Topic: Antminer S5, Spondoolies SP20 or 3 x Antminer S3? (Read 4566 times)

Thanks Rich,

I am using Kano's latest that has a voltage setting in the advanced tab of miner config. But, I'm not sure if I'm inputting the values correctly. See link below where I'm going to continue this thread in hopes of also getting input from Kano and some others on software questions. I think continuing in the topic below will give it better visibility.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12230103

I can't find the spec on the Digi+ VRM AGP1209, however the Digi+ VRM ASP1212 is a programmable Multiphase Buck Controller. So I think you have found the elusive programmable S3. In which case it should respond to voltage programming from cgminer so long as you have a firmware version that supports it.

Am not certain which version you need so some experimentation may be needed. versions to try are.

140826 141013 141024 141126 141219

Be careful with 141024 as this is the one where the reset button does not work

Rich

Here are some close up pics where you can read the markings.

I installed Kano's latest [CGMiner] => 4.9.2  [API] => 3.6, details of which are at https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries/tree/master/AntS3.

It has the voltage adjustment, which I tried setting to .65 V and restarting as instructed and nothing changed. Still hashing at 450 Gh/s and 350 W for the same 0.79 J/GH I was getting before. As you know, if voltage would have actually changed I would have expected X's in the ASIC status and having to reduce from the current 225 MHz to stabilize. Would have been great if it was that simple.

It is an early S3, but the newest one of the 5 that I bought. Below are front/back pics from one of my other 4 boards showing the resistor mods on the backside. They seem to be the same version that you're modding. I'll try to get a pic of of the top of the mystery board that shows the markings.




Thanks for your help.

Well that is definitely a version of S3 I have never seen before. Have you tried the firmware version that allows voltage adjustment from cgminer to see if it responds to that. It still had Buck converters but there are trio's of chips on each one. Can you take a picture just of the top of the board where the components are such that the component markings can be read?

I see the ident says V1.0 so am assuming it is an early S3?

Rich

Hey, Rich
Here are pics of front and back of board. Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to undervolt. Thanks.

I believe I stated the price is too much at the moment.
From reading the posts and work done to the S3 and S3+ I believe he has as much chance as anyone to make the Sfards chip sing. \
The simple fact us none of us know because there haven't been any / many if any seen in the wild. Jabber has done work with them on his dev chips, but very few people have done anything.

My only recommendation or suggestion was that he check out the chip, the technology for the lower efficiency. If you notice, that is exactly what RichBC seems to be skilled at doing.

How can you honestly suggest something cannot ROI when you haven't seen the person's skills?

There are many talented people in the bitcoin scene and I try to listen to all of them. I suggest you try your hand at more listening to some of those folks and understanding the context of other's posts.

RichBC thanks for what you've shown. Regardless of any repeat in the end result, it is refreshing to see a different application with the rheostats which I can get on the cheap. That is a fantastic way to dial in what an individual miner may do the best at.
Please don't stop sharing!
 

If there were no obvious Buck Converters it's possible you were looking at the S3+ which was a trial for the S5 with string power and no DC-DC converters? However I have seen pictures of an S3 with a different chip and associated circuitry but still 8 Converters?

I will post up my stuff in the Undervolt thread when I get a moment. Am also exploring S5 undervolt.

Rich

Thanks for the quick response.

I'll get some PNs and will post some pics. I tried looking for the hashing chip driver and an associated voltage divider circuit without luck. I was looking for 8 similar circuits like we're seeing on the boards we modded, but there are not 8. I did find 4 similar circuits on each board so it's possible that these 4 are doing what the 8 TPS53355 synchronous buck converter is doing on the older boards. But when I tried googling the PNs nothing showed up.

May be good to post to undervolt thread and continue there???

Yes I was pleased.   I actually ended up with 0.49J/GH as with more testing it started dropping the odd chip so I had to push the voltage up slightly. Yes the 270 Ohms was the additional resistor in parallel the VFB feed resistor, and ended up being  a 330 Ohms.

I only have the one S3+ & one S3 they both have the TPS533355 so that's all I have played with. Have seen pictures of what looks like a different chip, do you know the part number?

