Definitely. It'd probably take them a couple weeks just to respond to my email with return directions. And then after spending lots of money to ship from US to CH, what's their incentive to not put me at the back of the line behind all the other customers clamoring for their late orders.
I pointed Bitmine management to your post for clarification and got following official feedback.
This is a transport damage and covered by related insurance.
If the damage is cosmetic or easy to fix (like re-plugging cables or tighten screws), customers might want to give a try. Otherwise, please contact customer service to get the issue resolved. Support currently has a backlog for around 3 working days. Also, please document the damages with photos and provide them with your request for handling the insurance and improving the shipping process.
Thanks and good luck.
Thanks zefir for looking into that for us! It's good to know the official recommendation for these situations. Is the ~3 working day backlog for email replies, or shipping out replacement parts after they receive damaged ones?
In my case, I still think I can resolve the issues quicker myself, if I can get some info. I did find a couple small components missing, probably because of the loose heatsinks, numbers C98 on one module and C45 on another. I found the C45, though it was a bit damaged, and soldered it back in place. That module seems to work fine now, though I only ran it for less than 30 secs since it's missing heatsinks and I didn't want to fry the chips. The C98 is too tiny to have hope of finding, but interestingly, that module seems to run fine without it. Do you know, or can you find out, whether it's a bad idea to continue running it without C98? If so, can you tell me its specs so I can order it from Digikey?
As for the damage to the connectors between the modules and bus board, I managed to repair it successfully. Sorry I didn't take pictures of anything I did. But I do want to highly recommend that Bitmine add a support bar on top of the modules to prevent them wobbling during transit and even afterward. Just a simple narrow strip of metal as long as the case is wide, with screws through it into the top of each module's main heatsink, should stabilize the modules and prevent the damage I found related to that.
I doubt that would solve the problem of the small heatsinks falling off though. Does the thermal adhesive they're using just not stick to aluminum (or whatever the heatsinks are made of) well? At this point, I think all I have left to do is find a suitable/better thermal adhesive to put these back on. What about this one?:
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_alumina_thermal_adhesive.htmHow important is it to have high thermal conductivity on top of the chips, vs through the board?