Topic: [Review] Spondoolies SP20E Jackson review by 2GOOD (Read 8028 times)

Thank you, how it works?

might be: 1 as in Max PSU Power Unit 1(or 0 in Asic stats) is 4 on the front of the miner
                2 as in Max PSU Power Unit 2(or 1 in Asic stats) is 3 on the front of the miner
                3 as in Max PSU Power Unit 3(or 2 in Asic stats) is 2 on the front of the miner
                4 as in Max PSU Power Unit 4(or 3 in Asic stats) is 1 on the front of the miner

i don't remember exactly, but you can get a confirmation here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/unofficial-spondoolies-sp20-thread-872014
or here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-spondoolies-tech-carrier-grade-data-center-ready-mining-rigs-521520

Thanks mavericklm,


Is this how the power units relate to each loop?

Power Unit 1 = LOOP[0]
Power Unit 2 = LOOP[1]
Power Unit 3 = LOOP[2]
Power Unit 4 = LOOP[3]

my settings:

Start Voltage    0.68 / 0.68 / 0.68 / 0.68
Max Voltage    0.74
Max Watts    255 / 245 / 255 / 245

notice the 255w and 245w

Max PSU Power Unit 1 (70W - 288W) set this one higher
Max PSU Power Unit 2 (70W - 288W) set this one lower
Max PSU Power Unit 3 (70W - 288W) set this one higher
Max PSU Power Unit 4 (70W - 288W) set this one lower

play with the 4 settings until you get your desired temps! good luck!

Excellent review.  Thanks!

I'm having the issue with my SP20 where the back chips are getting much hotter than the front ones.  You mentioned you can set lower start voltage for them and limit the power for unit 2 and 4 to reduce the heat.  If you have done this can you show me a screenshot of your settings or maybe provide an example?

got it, so this is some kind of internal system utility that is being called upon when needed, not external.

Busybox :

Nothing to worry about

once on initial firmware, my SP20 periodically connected by itself to something called BusyBox, which from the looks of it was some automated SPT program.
It (connection or call upon) only occurred when apparently something was going wrong with the miner. I did not mind because connections like this probably help SPT to improve the software, but to see the connection was entertaining: "ET called home".
I wonder if someone else saw the BusyBox making an appearance.
I haven't seen it since 2.5.50ish, but did not look too closely because hashing is OK.

* Device ID
* LAN address
* External (WAN) address
* Firmware version

It can be disabled in settings.

myminer.io which re-directs to spondoolies-tech.com / sails ORM finds your miners for you. how often do these miners phone home and what information is being sent ?

Cables are 1.5 mm2 copper, bought from the local electrical store. The connectors are actually 8pin and I had to modify them to fit also from the local store.
In AWG that makes 16 or 15. I wanted to use 2 mm2 but it's too thick to fit the connector, anyway IMO 1.5 is ok,
The alloy of the wire is important too, also I soldered mine to the connectors for less resistance/heat

usually ebay

14awg
where do u get your connectors? cause the cable is more than perfect but the connector is the weak point

i always use 14awg or above these days

2Good,

Can you tell me where you got the power cables from?  If you made them from parts could you tell me where and what parts you bought? Thanks so much!  The cables I'm using now get very warm.

Bill

Блaгoдapя

You can find the Bulgarian version here: [Peвю] Spondoolies SP20E Jackson

You have to love bureaucracy and the pessimistic nature of those that work there.

Kudos on a great review!

Hello,
I suppose You have tested also setting more than 288W per unit. Would You please tell me if it is safe if PSU is good enough?

edit: I realized that it is impossible to set higher value then 288W

Excellent review,
I raise my glass of Christmas cheer to you,
Thanks

Trends

Smart choice 

Agreed. I was on the fence between SP20 with the Gb and the S5 and this was one of the swaying reviews that drove me to ST.

Indeed, one of the best reviews.

