Topic: BFL "EasyMiner" Released. Reviews? - page 2. (Read 21495 times)

No, that honor should be left for Windows ME

Hahaha! So true.

Hello James,

One possibility is that windows is denying access to COM port. This can be resolved if you right-click on Easyminer
and click on 'Run as administrator'. Please run this test and let us know how it goes. Of course, I must add that
Windows Vista is probably the worst operating system ever developed since the Big Bang.

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Hi, I have my BFL's up and running but wanted to flash them.. the only windows machine I have here is running VISTA (my normal mining is all on Linux), so i grabbed the EasyMiner_V_1.1_Beta to see if I could flash one with the higher firmware, but cant get it to run.... my device manager shows the one BFL Single i plugged in properly on COM3 (well COM3 appeared when i plug it in), but when I open EasyMiner, (the only option available is "administrative mode") and click "Proceed", I get the windows dialog "BitFORCE-Miner has stopped working  A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available"

Any idea how to fix this?

James

Well, after two day sof running, #5 and #8 have returned to throttling (709 and 604 mhps).  total bummer

I guess I'll try flashing them lower to see how they handle it.

Okay, so I've re-done the thermal paste on the three units that were causing the most trouble...

The worst one, #8, is now running at 807.7/828.5 @ 54.0C.  Much better than it was, but still not keeping up with the others.

The second one, #5, is now running at 857.7/848.8 @ 48.6 C.

The third one I redid, #7, was dropping off yesterday.  It's now running 857.7/848.8849.1 @ 55.3C.

I just noticed that it was running better than all of the others by a hair.  #7 is pulling 857.7/849.1 where all of the other's  (except for #5 and #8) are at 857.7/848.8.  Weird.

The thermal paste seems to be at the heart of the issue.  I took a bunch of pictures of the process, and I'll put together a walkthrough.  One thing I noticed was that this one, #7, had a diffferent thermal paste and fan connector than the others.  The thermal paste was silvery, metallic looking, where #5 and #8 were white.  #7's hadn't dried up and became "lumpy" like the others.  The connector was also a black 2-pin, instead of the white three pin connector.

I used the AcrtiCleaner 2-part stuff, as per instructions.  q-tips and paper towels to get off the gunk with a quick wipe from a no-lint swatch I had after using the second cleaner.  Reapplied a dot of ArcticSilver 5 to the center of each chip.  They say the burn-in is around 200 hours, with a steady drop in temps over that time, we'll see.

*I may have goofed up #8, as I didn't apply enough ArticSilver the first time, and had to pull it off and apply another dot, so there may be bubbles.  I'll let it run throughout the night and see how it's averaging in the morning before I do anything else.  Oh, and all 10 units are using the 872 firmware.

It seems that one of your units is throttling. You may want to check heatsink, Intake air temperature.
Please let us know how it goes.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Thanks . Honestly, I have no idea yet, i was going to do some research to see what has the best reviews.

  Nice setup

What compound are you going to use ?? I'm taking a survey 

I've flashed them a number of times, with a couple bad flashes too (something interrupted it halfway through).

Here are how they look after mining for two days:



I'll probably be taking them down tomorrow to check the thermal paste.

So,I am assuming there is no real limit to how many flashes one can do to a unit ??

Please let us know how the unit works after reapplying the H/S compound.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Update:

I tried flashing the 792 & 800 firmware & the unit still throttles (room temp 76 degrees f) & won't get over 300 mh/s.

However with the 768 firmware I can mine with room temps of up to 84 degress f @ 760 mh/s,I opened my windows just to see if the higher temps would make it throttle & no throttleing.

Next step is to turn down the A/C to 70 degrees f & keep flashing firmware,higher each time & see what happens.


Before I do,is there any limit to flashing?? I already flashed 4 times so far............don't think so,but its better to ask


Also,if after all this & I still can't run anything but the 768 FW,I may try reapplying the H/S compound.Those that have done this,what compound are you using??

I always use Ceramique on CPU's & GPU's,but it's pretty thick stuff & I'm thinking it may be too thick for this application.

I've been keeping up with rkozola's issues to maybe be enlightened as my problem is similiar.

BTW,I know USB 2.0 works,but is there anything to gain with using USB 3.0 ??

I'd do that. Just get them all running how they should be then you won't have to watch them all day

I've noticed out of my 10 BFL units, two seem to throttle themselves.  I've done some testing between the 872 and 864, at 100 units, and they all pass (using windows 7 in Parallels on OSX).

They only seem to throttle after I power cycle them.  I had them all mining for about a day, and I decided to stop cgminer and let them cool down.  I shut down cgminer, and powered them all off for about 15 minutes, so they could get back to about 21 C.  When they came back up, they all reported a good hashrate, till I checked them again about 8 hours later. 8 of the units acted as expected (about 850 mhps), while one was at 752 (47 C) and the other at 663 (51 C).  I've been running the a/c through the hottest part of the day, and none of them get hotter than 58 C.

When I noticed this a few days ago, I read that there might have been an issue with thermal paste, so I took the worst of the units apart and cleaned off the "lumpy" paste and reseated the heatsink and pipe.  After reassembling it and bringing it back up, it reported an increase of about 10 mhps (bringing it in line with the others).  Sadly, after running yesterday and most of today and being power cycled and cooled this afternoon, it's fallen back to previous levels after about 4 hours (664 @ 51.6C).

At this point I may just clean and reapply thermal paste on the two "bad" ones, as this is about all I can think of trying.  It appeared that the "lumpy" thermal paste may have been applied, then allowed to sit for some time until it got seated on the chips (my best guess), so it wasn't getting 100% of it's surface touching between the heat sinks and chips.

I'm wondering if it might be worth it to simply clean all of them really well, and use a higher quality thermal paste.

Sure will

Thanks for responding so quickly 

OK, now you can test with 792, 800 and 808. Increase firmware version one by one to find
the sweet spot. Please let us know how it goes.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Well,I flashed the 768 firmware & viola,it's mining @ 750mh/s

I expected a learning curve,so I'm not disappointed in the issues I've run into  

It's a great little device & I'm very pleased with it.I'll be getting more soon!!!

Hope you guy's at BFL can get these to work a little better in a hotter enviroment,like 80 degrees.I'm in florida & to get to 72 degrees is very costly.

Thanks again for all the help guys !!!!!

Also, the test run shows Total Throttles = 1, this means the unit is throttling.
What is the In-Take temperature of the unit, not necessarily the room temperature?
These units are tested at 72F not 78F. Are these units placed close together? Is a GPU
exhausting hot air into the units Intake? Is the Unit in a closed space where it cannot
ventilate efficiently? Is something blocking either the sides or the top side of the unit?

Please let us know.



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[/quote]

I only have one unit & it's sitting on an open shelf away from any sources of heat,other PC's or electronic devices are at least 3 feet away & nothing is exhuasting anywhere near it.I'll setup another PC in another room later & move it there & see how it goes.

I went ahead & tried the 864 firmware just to see how it goes:



Yep,throttling is occuring

I'll try flashing the hot environment firmware & post the results,before moving it to another location.

Thanks for the help BFL-Engineer  

Also, the test run shows Total Throttles = 1, this means the unit is throttling.
What is the In-Take temperature of the unit, not necessarily the room temperature?
These units are tested at 72F not 78F. Are these units placed close together? Is a GPU
exhausting hot air into the units Intake? Is the Unit in a closed space where it cannot
ventilate efficiently? Is something blocking either the sides or the top side of the unit?

Please let us know.



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.