T3 (is it finally better than the Avalon Q?)

[00:00:00]What's up, guys? Welcome back to the channel. It's box day, as you can tell.

[00:00:04]Uh this is a large box from our good friends at Altair.

[00:00:08]And uh the thing inside this box, I don't know if it's any good or not, to be quite honest with you. That's what we're going to find out. So, uh let's go ahead and open this thing up. Let's get the magic carpoos mining knife out.

[00:00:19]And let's uh do some slicing.

[00:00:21]Okay, here we go.

[00:00:23]It's hard to do [snorts] this. I got to do all this stuff with one hand. That's the thing about making YouTube videos.

[00:00:27]People think being a YouTuber is easy, but it's not. You got to do everything one-handed. You got to narrate everything that you're doing.

[00:00:34]It's difficult. You ready for this? Here we go. Check this out.

[00:00:38]Okay, let's do some unboxing magic. Oh, wow.

[00:00:42]Oh, this is so cool.

[00:00:44]Okay, let's get the magic knife. Let's do a little slice action.

[00:00:49]I think you can kind of see what's going on here. Cool.

[00:00:52]This is the completely redesigned Fluenz Miner T3. It's kind of like an Avalon Q, but at the same time, nothing like an Avalon Q. They're both in the same category. They have similar form factors, but other than that, they're very, very different devices. This thing is made by Fluenz Miner. The Q is made by Canaan. This thing has Bitmain BM1370 chips. The Canaan has Canaan chips. This thing has six fans, plus two on the power supply, where the Q only has four.

[00:01:18]And it's just a much different device, despite being in the same category. Now, the very first T3 was a total disappointment. It didn't live up to the hype. It didn't live up to the specs.

[00:01:29]The hash rate wasn't as high as it was supposed to be. The efficiency was worse. It was much louder than they claimed. And so, this is supposed to be a better version of that first device.

[00:01:39]So, if we're judging this thing just based on appearances alone, it does look very cool. I like it. It's got these three fans in the back. I assume these are the exhaust fans, because they're pointing this way. It's got two fans in the power supply. It's got these three fans over here in the front. And I don't know if this thing is going to be incredibly noisy, like a jet airplane, or if these are special quiet fans. I guess we'll find out here in a second when we plug it in.

[00:02:01]And speaking of plugging this thing in, they gave us four power cords with this thing. You've got this uh 220 plug.

[00:02:09]You've got your standard US plug, a standard US plug, and a standard US plug. I guess in case we lose one or break one or the cat gnaws one in half.

[00:02:18]I don't even have a cat, so I don't think that's going to happen.

[00:02:22]Uh so let's take one of these cords.

[00:02:23]We'll just close our eyes and pick one and we'll plug it in.

[00:02:27]And let's see what happens. Okay, so I got this thing all plugged in in the Car way too many things plugged in in the Car Pool's Mining Lab / Office. Now, this machine uses over 1,800 W on its highest mode, and so it's going to require a dedicated 20 amp outlet.

[00:02:44]Otherwise, you're going to pop your breakers, you're going to have a bad time.

[00:02:48]Okay, so I'm having some trouble figuring out how to get connected to this device. Usually, again, I've done this like a thousand times and it's pretty easy. So, let's just go ahead and download the uh T3 operation manual.

[00:02:57]That should help. Okay, let's go ahead and Oh, no.

[00:03:02]>> [laughter] >> Well, this is not helpful at all.

[00:03:05]Uh so, let's go ahead and take this, dump it into chat GPT, and have it translate uh for us in English. Okay, so I followed the instructions and despite my best efforts, it's not working. So, we're going to go with the uh the old-school route. We're going to try to get connected and configured just using an Ethernet cable. So, let's try that.

[00:03:22]So, I like to use this Angry IP Scanner and I was able to find this IP address right here. Uh once I was able to do that, pretty simple, you just type this into the browser, and that brings you into the Flu Miner web user interface, which has this cool spinning fan. So, now we'll go ahead and put in our Wi-Fi credentials and submit.

