Topic: Very unofficial review of the BitaxeGamma miner. (Read 744 times)

Mine is dead so until sidehack contacts me about a return/repair/replace which I am willing to pay for its a brick.



To all be very careful with heatsink replacing as I have zero idea how I killed this unit.

v2.4.0 of the software is out, suggest everyone updates if only for the temperature sensor fixes. Updated on my end very easily with zero issues!

it died I went to make the heatsink better and when I assembled it back together its dark.

I am going to send it back for a repair as I do like the unit. Just be careful of your heatsinks.

That would also work! I need to wait until my new power supply comes before I can push for higher hash

I have this under the unit


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QMC1458?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

I mounted four feet on the miner with some long bolts

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QMC1458?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

50 mm fan

50 mm heat sink

miner

four feet with bolts

so double fan

I am doing

18.6 watts

55 c chip

51 c voltage regulator

freq 490

volts 1060

1th

18.6 watts per th

I've strapped a 60mm 5v fan to the back of the unit and the voltage regulator temp dropped from 64 degrees to 44! Massive drop! On top of that it brought down the ASIC temp from 54 to around 50 which is nice as well. I think a nice 60mm fan on the back isn't a silly idea, especially if you're asking a bit more voltage from the unit

yeah but the european seller sells the unit with the ice tower and the noctua.

which means easy setup for the miner.

I don’t mind tweaking gear, but I was a bit busy and would have preferred the model to come truly ready out of the box.

the ice tower +noctua is really good gets to freq 600 which is good enough.

There is another small test: Ice Tower + Noctua and the Argon THRML + Noctua: https://plebbase.com/research/ice-tower-argon-thrml-60mm-and-otzi-bitaxe-gamma-what-can-they-do-62

there are many ways to configure the bitaxeGamma in terms of cooling. and as philipma1957 has already said and as mentioned in the blog article, the combination ice tower with the noctua fan is the best one
here you achieve the very best values in terms of the efficiency of the new miner

btw sidehack please check your pm

"Ice Tower with Noctua NF-A4x20 5V PWM
I was very bullish about the test with the Ice Tower and the Noctua fan, this combination has already produced excellent results on the Bitaxe Ultra and Bitaxe Supra."



https://plebbase.com/research/naked-lama-um-gamma-i-mean-bitaxe-gamma-61


cyan did a ton of research it looks good.

Also hey Phil, since we started lapping heatsinks (removing the yellow anodize and smoothing any striations or lack of flatness in the surface), we've been able to run 525/1060 on every unit that's gone out with Noctua fans. Still annoyed at 2-point mounting but the heatsink surface is the biggest problem with heat transfer on the unit you received.

Someone please talk me out of this...

I'm itching to buy this

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005859027667.html?channel=twinner

And pair it with this

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005671845842.html?channel=twinner

To cool the BitAxe, could always add more units in series too because of the size of the rad. I know it's TOTALLY overkill but damned if it won't look cool haha

So even if the bitaxe is 10x slower than
 1 out of every 120,000 blocks that it hits will be lost due to it being 10x slower than the controller you have measured.

Considering that the bitaxe world wide has only hit 1 block it was and is unlikely that we will ever see a bitaxe miss a block due to controller speed.

At most maybe the bitaxe will hit 10 blocks a year if it sells a lot more of them.

That would mean 100 blocks in ten years or a 1 in 12000 chance of a stale block

And for all of the above to,be true we are talking 10s of thousands need to be sold.

125,000 bitaxes doing 1th would hit a block every 36-37 days about 10 a year

Of course the more likely reason to go  stale is long ping times.

So maybe the low cost 32 chip will never be an issue.

