Topic: Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com - page 62. (Read 3049521 times)

Here're the instruction for applying artic silver thermal compound :

 http://www.arcticsilver.com/amd_application_method.html#

 there're 2 ways to do it, Center Dot & Surface Spread, all ways recommend using a creditcard to tint first. Surface spread recommends a cc or razor blade to spread it. Center Dot recommends a dot the size of an uncooked grain of rice(If you think that's enough in this application, go for it, but be prepared to be disappointed).

Somewhere in there it also recommends to spread the paste into the copper pipe cracks if any, to fill any voids.  Also notice that there is a break in period of up to 200 hours, where  it'll take multiple thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction, (results will improve over time). A thermal cycle is an on/off, heating/cooling cycle, but we never turn ours off so it may take longer than 200 hours to obtain max efficiency


Searing if you're feeling ambitious take a look at the intel instructions, there they have 2 add'l methods vertical line & horizontal line, however I really don't think they apply here, just if you're curious  

worth a try, let us know how it works out

Well, I had vegasguy take a temp measurement of the top of the E piece and side of the inductor on a VRM, they were within 5C of each other ... So, I think those thermal pads are transferring heat quite well. It may be worth a shot to add more surface area(sink the top) of the E piece. It would be like the easiest mod one could do, and if it works good... then great!

ohhhh, that's an idea, worth a try but I don't think those thermal pads conduct much heat up to the e plate, and U1-U4 usually need a lot of add'l cooling(when they need it), might work on U5-U8. Cutting e plate for U1-U4 isn't hard, only takes a couple min with a hacksaw, cutting it for U5-U8 looks like a real pain, but I never had to do it

You can definitely sink the E piece, throw some heatsinks from ebay on top of it.  That would dramatically increase the surface area of that E piece and probably cool the VRM's a lot better.

Arctic silver makes a 2 part thermal epoxy, that works better than the adhesive .. I don't think thermal compound will hold it very well. With the epoxy you need to clamp the heatsink in position for an hour. You can buy spring clamps at ace or Walmart that work well. If I only had to drop it a few degrees I went with the adhesive like you did. If I needed more I went with the thermal epoxy
NOTE: thermal epoxy is permanent & only to be used with the little 1/2in  copper heatsinks. Don't use it between the asics and the big KNC heatsink. If in doubt try the adhesive backing first

on the pcb the dc-dc are labeled U1-U8
on the advanced settings they are labeled dc-dc 0-7  ...  so if dc-dc zero in settings is running hot, put the heat sink on U1

-- that's what I did, maybe I should make a video and charge for it  

Do you know how DC-DC connections are numbered? The front 4s are staying low with individual heatsinks, I took out the adhesive back from one of the heatsink and applied thermal compound for the 1st DC-DC on the right after the 1st row of 4. I see that 1 of the DC-DC is 5C lower, was wondering if thermal compound is more efficient. 

you can't sink the E piece, it's down as far as it will go. Take out the thermal pads & there is a 1/4 in gap.  I did find a 1/4 in copper heatsink that fits right in there and they do work better than the thermal pads, but not as good as the 1/2in heatsinks with epoxy which will drop the temp a good 10-15c

-- and don't forget to scrape off the sticker on top of vrms it'll work even better

I should have documented it, but as far as I remember cube was running over 90C and your mod kept lowering hash rate until it found acceptable rate at which temp will stay below 90 which was 281. Below is a screenshot of 2 cubes. Cube 1 was modified and currently running at 325 MHz, cube 2 always run at 300 MHz, haven't tried 325 yet but I will soon. Other 2 cubes are in the process of modification, waiting on USPS to deliver heatsinks and thermal compound from Amazon any time now. Ambient temp is 81F in my garage. So I would say that individual heatsinks were able to lower temp for my setup.

Do you have any stats on before / after temps of the DCDC's u modded the cooling for? At the same speeds?

I really want to see the results of the mod before / after, thats key to seeing if this is all pointless or not.
Also, I would really love to know if sinking the E piece rather than hacking it all apart is adaquate to cool down the VRMs or not. I cant imagine much heat getting through those thick thermal pads, but w/o actual numbers to compare ... its all fucking guesswork lol!