This is the review that made me get a couple of SP20-s. Thanks 2G

Thanks, I've found it yesterday.

There is a bit about PWM already, but I don't know if it's applicable to the SP20 or if it does what I hope it to do.

I also spoke wrongly when I said that they all had it done via firmware. Habaneros fans at least were controlled in cgminer.

I just think it's a pity. The temp sensor is there, the PWM fan is there. All is missing is the code (which I won't be able to do, because of lacking programming skills).

All code is here: https://github.com/Spondoolies-Tech

SCAM SITE!

Thank you for the kind words 

Happy Holidays

Ok.

Every other miner I owned that had this feature had it done in the firmware.


Edit: nvm, I thought you meant cgminer by "miner source code".

No, but the miner source code is open.

Nice review specially the photos High quality!!

best of all sp20 reviews!
nice cat! and the 12v and comm cables!

Thanks for the review , and also for the  HQ photos.  Awesome miner !

i always thought auto-fans on the old SP10 would be a good idea.. then i could teach it to sing 'Flower of Scotland'
 

Another very informative review, thank you.



Any plans for the Auto fan, Spondoolies-Tech? Is it possible?

nice review. thanks for your time.

This made me smile. Hats off!

now that's what i'd call a proper review. and a cat too! it has everything.
thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the detailed, interesting review.
Nice cat!

Guy

I got my SP20 a little later after some problems with the Customs, not believing that I can get something for free. Anyway that's not the story of this post, here is it the nice and shiny SP20 JACKSON well packed in a sturdy eco-friendly box.



What you see is what you get - the device and that's all. I'm OK with that

Before I start this little beast I was worried about power delivery, it has only 4 PCIe 6-pin power connectors, this with combination of 1200W at wall consumption gets me a little bit worried.
1200W @ Wall => ~1080 W @ 12V divided by 4 connectors and you get 270W per PCIe or 7.5 Amps per cable or even more during the test period for this review.



As a home miner sometimes I have to leave the "farm" unattended and melting cables is something I don't wanna see so I've decided to made some new 1.5 mm² high quality copper cables for my DPS 2000BB PSU, at a later point it gets clear that you can limit the power per connection from the software which is great especially with mixed power supplies.



The size of SP20 is close to Bitmain's Ants, maybe slightly longer:
D 380mm; W 110mm; H 140mm

Firs Impressions: very good build quality, well manufactured and pretty damn good looking for a bitcoin miner, not something that we actually need but it's welcomed



On the front of the device are all connections and air intake, at the back we have the exhaust FAN



Yes kitty this is the one that bothers you so much, but we'll get to that later.

Setup:
So you have to prepare one big 1200W power supply or two 600-750W, yes the device can run with two PSU. Network connectivity is via a standard Ethernet cable, just connect it to your home router (you need to have DHCP server ON) wait for the device to boot and point your browser to: http://myminer.io



User friendly way to determine the IP address of your device, now just click on Go to miner link and enter the default user/pass: admin/admin
The setup is easy, just enter your preferred pools, you can drag to reorder them. You are now mining



Specification and Performance:

As mentioned above I power my SP20 with Delta DPS 2000BB PSU 90-92% eff.



The miner has two boards  each with 4 Rockerbox 28nm ASICs
Rated hash rate: 200 GH/s per chip
Rated Voltage: 0.7 V, voltage range is 0.63 V - 0.8 V

Spondoolies sell the device as 1700GH, I didn't pushed it so high - here are some results:



On the settings page of the miner you have two options Basic and Advanced voltage setting, test 1 to 7 are on advanced settings, while the last 3 represents the user friendly setups:
SF, MR - slow fans, medium rate
MF, HR - medium fans, high rate
TF, HeR - turbo fans, highest rate

The results are astonishing, especially the efficiency in the first test 0.5W per GH @ wall is by me a great achievement, I'll probably switch to test 1 to 3 in the spring or early summer depending on bitcoin difficulty and prices. It's great to have this flexibility which extends the life of the miner. For now I'm using the miner with test 5 setup - a great balance efficiency/hashrate/loudness.