My unit is plugging along nicely set to freq,460 volt 1060

I've done some profiling on my miners (not BitAxe, not its esp miner software, running on a slower single core controller);
Workgen max/avg 2953,1115.783936
PoolWork max/avg 3188,1798.692139
Nonce handling max/avg 4193,545.223022
(all numbers are microseconds)
Explanation: Workgen is the routine that prepares and sends the next (usually sequential in some form of another) job for the asic(s). PoolWork is the routine that receives the work from the pool in json format, decodes it, calculates the merkle root and prepares and sends this work as a job to the asic(s). Nonce handling is the routine that receives the response from the asic(s), checks it, and if it has a high enough difficulty, sends it to the pool.
As my controller is single core all routines can be, and are interrupted to handle the wireless communication, which explains the big difference between max and average numbers (I would say the network routines take ~2..2.5ms).
How to interpret these numbers?
First you have to realize that the asics are stand alone hash blocks. You give them a job and they will cycle through the nonce space and version bits and report nonces back to the controller whenever a nonce/version is found that has a high enough difficulty. The controller has to send a new job to them BEFORE they finish cycling through all nonce/version variations. The timing is not critical as long as the controller does not exceed this time.
So, in my case my controller has to send a new job at least ~4ms before the cycling finishes to run the asics at full speed (I use ~50ms for my miners, the exact value is calculated by the software and depends on asic type and frequency, see bottom of post for details).
So, now you've made sure the asics run at full speed. That leaves latency and is more difficult to classify. I think (and you may have other ideas) that only the time it takes to handle the nonce and report shares to the pool affects this. On average this takes my controller ~500us. In that 500us another miner might find a valid block solution. This happens on average every 600000ms, so my controller has a 1 in 1200000 chance that its found block solution is stale because of slow processing...

Job timing:
Tjob = (Nonce range * #Version variations asic cycles through) / (Asic Frequency * #cores * #asics) * latency safety margin
where
Nonce range is the range that the asics cycle through (2^32 in a perfect world, but antminer asics do not search the entire range, eg the bm1366 searches from 00000000h upto DFFFFFFFh).
#version variations is between 1 and FFFFh depending on configuration, default is 8.
#cores depends on asic type, the bm1366 has ~894
latency safety margin is used to lower Tjob to prevent latency in the wireless routines prevent supplying a new job in time to the asics. I use 0.8.
So, for a 500MHz bm1366 you get (3758096383 * 8 ) / (500000000 * 894 * 1) * 0.8 = 0.0538s

So some say the controller is too slow and some say it is not to slow.

I know
 fuzzy
 kano
 sidehack


have been here a long time

I do not know skot very well = the designer of this gear. he claims the controller is good enough.


I am not so sure how to clearly demo speed of dueling controllers on a 1 chip unit.

Since I do not know how to do this if someone can clearly demo controller speed on a 1 chip 1370  bitaxe

vs controller speed on any other 1 chip 1370 miner please show it to us.


for know I am playing with heatsink and cooling.

freq of 525
volt of 1100 below

pretty stable

Sigh ...

Now if you wanna know work generation time in cgminer, run a gekko and read it.
It's not a 'Oh wow I got one work to generate superfast', it's there for all work it generates while mining, with a total and average time.

your blog  and sidehacks suggestion is why I started playing with heatsinks .

it was a good read.

at helso yeah i can get it up to freq 525 and 1150volt

which is close to 22 watts. not quite stable at that setting. but I think when I get the new fan it will be able to run the default

525
1150

for days on end

if you are already testing, i would highly recommend this great blog article. i also posted it here a few days ago.
you are sure to find a suitable setup for your bitaxeGamma

https://plebbase.com/research/naked-lama-um-gamma-i-mean-bitaxe-gamma-61

Agreed, I think it's just about finding the right fan/heatsink combo. Whether I'll settle on this or try something else I don't know but it definitely is surprising just how much heat such a little chip can pump out.

Then again, shouldn't really be surprised, my no-limits 14900K can chug down 400~W at full tilt which necessitated direct die cooling. I did think about putting this thing under water but I think just a few $$$ too many for such a small project; I did find a nice block however

Well cygan myself and you all got much better results using better heatsinks.

So pretty sure that finding a better heatsink is the way to go.

I have multiple ones to test.

And a new fan coming.

The mean well psu I linked above is really good and it allows 4.5 to 5.5 volts at up to 18 amps.

I have yet to settle on heatsink and fan.

Stock for now, like I said, no time. But I plan to return to it in the next day or two. I think this fan is definitely the limiting factor here now; that and I need a better PSU which is also on the way.

Only issue now is the heatsinks weight makes the stand topple over, I'll need to do some modifying there too. The game never ends but boy do I love to tinker

Looks good.  What did you set it at?

400 freq
1000 volt

490 freq
1060 volt

Or higher.

Well, the first iteration is running. I don't have time to really mess with anything currently but it works as is and temps seem a few degrees lower (really need a bigger/better fan on this now) but the Xbox heatsink seems like a decent option if you have one laying around and are comfortable cutting one up and drilling some holes

good.

cygan has good thread / link he tested a few heatsinks.

the gamma 1370 chip burns more power than the 1368 and 1366 it is more efficient and allows higher hash but it does burn more juice.

and the 7-8 mm chip which is say 49 or 64 mm square is small compared to  the stock 45 mm square heat sink.

