Topic: New R-Box Upgrade Kit (Read 4843 times)

So, Novak and I did some discussing and it makes more sense to prioritize a pod miner over NRB boards. That said, unless we can get more chips (either in this generation or the next), neither are going to happen. I'm gonna close this thread since it's really no longer relevant.

I bought 2 R-Boxes from this guy to serve as permanent lottery players.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11799713

if gridseed 5 chips are getting a thumbs up here is an ebay link for them


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gridseed-GC3355-ASIC-Scrypt-SHA-256-USB-Dual-BTC-LTC-Miner-GUARANTEED-/181766271902?

I wouldn't mind fetching a couple for the museum shelf anyways.

I mentioned sending him one. I can send an RBox if you want one sidehack.

I know someone selling R-boxes for about 20-25$. I could have one shipped to you as a last resort. I think someone above said they'd send one as a donation though.

There are probably a lot more of the pods around than the GBlades - a board that would fit both would strike me as a very good idea, even though I have no pods.

like you I am still working with the 1 chip sticks   they are very nice gear. I get the felling they will run very well for a long time.

CanaryInTheMines used to sell them on Eligius iirc, maybe they might have one or 2 (dead/alive) to spare?

if not, I will look out for one or 10 for you, if I get my hands on one I'll PM you.

I have to applaud your designs.  If you could make one to fit in greedseed and U3 heatsinks that would be a very very nice product.  The good thing is there are A LOT more gridseed pods then new rboxs.  So much this cheaper price for equipment to put it in.  Although I do see why some want R-box it has merit as the amount of chips.

I personally would enjoy playing with a 4 chip modded gridseed pod.   If you go though with this design I think it's a great idea.   Either way you choose though best of luck.  I have been playing with the 1 chip usb model still and has been fun, and still working good. 

I think the 4-chip pod is a more logical target. It should be possible to make a single board which fits both the Gridseed and U3 heatsinks; I'll have to get ahold of an RBox pod to see what it'd require but I know I can hit the other two for sure.

I guess I was thinking of another piece of gear when it came to chip size.

J4bberwock's thread:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gridseed-g-blade-overclocking-7mhs-improvements-and-repair-576784

The 2 disassembled PCB

I'm talking Antminer S5 chips though (1384) not S3 chips (1382) - the 1384 is the SAME SIZE (8mm square) as the GC3355 chips on the GBlade, and fit into LESS board space since they don't have leads sticking out from the chips like the GC3355 does. I have never bothered looking at the specs on the 1382 chip as it's outdated technology now and no longer available anyway.

 Power isn't an issue on an 20 string, see the BM1384 specs at .6 volts (string). 18 string is closer to the .65 volt spec than the .7 but would fall somewhere inbetween.

 10-12 chips would NOT be doable as a string, though they could be made to work with a VRM setup - optimally a software-configurable one like the SP20E has for better flexability and longevity.

I had 17 of these at one time  the heatsinks can not handle 20 antminer s-3 chips.     more  of a size issue  the chips won't fit.

I liked this gear.  I used about 85 watts per unit with atx power.  they did not overheat using 85 watts.

 So they could do more like 10-12 chips   since these s-3 chips can pull 7 or 8 watts on the top end.  My sticks are doing freq 250 and pull around 5.5 watts

What I'd like to see would be a replacement for the Gridseed Gblades - the original "5.2 Mh/s Scrypt" per pair ones not the blacks.

 I'm SURE, given the junk power regulation stuff on those, that there are a bunch around that have died or died on one "blade" but not the other.

 HS on those should easily handle up to 20 chips, depending on the voltage they're run at.

 Optimally voltage adjustable, but a 16-to-20 chip string should run pretty efficiently.
 I figure (based actual power usage of my S5s) that the board (with a gold PS) would use about 40% more power at the wall than the chip specs, and I get the following:

 16 string would be .75 volts   - 286 GH/s at 155 watts (might be marginal these heatsinks but should be OK with a good 90mm fan)
 18 string would be .666 volts - 200 GH/s at   80 watts (interpolating here, but this would be viable with the "specified" GBlade 12V/10A power supply per side)
 20 string would be .6 volts    - 165 GH/s at   58 watts (pretty close to a direct match on power consumption with the original GBlade, viable with a barrel power connector)


 The 16 string would be kind of like a "quarter S5", a hair more efficient but not a bit diff.
 The 18 string IMO would be the best tradeoff of performance vs. power usage and should run plenty cool on these HS with the original fan.
 The 20 string would be a VERY nice high-efficiency replacement.

