So two days ago, the Used Antminer S5 Batch 7 from Bitmain finally arrived. Me and several user were previously discussing the condition and value of buying used hardware for the full price. So this is for the few who asked question such as "Second Hand S5, Is it worth?" This will be a pseudo review on specifically the Used batch 7 Antminer S5 bought directly from Bitmain;
So the packaged arrived in the usual box it always does. I quickly opened it and found some
very minimal packaging. No need to include a picture, it was simply
2 white foam square holding the extremities, with no other kind of padding or packaging whatsoever.The unit was fairly dusty and there was clumps of dust in the heatsink. Hmm well, a bit of pressured air and as new. Or not quite, but i guess
its not that bad.
2 Minutes later i finished placing it, plugging it and logging into the interface and replacing the Bitmain's worker info with Kanopool. Then flashed to Bitmain's latest firmware.
My first impression was Great,
the open wrt Luci is very responsive (My S1 are hella slow).
I then first tested a few things, the 2 most important point i must bring;
-
Fan control works, you set a %, no value seem to default to 80%~ Setting it to 65-70% made it at least quieter than my Zeus Thunder X3 which is honestly not that great. It makes the temp go up by 3c.
-
The unit did not burn itself down when i starved it of an internet connection. Instead after 2-3 minutes, the unit's alarm start blaring. Then a minute after, and not before the hash boards powered down, then did the fan wind down.
Then i tested the clocks. On a EVGA G2 1000W, i did 10 minutes runs and filled a chart to get an idea;
During the tests, twice did the first hashboard not hash. (Guessed from its temp dropping to 38c)
After, i set it to run at
Freq 375, i noticed twice that
the first hashboard stop hashing and is picked back up one minute later. By looking at the graphs, this has happened
3 times in 24 hours. I tried 12 hours Kano pool and 12 hours Nicehash. Both gave me the same hashrate.
1.23THs Client side. 1.225THs pool side. Actual HWE is <0.0001%.
This seem to be similar to what some other users reported, while using the latest firmware. I don't really know what to think about this.
Pushing Limits;After a week of running this baby, the
best overclock value is 393.75. Up to that point, the unit conserve its J/GH efficiency, so i have to say the overclock potential and
voltage control is
excellent imo. It has the added bonus of having nearly no HWE% as well.
I also improved the temps by directing air from a box fan on and over the heatsink, but not force it down the heatsink, let the pressure blow over. Otherwise the temp would rise a bit instead of lower. I get 56 and 58C instead of 59 and 67 or such.
I am able to run the fan at 58% with temps at 61c~ at 30c~ ambiant. At this level the S5 is very similarly noisy as a Zeus. As in the dB is lower but the piercing high pitch noise meld with the lower tone of other ASIC.