Topic: Antminer S5 + Laser cutter mods... (Read 6310 times)

Bitmain has reduced the price of the latest batch S7 miner. The Batch 10 S7 is priced at 2.1 BTC, which is less than $800. The biggest drawback is that you won't get it until roughly February 20th at the earliest. Chinese Spring festival, so Bitmain is on "vacation" until that's over. That will also push down the price of a used S5 as well. See:

https://enshop.bitmain.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020160129054250700R0OMI3KI061A

so if i box in the s1's i have i will get better temperatures cause of there open box design ? i thought about doing this a while ago till i seen this from you btw very cool with the plexi

MarkAz do you do any or are you considering doing any solo mining?  Do you mine any other currencies?

For power I'm running either DPS-2000BB's or the IBM 2880W PSU's, both are server power supplies that require you to also get a breakout board, but there's several forum members who sell those plus high quality PCIe cables - and you get WAY more PSU for the dollar than PC power supplies.  One thing I don't ever skimp on is buying power gear - you can use it from generation to generation of machine, making it a good investment, and you can pretty much resell them from what you paid, as they've already really been depreciated when we buy them (as all miners are buying the PSU's used).

As far as pricing, that's easy - miner prices are typically influenced by a combination of the price of bitcoin, the current network difficult, and the power efficiency of the miner.  In your above price example, the S7 is roughly 4x the price, but 4x the hashpower - so you might think those prices are close, but the reality is they aren't.  The S7 is almost 2x the efficiency, so your power cost will be 1/2 of what it would be if you had the same hashpower in S5's.  So, depending on your power prices, you may not even be able to mine an S5 profitably, which is why the price has dropped.

On the difficulty side, hash power has been on a rampage, and the total network hashrate has more than doubled since October, which is pretty amazing:

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Less thrilling is that means you'd be making 1/2 as much as you were back in October with the same machine.  

Generally speaking, you're almost always better off going with current gen hardware, although sometimes you might find special situations where it makes sense to get something one gen back (like an S5).

MarkAz,  what is your power setup that you are running?  Any idea why the price of miners has dropped so much?  I am seeing S5's for $260 and S7's for $1,155?

Uhg, yeah, I had some of those earlier S5's that were that configuration, and you're right, the heatsink we were using don't work on those pads.  I actually found some head sinks that were small enough, about 1/3rd the size of the ones I used, just small enough to fit inside the copper region.  Overall I didn't notice enough of a difference to do it for more than the two I had originally bought parts for - the acrylic enclosure made way more of a difference than anything else.  So unfortunately for that particular one, I don't think there's much to do.

Sorry no better news - maybe Vorta found a better solution than I did...

Vorta or MarkAz, did any of the miners that you purchased have a hashing board v.1.3 that have different heatsink pads than the later version say 1.7 that MarkAz had pictured? The reason that I ask is I purchased some of the heatsinks you have both tried out and I am not sure how or if it is recommended to attach heatsinks on the 1.3 boards based on the configuration.  Here are pictures of the 1.3 version board.

www.personaljohn.com/images/IMG_7058.JPG

www.personaljohn.com/images/IMG_7055.JPG

Any Suggestions?

I SECOND THAT MOTION!!!

stop spamming old threads with your company's link for fans

This is the best fan,  better than ultra kazes...

http://www.enermax.co.uk/fans/twisterstorm/


up to 154.53 cfm at 38 decibels ...  3500 rpm

absolutely beautiful! Have you thought of selling these once youve got the design down? I know i would be interested, and likely know a few others who would aswell!

Is there anyway I could get the dxf files or drawing for the enclosure? I run a sign shop with a couple CNC's and just bought 2 x S5's and possibly a few more in the near future. Enclosing the whole thing with heatsinks over the chips ducting the air across them seems much more sensible.