 Board should be 4" x 8" to fit the original HS "pad", but could be longer on the 8" side for low-power components that don't really need the HS (like the UART and possibly a microcontroller). The pad would make it trivial to put the BM1384s on one side of it and make good heat transfer to the HS itself, put the other "taller" stuff on the other side (you have about 3/4 inch of space to work with if you design the boards to "interleave" or put tall components on a part of the board that sticks out past the HS).


 If you could get any of these configurations built and sold for under $120 or so they'd be a winner!

lol whatever the decision, i have 5 gridseed pods collecting dust as well... i  am game either way, just thought i would point out that rockminer used the same boards and heatsinks for quite a few different miners.

That, coupled with Jabberwock's apparent intention to make an SFARTS pod, kinda leans me toward the NRB board. Though a pod miner would still be cheaper and easier to prototype and manufacture, making it also quite attractive. Nuts.

I for one have the big r-box, as well as the R-K miner (think it was essentially 4 110gh/s big r-boxes thrown on a tubular heatsink)  essentially that would allow me to upgrade 5 cards, and pretty much triple my entire hash power for less than a new s5 shipped from bitmain...  will have to look for sure but i do believe the heatsink and hash boards in the rk-miner and the big rbox are the same.

* after comparing the 2 it looks like the the r-k miners added a controller (possibly a teensy) on each hashboard,  but all in all same heatsink just 4x as many on the r-k miner and quite possibly the rockminer r-4

big rbox


r-k miner


r-4


so 3 miners utilizing the same form factor and heatsink :-)

pokeballs look good

Just for you Phil, I'm gonna start packaging these things in Pokeballs.

SFards  - J4bberwock is not this far along as sidehack
avalon  mini - is not  this far along


looks like

Sidehack -------- 1 chip usb miner orders real soon  as working tested sticks  have been passed out.

Sfards -----------J4bberwock  a 2 chip dual miner not yet no working model as of now

Avalon ---------- 4(?) chip mini  in August.

My goal is to review them all and own them all.

Then see about owning more of sidehacks bigger gear as it develops.

Maybe a few 2 chips sticks.
 The 4 chip  little r-box
the 18 chip big r-box

Should be fun.

Should hop on over to the SFARDS thread as well if you haven't already

the plus side is a simple build  and nice to have one or two around for fun.

It's just not as well designed as it should have been, both hardware and driver interface (in that it doesn't really have one).  That's pretty unrelated to the hashing chip of choice (BM1382 is also used in the S3 - not much of a problem with those).  Short of a bitwise quirk there's no reason a 4-chip miner would have issues in terms of comms where 2 or 8 don't.

I think the nice thing about a pod miner is that they're really fairly simple in construction.  Fan, heatsink, board - all matching in size and if done well only needs screws through existing mounting holes to hold it together - done.

If you are seriously thinking of a "4-chip" pod, do you want to adjust the poll at the top, or start a 2nd one?

If you go down the "4-chip pod" path, then it's right smack in the middle of the U3 space. While I don't own a U3, what I read makes it sound horribly unreliable, and difficult to get stable. Is it BM1382, and that part of the problem, or what?

My Rbox-little was very stable with a good power supply (i.e. not a 12V brick). It's only drawback was that it was close to 1W/GH at the wall. Once I got 3 working well with my Raspberry Model B (not B+ nor Pi2), it literally ran for 6 months without intervention. it was plenty quiet as well.

I already posted a link to modified source code that goes from 100MHz up to 300MHz by 6.25MHz increments. All you'd have to do is replace the files in cgminer 4.9.0 source and compile. Don't forget Icarus support.

thanks for corrections.


I listed the 1 chip at 13.75 gh as that is my max.

