Topic: ANTMINER S4 Discussion and Support Thread - page 47. (Read 301481 times)

...and I spoke too soon.
I sent a polite PM to BITMAIN Warranty:



Now I am at a loss. Obviously there is something else going on with this unit and the power supplies they provide.
I plan to call Colorado this morning, but what would other customers do in my situation?
I am not the type of person to sell my problem away, I would rather lose the money and throw the thing in the trash, but I will not do so yet.
So please, as end users tell me what you guys recommend.
I plan to call Colorado this morning to see what they say, but I will venture a guess they want me to send them the broken PSU AGAIN, and once they receive it they will send me another within a week.
This is not acceptable.
I am not exasperating when I say the unit has not run more than it has run, which is something BITMAIN should address.

I spoke to a friend yesterday who is something close to a mentor. He said I should cut my losses (the most loss comes from the time I have spent exchanging power supplies and proving the power supply is at fault each time, which is 4 hours at a minimum x 3 failures. Not counting the down time the unit is not hashing, and a different product could be in its place happily hashing away like the rest of my farm.
I will sell the other S4 units I have at the cost I have left in them.
I think everyone knows the product I will use in replacement.

Before anyone states there must be something wrong with my power, line, etc, another S4 is in the place where this one was, along with an SP20, on the same circuit, both happy and hashing.
I am at a loss on how to get BITMAIN to do the right thing. They either need to replace the unit with a functioning one, send me two PSU so I have a backup for when the next one inevitably fails, or completely change it for some other product(s) with an equivalent hashrate / work per cycle.

I will not do anything else with the unit without direction from BITMAIN Warranty, but I know for a fact the unit runs fine with another power supply.

BITMAIN I again ask for communication and help.
Everyone else, I plead for your guidance to resolve this situation in a moral manner. In other words, please do not PM saying to sell it off, as again, I refuse to put someone else though this. Many people who would purchase it would not have the skills to do the things it will require anyway.

Another question for the forum members is, Should there not be some warranty extension? Consider I started it running the end of December and has been without its power supply going on 3.5 weeks. Not 3.5 weeks straight, but off and on through the many failures.

 

If you're editing cgminer.conf, you may find some of these other cgminer arguments interesting:


A few of those (--bitmain-homemode, --bitmain-fan, --bitmain-temp) could make nice options for cgminer.conf for people who don't want their fans to burn out. I'm also curious if --bitmain-auto works.

I've partially figured out the voltage setting issue. This is using smit's FW (from here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=940250.0;all), but I'm guessing the same issue exists with the new Bitmain FW. The problem appears to be in how cgminer.conf is written. If you get something like this (for a voltage of 700 mV), it won't work:


It needs to have a leading zero, or else cgminer won't take it and will use the default value instead:


On smit's firmware, this is in /config/cgminer.conf. Probably the same location on 20150129. After you edit this, you may need to restart cgminer and then power cycle, or possibly just power cycle, I'm not sure which.

edit: You can probably also fix the issue by just pitting a zero first on the Advanced Settings page when choosing your voltage. I haven't tested that yet, though.

What was your solution for fixing the chain 1 issue?

I haven't tested lowering the voltage with this firmware yet, but hopefully bitmain will fix it if it is broken. The new firmware works MUCH better than the old one.

THIS IS CONFIRMED ON MY ALL S4'S. IF YOU WANT TO DO DOWNCLOCK DONT UPDATE THIS FIRMWARE.!!!
this firmware making fixed voltage 0,725 V. this is BAD FOR WATTAGE ! BUT FPGA CHAIN1 PROBLEM IS GONE
(for me doesnt matter, i fixed chain1 problem myself)

BITMAIN, WHY DID THIS? WE NEED CONFIGURABLE VOLTAGE AND WE PAID A LOT OF MONEY FOR THAT !!!
FIX THAT SHT !!

Without a doubt. Hopefully they'll up the game a bit with the S6.

I'm certain they have some space in their profit margin to sell at the same price, use higher quality components, and still make money (just not quite as much).

M

Oh, I'm sure they did. It would cost a fraction of a penny more for that rubber oil seal in the quantities they're buying.. Look at how much people were crying that the S4 was too expensive when it came out, imagine if they had put a quality PSU and 4 Delta fans. They have no choice to compromise, I guess. I'd be willing to pay a bit more for a quality PSU and fans, but most people would complain I imagine. The only quality parts in the S4 are the actual hash boards that were made by bitmain, the rest is outsourced lowest bid junk unfortunately. I'm sure bitmain thought those parts would be adequate for the job, but they had no way of telling for sure. Now they know.

