Topic: Hacking Antminer S17's and T17's because.... are we up to these already???? - page 2. (Read 472 times)

Ok. I just took a few sinks off here with air heat (360c) and no pre-heat. They come off pretty easily, and the solder layer is fairly thin so you should be able to put them back on with hot air at around 300c and a bit of flux.

For this particular gear, I can see the chips are still in place, was only the heatsinks that went, of course, I am not 100% sure if chips are not damaged since the gear isn't running now, but the kernel logs passed the chip count for all three hash boards, and before starting to mine it shows over-temp error in the kernel log and shuts down, which most likely indicates that all chips are fine, they just (obviously) can't run when their heatsinks are in a plastic bag.

Yeah, the solder can get a bit soft, and I have run across boards where the problem wasn't a bad chip so much as either extruded solder balls or the like.

Did the sinks go or sinks plus chips?

Let me chime in with another tip, do not attempt to clean these gears with a strong air compressor especially when they are hot, the other day I wanted to give the gears a good dusting, took one perfectly working S17 pro, took out the hashboards, put them on a clean table and I blew the life out of them, heatsinks starting flying like mosquitoes, I know since they fell that easily it was only a matter of time before they start falling off, but I could use a month or two of gears running stable.

Ok, so a first thought: When shipping these boards I have a simple recommendation:

Don't.

Seriously: The design of the S17/19 series boards is different from the S7 and S9 of yore. The biggest reason are the new heat sinks: I see that Ant realized you need the biggest sinks furthest away from the intake fans, but the problem is the sinks are long and only supported in the middle by the chip. Thus if you press on one of them (or if your box gets deformed by the local postage dinosaur) the moment of the force applied will torque on the chips and quite probably break them off the board.

Another problem is adhesion: On old boards the top heat sinks were glued on with epoxy. This was a mixed bag for although the epoxy could be too thick (poor thermal transfer) or too thin (damn thing falls off and shorts the board next door) they would typically break the epoxy before breaking the chip off the board. However on these units the top of the chip is metal and the heat sink is soldered on. Nice idea, that ensures an excellent thermal connection to the chip and if the sink falls off it indicates a serious temp error. But at the same time you are just as likely to rip the pads off the board and fixing those sucks a *lot*.

Best way to ship is to put the board in a crush proof box, maybe wood or the like. Even with soft/firm packing material I think it's too easy to knock chips off. Best thing to ship them in would be a S17/s19 case. Yes, heavier but might be worth it.

Next thought: Power.

Reserved for summaries

Hi all!

Well, people are sending in T17's and other mining gear and I thought I'd start another thread for them. Oddly enough I even get occasional messages to help with KNC Neptunes, but that's another thread.

I'll cover some of the issues I encounter with these things here, along with my own tips and thoughts on fixing them, keeping them alive, the occasional rant about quality control, and so forth. With the neverending chip shortages in the world and the odd fact that even S9's and DragonMint T1's are still profitable I suspect these will be around for awhile.

And as always I will try to make information I find freely accessible. I do charge for actually fixing stuff but that is more for my skills than any info I have in my head. The more people who can fix these miners, the better is my thoughts. So feel free to contribute your own thoughts on what works and how.

Lightfoot