hard mod information (depricated)UPDATE 16/11/2017: I successfully modded the firmware which will add unlocked voltage and fan control, so I advice NOT to hardware mod and see how far you can go with the firmware mod. If you want to undervolt more I advice the hard mod.https://preview.ibb.co/jmOdDG/20171031_171454.jpg
Hardmod infoThe antminer D3As an owner of the October batch of the antminer D3 I have good news. I now run my antminer D3 stable @ 15Gh/s with just 750 watts.
I decided to go for a mod, because I couldn't run the fans at full speed because of the noise. Therefore I could only run 13 Mh/s @ 850 watts before the mod, which is now not very profitable.
The mod:To get there I tried to reverse engineer the power circuit of the antminer D3 mining boards. Unfortunately there is some chip which I still don't know the specs from (labeled ADP BDY+), but I found out it's controlling the PWM of the mosfets.
So I tried changing the resistors around it and found out that changing the resistor R80 controls the voltage. Woop Woop
So if you want to do the mod I advice to replace R80 by a 25k ohm potentiometer. The voltage can be measured over C948
Improvement:without the mod the total voltage supplied to the asic chips is fixed @ 8.15v on the October batch. That means 1300 watts for 19Gh/s
After the mod the voltage is fully adjustable by using the potentiometer. It also allows to increase the voltage for overclocking if you want to do so.
But overclocking is not my goal, I wanted a silent miner: Therefore I now run my boards @ 7.1v @ 430 Mhz stable. That means 750 Watts for 15Gh/s
That is 50 instead of 68 watt per Gh/s
PhotosThe mod is quite easy if you have some proper soldering skills, but it's tricky if you don't have the proper tools / not have a steady hand...
https://preview.ibb.co/cYmyDG/20171031_163632.jpgupload gifs onlineps. I will make new higher res zoomed pics soon.
Other possible mods:Fan mod: (only when undervolting)
as I don't like that noise at all I also did some fan mods. I added a voltage regulator on one of the fans to decrease the noise during startup. cgminer won't allow you to go bellow 5000rpm othwerwise the miner fails to start.
Furthermore I replaced the second fan with a 2000rpm silent fan. To make this work you have to use the yellow wire (fan rpm) from the first fan as wire for the 2nd fan. Otherwise it detects a too low fan speed on the second fan.
I can say that running both fans @ 2000 rpm is acceptable to run it in a living room now.
Power supply mod: (only when undervolting)
By default the power supply runs @ 12.2v. I used the potentiometer inside to make it run @ 12.05v. This saves a few watts of power as well. Furthermore I added a regulator on the fan, to run it at 5v as this small fans makes an annoying high frequency noise when running at full speed.
SupportI hope this information does inspire you and help you improve the efficiency on the antminer D3. I hope to improve the mod: as I want to look into a software mod to enable changing the voltage from software. This would really open up the possibilities for all the users.
To get there I still look for a copy of the November miner firmware as bitmain is not supplying this yet. If one can login using ssh and make a full copy of the all the files that would be really welcome.
Hi Blissz, You could show a detail of the connection of the fans, thanks.