In retrospect I think I could make the stock heatsink work if I used these to tighten.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5CQ5SX3?

with these rubber washers.

https://www.mcmaster.com/99604A220/


machine screw
metal washer
rubber washer
oem heatsink
pcb board
rubber washer
metal washer
nut
second nut

even with a 2 point attachment this would not get loose like the springs on the oem heatsink did

and the rubber washers allow proper tightening.

that solution would end the rocking

at least I can now have fun with heatsinks

That heatsink looks like you've done a great job. I too will be using all 4 mounting points for my cut down Xbox heatsink. The reset and boot buttons will probably be hidden (no biggie - I don't use them) but I THINK the shape of the heatsink will allow me to sneak under anyway but let's see, I'll hopefully report back today

The issue with the stock heatsink is two pin mount with springs. the springs are not that stiff so the stock heatsink can rock.

remember it has a 5000rpm fan on it.

my stock heatsink was also a bit rough there is a photo.

Not understanding the mechanical issue I thought there was a short. as temps could swing from 50c to 65c

and back to 50c eventually it would get to say 72c and power off.

I listened to sidehack and took apart the unit. I tried a few fixes with the stock heatsink. I said fuck it as it  kept overheating.

I purchased a few ideas and fans to play with a better heatsink solution.

this works fine for low speed.

I will add a different fan and stop the avalon fan.

I will use a different heatsink its coming.

I am of the belief that the stock heatsink needs replacement. if you want to do this.

here is a possible heatsink that may have correct holes.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/175714276331. this indeed would need a little bit of work to fit as it may not clear the reset and boot buttons.

But be aware you will need to play with heatsinks with the gamma

yeah I don’t have the best shop and tools ⚒️ anymore.

I cut this heatsink

https://www.ebay.com/itm/134999782205?


here it is with stock fan blowing on side



and here is side view

with Avalon nano fan on top and stock fan is still on side



top view of how it works at the moment

I'm cooking something in regards to cooling too. I have a side gig of repairing, restoring and selling old Xbox consoles for more sats and just had the idea to use on of those heatsinks on the Gamma. It's not perfectly sized so I'll have to cut it down a bit but I think it should work perfectly. Have a new 60mm fan on the way too which I'm hoping will also fit. I'll post pics once I've got it together and hopefully some before/after results

well whether the controller works well enough is interesting question.

over night the new four screw heatsink did its job.


I think this is a good, well better heatsink and I grabbed it

https://www.ebay.com/itm/335319211992

he sold it for a bid of 17 bucks

I will post on it when I install it




and not many rejections which makes it look like the controller may be okay

That's where the configuring of the asic comes in. The speed of the asic is not (meaningfully) related to the work the controller needs to do when the asic(s) are correctly configured. You can configure the asic to require few work updates and also produce only high difficulty (and thus rarely occurring) results. The only hard limit on the maximum #asics a controller can handle is the number of asic strings that can be connected to the controller and that depends on the number of serial ports the controller has.

New heat sink fixed issue.

I am going to look for a bigger fan.

I will post  some more photos on thursday.

this is interesting but I believe it is for the 1368 or 1366 chip correct?

the 1370 chip would do 1000 gh or maybe 1100 gh at your freq.

which is double the work. which would mean more rejects .

I am not arguing that for whatever chip you are showing that it is not good enough as it appears that you are doing okay for the older chips.

I am arguing the results do not apply to the newer chips since it is far quicker and does more in the same time.

thus the errors would be double if it scales linear.  but since the results are not shown by you info I can't tell if the chip overwhelms  the controller and the errors reject go up 3 or 4 or 5 fold not 2x



edit found a heatsink that I can mod I think it is better

marking the drill mount holes




top view this is 50mm by 50mm


will need to cut 4 tabs for each mount corner





you can see the thin rubber washer for 1 mount

these four with the nylon screws will lock the new larger heatsink in place
no rocking  this should get me there. with less work than other ideas

Sorry for the long quote..
But I'll post some facts so everyone can form their own opinion;
- The average blocktime is 10 min. (600.000ms)
- My single core esp32-c3's need less than 1ms to check (including crc check/difficulty check/stale check) and submit a found nonce.
- The wireless connection has a sub 20ms latency
- Latency to the pool (solo.ckpool.org for me) including the wireless latency is around 50ms
So, according to my poor math due to the very slow esp32 I will get an additional rejected share every 12.000 submitted shares, ... I know, its shocking
In reality my rejected shares are anywhere between 1 in 750 .. 3000 shares submitted (depending on connection/pool load?).
In short: the speed of the controller does not in any way/shape or form matter. You can overload an esp32 by (mis)configuring the asic(s), but why would you do that?