Since I can't get a higher freq yet. I am pretty much certain I can get it to do 300 since at 250 with a fan it is only 90f or so.

My software skills are brutal.

 So cut + paste not much else.

If you want to send an sdcard with your minera image that has all the higher freq's

 I could test a rasp pi.

Which rasp pi did you  use?

 the B the B+ or the newest model 2

I have a B and

 the newest model 2 4 usb hub

4-chip would be probably $45-50, depends on PCB cost and some other factors. Also I like how you say the 1-chip stick max at 13.5GH when I have two sticks running 16.5GH for the last couple days. I think you're just not trying hard enough...

The 4-chip would run 90GH if you could keep it cool. 65GH would run under 35W, 90GH more like 50. The 18-chip board I'd probably set stock frequency at 300MHz for a NRB, which would get you 300GH off about 120W at the machine. For 18 chips probably would run higher than $100, maybe $110 neighborhood. We'd save some in regulator cost but add more in chips.

 25 usd ----------------- 1 chip stick   gives about 13.5 gh max at freq 250---- as I have not gotten software to load higher freq values (poor software skills on me)

35 usd  ----------------  2 chip stick   should give about   32 gh max ---- once built


45 usd -50 usd ? -- 4 chip pod    should  give  about 80-90 gh max----  65gh with 35 watts 90 gh with 50 watts



110 usd --------------- 18 chip board gives about    300gh     at 120 watts


Just to compare pricing please make corrections.--- I have corrected as per sidehack's later post

The Amita (two-chip stick) is coming in about $35. This'd have an additional two chips ($7) and a microcontroller for voltage adjustment and temp monitoring, so add at least another ten bucks.

I would try a handful of the 4 chip/pod board's also.

If were now talking 4-5 chip "pod" (or "ufo" like I used to call them), vs. 12-18 chip box, I vote pod.

While we're on that subject, what kinda price would we be looking at? 35-ish?

I'm interested in 2 upgrade kits for the R-Box and I have a friend that might want 2 as well.  It won't let me vote in the poll because I don't have enough posts, I guess I should spam up the forum more.  And depending on price, I'd also be interested in 2 sticks from this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gekkoscience-bm1384-project-development-discussion-995675

4 chip units work  I am looking at my heat sinks and I think I could rig something up.

meh, if i could strap down an intel BGA775 sink to it (or any of them multi-socket heatsinks), i wouldn't say no. some little 60-100GH/s pod would look nice.

I do have more NBRs over U3/Grid/Rboxes. but if fitting a stock cpu heatsink to them with little mods, i have little problem buying up a handful.

I would def prefer a 4 chip board, because I have a ton of gridseeds covered in dust.

Since I have a couple U3s and no R-boxes, I would vote for the 4-chip as well.

I would rather have a 4 chip mod. Also do you want an R-Box to play with? I could possibly send one I have laying around.

Novak's got a disassembled U3 on his desk, and I just took apart a Gridseed pod to look it over. We don't have an R-Box pod to play with.

Either a four-chip pod or a 12-18 chip NRB board would demonstrate string and software. A 2x2 like the pod would be built off Amita power systems, not really useful for a larger board with different requirements, but would probably need firmware and driver stuff for command-line volt and frequency changes.

So maybe I should ask who'd rather have a 4-chip pod upgrade over a NRB upgrade? It'd certainly be cheaper to prototype.

Might be easier to label them that way, yeah.  Not sure why they ended up calling it the 'New R-Box'.  It wasn't just a small change a la the U3 batches.


I would be more interested in a podminer ( gridseed orb / r-box-little / U3 / zeus blizzard  / hashbuster micro / bfl jalapeno (...) / oh-geeze-now-I-gotta-count-AM-cube-too-I-give-up ) as an intermediate solution between a Compac and a full fledged type zero board.

There's pretty high-res shots of gridseed boards on the 'net and dogie's got good shots of both the U3 and the r-box-little.  Can't say I've looked at topology, but except for the LTC side of the Gridseed, they're bound to be pretty similar anyway.

r-box-little = older smaller one

r-box-big   = newer bigger one

It's specifically like the 5-chip Gridseed units, which the guy was discussing. Someone posted a picture of that 32GH R-Box on the previous page, and yeah they're built pretty similarly but I don't have one to take apart for actual comparison.