At the Asic stats tab you have advanced statistic of the current state of the device, this includes power consumption per LOOP (2 chips), DC2DC voltage and temperature, ASIC temps and so on. I'm very happy with this screen it gives me the whole information that I need to precisely tweak my unit.



The back chips are getting hotter air that's why their temp is higher, to keep them cool you can set lower start voltage for them, and limit the power for unit 2 and 4. By doing so the software will try to keep them at the maximum power defined while bellow 125C and you can go low enogh to undervolt. Basically you can maxout the front chips and undervolt the back - this is so far the first bitcoin asic miner I test that supports this kind of tweaking - amazing.



When you apply new settings the miner's chips are powered with start volts and the fw slowly increases the voltage to the higher setting, if the temp for a specific chip reaches 125C the chip resets and it's voltage is dropped slightly until max point for this specific ASIC is found. This point depends on the environment temperature, fan speed, specific chip characteristics etc.

Cooling:





One very powerful 120mm Y.S.TECH fan is used in the negative pressure tunnel. A lot of pages in this forum about how load in reality is this miner... what to say It is LOUD, but not that scary as some describe it only the cat doesn't like it much, but she is scared from the vacuum cleaner so no big surprise if you know what i mean Maybe I'm used to Technobit's loud miners and can't be surprised that easily anymore, but in anyway this device is not suitable for home environment as Spondoolies presented it: "HOME MINING IS BACK"



The two boards are vertical, while chips are aligned in a chessboard pattern, but still the back chips get a lot hotter air. If the miner wasn't designed in "carrier grade/data center" in mind but more home oriented they could of put the boards horizontally and use two 120mm fans, that way each chip gets cool air, yes the upper board will be slightly hotter but they can even seperate the boards with metal, it's all a point of engineering and solutions can be found. Don't get me wrong this is so far the best miner I had, but that's just human nature - we always want more and better - this is how progress is driven



IMO the problem with cooling is not the fan, but the asic's heatsinks, some users on the forum managed to "unglue" them and it turns out that the copper shim is not bolted or something but just sitting there between the chip and the heatsink, so you have two heat transfers via thermal compound once from the chip to copper and another to the heatsink itself. Personally I'm not planing to mod this for now, maybe when the winter is over.



I'm a big fan of fully automated autonomous devices, ones that you can set and forget. This miner is close to that goal, maybe Spoondolies will automate the fan in future fw update. I would like to see min and max fan settings, and maybe target output temp (top) setting with these inputs a script can regulate the fan within the defined range while keeping the device cool and at maximum performance. In the end they advertise SP20 as a "home miner", and a typical resident have to leave the miners unattended once and a while not to worry about the weather or neighbors calling 911 to rescue that "wild cat" trapped in the garage for days

Pricing:
There is not much to say here. ATM You can choose from:
Technobit HEX4R - 850GH - 365$ (0.43$/GH)
Spondoolies SP20 - 1700GH - 659$ (0.38$/GH)
Bitmain Antminer S5 - 1155GH/s - 418$ (0.36$/GH) (just released)



Pros:

• Reasonably priced
• Full Software control
• Great overclock/undervolt capabilities
• Amazing efficiency at lower speeds
• Easy to use, responsive and good looking interface

Cons:

• Hard to reach advertised speeds
• Auto fan feature will be nice
• LOUD

Conclusion:
The Spondoolies SP20E Jackson is a very high quality bitcoin miner with great capabilities for custom performance optimization in terms of speed or efficiency. It's very easy to set up and runs flawlessly without an issue. The efficiency of the unit at lower speeds is amazing and implies longer life while keeping your bills low.

Full gallery can be found here: http://imgbox.com/g/f9dpu4eptX

best
2GOOD