[00:03:41]Operation success. Okay, so now we're connected over Wi-Fi, and you know what?

[00:03:46]Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I think the easiest way to do this is when you get this device, plug it in, then plug in an ethernet cable. That'll allow you to quickly scan for the IP address, access the web UI, input your Wi-Fi credentials, and then you're good to go from there. That takes us to where we are right now, which is this thing is hashing away. We can plug it in wherever we want. We're not tethered by an ethernet cable. And that way we can have this thing out of the way because it's a very noisy device. Now again, there's a really interesting trade-off when it comes to the noise that this thing makes, and we'll explain that here in just a second. I actually don't think it's the worst thing in the world, but here's what we're going to do. First things first, let's jump over to the web UI. Let's take a look at the performance. So, let's evaluate hash rate, let's evaluate power consumption, efficiency, just the web UI in general.

[00:04:34]Then we'll see how it compares to things like the Avalon Q, the Monster Miner S21 XP, and figure out which one is the better choice. Okay, so we are connected. We are hashing. We are inside the web user interface. Now it says we're doing 117 terahashes per second, and we're consuming 1,492 watts of power. Now before I came in here, it was telling me that we were consuming 1,789 watts of power. So, I believe what the thing says at the wall. I don't believe this at all. In fact, this thing is way off as far as its power consumption estimate. Uh but based on that right now, so if we look at 1,789 / 118, that is a efficiency number or an efficiency number of right now 15.1 watts per terahash. That's not terrible, honestly. That's really good. In fact, it's much better than the Avalon Q. Now on the pool side, it's telling me that our hash rate is 144. I know this thing is not cranking out 144 terahashes per second. I actually do believe what this thing is saying more than I believe what the pool is saying. And so performance-wise, this thing is better than the Avalon Q. My Avalon Q is running at 92 terahashes per second. It is pulling 1,749 from the wall. So, it's similar as far as power consumption is concerned, but obviously this thing has a much much higher hash rate. Now, the chips that are inside the T3 are better.

[00:05:58]The BM1370s are better than the Canaan chips. That's exactly why a Nerd QX++ as a for instance has the same hash rate but far less power consumption than a Nano 3S. They're just better chips. And I honestly think that's one of the best things about this particular device.

[00:06:15]Okay, let's talk about this web UI because it's not great but it's not terrible either. It just feels unrefined. It just needs some work.

[00:06:23]There are certain things where if someone brought this to me and said it's a work in progress, I'd say, "Hey, this is awesome." But if they said, "Hey, there here it is. We're done." I'd say, "Look guys, need some more work. Back to the drawing board a little bit." Uh because there's just certain things about it where I think they could have improved upon it a little bit. Uh but I do like things like these cool gauge clusters that show the real-time and average hash rate. I like the spinning fan. I like the three temperatures that indicate the intake, the board, and the exhaust heat or temps rather. That's what those three thermometers over there indicate.

[00:06:57]Uh there's some other cool stuff too but there's some weird things as well. So, these running settings which I don't know if you can see, it doesn't show me the drop-down menu uh over here on OBS Studio but you've got three modes. So, you have power saving mode, normal mode, and efficient mode.

[00:07:13]Now, with the Q, you've got the eco mode, the super mode, and the standard mode. I don't have to explain what that means. You have probably have a pretty good idea uh what they're getting at with that. Uh with these running modes, you've got these like the power saving mode, that makes sense. You probably save power with that one. Normal mode, you would expect that to be in the middle. And then what's efficient mode?

[00:07:34]Kind of sounds like power saving mode.

[00:07:36]Uh really what it boils down to is the power saving mode is about 1400 W. You get about 85 to 90 terahashes a second.

[00:07:44]The normal mode is like this crazy ridiculous mode that uses more power than any of them, but delivers like the medium hash rate. And then efficient And then the efficient mode is the mode that I'm on right now. I would have 110 terahashes per second and we're at about 1780 watts being consumed. And so they should just have the whatever the efficiency mode should be called high power mode, which is like the optimal, you know, highest hash rate crazy mode that you're running on. And then they should have the power saving mode. So they should have a low power and a high power. That would be very easy.

