Topic: Reviewing the Halong Mining DragonMint T1, a 10nm Bitcoin Miner (Read 1934 times)

Thanks in advance. If you can't do this with the unit open then just measure the voltages on those heatsinks that can be reached through the case openings with the case closed and just the fans temporarily moved aside.

Updated the OP with a close up of the Zynq chip there - second to last picture there on the teardown section. Let me know if any of you want any other closeups!


I'll try to accommodate this. Unit wasn't friendly with me when I had the fans disconnected or even connected, will try a workaround.


Good question! I actually lost hashrate with the new firmware. It went from slightly above to below spec with the update. My recommendation at this point is if you have a unit that is hashing around spec, don't touch it with any firmware updates just yet. Halong indicated they're working on firmware updates to alleviate this issue. The GUI had welcome additions, such as individual chain ASIC status charts and a firmware checker, along with autotune capabilities. I'll throw those up here in the OP shortly.

It  gives better graphics  

maybe a little better power draw.
maybe a little better hash.


say  1650 watts at k-watt meter
say  15540 gh


vs  
1679 watts
15300 gh


this particular unit  is the one I tested  on old firmware with 3 psu's

I need to  check  power again

i am now at

1640 watts
15540 hash

0.1055 watts a gh

 

Hi,

Does the dragonmint T1 new firmware offer any improvements in hashing speed, or was it to update a different issue?

Thanks!

Measure the DC voltage (if any) between the individual heat-sinks; while operating, but open, with additional external desktop fan providing additional cooling.

Based on what theory?
They are Samsung 10nm chips.

These ever smaller nodes are geared for low-power applications -- NOT high power ones like mining. The overall power involved raise die temps far beyond what the Foundries processes are designed to allow for. As a result the only way to make the miners stable is to sandbag the operating parameters and that means a lot of *possible* efficiency gains go right out the window. Props for mining chip makers trying to push the envelope but as usual the Real World pushes back - hard.

The Ebang 10nm miner is another example of designs gone wrong...

As for theoretical gains AB may give -- so far not as-advertised...

I'll tear it down again soon and add a few more detailed pictures If anyone wants anymore details, let me know here! I'll update the OP with some additional details later.


6 months from the point of shipment - more information on the terms of sale page here

Yoshi did confirm it was Samsung and 10nm! More details this tweet

Halong is also the only miner manufacturer I've seen take this many payments options. In addition to the standard Wires/BTC options, they take BCH, LTC, ETH, XMR, DCR, USDT! Great to see a manufacturer accept the currency they sell miners on. A good thing!

Yoshi Goto (MyRig) has mentioned that it is 10nm chip and that the foundry is Samsung.

This isn't 10nm is it?  I thought it was 16nm

Look, if you assume a 10nm chip designed as well as the S9 chips, you should be getting about 20TH @ 1400w. 

If version rolling ASIC boost adds another 20%, you should be seeing ~24th at that power. 

My speculation is that this is a 16nm clone of the S9 but with the ASIC boost counteracting a worse chip design to bring a *very* slight increase in efficiency.

As much as people hate Bitmain, they do seem to have the best chip designs.

That's 6.25% less than S9 on APW3++ is about .112 watts per 1gh at the wall, better efficiency indeed.

Never looked at the reviews of the s7 or s9 despite them being several years old now??
The t1 has same layout and lazy/brain-dead heatsink design that makes for them being LOUD due to all of the turbulence created by so many leading/trailing edges on that mass of individual sinks.

ref the Canaan Avalon repair guide for example of correct thermal design.

I've never seen a teardown of a Bitcoin miner before and was amazed to notice the sheer amounts of Heatsinks on the PCB. It would've been nice if all the cables came braided or with some outer protection for the PSU wires. The 14AWG power cable looks pretty good. I'm pleased to notice the front end as well which looks fairly simple to configure and setup the connection to the pools. How many years of warranty does Halong provide for these units? Also is there a possibility to have a look at the ASIC chips and to verify if it was producted by Samsung?

all of mine are about .105 watts per 1gh at the wall.

