Topic: Avalon ASIC users thread - page 100. (Read 438516 times)

Thanks and thanks. No tip jar for so little

I consider my Avalon batch#3 unit a nice done product. It came with a 850 W PS. It's an Enermax Gold able to put 840W on 12V. Out the box Avalon unit can run much higher then specifications.
But I'm not so sure that it will be able to pay itself, even overclocked like this
So I'm willing to try to push it more. I believe there are two problems which need to be solved:

• Cooling is less then optimal. The modules (heatsinks) are much hotter at the end. But the exhausted air it's only warm. I have some ideas of how cooling can be improved.
• Voltage on the chips must be raised a little. It's now around 1150mV (both from schematics and measurements). Specification of the chip is 1200mV. I believe it will be no problem to push it around 1240mV, which I hope it will allow it to run at 375MHz. But this will mean ~25% more power, so cooling has to be solved first. And this would be a hardware mod, 40 resistors to solder.

And during the time the unit is upgraded, it does not produce, or at least not at full capacity

Very nice data.  Where is your tip jar?

I let 20130810-1 run overnight.  The frequency dropped until it was about 304 MHz, and was steadily dropping when I stopped it.  The stable frequency under 20130703 is 345-347.  I am mining under eligius, and the recent behavior is online.  I returned to 20130703 an hour or so ago.

My temperature ran at 49°C and I had the idea that there was a "<" vs "<=" problem somewhere, or it's evil twin ! > vs if "<" then .  However, I tried to raise the temperature set-point to 51, and this did not help.

Some power measurements for Avalon.

Unit is batch#3 w/4 modules, fw 20130723.
Temperature target 65C. Keep in mind this is equiv with 45 for batch#1&2.
Temp1 (input temperature) is 21C .
Temp3 (output temperature) is roughly 15C lower then Temp2.
Wall is wall power in watts.
Errors is percentage of HW errors versus diff1 shares.

freq	wall	fan1	fan3	temp2	errors
256	685	2280	2040	60
270	722	2280	2160	60
282	755	2400	2160	61
300	803	2400	2160	63	0.94%
325	873	2520	2280	66	1.08%
350	943	3480	3240	63	1.35%

Produces arround 109-110Gh/s @350MHz, confirmed by btcguild (more or less).
At 375MHz unit cannot maintain 65C temperature target. Hash is less, around 105Gh/s, due to large percentage of HW errors.  

Me?

A retail TP-Link 703n can be found on eBay or Amazon for about $20.  It can be flashed with the 20130703 firmware, and then plugged into the USB cable inside the Avalon.  The LAN cable or WiFi can be used to access it.  It has a mini-USB power cable.  I ran a for-repair Avalon a few hours this way before I got the soldering iron and made a permanent repair.

I am running 0703 and kind of scared to update to 0813/0814.  One person got bricked, several others report decreased hash rates.  Anyone got positive results yet?

Was happily running 20130703 since release with no issues at all. Highly recommended (on 20 or so units - batch 1 and 2, on my batch 3's I just run stock because of the temp sensor change etc). I saw the new firmware and decided to give it a shot on a batch 1 and it bricked it. No reset or nothing could get it back.

I figured no problem. I picked up some extra TL-MR3020 to replace the TP-LINK TL-WR703N router but those didn't flash and in the end I gave up on messing with that (from what I can tell you need a custom one or something).

In the end I found a very simple solution that works awesome:
1) Unplug the USB extender from your TL-WR703N and Ethernet cord
2) Remove the USB extender you won't need it anymore
3) Connect a Raspberry PI to the USB (no power cord needed) and Ethernet
4) Download the latest minepeon from http://sourceforge.net/projects/minepeon/
5) Write this to an SD card for your Raspberry PI
6) Its plug and play so just configure your pools with the web interface