[00:08:20]As far as the normal mode goes, they need to dial that in a little bit. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know why it exists and I don't know why you would ever want to run on that mode because again you have a lower hash rate, but you have more consumption. And I think that's just because it's not optimally tuned.

[00:08:36]So again, one of those things that needs some work.

[00:08:39]Uh one of the other things that I did not like. So here in the firmware update section, I thought, well, I wonder if this gets better if we just update the firmware. And so what happens is if you go to the Flu miner site, you download the firmware, you go and select that firmware and decide you want to update it.

[00:08:56]When you do that, it says upload progress and then it says upgrade failed.

[00:09:01]Now there are two ways to update the firmware. You can do it through the web UI, which doesn't work, or uh you can upload it to an SD card, put the SD card in the device, and then it should work that way. Hopefully, maybe, I don't know.

[00:09:15]Uh so this is kind of one of those things. Now this really kind of boils down to Here's how I would compare. For instance, like the Avalon Q is like a Toyota Avalon, which is like a variant of the Camry. Uh it's reliable, it's easy to run, my mother could run an Avalon Q, very simple. I've had a Q running for uh months and months and months, 24/7, 365, no problems whatsoever. Uh the firmware, it's okay. I mean, the dashboard for the Canaan stuff is all right. Leaves a lot to be desired.

[00:09:43]However, with the Hashboard app, you are able to get in and fine-tune things like the fan speed, uh the control settings, scheduling, all this other stuff. And so, you can supplement the existing Canaan stuff with that Hashboard app.

[00:09:57]Now, we're going to do that for this as well, because we think there's a lot of work that we can do on this. Again, being able to adjust fan speeds, uh probably relabeling the work modes, we may be able to do that as well.

[00:10:08]And so, hopefully, we can do some cool stuff with the T3. We'll see.

[00:10:13]Um >> [sighs and gasps] >> but the T3 is kind of like an M3, like the BMW M3. It's louder. It has better performance, but it's a bumpier ride along the way, which is again, to be expected for more of like the sports car.

[00:10:26]The thing is, with the T3, you've got the better chips. And so, it should be the better device. If they could just dial in the firmware, it would be better, I think, than the Avalon Q, hands down. Uh because I think they could really dial in the tuning. Uh you would have it even better efficiency probably at that point. You would have an even higher hash rate. And if you could adjust the fan settings a little bit, you know, it would be a good device.

[00:10:52]And so, >> [sighs] >> I don't know, man. When it comes down to which one is the better option, I guess, between the two, it really comes down to which one is better for you. And that And that brings us to this trade-off that I was talking about as far as these chips are concerned. Now, we're going to go back to the device, uh because I want to talk about this. This is really important, and it's one of the interesting things about, especially, the comparison between the T3 and the Avalon Q. Okay. So, the Flu miner T3 is much louder than the Avalon Q. And the reason for that is a couple of things.

[00:11:24]Number one, well, it has more fans. So, you got the three here. You've got three here, and you've got a couple right up here that keep the power supply nice and cool. Now, the reason for that is this.

[00:11:35]Because this has the Bitmain chips, which are superior chips, it has this requirement that it needs to run the chips cooler. So, the chips that are in the Avalon Q and the Nano 3S, they run comfortably, their safe operating range is 80 to 90° C. Now, with the Bitmain chips here, these things run at 55 to 65° C. So, it takes more fan, more fan speeds, more fans in general to keep these things in a happy place, 55 to 65 degrees C operating range.

[00:12:07]Now, the result is you get a louder device.

[00:12:10]And I'm going to show you what I'm talking about because this microphone has noise cancellation and you can't really get a sense for how loud it is.

[00:12:17]So, here we go.

[00:12:19]Okay, so you can hear this thing, it's loud, it's noisy, you get the idea.