The stats from 1 of my miners;

We used a pretty high quality thermal pad on the R909 to help with contact and thermal expansion issues. Got along quite well.

Single chip, just gotta make sure the heatsink mounts flat to it and stays flat to it. Two-point with a tiny chip gives a lot of room for swing. Can't wait until we have the new heatsink samples in hand with four screws and a nice solid base for better lateral heat transfer away from the central hotspot.

Phil, sorry yours went out with an unlapped heatsink. It was one of the very first production units after the five samples I built to test thoroughly. We started sanding the heatsinks smooth a day or two after yours went out. Wish I'd thought of it sooner.

four nylon screws very thin rubber washers that will compress four nylon nuts



I have four of these plates 20 bucks for them I can make 16 mounts




mount OEM heat sink on plate.




the OEM  heat sink is not nearly as smooth as the aluminum mount plates I purchased.




When it is done I will photo it whaling (I hope)

and I have some copper plate on the way. I will see if it is better.


cygan has good results with better heat sinks.

check it out: https://plebbase.com/research/naked-lama-um-gamma-i-mean-bitaxe-gamma-61

that link is from here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5506695


and his best one has four mount screws.

lol - even the people who designed and made the ESP32 disagree with you

So that's like why every other miner doesn't use them? Cheap is cheap ...

my heatsink is grooved bigly

I just got back from a long day on the road and spending time with my Demented bro in law.

I am really spent at the moment.

I have parts and will be showing my fix.

Its cheap enough.

Ahh the joys of mass production. You might never see it but 10% of your boards could.

Board deflection of only 1% will cause this, even a .5% settling error of the asic will cause it. Maybe too much paste on asic pad.

More of a problem for Muti asic boards though

I haven’t experienced this uneven heatsink issue you mentioned. It kinda seems like you got a bad batch.

Four point mount custom heatsink with a thicker base will be awesome! There really isn’t any headroom anymore with the current one.

My Gamma just arrived and got it set up within minutes. Smooth setup and running very well. I don't have time to tinker today but plan on having a proper fiddle with it tomorrow!

But rock it does. Northbridge heatsinks are designed for chips with large packages and/or integrated heat spreaders, more like 25mm square than 8mm square. With that much area, a 2-point mount is okay because there's no leverage to rock it. A small chip in the middle might as well be a single point fulcrum. It's super easy to upset.

We're already designing an improved heatsink (more dissipative surface area on the fins) with 4-point M3 screw mounting, like what's been working on our stickminers for most of the last decade. Might have samples in the next week.

Phil, I think yours went out before I started lapping the heatsink underside. The ones we got in were not exactly smooth either, and the smoother and flatter the mating surface, the better.

the ASIC is less than 1mm high. there isn't really much room to rock.

I will be getting the parts to mod the heatsink setup. Sidehack thought it could be the heatsink. As I look at your design I see a small chip maybe 7mm square. A 40mm heatsink rests on that.

So you have a balance act because the heat sink sits on top of the small chip and only has a set of 2 fasteners.

Since the heat sink is raised off the pcb having 4 points vs 2 is better.

If it works cool if not then it has an issue I don't understand.

Stock heatsink is aluminum. It's actually a repurposed PC northbridge heatsink. If you look around some people have found bigger versions. There is also the Argon THRML cooler if you want to go supercharged.

The stock heatsink and fan is capable of cooling the bitaxeGamma at stock hash frequency and voltage settings. If you aren't stable at the defaults, you should speak with the seller.

Because of the increased power of the BM1370 chip in the Gamma, there isn't much headroom for overclocking with the stock heatsink.

Well when I redesign the heatsink. I will post the design it's cheap to do it.

A question is the stock heat sink copper or colored aluminum?

I ordered both aluminum and copper plates to do the mod.

I am really hoping my idea is a big improvement as it is pretty cheap

Nah, the ESP32S3 (indeed dual core) is more than enough for a handful of ASICs. It's your Cortex-A running Linux that is overkill

it is definitely the heat sink

the chip is tiny and the heat sink is big. thus it wants to wobble because of the 2 connectors.

I hope to have my mod done by Friday.

I got this plate


https://www.ebay.com/itm/284945811793


it will need 4 holes drilled into it and a small notch by the reset and boot buttons.

at botor123

I will keep your fan choice in mind

400Mxз, 66C,100%fan - your cooling is very weak. replace it with an argon fan.

Please post pics of this when you're done! I should get mine tomorrow so looking forward to tinkering. Any luck with the failure or is it still dead?