Overclocking (Optional): Warning if you do : Batch 1 upgrading your PSU is mandatory, Batch 2 I didn't upgrade and had no issues. But I definately burned out some batch 1 PSUs.
7) If you want to overclock it which you probably do then just SSH into your PI user: minepeon and pass: peon
- to find PIs easy on your network just install arp-scan (pacman -S arp-scan or yum install arp-scan or apt-get arp-scan)
   and run "sudo arp-scan --interface=eth0 --localnet | grep b8:27:eb" this will show you all your PIs on your network
Once you have SSHed into your PI edit /opt/minepeon/etc/ and change the config file to look something like:
{"algo":"c","avalon-options":"115200:24:10:50:350","api-listen":true,"api-port":"4028","avalon-freq":"350","avalon-temp":"20","avalon-auto":true,"expiry":"120","hotplug":"5","log":"5","no-pool-disable":true,"queue":"1","scan-time":"60","shares":"0","kernel-path":"\/opt\/minepeon\/bin","api-allow":"W:0\/0","pools":[{"url":"stratum.btcguild.com:3333","user":"your_user","pass":"x"},{"url":"stratum.btcguild.com:3333","user":"your_user","pass":"x"},{"url":"stratum.btcguild.com:3333","user":"your_user","pass":"x"}]}

Hopefully this helps someone else out there who has burned out a router or maybe someone wants to try overclocking without messing with their firmware. If you need any help or have any questions just shoot me a PM.

Thank you so much for your advice, support, and software!
I've removed the temp settings, now only have this:
--avalon-auto --avalon-freq 325-375

I'll throw some BTC your way later today or tomorrow, need to eat now.

Thanks again!

_theJestre

For batch 3 Avalons, so yes you got it wrong. Remove those lines ASAP.

Maybe I misunderstood something I read earlier, I'm a bit confused with the different batches wanting different temperatures.

I thought with the new firmware that "70 was the new 50" for Batch 2 Avalons.  Did I get that totally wrong?

Thanks,

_theJestre

Interesting. I uploaded a 20130814 (which is basically the same as the 20130813-1 firmware, just with the cgminer 3.3.4 tag). What I've found with the changed code is that my (batch2) avalon hovers at a lower frequency of 345 instead of 352, but ends up with the same hashrate. If there was something I'd recommend for you on batch 2, it is NOT setting your temperature so high. That is almost certainly contributing to your hardware errors and may damage your chips. If you really want to run them high, I'd suggest 60/70 instead of 70/80, but the defaults are there for a reason.

Hi all,

Just saw the new firmware 20130813-1 and thought I'd upgrade from 20130703, which was giving me ~78Gh/s on my batch 2 Avalon.  I was using just --avalon-auto to achieve this.

I'm getting less Gh/s now, probably about 72 or so.  I'm using these options:

--avalon-auto --avalon-cutoff 80 --avalon-freq 300-360 --avalon-temp 70

Am I doing something wrong, do these numbers look completely off base?

Should batch 2 Avalons just stick to the 20130703 firmware?

Thanks,

_theJestre

Although I was advised against this, I've had all 7 four module Avalons running at 350mhz with Avalon's stock 850w PSU running stable for exactly 2 weeks now. I did have one PSU die the first day, but I have had no problems with the others. I just replaced the PSU and she was back to hashing within minutes. I assume you would have to be incredibly unlucky for a blown PSU to damage the Avalon's components. In all my years (aka. 1 year  ) of GPU mining, never has a blown PSU caused any extra hardware failure (again, in my experience... your mileage may vary.)

As we used to say when I was a snowboard bum in Colorado for a few years after graduating high school, "go big or home." (then proceed to pee your pants while hucking a 50 ft cliff)  

1. Hashrate is only calculated from non-HW errors on the avalon driver
2. No

I have updated from 20130703, to 20130810 for a few hours, then to 20130810-1 most of today.  I will let it run overnight, but I seem to see a decrease also.

I used firmware 20130703 before upgrading to 20130813-1, I get more HW errors and the chips are clocked to 346mhz instead of the normal 350-355mhz.
It is a batch2 avalon.

What could be the case?

I wouldn't even dare.

4 module B3 stock @300mhz draws ~850W from the wall.  Load a PSU @ 100% 24/7 is asking for a bad time!

Has anyone produced a graph of clock frequency vs wall power on a batch #2 unit?

I have a GX 850 power supply, and I have mixed messages whether it is enough to power a 4 module unit clocked at 347 MHz.

2weiX thx for ask for that.

Is it possible to perform  tests which will determine which chip in the chain is  generates errors/are broken?
Usually chains contain 10 chips (Avalon and Burnin BB)
Any one can write some procedure which will return the test result of individual chips ?