Topic: [Project Assistance] Have Access To Free Electricity, but... (Read 2224 times)

Its the boards, the way the chips are made its a pain to even check at the chip level or find out which chip would be causing a problem, like in RichBC's situation. Basically even though the v1.91 take the downvolt well, they all react different and it take only one chip to make the whole board not downclock very well.

The controller is probably pretty standard, it can even be interchanged from certain miner to another if you just flash the SSD to the proper firmware.

Was it the hash boards or controller causing the issues? Also, at this point I'm not so much going for overt efficiency gains as much as trying to drop the temp. If I can bring it down to 11.8 or so, maybe even 11.5, I could cool it off a bit.

The thread we're working on, do get good results but pretty much everyone that has earlier versions don't get good results. So in effect, only with v1.91 boards people have been able to lower the Volt and get efficiency gain.

Older versions were report to drop chip when you start dropping the volt significantly under 12v and there wasn't much gain to it. Please check your board version and post your results there that would be nice. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151460.180

11.7 was sharing my computer's PSU with it. I wish I could undervolt the HP supply to about 11.5, as I've heard people are getting decent results below 11 even.

This guy in the video is using a peg to upvolt it, maybe you're able to downvolt it too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYOgZqfjimw

Not sure if its a home made thing but you definitively should be running it closer to 12v in your case. But if you have one at 11.7 that sound pretty good too for stock speed. It should run stock speed without hashlost and still be more efficient.

This bloody supply, man. That 12.6V is really killing it. Ups the temperature by nearly 5 C from a supply that's about 11.7 loaded. I might not be paying for juice, but one of my goals was to have an S5 that was running in something besides a completely stock/typical configuration.

Yes, with a single fan, the air entry end of the heatsink is cool, while the other end is generally much hotter, by something like 10c+. So the setup i had before was a simple piece of paper force air flow to go through the fin's on the side from another airflow source.
Then i evolved when i was able to change my setup, now that the air is cool enough, i can leave the heat exhaust enter my appartment.

So i just put it on the side and the box fan in the window pull air cool enough to keep it cool without using the miner's fan much. Hence, in comparison, quite quiet. The only thing you must watch out for is for the exhaust of the heatsink to not get resistance from the air being blown from the box fan, so i leave the exhaust just outside the box fan... hell i'll get your a picture.

Yeah at this point being at home and experimenting with this loud-ass unit is something else. I'm okay with it, I get used to it after a while, although relocating it isn't out of the question. My cat and my girlfriend on the other hand... They're a little different.

I wish I had access to air that cool at the moment.

So you've got your S5 tipped on its side, if I read that right? I just blocked off that opening so air could go clean through like you'd expect a forced air cooling to do.

Yeah i don't know, Servers PSU come by the shovel, some have a volt adjustment pot but i'm not very familiar with server PSU's. At the moment i have a box fan blowing 18C air from the side's so air go through the fin, the fan is at 35% and the temps is 51/53c which is excellent and the noise is acceptable. Under 60dB~

That PSU is 20$ on ebay so it's probably not something very fancy. It might also itself be loud. Anyways, in your case, money wise, no its not worth getting a 160$ EVGA G2 i'd say since you're not paying for electricity, personally, even though i have mega cheap electricity i still get good PSU to have stable power, long lasting hardware and no fires xD

But as we previously discussed, stock speed is loud as fuck. Personally i only find it bearable under 2800 RPM. A second fan or some after market more silent fan could work depending on the ambient temperature and the speed at which you run it.

Also the speed really seem to settle after 20-30 minutes. I did short runs at first too, 10 mins runs as you can see in the charts.

But anyways, for me efficient PSU's is important to keep them from generating Heat into the ambient temp, and optimizing how many miners i can get on a 15a120v breaker. For you, that's up to you to decide.

The other upside is an ATX PSU will generally be really quiet. I don't know about the server PSU you have but the server one i have even though they are 94% efficiency get really loud at 800w/1100w limit.

I'm still doing short 5 minute runs checking hash rates vs power vs temp at the moment. I think the thing said v1.3. Shit, is this thing loud though. Mother of god. That's why I want to try to see if I can bring the voltage down to something a bit more normal.... or slightly under. You'd think a PSU for something as expensive as a server would have a fine tune pot on it somewhere.

Also, would a normal ATX computer PSU be worth it in terms of keeping wasted power down, as opposed to this server unit?

Hmm it seem like a low end PSU, at least reviews says its in the bronze efficiency usage, fairly wastefull about 90 watts more than a gold. But in your case it's probably okay but i'm not really sure how the S5 would work with over voltage. My ATX PSU's have a rock solid 12.05v~

I'm guessing as long as you don't see a lot of hardware errors you should be okay, what is the PCB version on the top right of the boards? I'm guessing a v1.91 would handle the over voltage fine but i don't know how the others will since i don't think they have oscillators.

