We've seen a lot of boards from Technobit and they all look pretty much the same - 8/16 chips on small board with an industrial heatsink. Now it's time to present you something slighly diffrent in a disgin point of view - The new Technobit board with 4 chips Minion chips from BlackArrow -
HEX4M
This miner is huge compared to older products, the board itself is 250x250mm and the aluminium heatsink on the bottom is slightly larger 250x300mm
It's great to see that Technobit decided to use standard CPU coolers for this device, but will get to that later.
As usual the product was well packed, but I highly recommend to order the CPU coolers from your local retailer. First you will get lower shipping fees and it's more secure for the board to travel without the heatsinks attached, despite it's well mounted on aluminium plate.
Specification and Performance:
As mentioned above the board is equipped with 4 x 28nm
Minion ASIC chips, BlackArrow insist that it's speed is 120GH with efficiency of 0.75 watts per Ghash on the other side Technobit advertise the miner as 400GH/s i.e. 100GH per chip. lets see the real world results:
Indeed with a clock settings 1016 Mhz and voltage of 0.805V the board speed is 400GH, however I was unable to achieve the stated speeds from BlackArrow's specifications: 1200Mhz @ 0.82V - 120GH.
Here is the performance chart of the board at various configurations:
The power supply used for the test is
FSP Aurum S 600W, it is rated GOLD which means 90% efficiency, that's what the second power column is representing Wall power consumption minus 10%, the efficiency of the board is calculated with these numbers. The board is power by 2 x PCIe power connector, there is a space for a third connector but apparently Technobit decided that it's not needed. IMO 210 watts per PCIe connector is a lot (70W per wire) and maybe later revisions the board will be shipped with 3 connectors. As seen form the chart the efficiency for the whole miner is around 1W/GH, if we take into account 10-15% loss in DC/DC conversion the eff of the chip itself is 0.85 W/Ghash/second. I recommend running the board at 1016/805 which may differ from the default settings from technobit. Undervolt tests
hereCooling:
The top of the ASICs are cooled by
AC Freezer 7 PRO Rev.2, but you can use any Intel s1150 compatible, since the coolers are not included by default - you have to order them separately from Technobit or for example they are on sale at
**newegg - 25$
The whole board is placed on a big aluminium heatsink which has two functions:
1. To cool down the bottom of the board - chips and regulators
2. To prevent the board from bending
There is an extra Sunon 120mm fan to cool the base.
Keep in mind that I have a pre-production unit, the final revision will have special holdings for the bottom fan and the 4 "legs" will be at the corners of the board with the option for stacking. Also the boards will be shipped with custom made (lower) stands to attach the CPU cooler.
I'm happy to say that this unit is relatively quiet and totally useful in home environments.
Pricing:At the time of writing you can buy HEX4M from Technobit for 379,00€ without the top coolers. As always investment in bitcoin equipment is risky but let's see where this price sits in comparison with other products from Technobit and various bitcoin mining manufactures:
As you can see from the chart, HEX4M is reasonably priced but once again the BITMAIN offers better price per GH for its Antminers, especially if you live in a country where Customs are not a problem for the rest of us importing an Chinese miner can be a hassle. The other problem for Antminer S3 is that it's currently sold out. Other interesting product to compete with the HEX4M is the new board from Technobit based on AsciMiner BE200 chips, I hope to get mine soon and review it.
Host device and Software:As all other products from Technobit this is no exception, you need a host device to control the board that can be:
1. Take one TP-Link TL-MR3020 Router and flash it with the firmware from Technobit's website. Here is a great
tutorial by Zich. You can also order it directly from them at slightly higher price, but pre-flashed and ready to rock. If you plan to use the router you will also need USB hub.
2. Windows based PC with patched version of cgminer that supports the HEX boards, more info how to run it here:
CGMINER Windows build for TECHNOBIT's Boards (coming soon)3. On a Linux based PC it will best to just compile cgminer with the latest patch from Technobit or download my build for Ubuntu x64
(coming soon)4. You can also use Raspberry Pi as a host device - but it's not recommended -
more infoHere is how to apply patch 0.3.6 and compile cgminer on linux host:
git clone https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer.git
cd cgminer
wget http://bitcoinbg.eu/tools/technobit/rev_45dbbb4cac091e41b0123fd211b6293436921681.patch
git checkout 45dbbb4cac091e41b0123fd211b6293436921681
patch < rev_45dbbb4cac091e41b0123fd211b6293436921681.patch
./autogen.sh --enable-hexminerm
make
Start cgminer with the following line:
sudo ./cgminer -c ./cgminer.conf --hexminerm-options 4:1016 --hexminerm-voltage 805 --hexminerm-chip-mask 15 --hexminerm-hw-err-res 10 --hexminerm-nonce-timeout-secs 3 --hexminerm-pic-roll 90
where cgminer.conf is in the same folder and with your regular settings.
Pros:- Reasonably priced
- Good Efficiency
- Availability
- Software voltage control
- Quiet
Cons:Conclusion:The efficiency of the board is good, but I was wondering if 1W/GH is good or bad at today's standards. The miner is very stable and pleased with the final product. In the end the Bulgaria based company once again did a great job with this challenge and AFAIK Technobit is the only one to offer assembly service for Minion ASICs.
Full gallery can be found here:
http://imgbox.com/g/3gEyEjC5Ckbest
2GOOD
P.S.
===
I personally expected
more LEDs on this board