[00:12:23]Here's the trade-off and here's where I actually don't mind it. Though this thing is louder, the heat that this generates is substantially less than the Avalon Q. The Avalon Q is an absolute space heater. This thing, probably if I had to guess, puts out about 20 to 30% as much heat on this high mode as the Avalon Q does. And so, I live in Southwest Florida, it's incredibly hot, I do not need a space heater in my house. I will take the noisier fans all day long over something that just heat pours out of. In fact, I made a whole video about the Avalon Q where I had to route the exhaust, I had to put this shroud on there, I had to put an inline fan, and I had to route the exhaust out of the dryer duct in my house so I wouldn't turn my laundry room into an absolute sauna. And so, quite frankly, just between that and the power, I think this is the better device for me. And again, it really comes down to what you want. If you want something that's really quiet, go with the Avalon Q. If you want something that works as a space heater, go with the Avalon Q. If you want something that's going to have 20% higher hash rate, something that looks a little cooler in my opinion, and something that will hopefully get better as the firmware improves, Fluoner T3 all day.

[00:13:38]And so, I don't know, guys. I actually really like it, and between this and the Avalon Q, I'm probably going to go with this. And that's crazy to say, but I would trade this for an Avalon Q, and I'd be happy with this just because I do kind of like it. Now, there are some rumors that guys are going to work on some firmware with this. Uh Nikos, the crazy guy who just reverse engineered the Canaan stuff, he is talking about potentially doing some firmware with this, and if he does, I think that would be fantastic. If you could run Lux on this device, this would be the ultimate machine. Okay, guys, so what's the verdict on this thing? Should you buy this thing? Should I buy this thing? Cuz quite frankly, this was sent to me as a demo, and unless I pay for it, I have to send it back. Now, here's the difficult thing. Here's the Here's the struggle when it comes to devices like this, these high hash rate home miners. Because this is going to cost $1,800.

[00:14:31]Then it's going to cost $160 each month with my expensive electricity rates to run this thing, whereas I could buy myself something like an S21 plus plus or an S21 Pro. It'll cost about the same amount. It's going to cost about the same to run if I send it to Block Ops, where they have much cheaper electricity, and uh I'm going to have more than double the hash rate. And so, it really comes down to you and your situation. Do you have solar power? Do you have very inexpensive electricity? Because if so, devices like this make a lot of sense, but if not, it makes more sense to buy a Bitmain Antminer and send it to Block Ops. And in fact, if you want to try that out, you can go to karpuzmining.com. That's k a r p u z mining.com/testdrive.

[00:15:11]We will give you a free Bitmain Antminer for an entire week. It's pretty cool, and you should probably do it. These devices are great. I like these things, and I think for some people, they make a lot of sense. Now, I probably will end up buying this device, and that's because there are rumors that they're going to make some crazy aftermarket firmware. I need this thing so I can add support to the hashboard app. And so, for those two reasons, I will probably end up buying this thing. Not to mention, I like the way it looks, okay? I like the logo. I like the font. It's a nice It's a nice typographic logo. I like these vent holes on the side. I like all the fans.

[00:15:46]I just think it's a cool device, but I'm still not sure yet, quite frankly. So, you let me know. Do you think I should buy this? Are you going to buy one? Are you going to buy a Q or an Antminer instead? Uh let me know down in the comments, and uh let me know if you have any questions. Now, if you found any value in this video, I would appreciate it if you would uh give me a like or maybe a friendly comment or even subscribe, because I'm one of the few mining content creators that does not buy subscribers. Now, a lot of them do uh because it helps them build credibility. It helps them go to partners and say, "Hey, send me a bunch of free Bitcoin miners." And uh that helps them accelerate the growth and momentum of their channel. Well, I don't. And so, uh all these subscribers that I get here are from subscribers like you who actually decide you want to see my content and subscribe to my channel to see more of it. So, anyway, if you would subscribe, I would appreciate it. I thank you as always for tuning in. It means a lot. I put a lot of time and effort into these videos, sort of. It always means a lot when you guys lend your support. So, anyway, that is all I've got for today. That is the Flu miner T3 V2. Let me know if you want to know more about this. There is a link down in the comments if you want to buy one. And uh other than that, have yourself a wonderful day.