1 has a dropped board


http://ckpool.org/users/16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr

first unit old firmware on this one look at 1 hr rate of 15.1t

workername": "16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr",
   "hashrate1m": "19.8T",
   "hashrate5m": "16.8T",
   "hashrate1hr": "15.1T",
   "hashrate1d": "142T",
   "hashrate7d": "34.6T",
   "lastshare": 1523633408,
   "shares": 5329198977,
   "bestshare": 65201213603.0,
   "lns": 5307498287.915012,
   "luck": 1.01,
   "herp": 5351461064.377117

second unit old firmware look at 1 hr rate of 15.0t
"workername": "16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr.1",
   "hashrate1m": "11.7T",
   "hashrate5m": "13.7T",
   "hashrate1hr": "15T",
   "hashrate1d": "9.66T",
   "hashrate7d": "2.05T",
   "lastshare": 1523633409,
   "shares": 311079480,
   "bestshare": 226462495.0,
   "lns": 310052756.1595064,
   "luck": 1.0,
   "herp": 310046022.2003531

third unit old firmware look at 1 hr rate of 10.6t this is the one with dropped board.

 "workername": "16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr.3",
   "hashrate1m": "12.4T",
   "hashrate5m": "11.7T",
   "hashrate1hr": "10.6T",
   "hashrate1d": "6.56T",
   "hashrate7d": "1.39T",
   "lastshare": 1523633409,
   "shares": 210180304,
   "bestshare": 196625949.0,
   "lns": 209494784.5212819,
   "luck": 1.0,
   "herp": 208768486.6223349


fourth unit old firmware look at 1 hr rate of 15.2t
"workername": "16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr.4",
   "hashrate1m": "16T",
   "hashrate5m": "16T",
   "hashrate1hr": "15.2T",
   "hashrate1d": "9.74T",
   "hashrate7d": "2.09T",
   "lastshare": 1523633403,
   "shares": 317464726,
   "bestshare": 1129180623.0,
   "lns": 316388009.930127,
   "luck": 1.01,
   "herp": 318588468.9164163



fifth unit new firmware look at no number yet note this is the one from a forum member.


"workername": "16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr.2",
   "hashrate1m": "17.7T",
   "hashrate5m": "14.3T",
   "hashrate1hr": "2.43T",
   "hashrate1d": "2.41T",
   "hashrate7d": "583G",
   "lastshare": 1523633398,
   "shares": 89727984,
   "bestshare": 128850564.0,
   "lns": 89362162.95710222,
   "luck": 0.99,
   "herp": 88289805.74712613
  },
sixth unit new firmware look at no number yet this is fro myrig/yoshi

"workername": "16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr.6",
   "hashrate1m": "15.5T",
   "hashrate5m": "15.4T",
   "hashrate1hr": "5.34T",
   "hashrate1d": "495G",
   "hashrate7d": "95.3G",
   "lastshare": 1523633410,
   "shares": 14209748,
   "bestshare": 11305225.0,
   "lns": 14171517.17823051,
   "luck": 1.05,
   "herp": 14845056.71371713
  }

There is a huge inductor on the PCB so it looks like
there is a DC/DC converter on board. Can you read
the chip number of the chips that are directly under
this inductor on the other side of the PCB?

THanks for the breakdown, very well made post !  Who cares if it looks the same.  BTC ASIC design is no secret anymore.  Bitmain is probably plotting to destroy the market or extract as much from it before other competitors like Halong eat up its market share, and more importantly, its hashrate quasi-monopoly.  No supply monopoly, no coin control. 

  It looks like an S9 but remember that you can find all the design files for an S9 in shenzhen if you know where to look.

  And you dont even need the design files to reverse engineer  it.  you just need cash and connections

It is not an S9,
that is just a silly statement that everybody with no technical
knowledge says.

The design is close to what Innosilicon has done with its current gen. miners, as I have stated many times earlier..

Right looks like totally copy of S9, they need to develop something new not resell with same ASCI with little bit more comsumption and Hash rate...

Slightly more efficient than proven S9.

WTF?  it's an S9 for fck sake...exact clone..with overt ASIC boost....
Big fck deal..rip off

Now *that* is a review. Non-political, entirely on-point and shows that you studied Hagg's and other members reviews to see how to do them properly. Very well done and worthy of some Merit.

Will update after a bit for sure!

I did try to pull off the heatsinks from both sides, didn't budge with gentle pressure. It's got some good adhesive, and I don't want to break the toy just yet!

It would be interesting if each board can accommodate 10 more chips. You'll note one side is fully populated with heatsinks, one is missing 10 - perhaps airflow is sufficient enough. If so, on the 3 chain ASIC setup they have, that would mean an increase from 138 total chips to 168, nearly a 22% increase.

I'd imagine this would create way more strain too on the power pull. 22% on top of even the 1584 I reported puts it at around 1930 watts. It also brings the 16TH spec to 19.5TH!

We're going to need some bigger power supplies

Looks like there are heat sinks on both sides, you would have to pry them off of whatever adhesive they used.  I would hate to break a new toy.

