Futurebit Apollo II BTC Founders Edition Full Node Review - PIC HEAVY - page 2.

Omarkoman

newbie

Activity: 8

Merit: 1

I love to tinker so will have to take it apart and go from there.

I can see there are copper blocks I can get off aliexpress with various dimensions / sizes, I imagine a 10x10cm would suffice plus a decent 420 radiator + pump with res should be more than efficient to extract heat from water. I have dabbled in watercooling in computers for last 20 years and water is ALWAYS much more efficient to cool vs traditional aircoolers.

taking the Apollo II apart is first step to see the required surface area that needs to be cooled (eg how many chips there are etc).

I just want max performance but no way I can stand the noise with current cooling!

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

Quote from: Omarkoman on May 24, 2024, 04:19:43 PM

thanks, I figured it out now and setup custom pool.

I am going to open up the case and see if there is any chance to figure out how to water cool these using a computer 360 AIO.

the device is fantastic BUT ... even in ECO mode and fan at 2200rpm its LOUD to sit on your desk in office or bedroom. on Balanced mode and fan at 3300rpm its VERY loud and unless you you have a house and can keep it in garage away from you, its just not practical to have in an apartment. The Turbo mode is ridiculously loud, like a jet taking off.

frankly even in Balanced mode, I dont see the longevity of the fan spinning at such high RPMs for months and years and the amount of dust it will collect with so much air being sucked in will require regular maintenance / cleaning as it will otherwise overheat.

its a great device but the cooling just doesnt work above ECO mode and needs watercooling solution.

the device cost me $2000 Australian dollars after shipping and taxes. A 360 AIO costs $100 so Im surprised they have not offered it as an option with an external box attached to the Apollo II with the fan and radiator. I would be very happy with that as who cares about aesthetics.

I'd be curious to see how you make out with this and how much it really helps with the cooling! They do run hot but no hotter than a S19 would.

Balanced is where I am running mine currently and using the solo mining pool aspect heavily with just over 9PH pointed to it.

Omarkoman

newbie

Activity: 8

Merit: 1

thanks, I figured it out now and setup custom pool.

I am going to open up the case and see if there is any chance to figure out how to water cool these using a computer 360 AIO.

the device is fantastic BUT ... even in ECO mode and fan at 2200rpm its LOUD to sit on your desk in office or bedroom. on Balanced mode and fan at 3300rpm its VERY loud and unless you you have a house and can keep it in garage away from you, its just not practical to have in an apartment. The Turbo mode is ridiculously loud, like a jet taking off.

frankly even in Balanced mode, I dont see the longevity of the fan spinning at such high RPMs for months and years and the amount of dust it will collect with so much air being sucked in will require regular maintenance / cleaning as it will otherwise overheat.

its a great device but the cooling just doesnt work above ECO mode and needs watercooling solution.

the device cost me $2000 Australian dollars after shipping and taxes. A 360 AIO costs $100 so Im surprised they have not offered it as an option with an external box attached to the Apollo II with the fan and radiator. I would be very happy with that as who cares about aesthetics.

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

You will need to have the node fully sync before the solo mining option becomes available.

Additionally, when using a custom pool you need to select one of the existing pool options first then you can select custom and make your desired entry.

Quote from: Omarkoman on May 21, 2024, 11:51:49 PM

Quote from: sorensenes on April 26, 2024, 02:08:29 PM

Once logged in click on settings on the lower left side. The first page that pops up there is Pools which allows you to select from a pre-populated pool or choose a custom one so that you can enter in the pool info and mine to whatever pool you choose.

hi, I got my Apollo II but when I go to pools section in settings and select Setup custom pool I can not edit the URL or username or anything, its greyed out.

is this normal or do I need to do anything else? (note - my node is still synchronising but that shouldnt affect me being able to setup a custom pool right?)