The "New R-Box" is basically half an AM Tube board. It's got four VRMs (TPS53355) with three BE200 per, voltage and clock pretty much the same. I think the volt-setting resistors on the buck circuit are even the same values but I could be wrong, been a while since I looked that close. Yep, it's really hard to talk about Rockminer products since they all have pretty much the same name.

This sounds a lot like the "Original R-box". That was a roughly a 4" cube with a fan sitting on top. It had 4 chips under the heatsink, and think they were BE200 ASIC's. This was roughly 32GH and maybe 40W at the wall with a 12V brick. I expect that the "New R-box" was essentially a different board with the equivalent set of parts from three of the "Original R-box".

It's kinda too bad that Rockminer re-used the name the way they did.

You know...

A 3x2 of BM1384 would run about 45W (including fan and everything) for 100GH. But with the top heatsink core as narrow as it is, 4 chip is probably the only real option. Amita regulator with a bit beefier inductor could easily drive a 2x2 of BM1384 and get you 85+ GH off less than 50W, down to around 30GH off probably less than 12W all in. Just uh... just throwing that out there.

They stopped selling products early this year, went cloud mining contracts.. think they pretty much disappeared when all the AM drama started.  rockxie hasn't been on since early March.  Continue discussion in rockminer thread? https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/rockminer-miners-using-gen3-asicminer-chips-528464

Perhaps, how hard would it be to do is the question.

Is rockminer still around... I can't find their site .

Ok, clear, thanks!

You have some free action for a while. 

I saw a really nice heat sink  for 12 bucks on ebay. I think I will get it and just hope these get built.

Just had a thought about selling my 2 remaining New-RBoxes these days but now I will wait a little longer and watch this thread 

If I was going to do any production of these I'd have to get more chips. I've already emailed Bitmain about the possibility of getting more chips (which I was wondering anyway in case Compac/Amita sales were ridiculous). When the idea for this board was proposed, a one-off run was asked for which means a single batch of a few hundred boards, which I've repeated a couple times. The point is not to make it compatible with an S1, but to make it compatible with a New R-Box; S1 compatibility is almost a side-effect of convenience on my end. If you want a mass-produced product to stick on your S1, you want this thing's big brother the TypeZero Spec1 - which this thing would act somewhat as an initial prototype for since the base design would be almost identical. Depending how timing works out, I'd rather put new-gen chips on the TypeZero once some are known to exist. If Bitmain doesn't give us any info, Avalon might.

So, yeah. What Phil just said.

I am thinking sidehack is looking forward to a second set of chips maybe BM1386 for the new s-7  not sure.

This r-box is more like  a practice step.  Have to wait and see.

Ok got it.

This stuff is not for mass production. 

but he has 1000 chips with 600 set for usb sticks this leaves only 400 chips left.

these boards are 18 chips so we are not at a quality point.

of course my numbers may be wrong on chips.

And you'll loose all the buyers who wants to buy in quantity....

I think nobody will redrill 100 or 200 pieces of S1 or S3.... Redrill and make the screwthreads.... Not a good idea.

Dang, I was hoping to get rid of these things 

Yeah I am in for a few. I will make my own design with parts lying around and the 18 chip boards.  should be fun.

I have 2 NewR's and I'd upgrade em, I like a few USB miners for altcoins and rentals

See the poll, top of the page.

I have a lot of heatsinks

I used to build amps for musicians

and audiophiles

 these are about 6 by 12

 I can drill them to fit the chips and put two boards on it.
heck If I figure out where I put them i could use 1 per board.  would be quiet.

Count me in for one please.

I have a New R-Box that I would like to upgrade.

Any idea on the cost of the board?

- fvineyard

I think I can make some nice heat sinks match this very well.

If I'm not able to fit S1 holes on it, they'd still fit on a redrilled S1 heatsink. So, anything you could mount a standard S1 board on would fit two of these side-by-side.
Yes, it'd have a PCIe for power and a USB.

so this board will have a pcie jack on it ? along with a usb port?