Good review. Pls update us after few weeks how’s the performance ?
Also QUESTION: Since you opened the Miner , did you see SAMSUNG on any off the chips ? Curious to find out what the manufacturer or manufacturing process 10nm or 7nm??

Great question! Shows up as dead, and tries to find the next pool.

Also, I didn't specifically show off the dark accent option of the GUI! I made a clip of me changing the that around and you can see the pools. Pools 1 and 2 are the ones that don't support ASICBoost, where the third is compatible. This is the interface after applying the firmware - you can see some GUI changes! A welcome addition. I would really like tuning capabilities in a future update!

https://i.gyazo.com/711990fe2ae65329fd7042a05d4869b0.mp4



Thank you! And thanks for your prior reviews as well - I looked at one of your prior reviews for formatting ideas

It's nice to have a good look at this machine, thank you.  

I've waited ever since from January for this to happen and now it finally has.

Great work. Nice teardown. Thanks for the post. Loving my Dragons!

What's the behavior if you point it to a pool that doesn't support version rolling? Does it show an error and goto the backup pool?

This thread is a review of Halong Mining's DragonMint T1, their first offering in the SHA256 market. There will be detailed pictures of the GUI and a hardware teardown.



The  DragonMint T1 "Terminator" is Halong's first SHA-256 offering, utilizing AsicBoost with specifications advertised at 16TH, 1480W @ 240/25c, with an ±8% variation.

Halong Mining was first publicly advertised around November of 2017, with many prominent figures in the Bitcoin community endorsing the legitimacy of the project. Preorders were offered at $1350 for the miner. Myrig is advertised as Halong's distribution arm globally. The official websites, along with the twitter handles are listed below:

https://Halongmining.com, https://twitter.com/halongmining
https://Myrig.com, https://twitter.com/MyRig_com

Halong Mining's representative, Scott O, was prominent on the Halong thread and that's when he advertised that he lived near Milwaukee. Being a resident here locally, I took Scott up on his open offer to review the unit in person, which I did in early January. I was delighted with what I saw, and became a customer not too long afterwards. Last month I offered to review a unit, which was provided in addition to the PSU, which I received yesterday.

Without further ado, the unboxing!



As we can see, the unit has the standard "tube" form factor, a common form factor. The PSU has 10 PCI connectors, which plug into the 3 ASIC chains (3 each), and one in the control board.

More close ups, and plugging in the PSU!



 

After plugging it into my setup, it didn't take long for it to show up on my network. I navigated to the page. The default login username is "admin", and the password is "dragonadmin"



The default pool settings! As with most miners, the hashrate spikes up when it first goes online, it equalized as time went on.



I adjusted the pool settings and pointed them to slush. Here's the GUI hashrate at two minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and finally at 75 minutes!



Poolside stats! Averaged at 16.07 TH in a bit over an hour.



Amp pull was fluctuating between 6.5 and 6.6 amps, which reflected consumption between 1560 and 1584 watts. The ambient heat in the room was hotter than usual, close to 30c/86f intake (thanks B29 miners!). I used a Fluke 323 Meter to measure the precise pull.

Here's the rest of the GUI!

 

GUI updates (existing and upcoming!) - including a demonstration of the color scheme change!






Onwards to the tear down! Off with the warranty seals.



Halong has an official setup video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQOU1PLKerk

PDF version:
https://halongmining.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/DragonMint-Setup-Instructions.pdf

You'll need to use an active version rolling pool (AsicBoost) with this miner, such as CK or Slush pools.

There currently are no firmware updates published on the website, however, Halong's Telegram (https://t.me/dragonmint)
published one for the T1 here (updated to Beta version - 041518) -
https://download.halongmining.com/testing/t1_20180415_075807.swu

I uploaded all the pictures here to imgur albums (some bonus ones too that are not posted here!). First one is the GUI, the second is the hardware. Third one is the new GUI changes.
Stock GUI
Hardware Teardown
New GUI changes

To conclude, I'm impressed at Halong's first generation DragonMint T1 "Terminator". It's great to see more competition in the field, and even more impressive that this is Halong's first public run. I'm eager to see what Halong will do next.

A special thanks goes out to Scott, Drak, Yoshi, and the rest of the team at Halong for providing me the unit to review. I look forward to seeing T2, T3, T4 and beyond! Maybe an "Enforcer?"

Stay tuned to the official twitter channels, telegram, and the website for more information for future releases from Halong!

Thanks for reading into my review of the DragonMint T1! It's my first review here on the forum. Please feel free to post any questions/comments below

Modified 5/19/18