I will post up all my measurements on the S3 Undervolt thread if you think that would be of use?


Rich

0.48 J/GH is a great result! I soldered a 2.2k resistor across each of the 8 VFB resistors per board for 4 of my S3+ and tried various frequency settings to get the lowest J/GH. Looking at the OOXX results, measuring power, and GH/s, the results varied for each ranging from 250 - 390 GH/s with the effeciencies being all around 0.61 J/GH. It sounds like I need to lower the resistance more. A couple questions.

Were you adding 270 ohms across VFB or was that the total resistance across VFB after you applied your additional parallel resistance? If the latter, what was the additional resistance?

Some of the newer S3+ boards don't use the TPS533355 chips. Have you ever tried to undervolt them?

There is an S3 undervolt thread at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/undervolt-antminer-s3-771979
I'm sure they would be interested in your results.
Thanks for the info.

Nothing on the market currently will ROI at 15 cents/KWH electric cost. Even turning the SP20E down to it's lowest undervolt setting isn't profitable enough to ROI before the bitcoin reward halfing next summer kills it's profitability.

 Technically, you CAN mine profitably right now at 15 cents/KWH with the S5, the SP20E, or the SF3301 - but unless they're almost paid off already, forget getting back the money you'd pay to buy one right now (and don't forget cost of power supply adds to that). I'm not sure but I think the Avalon 4.1 MIGHT be able to mine profitably at 15 cent electric, but that would be VERY marginal.


 New hardware is still a major question mark.

 The SF3301 COULD be profitable and hit ROI if they dropped the price down to something reasonable, but at the current $1199 PLUS SHIPPING it's not likely to ROI unless you have VERY CHEAP electric - and looking very iffy even THEN, IF you can actually get one direct sometime this month as opposed to paying the crazy pricing from folks like Zoomhash.

 No clue about performance or cost on the announced S7 yet - but that should be soon, I'm certain Bitmain is MAKING them but replacing S5s in their own farm before they start selling S7s. I would guess late this month or sometime in September we'll finally get some hard information.

 No firm knowlage about anything based on Innosilicon's announced A3 (ditto the A4 for Litecoin fans) yet though it appears LTek (sp?) is planning a next gen miner around that chip and I'm sure Innosilicon will produce a "reference" design and sell it like they did on the A2 Terminators.

 It appears that BitFury is ONLY selling it's current gen gear to BIG farms - or might only be selling the chips and letting the farm do the board design and/or board build work.

 KnC isn't selling to anyone else any more, not that I've ever been impressed with the reliability of their equipment. They also have bad enough legal problems I won't be shocked if they end up bankrupt sometime in 2017 (legal processes tend to take a while when the defendent can afford good lawyers).

 No clue yet what Avalon is doing on next generation if anything.

 No idea if the Alchemist folks are even thinking about Bitcoin or a next-gen Litecoin miner design.

 The folks that announced an X11 miner design haven't said anything since they canceled out "due to lack of preorders, going to look for venture capitol investment". Not sure if that one was vaporware or not, but it seems they actually refunded preorders which tends to make me think they were legitimate - just badly underfunded.

 I try to ignore vaporware announcements, can't think of any legitimate folks still in the mineing hardware business I haven't mentioned above.

Thanks for your tips. I don't want to buy old mining equipments. I give up on S5 dream, too. I should save my money for better investment plans.

At 15 cents you are just into loosing money territory with an S3. If you want to have a play, as I am, best value for money is a 2nd hand S3 with an undervolt mod & the frequency turned down.

I think that with 15 Cents power any existing  S5, or new hardware S6/7 etc will not ever pay for itself, particularly with Bitcoin halving less than a Year away.


Rich

I have 15 cent per kw electricity cost. Do you think I shouldn't mine with that price?

Funny that you mention the DC-DC converters as those were the original problem with the S3s .  When Bitmain first announced the S3, they were promising 504GH/s hash rate.  Later, they tuned that down to 478GH/s and finally on launch, they were only 440GH/s.  All because the DC-DC converters they obtained were unreliable and shoddy.  Sure, some of the units will hash at 504GH/s (one of mine has been for a year now).  Some of the others won't even hit the advertised 440GH/s (one of mine has to be down clocked to run stably at 400GH/s).