Omarkoman

newbie

Activity: 8

Merit: 1

Quote from: sorensenes on April 26, 2024, 02:08:29 PM

Once logged in click on settings on the lower left side. The first page that pops up there is Pools which allows you to select from a pre-populated pool or choose a custom one so that you can enter in the pool info and mine to whatever pool you choose.

hi, I got my Apollo II but when I go to pools section in settings and select Setup custom pool I can not edit the URL or username or anything, its greyed out.

is this normal or do I need to do anything else? (note - my node is still synchronising but that shouldnt affect me being able to setup a custom pool right?)

sorensenes

newbie

Activity: 4

Merit: 0

Quote from: Sledge0001 on April 26, 2024, 01:10:15 PM

Quote from: sorensenes on April 26, 2024, 10:34:35 AM

I just got my Apollo II home miner and have a question. I know it can solo mine, but is it possible to have it be part of a pool mine instead? If so, I haven't found any articles or information in how to set that up. If anyone has any insight or any pooled mining recommendations, please share.

Yes you absolutely can mine to a pool if you prefer and not take advantage of the built in solomining function.

Once logged in click on settings on the lower left side. The first page that pops up there is Pools which allows you to select from a pre-populated pool or choose a custom one so that you can enter in the pool info and mine to whatever pool you choose.

Thanks so much sledge. I've got everything hooked up and seems to be running...just need to wait and see if it syncs with Ocean.xyz (the one I chose).

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

Quote from: sorensenes on April 26, 2024, 10:34:35 AM

I just got my Apollo II home miner and have a question. I know it can solo mine, but is it possible to have it be part of a pool mine instead? If so, I haven't found any articles or information in how to set that up. If anyone has any insight or any pooled mining recommendations, please share.

Yes you absolutely can mine to a pool if you prefer and not take advantage of the built in solomining function.

Once logged in click on settings on the lower left side. The first page that pops up there is Pools which allows you to select from a pre-populated pool or choose a custom one so that you can enter in the pool info and mine to whatever pool you choose.

sorensenes

newbie

Activity: 4

Merit: 0

I just got my Apollo II home miner and have a question. I know it can solo mine, but is it possible to have it be part of a pool mine instead? If so, I haven't found any articles or information in how to set that up. If anyone has any insight or any pooled mining recommendations, please share.

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

Quote from: vaporspace on April 24, 2024, 08:47:47 PM

Great thread Sledge0001. What's been your best 24 hour SATS so far?

Is anyone out there leveraging the node piece of this device to drive traffic, running lightning node, etc? Cheers.

Glad you enjoyed the write up.

This really is a great piece of hardware for the home miner or small farm.

I am only solomining directly to the Apollo II so I can't really give you a number of how many sats per day.

Based on the calculator here: https://miningpoolstats.stream/bitcoin (You'll have to look for it on the page)

9 TH/s
Daily est. coins
0.0000064 BTC
Daily est. earnings
0.41 USD

However, I see no place to calculate power consumption so this may not be accurate.

heslo

legendary

Activity: 1235

Merit: 1202

Quote from: vaporspace on April 24, 2024, 08:47:47 PM

Great thread Sledge0001. What's been your best 24 hour SATS so far?

Is anyone out there leveraging the node piece of this device to drive traffic, running lightning node, etc? Cheers.

I've just solo mined since I got it but will definitely be pointing it to another pool to see how many sats I get per 24hrs. Have yet to run a LN node on it yet (waiting for someone else to do it so I can follow their guide haha) I wonder if FutureBit still has plans to integrate Lightning into the UI software?

vaporspace

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 1

Great thread Sledge0001. What's been your best 24 hour SATS so far?

Is anyone out there leveraging the node piece of this device to drive traffic, running lightning node, etc? Cheers.

philipma1957

legendary

Activity: 4326

Merit: 8950

'The right to privacy matters'

nice choice of power setup. a hefty switch and nice 3 pin connection.

seems to be just about 38 watts a th maybe 36 watts.

the 350 watts is a good energy point.

heslo

legendary

Activity: 1235

Merit: 1202

Update already done! Just wanted to get it all up and running (I'm impatient) then ran the update. Was gonna flash the SD card but tried the OTA update and that worked flawlessly too. Very impressive so far!