@bittalc1,

Sorry for the trouble.  We sent you PM.  Please check.  If its still under the warranty, please respond back to us. 

If it is out of the warranty, we should be able to provide the fan to  you for a small fee.

Thank you

Yesterday one of my fans also died . Today i must dissamble my unit.

I think you give Bitmain too much credit.  They probably used the cheapest fans that would just barely fit the bill.  Like the PSU..

M

For now, I haven't replaced any. The fans which have stopped spinning entirely I've repaired by replacing the lock ring, and re-oiling them. Had to sacrifice 3 perfectly good fans to take their lock rings. 

I just finished re-oiling 8 fans across 2 S4s. As troublesome as it is, I sincerely think it's something everyone should do. Half of the fans were filled with dusty crap as pictured earlier, while the others still looked brand new. Some of the bearing were a little stiff, and their fan hubs had a very rough "travel" when you push them inwards. Re-oiling them seems to have helped a lot. Hopefully this will save them from their inevitable fate.

If you do re-oil them, you won't be able to reuse the black sticker that was covering the fan. Having nothing better on hand, I used duct-tape to cover the hole and keep the oil "sealed" in. I used Amsoil 5W-20 synthetic oil, which probably isn't the best for re-oiling a fan bearing but once again, it's what I had on hand and it's always worked great for me in the past.

I'd like to state that I don't think this is Bitmain's fault, as they didn't manufacture these fans. It would be nice of them to extend the 3 month warranty for the fans, though, as these seem to be failing pretty close to the 3 month mark. A quality fan usually has a MTBF of 50000 hours, these are having a hard time reaching 2160 hours. The same could probably be said of the PSUs.

I decided to change my mind. Previously I stated BITMAIN would no longer hear from me after I received the 2nd Batch 2 S$ PSU replacement. This has been one of many PSU failures. I ran one week out of three with that particular S4. As the customer int his situation I feel I can retract, and move forward with my opinions. It isn't as though anyone from BITMAIN was communicating with me anyway.

I am no longer surprised by reading things like this about the fan, or the previous post regarding the firmware having voltage selection removed. BITMAIN should take a few lessons from several community members. They should hire some of the folks from this forum to be involved in every step of the next generation. The operation must be ran by someone who has little to zero experience building a company. *NOTE* I didn't say open a store, I said build a company. Very different.


Prelude, thank you for taking the time to share. Please let me know which replacement fans you are using. I am going to check all of my units now. I will always share anything useful if I find such.

So the fans on my S4s are starting to drop like flies. So far I've had 3 die in a span of 2 weeks, and decided to see if they were salvageable. I've re-oiled fans before, so I figured I'd give that a shot.

Here's what I found:



Bearing lubricant is completely dried up, and the lock ring popped off due to what I assume to be wear from a lack of lubricant. Fans normally have a rubber plug to seal the oil in, but these do not. They only have a sticker over the hole, which in my opinion is a fatal design flaw. I've had 3 out of 20 go bad so far, with a few more showing signs of degradation in the form of slower RPM than normal. I expect them all to go bad in due time because of this flaw, unfortunately, and you should too.

Hopefully Bitmain will consider sending out proper replacements to their customers, as these fans are completely unacceptable considering the lack of a rubber oil seal.

I managed to fix this one by taking the locking ring from another 120mm fan, but I still don't have an appropriate plug for the hole. I'll need to figure something out, and re-lube it.

hi guys,
Bitmains last S4 firmware has a HUGE BUG.(or they do this in their knowledge for sell alot of S5) We cannot change voltage !!!
if you want to do downclock you must to use previus version.
initramfs.bin.SD-20150129.tar this version is Bad for voltage settings...

My bad.  Must have been the crazy thickness that threw me. 

huh? the S4 uses 120mm.....

Coolermaster Jet Flo 120's are far better fans; you just cut a little plastic from the connector and they work with PWM.  More to the point the S4 doesn't use 120mm fans; it uses either 92mm or 80mm ones.

And where is the link to this s4 

Warranty is 90 days through BITMAIN direct if you purchased through them or an approved re seller who does not handle their own warranty. Even in that case BITMAIN may help, but they told me it is their discretion.

I think Dogie recommended some fans which I am using on a power supply and haven't tried them on the S4, but they may work. Check out the dimensions to make sure though. Do not go off me saying this, but ?I do enjoy these fans.
corsair SP120 High Performance Edition with PWM. 2 pack is around 30 USD. I do not *think* they are enough for an OC S4, but check them yourself.