I guess it's 13-15 cents around as he's living in Turkey. I wouldn't mine for these rates though, there are cheaper places to mine such as East of Turkey. (They don't pay electricity fee )

what is not cheap power?

 21 cents a kwatt? = loser  with any gear.  as the power costs more then the coin mined as soon as your start.

so the question is how much do you want to lose.


the lower then 21 cents means more time before power costs kill your profit.

so what is your power cost.

if you tell me 20 cents I would say do not spend much and mine a little.

I was having same questions these days. I'm so unsure about buying new mining equipment. Should I buy Antminer S5 or should I wait S6's to come? My electricity is not cheap.

I decided to try my hand at Undervolting the S3, I would like to play with the S5 but am hoping the second hand prices will come down a bit first.. Although there are posts around that say you can change the core voltage using the Advanced setting field, like some others have found on my S3 & S3+ it seems to make no difference to the voltage.

I wanted to be able to easily adjust the voltage so I soldered in 2 x 4 channel 5K digital pots across the VFB resistors. These are setup with an Arduino, which also measures the voltage set..



In practice I have just rediscovered what other have found, but it's good to see the numbers for yourself.  

The Standard S3 with 218.75MHz clock had a core voltage of 0.8V hashed at about 440GH & took 321W at the wall giving J/GH of 0.73

After trying a lot of frequencies and voltages I decided it was possible to continue at 218.75MHz with the voltage reduced to 0.73V. This gives a small number of hardware errors .001% but improves the J/GH to 0.65. I soldered 4K7 resistors into the S3 an am letting it run, while continuing to play with the S3+ with the digital pots.

At my electricity cost this moves me from Break Even to about £1 Week profit. I am happy with this for the moment as it's buying BTC and my Wife is happy as it's drying the washing.

As would be expected as you drop the frequency and Core voltage the efficiency increases and the J/GH drops.

The best I have seen was at 125Mhz, 0.64V Core Voltage, giving a hash of about 254GH which is J/GH of 0.48. This was with 270 Ohms across the VFB resistor and at this point I run out of adjustment on the core voltage as we are very close to the TPS533355 0.6V reference voltage. However I am actually surprised that the chip was still hashing at this voltage.

I could probably squeeze a slightly better result by doing away with half the DC-DC converters and moving to 4 chips per, as the currents are now much reduced. I may try this later?

Rich

 To be picky, there are 2 counties IN the state of Washington with electric BASE rates around 3 cents/KWh (Chelan and Douglas) - actual cost will be a little higher due to meter charges and such, but they're both still easily under 4 cents/KWh and probably close to 3 if you use a lot amount of power. Do note that they've been having drought conditions in the Columbia river watershed upriver from that area, so the local PUDs have been adding surcharges for part of the last 2-3 years due to the lack of the usual water flow.

 There is a third county (Douglas) where you can easily get a little under 5 cents/KWh (base rate a bit over 4 unless you use a LOT of power, then you can get a little under) on a smallish farm. Same surcharges issue for the same reason.


 Watch out for the rents though, especially in/near Wenatchee itself. They're not SoCal or SeaTac level high, but....


 MegaBigPower's actual farm location is not actually in Wenatchee, I'm pretty sure, based on comments they've posted - I suspect they're on the other side of the river somewhere in Douglass county like East Wenatchee or Wenatchee Beach areas, perhaps further north.



 Most of the REST of Washington state has quite a bit higher power rates.

At the stick but  my pc runs a node and is on 24/7/365

  So I don't count the pc. it uses 32 watts to run the node and 1 more watt to run cgminer.

 I have a hub that is very high quality.  It loses 5 watts and can run 16 sticks..

So basically  I am 6 watts in the hole once I start the first or the 16th stick.