You can compare your results (temps, speed, HWE%) with mine;
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/reviewmy-experiencewith-bitmains-second-hand-used-antminer-s5-batch-7-1151326

Since then the HWE% on my S5 went up its more like 0,002% now at 393.75.

So the first S5 showed up today and I'm running numbers. One thing that gets me is the power supply I'm using (HP DPS800GBA) is running hot at 12.65V. How the hell do I bring that down? Is there a pot somewhere easily accessible for fine tune?

Oh it's so pretty! lol no that's actually really neat, gives a nice graphical approach. If I have room for two displays in that window I can probably have a display with that on it, and one below it with the descriptions of the technology and numbers from the miner that's next to it all.

Maybe you could display this fancy block explorer live;
http://chainflyer.bitflyer.jp/

You can change the language to English by clicking on the Cog. Explain that each gem that fall is a transaction that just went through, live. Etc, there's many blockchain explorer. Not sure if you have to display it live but you could, maybe even on a small LCD screen showing live blockchain transactions..

Basically the aforementioned website is the same info displayed as https://blockchain.info/ but more "eye candy" i suppose?

Red tape. Never fast. I will most definitely keep all of you updated as things progress though. What I've gotten down so far from the dept head is to have a write up on the blockchain, some sort of screen showing blockchain activity, miner activity, operating characteristics (voltage, GH/s) and some other stuff in that same direction. I've got to go in next Wednesday for their weekly department meeting thing and present it to the rest of the faculty to get the final go-ahead. So that means a write up on the blockchain and its relevance to modern society and the future of the financial / security industries. Nothing too fancy, just a way to make things relevant.

Have you got any replies this week? I am wondering what you final setup will look like after all the ideas we bounced at the wall. Please keep me posted, i'd be up for more idea bouncing if you ever meet some technicalities that need resolved~

Here is a very short video about explaining it - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/video-bitcoins-blockchain-technology-explained-in-2-minutes-1177497

You can go much more in depth if needed.  But that is a decent video for showing someone new who needs a quick anwser of what it is.

Just waiting on the go ahead from facilities and tech (network needed and I want a port so I can keep an eye from home).

In the mean time, anyone got a link to a good explanation on the blockchain and how it all works from the inside?

If I knew enough about most of the technology behind BTC, like the technical details of how the blockchain works, etc. I've read stuff a million times, but it seems there's way more to be had and I don't know quite what it is. In terms of the concerns, sound isn't one, so that's taken care of. I plan on documenting it, mainly for sharing with the people reasons. I can see the lines you put up there with topics and what sounds like a written report would go well in my, well, "technical reporting" course. Holy crap this project is going to be quite useful.

I'm confident whatever is there will be great. Exposure in general is good and making the case for a home miner is always great with all disclaimers stating you will lose every penny so don't spend what you cannot afford to lose. I know you are asking for build advice not legal or anything else, but throwing that out there to always protect yourself.
Look for opportunities when you do this. Talk to people in areas you may not already and take on an educated peer in the project who can be useful and teach you things. Because why not.

Show solo mining vs pool mining. Expand on the future of decentralization which is the opposite of what is needed.

Assuming you have any safety consideration including power and ventilation and IF "money is no object" and you're a gambler, get the S7.
-- another PC disclaimer:
It sounds like You can probably make more buying and holding.
...At Least I am told that quite often.

With what I see happening I think you are going to see the community underclock the S7 with variable voltage power supply or some equivalent. The string design has some folks doing some work. Get a power supply, or actually  get a couple. You can really show efficiency in a real world environment where it defines the landscape. You could even get a little political about efficiency in general, and how we are robbed of it every day. Off topic

I think:
Introduction to: A Bitcoin Miner: Attempt 1 --The S7
Main Body #1: Setup, Operation, and Maintenance --The S7
Main Body #2: Meet a Miner - Efficiency and Difficulty
3 Centralization
Running a node
Live Web Display with wifi camera  

I think what you are doing shows initiative, but be safe, and... I'm saying this figuratively, but get insurance on yourself in this situation relative to the school. Do not let someone do something stupid and you get burned with some 30k bill. Same for you too, check the wiring yourself or have a qualified person do it if you are not. Make sure you do not catch someone else's engineering project on fire, or them you. Make sure on the noise, even underclocked with great fans an S5, S7, will be noisy. If it isn't an issue, great, but don't think it won't be loud.

More than anything record it, take notes, and take tons of pictures and video.
You might make a youtube channel people can follow.

Easy for me to say all of that huh?
Good luck, I hope they see the initiative.

Explain the blockchain to everyone.