Topic: Avalon ASIC users thread - page 209. (Read 438340 times)

Guess what, those places might not be suitable for bitcoin mining.  Power cost and climate are things to take into consideration.

And if Al Gore is right, more and more places will be like that.
Rumor has it, he and his cronies are buying up huge swathes of land in Alaska and northern Canada for future pineapple and sugarcane plantations...

In many places where I have lived it is 85F when the air conditioner is running.

There should be excuses for TBF to not ask serious questions of Yifu.

1) Secret..............

2) Secret..............

 

Bitsyncom, here's a request for information to include in the Avalon newsletter:


1)
What is the status of "shipped" batch #1 orders? (Are they all stuck in customs? Any updates on ETA? How many have shipped?)

2)
What is the status of batch #2 orders?
-From my understanding only a fraction of the 600 units were processed by WalletBit.
-What's the status of confirmation emails for paid orders? (How is order # being determined?)
-Is there going to be another official re-re-opening of remaining batch #2 orders or will they just show up as "in stock" in the store (http://store.avalon-asics.com/ -- which is in a bad state right now)?

Usually high temperatures affect the capacitors first, electrolytic capacitors constantly baked in high temperatures will fail rapidly. Also the design of the semiconductor structure in the chip itself can have an impact on the maximum junction temperature. My old laptop's Athlon64 has a max junction temperature of 70C while my new laptop's i7 won't shut down until nearly 100C.

High temperatures will also cause devices to age more rapidly in terms of electromigration and other nasty stuff that some users have observed here when their cards can no longer run stable at high clocks after long periods of operation.

Why would these temperatures break down the device though, as you seems to suggest is possible? Which components are slowly degraded because of 80C temperatures? The PCB itself? Surely the silicon itself can stand temperatures much much higher than that. But of course there are capacitors, voltage converters and all sorts of components I don't know what are, and it's possible they somehow break down at higher temperatures.

I'm genuinely interested in an answer, because we all hear all the time that, for example, running one's CPU/GPU at high temperatures causes its lifespan to decrease, but I haven't actually seen any data to support this. I mean, it obviously gets too hot at some point, where some of the components will not be able to handle this, but whether this is 60C, 80C, 120C or 150C I don't know.

I know some computer components can run extremely hot.. what I'd be more concerned with high temperatures over long time periods is the lifespan of the device.  Just how long can these keep running at those temps... 3 months... 6 months.. 3 years?... Hopefully we won't find this out anytime soon

Is 50C really a problem? I had the impression that even 80C isn't a problem? My GPU is at 62C right now not doing anything. (FOSS Linux Radeon driver has no power management )

Are there components on the board that might not be able to withstand >50C temperatures?

Remember that the hotter the heatsinks get the more heat they dissipate. Both by radiation but also by warming up the exhaust air more. If Jeff's room is 20C now and he heated it up to 35C I don't think we would see an increase to more than 60C, with the fans running at the same speed.

Two units are confirmed in this thread (jgarzik and the BF), and network hashrate indicates no jncrease beyond the usual variance.

Whats the total count of ASIC's in customer hands?? 3 or 4?

Can you quantify how much noise it makes? I guess because these are big fans, the noise is not as irritating as little GPU fans at full blast?

I know for sure I would not want to share an office with 3 GPU cards at 100% fan speed

The ASIC definitely sheds heat well. I tried working in the office where it's kept the other day (which has a couch.) And almost fell asleep from the warmth and pleasant hum of Bitcoin minting. 

Also, this morning I somehow spilled OJ on myself and my laptop keyboard. I pulled the keyboard out, washed it in the sink, and used the ASIC's exhaust to dry it. 10 minutes later my laptop is as good as new.

Cheers for thermal efficiency!

This would be great, it seems like he was updating us a lot before pre-sale batch #2 and now its a blackhole in some regards.   Good customer service would be at least an update once a week. 

Can you kindly do us a favor and ask him what the shipping status of batch #1 is and what's happening with batch #2 ?

I honestly don't know the answer...Yifu will be here today, I dont have the logins.

Come on Bitcoin Foundation, you gotta give up more details than that

I'm not.

Seems pretty clear heat is not a problem here.

Maybe not stupid, but probably not the best idea. It's more along that lines of "Hey guy who paid for some mining hardware, we want you to stop earning a couple hundred bucks a day from your Avalon so you can spend time doing testing for us."

Right now if intake air temps aren't 85F, why take the unit offline to test that? Worry about it in a couple months when it's getting warmer and there's a couple hundred TH/s on the network, but for now milk that thing for all it's worth. If anyone should be doing this testing, it's the Avalon team.


No, the heatsinks are 50C assuming that the camera was properly calibrated to view flat metal surfaces. The air temps are going to be less than the heatsink temperature, looking at the picture it seems around 30C. As you say, 20C would be better but 30C is pretty standard for what a PSU can see drawing air from the inside of a case so it's not like it won't handle it.


Jeff, if you're wondering if it's heating related, grab a couple high flow 120mm fans and put them in the missing holes running full out. You could also make an air guide in the empty slot to force the air from the fan with only module into the heatsink. Both things could be done without having to take the unit offline to tinker with, and they should drop the temps substantially. See if that helps with your restarting issue.