Thanks

Gerald  

I have forced air (coming via an 18" duct from outside air) coming in on the 'cold' side if you can all it that in AZ, and on the hot side I have a big exhaust fan that dumps the air into the attic.  The whole situation works pretty well, although it definitely does get hot in there... I've written an app that changes the speed of the S5's based on the ambient temperatures, so that keeps them within range at all times.  I have Environsense modules on all the PDU's, plus I built my own WiFi temperature sensors that I scattered around to also get a feel of what outside, garage, attic, etc temps were.

With my case mods, the airflow is much more controllable - although ultimately I'd like to duct them into a plenum, and then exhaust that separately.  As it stands now, it's much more about airflow than air temperature - at least from what I've experienced.  I've considered doing some sort of cooling, but doing AC just wouldn't pencil out - I've been looking more at direct-indirect evaporator cooling.  The big advantage with these kinds of systems is you get the cheap price of evap, but also don't raise the humidity - at the cost of a bit more complexity, and slightly less effective cooling.  There are some of these kind of coolers that are up around 40 SEER, which is outstanding.  They're not going to work in all environments, but in a desert setting, they rock.

how do you get rid of the heat in your garage. I had mine in the garage with a 1500btu AC unit and it was still so hot I had to underclock them just to keep them under 65c.

temperature here is 105F day high 85F overnight low

I'm using thermal adhesive, as I don't really see much of a reason to ever remove them - get them done right once and not have to worry about them falling off.

As far as those, I've purchased some in the past, but as you pointed out the ones you linked to have much better thermal tape (the ones I got had crap tape, next to useless).  One of the used miners I bought actually had those applied with presumably thermal adhesive as well, although whoever did it installed them perpendicular to airflow, which sucks.  This particular unit doesn't perform as well as the other heatsinks mentioned, but it's hard to say how much off it is because of the wonky orientation. 

All things being equal, if I'm going to spend the time to mount these on a machine, I'm going to use the best heat sink I can lay my hands on.  I really like the ones that Bitmain put on the rare few machines (I have two), but I think those long finned ones are the next best thing - I can't really see much of a difference between my machines with them vs the Bitmain ones, but I haven't done really extensive testing yet.

Here's a shot of my test setup prior to mounting all the heat sinks, and I think I still had one or two with the stock case - now they're all running my custom case + kaze fan + spacer + heat sinks - so nothing else I can really think of to keep them cool mod-wise.

These heatsinks are pretty good. They use the high quality Sony T4000 thermal tape, so you don't need an extra cost for thermal grease/paste/tape.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bitcoin-Miner-Antminer-ASIC-BTC-180GH-s-Cooling-kit-72pcs-DIY-Aluminum-Heatsink-/121331886591?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c3ff1a9ff

I added the heat sinks that Vorta linked to earlier - and as Tony the Tiger would say, "They're Great!"

I used Arctic thermal adhesive - not thermal paste:

http://amzn.to/1dYPRyw

I figured that I would leave them on either way, so might as well stick them on for good... The adhesive is the two part kind, so a bit of a pain but nothing major.  I cleaned the surface first with Isopropyl alcohol - I prefer these wipes because the wipe doesn't leave any fibers, it's 99%, and they don't skimp on the alcohol:

http://amzn.to/1Gh8xRH

I applied the adhesive to the base of the heat sink, and then just stuck it to the miner - you don't need a thick layer of the stuff, just enough to cover the bottom, so I imagine the thermal paste kit above would be enough to do two miners (or at least that's what I would probably be able to manage).  Here's what they look like:



So I have a bit less envy about those lucky enough to get factory ones.  I would point out that it took me about 30 minutes to apply them all, so not super long, but not fast either.

As I mentioned above, I'm running these miners in what would best be described as a 'harsh' environment - so it was hot when I test it.  This particular miner runs typically about 73/73 - this is with the case mod and the Kaze fan in pull configuration.  I got it up and running again and let it roll for about an hour, then checked how the temps were doing, and it was a solid 67/66, so about 6c decrease in temp - of course that's just what the internal sensor says, let's take a look at what Mr Flir has to say:



They're definitely running hot, but if you look at the surrounding areas, they're running much cooler, so they definitely seem to be pulling heat from the board.  I would guess that the impact on a case without the airflow being as controlled as mine may not be as dramatic - but with mine I'm forcing air over the sides somewhat evenly, so probably a more pronounced effect.