I figure I will run 6 and I will have to add 1 watt per stick.   brings numbers from .31 to .35 if you run 6 sticks. (in theory)

 my 2 sticks do 14 watts/ 29 gh

Not wanting to stray off topic..... But am interested in how you are measuring the Power on the Sidekick USB? Are you measuring it at the input to the stick? If so this may be making things look better than they are as it factors in nothing for the generation & losses in the USB supply in the PC. However if you are powering it separately and measuring the power taken by a separate USB PSU then that is then a fair comparison with traditional miners "at the wall power"?

Rich

I bolded part of your response as I think that way often.

  And I got one of my 2 sticks to do .31 watts  which is nice work on sidehack's part.

To be honest I am more interested in coming up with a way of having 0.33J/GH & 1000GH than actually using it. It's not about making money or any concern for the time or money that it costs, for me these things are often more about the journey than arriving.

So I find it interesting that Sidekick have achieved 0.33J/GH, also worth remembering that Bitmain initially billed the S5 as being 0.2J/GH capable with these magic words.


This being supported by the BM1384 data sheet that shows. 0.6V - 8.25 GH/S - 3.43A - 2.058W - 0.249W/GH

So from what you say part of the problem is that the S5 does not like to be started at much less than 12V, but can be dialed down to 10.5V giving around 0.47W/GH

Although good this is still some way short of 0.33 or the 0.25 in the data sheet. So either they were optimistic, or further changes are needed to get lower?

I can see that others have already played with this, however I feel that something prompted Bitmain to put 0.25 in the data sheet and that Sidekick have shown that 0.33 is possible. I feel that finding a way of pushing an S5 into 0.3 and possibly high 0.2 territory would be an interesting project. My experience on other projects has often shown that a modified manufacturers product is a much quicker & lower cost way of coming up with a better product than starting from scratch.  

However before having a go at the S5 I am going to continue up the learning curve of undervolting & frequency lowering with my low cost S3  

Rich

3 is close enough to the right answer.

Now part of it is the 1384 chip seems to need a kick of power to start.

So  an s-5 can't start at 10.5 volts  it can start at 12 volts and if you set it on freq 300 vs 350 start it at  12 volts then dial  down the psu you

can drop to 10.5 or 11 volts.

So you need a server psu plat or gold quality that will allow power to be dialed down to 10.5 - 11 volts  .

Someone sells a server psu that allow voltage to be lowered.

if you do all this   I think you get 11/12 x .52 =  .47 watts a gh.

to better then this you need a different board design.

I not trying to be negative I am just point out why home mining is dying.

Look at it like a big business.

 What is easier to do make better mining gear or find cheaper power?  The answer is cheaper power is a much safer way to do BTC mining.

In the USA Washington state has 3 to 5  cent power.
In China there are areas with 3 to 5 cent power.
In other places of the world there are areas with 3 to 5 cent power.

So  I  make a 1000gh machine it uses 320 watts  I have 8 cent power.  I spend 60-90  days building it .

you use 1150gh s-5's you have 3 cent power. you wait 6 days for it to ship to you

you crush me . Just do the math.


So if you are bitmaintech  you rather make .52 watt s-5's since they are easy to make and you have 3 to 5 cent power.

OK I have done a bit of searching on the Sidekick USB and it seems that it can achieve 0.33J/GH which is probably best in class at the moment? So to keep this thread on topic, it's already been reclassified from Hardware to Speculation   This for me begs the question that as the S5 & the Sidekick are both based on the BM1384 chip, if the Sidekick can do 0.33J/GH why can't the S5?

I see 4 possibilities.

1) The S5 can do it, you just need to find the right settings.
2) The generation of the core voltage in the Sidekick is more efficient.
3) There is something in the Sidekick code / chip setup etc that Sidekick have found that Bitmain have missed.
4) Something else.  

Have to say I can't get too excited about a USB stick with 8GH. However I could get very excited by understanding how they have done it and applying it to an S5 or if they have plans for a product with 800 - 1000 GH based on the same solution and J/GH.


Rich

Phil has a good thread with reviews and vouches in it: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-combined-sidehack-novak-usb-stick-review-thread-aka-gekkoscience-bm1384-1086011

I can say after trying one it is a solid miner with a LOT of options on how fast you want to run.  Even on very low I was still beating Avalon nano on speed.  And if you crank it up, it is an amazing speed for one chip on a usb miner.