Thanks for sharing. What were the DC/DC temps before the mod? Lower or higher?

congrats,  I found I never had to do those front 4 because they always ran pretty cool. I  did  vrms 1-4 if they were running hot.  I made it thru all summer in the south Texas heat running at 325 MHz, and 19 days without even a bfg restart, woulda gone longer but I had to edit the config file, lol

Just wanted to share my experience after watching the YouTube video, I went ahead and ordered copper heatsinks and GC-Extreme paste from amazon, they were delivered within a day. I cut the metal bar further to allow me to install individual heatsinks on all 8 DC-DC modules. BTW, I replaced the stock fans with Noctua earlier. What an improvement, this cube would never run over 281 MHz, now it's been running at 325 MHz for over 24 hours. I see DC-DC temp as high as 86 but never 90, as I set that as my max temp on GenTarkin's mod. Cutting the metal bar was a pain though specially for the front 4 DC-DC modules.

searing I would definitely try it on the ones with bad cubes, but if a cube is running fine don't mess with it imo.

it's a pain in the neck only when you have to redo it cause  ya didn't put enough paste on the 1st time. If you try to put as little as possible on, you are just going to redo it more times than'd you'd like. Spread it evenly with a credit card on both surfaces you'll be fine.

PCB flexes way too much , and if you don't get the aligment pins in the holes, the PCB will just flex and leave a gap. there's nothing behind the pcb when you tighten the heatsink, it just bends

it's really not that hard, people that are trying to sell ya something making it seem way harder than it really is.

So what is your take on TXSteve's quote below?




From the above TXSteve post above he seems to think it is a royal pain in the ass to do this re-paste etc etc perhaps my only goal would be to blow the dust out of the cubes
and leave it like that?

side note:

*on the video he never wiped off the paste on the pipes of the heatsink I guess from what you say we know why* for TXSteve's info of filling the gaps above being a pain.

and again my other point (should probably wait for Vegas to answer this stuff) but here goes

These puppies have been running 24/7 and 20 days short of one year..so again does this paste 'degrade'? If so maybe the risk of a repaste is 'gonna' be needed with say
a 'hint' of more dies being throttled down or dying?

Anyway from TXSteve's  post I'm now further confused if I should even bother to touch them..and from your post that says you (Glen Tarkin) says he put way to much paste on this rebuild.. hell I guess I'll wait for some info from Vegas and at worst just blow the cubes out with compressed air make them less ugly with crud.

But it does bug the hell out of me that my dead dies could be the result of 1) too much paste 2) too little paste 3) paste that has degraded over the year of 24/7 mining or 4)Just shoddy KNC bad dies the first batch. I guess (4) is still the most likely. Anyway we will see what Vegas has to say.

Crypto never any clarity

I don't think you can get enough pressure to use the bead in the middle technique because the board flexes. Also you need to fill the gaps in the copper pipes on the heatsink, so need to spread it on both surfaces ... if you don't you are just going to have to take it apart and do it over, at least that's what I found, and I've had all my cubes apart. It's a pain in the neck doing it twice because you didn't put enough on the first time, and when you take apart again you can see where the paste didn't spread right

That was a good video, Ive been wondering how the inside of the titan was put together =P ... I dont have one physically, mines hosted(yes all the coding Ive done has been remote) LOL!
He put WAY TOO MUCH paste back on the ASIC, it will be oozing out the sides if it seats properly. I prefer to have a much thinner layer when I apply paste. Hell, I dont even spread it out, I just put a tiny bead in the middle, enough pressure should spread it out evenly as needed. Thats how arctic silver has always recommended application of their products.

I guess getting ambient temperatures of measuring points of the DCDC's are pointless now, it was something I askd vegasguy to check on while it was mining, but I didnt realize they had a "heatsink" on top of them for cooling =P
Yeah, I would like to see the temperature deltas between the banks he applied the copper heatsink on vs the ones he just left w/ the alum "heatsink" ... if the temps are anywhere near close then individually sinking the DCDC's is pointless. But, I know vegas has done a ton of work on tweaking the cooling on these things so Im interested to see what hes got goin on =P
Heck if that metal plate gets really freaking hot to the touch, that means the pads are doing a great job of transferring the heat to that plate from the DCDC's ... which means if u put heatsinks on the plate, even that would help cool those DCDC's better.
Hes still making the video lol!

