Topic: Antminer L3 - 250mh - 400watt Scrypt miner coming soon - page 39. (Read 137431 times)

I think its simply down to the DC circuitry design. Bitmain uses a serial DC circuit. It's very efficient, but any single failure in the circuitry results in the loss of the whole board.

Clearly they can't or won't. They've had at least 7 or more generations of miners now and they all seem to have the same serial DC circuit design/manufacturing flaws. My guess is that if you're Bitmain and can access new boards nearby at cost, the reliability trade-off relative to the efficiency is a good trade-off.

If on the other hand you're several thousand miles away and have to pay retail prices and operate through a re-seller, then that trade-off is probably totally unacceptable. Buyer beware. Based on their illustrious track record I certainly won't be buying any Bitmain products.

 

Just a heads up.  If you bought L3's and are having an issue with the miners and need support.  You have to go back to whom ever you bought them from in order to get warranty support.  When you try to file a ticket on the Bitmain site they will tell you that you did not buy the miner from them, or that the miner is no longer supported and the repair will be at your cost.  I emailed them and they informed me that since I purchased through someone else I need to go back whom ever I purchased the miner from. 

Bitmain will not help me with the L3 isssue.  I have to work with Eastshore.  Bitmain has told me that I can return just a board that is defective with the L3's.  The R4,T9,S9 all require the entire miner to be returned, but that I can send back just the bad board with the L3. 

I am talking to Eastshore now about this and they are telling me that I have to return the  whole miner.  I have informed them what Bitmain told me about sending in just one board and they are going to go to the technical department and ask about this.  So I will keep you posted on this process.  Hopefully I can just mail back the problem hash board and not the entire miner.

I just saw the post from Deep in the Mines about an L3+.  Frankly given what I am seeing with the current L3's I don't know that I will be in a hurry to buy any L3+ miners.  Bitmain's quality control is so poor and the process to get something fixed is so bad that it really is hard to justify continuing to spend money with them. 

Also the increase in size means more power draw, probably 2 fans and most likely another situation with LOUD fans making it just unacceptable for home mining.   The current L3's are fine for home mining as far as power draw, and noise levels.  They are not quiet miners, but the noise levels are acceptable for home mining.  The power draw and heat production for the current L3's are not bad either. 

So if Bitmain wants to improve the L3 how about improving the quality control and making a reliable miner.  Not one that is going to get hotter, louder, and most likely be even more unreliable than the current L3's.  If this plays out the way it sounds I don't think I will be buying any of the L3+.

 

Great, more miners to flood the Scrypt market with.

Just to let everyone know Ive been hearing rumors the next release will be L3+ and will be 504Mh/s not sure if this is real but this source also told me about L3 before it was released. If this is true I would figure it would be the same length as a S9 and use two PCI connectors per board.

anyone tried to oc those badboys? How far did You go, are they stable and whats power usage with oc?

I got a power meter today and my power draw is 385 TOPS, I'm looking at it for a few hours now, and it hasn't moved beyond that poin.

EDIT: how to set it up for nicehash?
Also I have one "%" which changes to "!" sometimes in asic status, what does it mean?

cheap psus overrate their capacity, so by specifying 600 they figure even if you use a junk 600 that can actually only provide 500 it will still work. kinda like when amd/nvidia spec a minimum psu of say 600 watts for thier card when a good 450 will do.

you should get a power meter like a kill-o-watt to get actual power draw.

ah... too bad.
thanks

Yes you need at least 550 or 600. Miner is rated at 400, but it will increase it's power consumption on peaks also large Fan takes 30 or so watts.

Hey guys,
mine is working all right so far, I'll keep you updated,
but the Bitmain PSU makes horrible noise, it's got one miniature vent which is spinning at very high rpm and making a high pitched noise,
can I use my Corsair 450W PSU? Eastshore guys recommend at least 600W PSU, not sure why, if miner is rated at 400W?

So basically both Miners are giving problems with board. 2 out of 8 boards. Nice  Bitmain at it's finest. And people whine that Inno is too expesnive or bad buy. Lol one broken board and you pay more than you gain from power usage difference between both.

On the L3's so far it is one miner that has crashed and lost boards repeatedly.  It appears that it is likely the one board that throws the hardware errors that is causing this issue.  I have been running it since Saturday with the one board disconnected and it is working fine so far.  If by the end of the week it has remained stable then I will be shipping this one board back to Bitmain. 

I have another L3 miner that reports some hardware errors on one board, but so far it has not escalated into a problem.

I have heard of others now that seem to be having some issues now as well.  Some think it is temps and are setting fan speeds to fixed speeds at like 80%.  It is board 3 that seems to be getting warmer than the others so people are trying to work around it.  So far I haven't messed with the fan speeds, but I did notice my problem miner becomes a bigger problem as the ambient temps get warmer.  However in my case the problem exists regardless of temps, but it becomes more persistent when it gets warmer.   

How many L3s do you have Longsnowsm, or put it another way, what % of cards have failed or showing signs of failing? Just the 1 so far?

ahh yeah ok thinking about getting one but I see they just upped their prices.

Eastshore powers on the miner and gives you a screen shot.  The miner at that point is only running for a few minutes when it is screen shot and then packaged to be shipped.  Basically they verify it will power on and start to hash.  Not long enough to detect the issues like I am seeing. 

doesn't eastshore test the miners and send a screen shot before shipping?

My problem miner started out this way, but it has progressively gotten worse. Right now I have disconnected the board that throws the errors and letting it run to see how long the miner goes before issues appear again.  If the board with the HW errors is the cause of my boards dropping then this should prove that out.  I tried the one board at a time testing and sadly I couldn't reproduce it.  So now I am more or less going at this "backwards" and removing the suspects as they poke their heads out of the holes.  I can tell you this isn't a lot of fun. 

Yes, one of the board is weaker and generates an average of 30 HW per day but until it does not cause of dropping board, this situation is acceptable, because it does not make much impact on hashing speed.

Looks like the board with all the HW errors is getting sick.

Overall I'm happy for now about my L3, in particular that it's batch 1. After more than one month of mining on NiceHash by my L3 it dropped one time one board, so I restarted it once a week with the hope it will help prevent dropping board. Now after 10 days I'm going to wait for how long my L3 would works without dropping board. I watch and I will let you know about my result.
Screen shot after 10 days.
https://images82.fotosik.pl/405/92d697ca97a3dfd1.jpg