Well that is interesting. We have discussed that it's possible to get something just under .5 J/GH with the miners in the title. What J/GH are the Sidehack USB sticks achieving and are they actually available?

Rich

 People that understand home mining is over at the price they are paying for power.  Will buy usb sticks.

 I can justify 10 to 20 usb sticks from sidehack in my house because they burn the least power per gh.  They are quiet.

 They will earn more then the power costs me for about 1 year.



No gear in my house can roi as of today. But I am still committed to BTC on a level that has no:

 MONETARY GAIN FOR MYSELF  IN THE YEAR 2015.

BTW I only made money on this game  in one year 2013.

SFARDS SF100 is only 20% more power efficient than the S5 and twice the cost per GH/s. If trading is not your cup of tea I would look into replacing the fan on the S5 to cut noise. Some advice on upgrading the fan at https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMining/comments/322z3a/fan_upgrade_for_antminer_s5/ and https://forum.bitmain.com/bbs/topics/1744

I guess one of the growing problems for the "Home User" is that the target market for the manufacturers is now the big spending farms and for them with cheap electricity the key requirement is for GH rather than J/GH?  Do not know what the Farms pay per KWH but will be interesting to see what happens when their return begins to approach zero with the current generation of miners?

What we need is a manufacturer who concentrates on a sensibly priced miner where the key feature is a low J/GH rather than all the emphasis being on higher GH.

BTW, still learning here. Who buys and uses the silly USB miners that do not appear to tick any of the boxes?


Rich

How can you honestly suggest something that will never get close to ROI ? - the sfards chips are new, and premium priced (and sold out god knows why with that pricepoint) ... unless they do a 50% discount to bulk buyers that miner is as doomed as the Monarc was as soon as BFL put them up for sales

They took this out of the manual, probably because it never worked properly anyways. Would be very interested about that myself!

S3 is good for those with cheap eletricity.   On SFards I would not count on them to soon.  They have been very quiet.

LKETC is also one to watch.  After they get their next gen we know they have been very successful in past at mass production.

Hi Guys

Thanks for the inputs. I spend a lot of time playing with electronics so in many respects this is just an interesting learning experience for me. Just buying Hash & Trading is not what I am after, I still remember loosing a lot of money when the Tech bubble burst...

So if you need Electric at 5 Pence (8 Cents) / KW then that means anyone mining in the UK is loosing money and I guess those in the US not making much?

This was my simple rounded / approximate maths based on my very limited experience mining with the S1 on PPS sites like F2Pool, NiceHash & BTCChina all of which gave similar results.

S1 running at 180GH/S consumes 340W @ the wall, ( 2J/GH)  24Hrs running yielded .002 BTC = approx 60 Cents

So cost @ 15 Cents / KWH is approx 8 * 15 Cents = $1.20

So a loss of 60 Cents every 24 Hours, not good but the washing is dry.


So now looking at a miner running @ .5 J/GH so 4 x the efficiency of the S1

So if the miner was running at 800GH/S this would yield approx $2.40 in 24 Hours

Electric cost should be the same @ $1.20  in  24 Hours, so a profit of $1.20 on current difficulty.

I will do the undervolting / underclocking on my S3 and see what "real World" results I achieve and take things from there.

Will read the thread & keep an eye out for the Sfards chips.


Rich

A bit outside what you've specified, and the price is too much at the moment.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-sfardssf100-the-first-28nm-dual-mode-miner-is-accepting-pre-order-now-985400
I'm betting you will start seeing some goof efficiency from Sfards chips.

It is a hobbyist miner. I will get one, but I will wait for the first price drop and initial reviews.

The SP20 is the top of the heap imo. I prefer those every day.
I have two I purchased in a group buy in December which I've ran the piss out of, and then finally dialed them back due to heat, but the rest of my SP20s get babied.
I think they defined quality in the miner market.

Then if you check the speculation threads you will see Bitmain has hinted to releasing their newest miner by the end of the month. It will be overpriced, way overpriced.

Good luck!