After fucking with gear really long time I realize the two pin heatsink is a bad choice.

I thought there was an intermittent short that cause the heat to fluctuate like mad.

53
65
52
67
57
75 over heat mode

I am designing a fix.

It will involve
 four nylon machine screws
 four nylon washers
a 50 mm copper plate
the oem heatsink


the issue that causes the roller coaster temps is the oem heat sink rocks  due to the fan moving at 5000 rpm


the pcb board does have four heat sink mounting holes.

the chip is tiny and the fan will rock the oem heatsink changing temps all over the place.

if you use a copper square
you can mark where to drill it.

put the four washers on the oem pcb board run the four nylon screws under the board and through the washers

lay the 50x50x6 copper plate over the four screws.

tighten two of the screws on an angle
lay the oem heatsink with a lot of paste over the other two  nylon screws

tighten it all up.

the new plate will now rock it has four screws holding it.
it has the nylon washers under it making it level

the oem heatsink is now a tiny bit smaller than the 50 mm plate thus it keeps steady contact as it has no place to rock.

I have washers
I HAVE screw and nuts
i just ordered the copper plate

this should be a fun project

and it is dead.  I am guessing they was a short.

temp would spike up and down.

overheat

I replace paste

temp would spike up and down

then go into over heat mode


it no longer goes into mining

I will talk to sidehack about a replacement.

thoughts

1) it is cute.
2) I have to look for a better 5 volt power supply I do have a meanwell someplace.
3) it is quiet even with the Avalon nano fan


https://www.meanwell.com/upload/pdf/LRS-100/LRS-100-SPEC.PDF


I ordered the 5 volt from amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DM24C9C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?

can run 2 or 3 of these  can adjust as high as 5.5 volts

note my psu is set to 5.18 volts but reads at 4.8 volts due to draw from miner.

please with it and happy it likes the nano Avalon  fan for extra cooling.

this will stack


bitaxe on top
nano gift fan second
mean well psu bottom

fixed that for you,

It has settled down nicely.




overkill power supply that is also powering a second fan look at that fan and realize it has a usb a style end in that overkill power supply


the cools thing is the second fan is courtesy of Avalon (thanks DaveF)

I purchased the Avalon nano from  and Avalon sent the fan as a gift so Dave sent it to me the other day.

here it is stand alone.
 now you know how to use it (a secondary bitaxe cooler )

You are a little bit mistaken, Phil Fuzzy. I'm working on designing an internal controller for proper GekkoScience gear, not for the Bitaxe or OSMU. You are correct though that the ESP32 is fairly inadequate.

As has been pointed out in other threads, the ESP32 micro-controller used is an extraordinarily poor choice for miners. It is made for use in very simple IoT devices such as sensors, thermostats, wearables, etc. that do not need good performance. Even the maker of them clearly states that. Even the best one only has 2 cores/threads which means that at best it can process hashes and do I/O without having to interrupt the processes provided the main and I/O threads are programmed to run independently. AFAIK the one used in the BitAxe has only 1 core...

All of that out of the way, does it work? Sure - but when there is a change of work and when it talks to the WiFi things slow down a lot. Because Skot is/was an IoT developer it makes some sense that he'd pick the ESP32 just because he is familiar with it. Unfortunately he did not know that you REALLY need a REAL multi-core/threaded CPU to ensure decent performance so the various processes running do not have to interrupt each other. Even the original RasPi-1 used a more capable chip.  ref https://www.elprocus.com/difference-between-esp32-vs-raspberry-pi/

FYI, while the 1st ones from Sidehack will be using the same micro he is already redesigning it to use the Pi Nano to eliminate the processing bottlenecks and also allow using USB along with hardwired LAN connections.
edit: struckout comment on redesign.

Check your thermal paste. I don't trust these two-point heatsinks very far and it probably wiggled in transit and jacked up the paste.

spacer

spacer

spacer

spacer

first tweak https://solo.ckpool.org/users/bc1qtcasgay4runad5kajafk0e7gz9c6r3akje5ref

working better with that address.

unboxing



lots of packing



more packing

Okay set it up today.

here is a quick gui shot.

first impressions are this will need to be tweaked a bit. before I fully review it.

https://solo.ckpool.org/users/146UJM5kgzLVUV23CXCf33KQKHckoX1gx3

it is under preforming but I may be having internet issues.

first tweak was use a different address

first tweak https://solo.ckpool.org/users/bc1qtcasgay4runad5kajafk0e7gz9c6r3akje5ref

working better with that address. than with the 146.... address