Either way, if you've wondered if and how much of an effect heat sinks on that side can make, now you know.  I would classify the ones I got as somewhere inbetween the nice ones that Bitmain put on some of there, and definitely better than those small silver ones most people put on them.

I've started converting over my test S5 setup at my house, and I'm leaving one of them stock, so I can use as a comparison.  Right now I'm running them at basically ambient air temperatures, which are brutal here right now, so let's say between 44c and 46c during the day - so if you're interested in how the Antminer does under high temps, then you'll be interested in this. 

The stock unit (with spacer, I don't run any without it, so figure it's about 1c lower than without) runs out at about 67/64 in the temperatures mentioned above.  I also tried for the heck of it just doing on in pull configuration, but the unit started sounding the thermal warning after a couple minutes (80c), so that ends any of my tests.

With my enclosure (plus spacer), in the same push configuration, it runs about 71/65, so about +4c on average.  In the pull configuration (my normal one), it runs 69/63, so about +2c on average.  Now while this may sound worse, I argue that it's actually better - when I do the thermal imaging on the boards, the heat tends to be more even across the board than in the stock configuration.  One other advantage is that point it's the hottest is towards the fan side (in pull), which I suspect means I could create some inlets in order to allow channeling some cold air in later in the path - the trick being not to make these holes so large that they starve the main intake.

After mounting them on 20+ S5's, I've refined the screw hole size/positions, as there is a fair amount of variation between units.  When I originally put together my test rig, I bought all of them used so I could get a nice cross-section of devices, but there was alot more variation than I expected.

I'll have more this week, I'm finishing up a logging and management application for the S5's, so I can get a better sense of their status over time - and then combine it with the networked temperature monitors I built.

I would love to get 6 of those stock fans I don't mind the noise.. I just want to be able to keep em cool and having six extra will allow me to do  quick swap out for cleaning

opentoe, unless you full enclosed it like I did, with almost no airgaps, then you'll get very different results.  I had tried the Noctura's as well, but they were not even in the running compared to the Kaze - but since you're running in an air conditioned situation, then that's probably your biggest variable. 

On the heat sinks you linked to - they look nice, but you mention they have thermal paste already on them - are you sure they don't just have thermal stickers?  If it's paste, that's great, although I would probably just recommend using thermal adhesive and being done with it.  Also, contrary to what I've seen written on here, it is NOT a good idea putting a heat sink on the temperature IC - this makes an already marginal measurement almost completely worthless, and will increase the likelihood you're overheat your hardware substantially.

I've been converting all of my test rigs over to the cases - but I'm gone right now, so when I get back next week I'll finish it up.  Since I'm in AZ, I'm testing the worse case situation, where ambient temps surpass 110f... And what I'm interested in designing is something that works with the device using just airflow in that situation.  Right now if you have enough CFM for the room forced air, you can run machines using the stock fans just fine... The issue I have with that is how loud it is.   With my configuration so far I'm seeing temps that are a fair bit higher than stock in this super-heated situation, so let's say 5c above stock as reported by their IC, but the actual miner's heat pattern looks more even than stock.  One other plus is that this 5c temperature increase is regardless of spacing between machines - whereas the stock configuration gets hotter if you put them right next to eachother (whereas mine doesn't) - this is just really because stock it's venting hot air in all directions.  That's why ducting is interesting to me - if I can completely get it out of the mix, then I think that's a great gain.

notlist3d, hard to say what it will cost when done, since the thickness of the materials affects things a fair bit - but as it stands right now with 2mm bodywork and 5.6mm fan spacers, it's under $20/machine, and shipping should be cheap since it basically all becomes flat...