15 us cent or 10 pence = loser  more then likely.

11 us cent or 7 pence = maybe a loser


 8 us cent or 5 pence = maybe a winner


lower then above you can make money

higher then above you will almost certainly lose.




the s-5 is designed to do a flat number  about .52 watts

the sp-20 can get .46  watts low clock and .7 watts high clock

if you have a really efficient 12 volt power source  you can dial down to 11 volts you could do the s-5.

Start it at 12 volts at 300 freq then dial the psu down to 11 volts.



The info below is pretty   good.

no one gets .3 watts on any gear except sidehack's usb sticks.

I have owned s-5's you can get .49 watts a gh

I have owned sp20's you can get .45 to .47 watts at lower gui clocks  of .6 volts and 950 gh

I have owned s-3's  you can get .62 watts a gh

I have owned avalon 4.1's you can get .48 to .51 watts

With your power cost I think you would be better served by just buying hash on the Hashnest market. UMISOO has the highest yield at the moment, not S5. If you learn to trade you can also make money buying and selling hash with mining income as a bonus.

Yes I have read the S5 thread looking for any info on J/GH and it's mostly full of people discussing what alternative fan to fit, so got the picture on how loud it is. In practice, within reason, noise not a big issue as the washing is dried in a remote part of the house and I could if necessary move it out to the boiler house. Lowest J/GH for 800 - 1000 GHZ is the main selection criteria.

Power in the UK is a bit expensive, best I can get it at is just under 10 Pence (15 Cents) / KWH. I would really like to get to 0.25 - 0.3 J/GH which I have seen as being possible on the S5. Cannot find at the moment much mention of the SP20 being much less than the quoted 0.47 J/KW but it looks like making the adjustments is fairly easy so I feel it will go lower.

I have just bought a S3 at a good price so will do an undervolt mod on that and see how low I can go, whilst continuing the research into the S5 & SP20.

Any further inputs on actual J/KW and how these were achieved for the S5 & SP20 would be gratefully received.

Rich

the sp20  can do 470 watts at about 1000gh

gui settings around

.605
.605
.605
.605

max volts .611

fan at 10 you are UK based so is your power .12 cents usd?   I guess that is 7 or 8 pence a kwatt.

One thing you may want to consider. While I don't own an S1, my understanding is that it's a pretty quiet miner. I think that is also true for the S3. It is most decidedly NOT true for the S5. I do own an SP20, and when pushed for speed, the fan is plenty loud. I am way down clocked for the summer, and it would fit your efficiency desires, it might still be a bit loud for your situation.

You might also want to consider an Avalon 4.1, which is only available on the used market.

I only mention the loudness, due to the reference on clothes drying.

Very late to mining, do not know how I missed it, but 4 Days ago bought an ebay S1 for £30 and have been progressing rapidly up the learning curve.

So the S1 is great for learning but at 190 GH/S with 350W at the wall (1.8J/GH) it's a great way of loosing money. However unusually my Wife is happy as it's doing a great job of drying the washing.

So my objective is to have between 800 & 1000 GH/S at the lowest possible wattage. I will buy the hardware second hand and am happy to right off the hardawre cost, because if I wasn't doing this I would be spending money on something else :-)

I am considering the 3 options in the title, and am happy to spend time adjusting and modifying if that will improve the J/GH ratio My initial research shows the following.

Antminer S3 Underclocked & undervolted  x3 ebay price £260 - £300
0.68V, 150MHz, 310GH/S, 180W x 3 = 930GH/S, 930W = 0.6J /GH

Antminer S5 ebay price £300 - £350
0.51 J/GH  (Have seen 0.2 J/GH @ 9V mentioned but can it be done?)

Spondoolies SP20 ebay price £340 -£400
0.47 J/GH

So this is where I need some help. For me it's all about how low I can get the J/GH. I don't mind lot's of playing about or hardware modifications. I have something in mind for the S3 which will make the voltage full adjustable, but more on that if I go down that route.

So what I would like is any inputs you have on J/GH you have achieved on any of the above units and what settings or modifications you used to achieve them.?

Many Thanks

Rich