On a side note I posted this a bit further back. The below video shows a guy tearing apart a Titan cube. It is all in Swedish but I get the gist of it.

Except for the fact of learning my cubes are 'filthy' after watching this video by peaking inside and probably I SHOULD ASAP use the Air Compressor
and blow out 11 1/2 months of dust in them (in basement ..cooling in summer as a big shuttle fan and windows open....my pics here if you want to see setup
lostgonzo.imgur.com)

Would it make any sense for me to put new paste on the cubes as seen in the video after I dust them out (probably would do the heatsink mod too as they are cute or
maybe I really should replace the paste...the Titans have been running 24/7 for 11 1/2 months. Maybe this stuff dries out or something?

Or would that likely NOT make any difference on my 2 cubes with 1 dead die each? Thermal paste just helps heat...the dies I have set to OFF would likely not
benefit from this at all anyway......

Newbie other issue....if I could or being a newbie 'likely too" use too much thermal paste or muck it up in many different
newbie ways ...on your advice ... I may just limit myself to dusting them out...

Then again it don't look TOO hard even from my limited perspective ...newbie that I am on such electronic mods

here is the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-RBI4am-wY

One last point ....as I watch the above video ..I can see where taking off the 2 ends on the heat sink to get access to the ends for individual heat sinks, but why did he
not just also prune the front of the large standard plate heatsink also and put copper individual heatsinks on all of them?

Seems to me he still had enough of the large standard heatsink plate to connect the fan/cooler back down with the
thermal paste on the Titan Cube and just put individual heatsinks on all the components. (whole thing still looks newbie scary to me)

Vegas if you are on .....you can jump on this too on what you think of the process on the above video..you probably have better ideas anyway

Anyway appreciate the advice. I SHOULD probably refrain myself for 20 days till warranty wears out. Original Titan will be 1 year on Nov 6rh 2015.
The 2nd used Titan I got is also a Nov 2014 unit.  Then after that point in time I can drag the HACKSAW wave it at the
Titans and make evil laugh sounds at them...heh......it will be very very therapeutic indeed! Again should you think I should bother with the mods he does.

Again thanks for any advice.

hah! yeahp, I know how ya feel! There is literally no hardware Im interested in anymore at this point. Its all a fucking ripoff right now. The reward/risk ratio just aint favorable enough anymore.
It will be if the price ever returns astronomically high. But thats going to take a lifetime at this point LOL!
The titan was the last piece of hardware I bought. Glad I did cuz I learned a lot coding to improve it, so its been one hell of a fun project, no other miner has given me such opportunity. But, beyond Titan, theres really nothing left LOL!

Oh ... how I miss the GPU days! =(
When mining was actually fair and fun and decentralized.

Yep...I was that 'newbie sheep' as you say ...(I was such a great and happy newbie in 2013 after drinking the kool aid thou)

Now I'm no longer a 'bright eyed newbie" (but with dreams of $1000 usd BTC again someday....I could go back to stupid newbie mode..in a heartbeat!)

Live and learn I guess at least I was well enough out of my 'newbie year" by 2014 I did NOT get sucked into the 'cloudhashing scam" /paycoin scam /
had NO $$$ in mt. Gox/ and whatever pre-order probs I had with BFL and Alpha Tech (still no scrypt miner 2 years now) I got refunds due to 'dumb luck'

Used up my 9 lives of luck with crypto like a cat on the freeway.

So after these Titans go to doorstops I will be into 'attic mining' ..in my case I look at the 5k of crap in my attic..sell it on Ebay and then buy crypto with it!

So then coinbase is my new flame at that point (oh baby hubba hubba)

No more 'Hot Mess' full of Drama "Mining Relationships" ..sure it is great like Sex
with a crazy chick when it works..but mostly it ends up badly and you feel dirty after....or in my case 'survivor's guilt from a BFL refund one of the few)