If I have heatsinks, boxes, fans and an usb hub.   along with a pc/controller like a rasp pi

 I can jury rig it up correct?

I have an idea  for cooling it. I have some  long aluminum bars.

___________________________________________________

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just like above I could do 4 boards attached to it.

Yes, the heatsink fans and box would be reused. You know, all the really heavy parts that suck to ship and also that I don't have the tools to make. Just like with the other large-scale boards we're making.

Someone requested New R-Box form factor and it's close enough to something I was already going to do that the idea seems appealing. If I wanted to make a new Gridseed, I'd be making a new U3.

Anyone saying "Make the S1 board instead" is not paying enough attention to everything said so far.

I'd definitely be interested for myself, but you probably wouldn't get much more than 50 sales. My suggestion would be to make something that is compatible with as many chassis as possible, which may leave the board looking like swiss cheese. If you have to pick one compatible chassis, go with the S1. S1 is going to be your enthusiast board, with the highest ratio of forum users and tinkerers.

What about the New R-Box hardware exactly is reused?  The heatsink and fans?  The box?

I guess what I'm getting at, is, why wouldn't you just design the board with heatsink at that point?  By reusing a not-so-popular piece of hardware, I would suspect that you're limiting the potential to mass produce it.  Unless you were to design it such that it didn't require a heatsink and operated at ambient temps, like those bitfury kits.  Which would be spectacular.  

Anyway, If I could vote for which form factor you should reuse in this small miner market, I'd say try to make a Bitcoin only miner out of the old Gridseeds.  There are an abundance of those in the wild from my understanding, since it was one of the first scrypt asics on the market.  I personally, have about 150 left.

Well, i vote Yes, due to the fact i have some dead New-R-Box's.. or they get trashed/hacked/used in some bitcoin cultist ritual

if the S1 is the same/similar footprint as the NRB board, and people want to go that way, meh, i'd re-drill the sinks to match and see if it fits in the case

you bring a lot of good points up.  getting it to market fast seems very possible.

I have a question when you build the board for it the 18  chips   would be placed so the rbox heat sinks and fans do the job?

 If that is true and I take a few of these 18 chip boards to use in one of my many cases + heatsinks.

  It seems like  I would need to provide heatsinks  + fans  + hub + rasp pi and I could build a  6 board unit  doing

1800gh and using 720 watts.

If the boards will use usb to a hub to a controller .  my concern is heatsinks and fans.

 I have lots of  cases heatsinks and fans and hubs and rasp pi's.

If this is true I want 4 to 6 boards.

Yeah, it'd definitely be geared toward people that already have 'em.

So I'm running one right now and it's giving me a reported stats of 40C on 110GH, which since these run about 1W/GH I can assume is at least 110W. That cool, I bet these wouldn't have much trouble cooling 150W or so. With that in mind, we could actually do a full 18-chip TypeZero (not implementing fan speed in hardware, but everything else) in a layout sized for this box. 18 chips would get you 300GH at 300MHz on about 120W, and then the only changes required for S1-style boards is PCB layout. If a new chip comes out, we can retool for the specific footprint and voltage changes, adjust the layout and BOOM we have a TypeZero Spec1. I think that could work. Price would probably be higher since the PCB is both bigger and in smaller quantity, but otherwise ought be not much difference. And if not enough people want them, well I just won't make 'em to sell.

I meant no offense or to be irreleant.   I personally would like to have one and be a support, as I appreciate and do like your work.

It's just the R-Box still has a decent price for it on sites such as ebay.  Paying over 1/2 of upgrade kit's cost for me to acquire a R-box makes this version one that you really need to have the new R-Box  to justify.

Either way best of luck with it.

oh damn, this puts me out then   I have the smaller R-Boxes

If you don't already have a New R-Box, no offense but you're sorta irrelevant to the discussion. Saying "a lot of potential customers don't have R-Box" is saying "a lot of potential customers aren't actually potential customers". I'll probably go ahead and design it, like I said it gets me to about 90% of what I wanted to design anyway. The question is going to be whether or not there's enough demand to try and mass-produce.

