GT Miner V66 600MH ETC/ETH review: quiet and highly efficient!
An ASIC for mining Ethereum Classic at home, without the racket of big industrial miners: that is the promise of the GT Miner V66, a machine from a still little-known brand. In this video (in French), we plug it in, configure it, check its power draw and hashrate, then work out its profitability to answer the question: is this Ethash miner worth it?
Video from January 2023: the figures below date from that time. See "What about today?" at the end of the article.
The GT Miner V66 at a glance
- Algorithm: Ethash, for mining ETC, ETHW and the other coins that use this algorithm;
- Rated hashrate: 600 MH/s;
- Power consumption: 420 W, as advertised;
- Memory: 6 GB;
- Noise: very quiet, you just hear a gentle whoosh;
- Connections: the power supply and an RJ45 cable, nothing else. There is not even an on/off button: the machine starts by itself;
- Size: larger than an iPollo V1 Mini, but perfectly reasonable.
A true home miner
With 620 MH/s for 420 W, the GT Miner V66 draws less power than two RTX 3080s, for a much higher hashrate. iPollo's V1 Mini 300 is half as powerful and draws about 250 W: it is slightly more optimised, but the V66 remains very efficient. Above all, it is a far cry from the big Bitmain or Whatsminer miners, such as the S19s, which run at around 3,000 W.
In our view, it is a home miner that you can install in a house: it makes no noise and is very simple to use.
Setup and configuration
- Plug in the machine: power and an RJ45 cable to your router. It starts by itself.
- Find its IP address, assigned by the router: in your router's admin console or with software such as IP Scanner.
- Log in to the web interface from a browser: by default, the username and password are both "root".
- Configure the pool: enter the pool URL, then, in the worker field, your wallet address followed by a dot and the name you want to give the machine. That's all.
The interface sticks to the essentials: among other things, you can follow the hashrate and the internal temperature of each hashboard.
Test results
- Hashrate: the machine shows 620 MH/s, then about 610 MH/s, slightly more than the rated 600 MH/s. On the 2Miners pool, the current hashrate was 580 MH/s, not yet fully stabilised: you need to let it run for a while.
- Shares: 270 shares submitted, 0% invalid.
- Temperature: around 40 °C, in fairly cool conditions.
- Power consumption: 420 W, in line with the advertised specifications.
How profitable is it?
We offered the GT Miner V66 at €1,430 including VAT, and our calculations are based on a price of about €1,400 including VAT. To estimate its earnings, simply enter its hashrate and power consumption on WhatToMine. With electricity at €0.10 per kWh, ETC brought in $1.77 a day, or $0.77 once electricity was deducted. ETC was not even the most profitable coin: ETHW earned about $1.10 a day, nearly 30% more. The MiningPoolStats website lists all the coins you can mine with an Ethash miner (ETHW, ETHF, Metaverse, QuarkChain…), including new coins that are sometimes even more profitable: it is worth a look.
The price of electricity is decisive:
- At €0.17 per kWh, the standard rate in France, nothing was worthwhile at the time;
- Around €0.10 per kWh is the baseline, for example with an EDF Tempo contract and by putting the electricity through a company as an expense;
- At €0.05 per kWh, as some customers manage in Spain with solar panels and a good contract, the calculation becomes much more favourable.
At €0.10 per kWh and €1,400 including VAT, with a profit of about €21 per month, it took roughly 67 months to pay back the machine, and about 55 months for a company buying it excluding VAT. The payback time changes a lot if you sell your ETC at a higher price: 17 months if you sell at 50% of ETC's all-time high, and 9 months if you sell at €75.
Should you buy now?
With crypto prices recovering, ASIC prices were starting to rise again. In our view, it was a slight rebound: no urgency, no need to rush, but the market may have reached a very low floor. Our verdict on the GT Miner V66 remains very positive: a simple, quiet and highly efficient machine, ideal for mining at home.
What about today?
The prices, earnings and payback times in this video date from January 2023 and are no longer current. Remember too that since the Merge in September 2022, Ethereum can no longer be mined: an Ethash miner like the GT Miner V66 can only mine Ethereum Classic and other compatible coins, whose profitability depends on their price and difficulty at the time.
Looking for a quiet machine to mine at home? Discover our home miners and our full range of ASIC miners. For comparison, also read our iPollo V1 Mini review and our December 2022 mining profitability update.