Topic: Butterfly Labs - Bitforce Single and Mini Rig Box - page 41. (Read 186929 times)

Wasn't there a post going around of a college kid who suffered brain damage due to all his mining GPUs in his cramped dorm room? Be careful, you should probably just send all those GPUs to me.

How the heck do you live in there without getting heatstroke?

An additional fan will also had a couple watts to the power consumption of the device...

I can pay $680 for ugly but working Single shipped my way, just in case someone wants to get rid of too many fans.

About 63 to 64 degrees C. But that's in a 90+ degrees Fahrenheit room, i.e. my $215 p.M. mining office.
In fact, the [Nvidia] graphics card of the Toshiba laptop that runs CGMINER and the ZTEX miner seems to be on the fritz due to the heat and I just ordered a 17" HP laptop as a replacement - it's on sale for $699 today.

Single fan:



JWU42:
I understand the Mini-rig will use updated/next-gen chips and will run cooler and faster.

This talk has me a tad concerned since the heatpipe design will be on the mini-rig.  Hoping they have put some of the lessons learned to practice with this...

Lord knows it isn't short on fans!!

Basically the heatsink's thermal capacity is too small if it heats so much even with a fan blowing at it at full speed. They should have made the unit bigger and used bigger heatsinks right from the start.

Encouraging. Are yours the single-fan or the dual-fan version of the Rev3?

Mine run at 50-58C. One seems to remain 3-4C hotter than the other. Can't tell you ambient, no idea. I guess 20-24C.

It was a very interesting observation, Inspector.

Prior to that, I was expecting (from BFL's photos of the different Single generations side-by-side, and the few 'eye witness' reports from people receiving their Rev3's) all current shipments of the heat-pipe designs to have only 1 fan. There was no indication, until now, that the Rev3's have both 1-fan and 2-fan versions.

So I'm not sure how much they've actually improved their thermals with the heat-pipe if a bottom fan is still needed for some of them. For example, I have a Rev2 that mines at 55C; another at 62C. The point at which they throttle seems to be ~75C (I experimented with some lower CFM fans which turned out to be inadequate) so there is a lot of headroom already.

Can anyone report how hot (as reported by cgminer) their Rev3 units run? Curious to see how they compare to the Rev2 units.

Hey, I was just reporting an observation.
Of course I'll keep the "ugly" ones, too.

It points to the poor design of the system in the first place. Poor design means long-term reliability is a serious concern.

To jddebug, gigavps, sgtspike and others who don't care about 1 fan or 2 fans: I'm glad that's working out for you. It means you'll be happy no matter what shows up in the BFL USPS box.

For others, who cannot hide these things in a basement or closet or datacenter, the difference between 1 or 2 fans is more important. In fact, even the CHOICE of fans is important. There was a post earlier about someone trying to set a Single up in their bedroom. It doesn't matter why: Maybe they have no room elsewhere; maybe that's where their only computer is. The point is that a stock Single, with its dual 43 CFM 2100RPM 27dbA fans, is TOO LOUD for a bedroom in which you are trying to sleep. Perhaps it is even too loud for a living room you use to entertain guests, or a study in which you are trying to ... gasp ... study.

So if a Single arrives with just 1 fan, it's going to be significantly quieter than the 2-fan version (or the dreaded 3-fan version). In my personal case, I've put Singles into a basement office. They are the 2-fan style, and I found them to be disturbingly loud. Much louder than the SLI gaming PC I have in the same room. My solution was to replace the stock fans with quieter ones. Now, even with all other equipment turned off in that room, the Singles can barely be heard. Paradise.

So for me (and perhaps for others), the amount of noise coming from the Singles is very important. Yes, I care that they mine away relentlessly and reliably and that will always be the #1 priority. But I demand they do it with the least amount of disturbance as possible. And I'm happy with the balance I've been able to achieve.

If I had a datacenter next door, an empty garage, or unused basement I wouldn't care what fans they used or how many fans they had or how much noise they made ... because I wouldn't have to deal with that. But when they are in my face, in the same room, and I'm trying to think, they need to be quiet.

So, yes, 1 fan or 2 makes a big difference to me. But I fully understand and respect jjdebug, gigavps, and sgtspike when they say they don't really care.

And I will pay $631 

Works fine, it has standoffs to keep the fan away from the table.

How do i put it on a table with a fan on the bottom?

Cooler AND faster....