I found the original Rbox software a little buggy.  Had to reset every few days.  I don't know if that carried on with the new Rbox.  Sure liked the simple design though.  Price would be the factor.

Make a lot of sens.

The only question is when will Bitmain release a new hardware and if it is with a new chip. ( should be this month .... but still who knows)

For me, the R-Box board doesn't interest me much since I have none R-Box. (This is only me)

If both the bitcoin community and yourself (with the design) will benefit more with that path. I don't see why we would try to convince you to not do it

Just as slight clarification:

	R-Box	New R-Box
	not it	it

Dang, all I've got are the original R-Boxes sitting at the house. I sold off my "New" R-Box models.

The biggest thing I don't like is this would make it where I need the R-box to upgrade.  I'm guessing a lot of potential customers do not have a R-box.

I'm sure you will have some sales, but I think a product that does not require a R-box will have higher sales.

Makes sense. R-Box it is then :-)

This would be board only; you'd need an R-Box to upgrade.

The decision isn't whether to make this or the S1, but whether to make this in the dead time we're waiting to make the S1. We'd need to do a similar build anyway as an initial test, so the question is whether I should work on an S1-precursor with BM1384 that I design to completion but never sell, or if I should make an R-Box with BM1384 that I design to completion and then sell, and which gets me 90% of what I'd have needed for the S1-precursor anyway. The way I figure, if I'm going to design the thing anyway, what's wrong with trying to make it sellable?

By which I mean, I design and prototype this inside a month. It's then sellable. I take two more months to shift the design to a new-gen chip for TypeZero and it's then sellable. Or I design and prototype this inside a month, do not sell it, then spend two more months with pretty good hardware on my shelf not helping anyone while I redesign for a new-gen chip for TypeZero and then sell it. The TypeZero timeline won't really be affected much at all.

I would prioritize S1 and S3 board first.

At least for me.

Yeah I've got a couple R-Boxes as desk pieces at work, if the price is good I would definitely purchase 2 boards

I would love to have R-boxes doing 200gh at 70 -80 watts.

  I wonder how many are out and about that could be refitted.

 There are a lot of s-1's sitting idol and s-3's about to go over power costs.

Still the r-box was nice and quiet.


Just playing Devil's advocate.

I guess it comes down to demand.  And chips on hand.

If the decision is between this and the S1 replacement, I'd vote for the S1 replacement.  A lot of us have S1s laying around(myself included) that we're looking forward to making usable again.

I sold my R-Boxes.  They were very nice except they were poor on power.


I think you need to see how many are needed.

Say you can sell 25 boards for 25 r-boxes.  How many chips how much money figure the demand and the need.

  Right now you have

1) a working 1 chip stick
2) a planned 2 chip stick--  I think you did get a working one and post I forget
3) an 18 chip board
4) an s-1 /s-3 drop in
5) a stud hub


 That is a lot of stuff on your plate.

Also avalon mini would be a direct competitor to the r-box  So I would consider waiting for the pricing on it to come out.

I think lots of us have S1-s laying around.

On the other hand in many areas the S3 will be unprofitable in the next months.

I think more Bitmain stuff was sold than R-Box...

I dunno, $100 seems a little high, considering S3's can be had around $85

my vote is maybe

IMHO the S1 or S3 upgrade would be better.

Maybe make a poll about it?

I would definitely take a look at them to replace my U3s.  I was going to look to replace my U3s with your sticks, but this path would make more sense.  I would replace my current sticks with a few of yours, replace my U3s with this device, and replace my unused S1 with the board ya'll are working on.

Question: would you need to already have a R-Box to upgrade, or would you be selling a turn-key kit?

So we're working on some miner design. It's sort of an awkward time to do so now with new generation hardware on the horizon. The idea was raised last night to work on a board which could be fit into a New R-Box using more efficient chips, and we've been giving it some thought.

If we wanted to push forward with a short batch of those, the design would be based off our concepts already developed for a bigger better miner. What we could do is use the New[er] R-Box as a testbench for this concept, and then retool the design for new-generation chips once they're available.

So, who thinks this is a good idea and would consider purchasing if it existed?