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

Quote from: heslo on April 18, 2024, 02:22:02 AM

Landed today! Already set up and hashing... node synching away!

Excellent machine and don't regret the purchase one bit!

Excellent!!!

To be honest I must say that I am truly impressed!

The pool / miner hasn't had any issues when sending a good share of hashrate to it.

@heslo Make sure you do your update!

To check all you need to do is click the power button on the top left (seen in yellow on your screen) and then click on the software version to check for new updates!!

heslo

legendary

Activity: 1235

Merit: 1202

Landed today! Already set up and hashing... node synching away!

Excellent machine and don't regret the purchase one bit!

heslo

legendary

Activity: 1235

Merit: 1202

That's really awesome! Mine is about two days away according to FedEx, can't wait to play!

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

With the halving / halfening or whatever you want to call it upon us and the pool code I have been working on is just not there yet so.... I decided to throw the house at the Apollo II's solomining pool just to see how it would hold up.

I have to say this things a beast in a box.

Here is the performance at 4.55PH

And a look under the hood to see how the entire system is doing while mining and acting as a solo mining pool.

Impressive right??

Okay so I decided to throw all I had at it and I mean everything in my private mining and pro arsenal... About 7.5PH.

Why you may ask? My answer is simple... Because I had to take the Apollo II where it had never gone before!

What kinda odds does the Apollo II predict??

What's the true load on the unit after 4 days online and tinkering?

And how have I done so far?? NOT ENOUGH BUT DAMN!!!!

I standby my earlier opinion that this may be a great turnkey solution for a small farm if they want to take a shot at the big prize.

The Apollo II can take it!

heslo

legendary

Activity: 1235

Merit: 1202

Well found out my unit has shipped by getting the customs duty email from FedEx Cheesy

At least it's on its way, can't wait to get mine and have a play!

Sledge0001

full member

Activity: 633

Merit: 159

Quote from: jstefanop on April 10, 2024, 11:53:27 AM

Thanks for the cool writeup!

Solo page is still a WIP, but lots more functionality will be incoming in the months ahead.

Good to see lots of workers attached since we didn't really test more than 3-4, need to work on the UI for that.

Regarding your questions:

Yes, you can add more "users" via a different payout address, workers can be broken out with a .xxx at the end of the address as you have done.

Adding explainers on the whole UI is on our to-do list

We set diff really low so users can connect ANY device (even nerd miners ) easily. If diff is too high they will never find a share and it wont show up in the UI. Our stratum implementation quickly corrects to higher diff, but as you can see there are lots of rejected shares on startup.

The max connection node setting works, but the UI is hard configured to show xx/32...as you can see you are at 39 connections so its working...will probably add this option in the node settings so the UI is updated properly.

@jstefanop

Really appreciate the work you put in on this as well as your response here on the forum.

I did notice that when adding a 2nd user the user does show up under the solo-mining page as connected however there were no stats being displayed for that 2nd user.
It may be helpful to have a pool page so that you can view the mining stats for every user individually that is mining to the Apollo II. Just a thought!

But I'll say again well done on bringing this to market.

jstefanop

legendary

Activity: 2174

Merit: 1401

Thanks for the cool writeup!

Solo page is still a WIP, but lots more functionality will be incoming in the months ahead.

Good to see lots of workers attached since we didn't really test more than 3-4, need to work on the UI for that.

Regarding your questions:

Yes, you can add more "users" via a different payout address, workers can be broken out with a .xxx at the end of the address as you have done.

Adding explainers on the whole UI is on our to-do list

We set diff really low so users can connect ANY device (even nerd miners ) easily. If diff is too high they will never find a share and it wont show up in the UI. Our stratum implementation quickly corrects to higher diff, but as you can see there are lots of rejected shares on startup.

The max connection node setting works, but the UI is hard configured to show xx/32...as you can see you are at 39 connections so its working...will probably add this option in the node settings so the UI is updated properly.

Topic: Futurebit Apollo II BTC Founders Edition Full Node Review - PIC HEAVY - page 2. (Read 970 times)