Topic: Whistling sound from the latest batch of S9's (Read 516 times)

Hello Gentlemen...

"WHISTLING": in the Antminer S9...

MYSTERY SOLVED...

Well, I have owned hundreds of the Bitmain Antminer S7's, S9's and S9i`s.  Last night while re-purposing my Antminer S9 machines, I ran across "ONE" machine that was giving me the horrible "WHISTLE".  Unaware that this is/was a problem, I first thought it might be a fan issue.  I have tried four different style of OEM fans.  The "whistle" is internal to the placement and configuration of the heat-sinks on the hashboards.  I tried swapping all three of the hashboards in each other's slots and the whistle did not diminish.

After swapping FANS, CASES, FAN MOUNTS and HASHBOARDS,  I finally was able to discover the cause of the problem.  When I swapped hashboards, The whistle did noticeably diminish when I replaced one of the S9 v4.317 Hashboards with a S9 v4.21x hashboards.  I looked at both hashboards to see what the difference is/was.

The EARLY model of S9 machine hashboards have a straight cut large heat-sink where ALL of the fins protrude straight "UP".  Bitmain changed the design on the large heat-sink design from straight cut (all fins UP) to a large heat-sink with a CENTER FIN WITH A "FLAT TOP" design where the center fin has a "HAT" on top of the center fin.  
Think about it this way.  A police whistle uses forced air that produces a whistle when it passes over the sideways "slot" cut into the exit port of the whistle.

So, the whistle is caused by the forced air passing over the "new style" heat-sinks (center fin is a flat top) and creating a high-pitch whistling noise.  It's more noticeable when the machine reaches the "premium" air flow speed which allows the air-flow to reach the optimum speed that interacts with the heat-sinks center fin "flat top" to produce the high pitch whistle which is so, so, so annoying.  Also, when fan speeds are ABOVE and BELOW the optimum "WHISTLE" speed, the whistle will increase or decrease.

I know this hasn't been posted to for a while, but I actually found a few tricks that I wanted to share here for anyone that comes across this post...  (because they are tired of their S9's wailing at them possibly, like me)

I have 2 S9's from the Jan batch, and both have a distinct whistle in them..  One has two Nidec fans, the other has a Nidec and a Yate Loon..  They both whistle horribly at full spin and maybe within 55% of full spin all the way to the top (full spin in my head being 6000rpm)...

This at least worked for ME...

The S9 with the two different types of fans...  It came with a Nidec on front and a Yate Loon on back..  I just swapped them..   Putting the Yate on the front and the Nidec on the back still gave it a whistle at full spin, but running between 4000rpm and 5000rpm where they stay in my setup, no more whistle... 

The S9 with two Nidec fans...  I repositioned the center board just a little bit, by wedging something VERY small (I used a rolled up dot of gapher tape) under the card right at the edge...  This made the center card sit VERY slightly higher in the front of the ASIC than in the rear, and changed the path of the airflow very slightly..  There isn't much play so it doesn't change it much, but that simple change also killed the whistle in mine at the mining spin speed (this one goes between 3800rpm and 4800rpm typically)...

More or less, both "fixes" just changed the wind going through the ASIC just a little bit (which was enough in my case)...   

Can't say this will help anyone here, but those small changes made a huge difference for my noise level and sanity...  Maybe these ideas will help a few others come up with other ideas along these lines (if these don't help of course)... 

Happy mining everyone....  and may it be a more silent mining for you all..

As a lot of russian customers said the best fan for s9 is Delta PFC1212DE. You can find it on aliexpress or ebay. Pretty cool air pressure with excellent CFM. Maybe it will help you. It may be with non-standart PWM 4pin connector, but there are a lot of info how to re-pin it.

lots of fans to choose from on digikey.com or mouser.com

Please let us know if you find something better

hi

we just got a S9 (january batch) with a rear fan exactly as the picture
YATE LOON 12BM-12D.
That fan came broken.

Is different from the front fan that bitmain sells as part.

Do you know which commercial fan can we use?

From the YATE LOON page it only blows 82.5 CFM @ 2300 RPM
http://www.yateloon.com/en/product-330977/DC-FAN-SERIES-120x120x38.html

But we think it must go 6000 rpm and blow over 200 cfm

Thanks

Either he's deaf, or he'll be soon  

How the hell are you able to sleep in the same room with the S9?   Even if it is in a soundproof cabinet.

I fixed my S9 by buying a sound box on ebay and some ear plugs..lol. Right now I have one rig going but soon as we get the garage cleared out, my son and I have 3 each to set up. My one is in my bedroom.

My S7 whistled when the fans were at full speed. Once it started mining the rpm backed down and it stopped. When it was whistling though I put a one gallon paint can in front of the exhaust fan. Not up against it. About a foot away. The slight back pressure stopped the whistle. I ran it like that for a while with no issues.

No need for the condescending tone. I've done plenty of research and am well aware that these are commercial grade miners not suited for the home. No one here stated otherwise, so calm the fuck down. I was simply asking out of curiosity because I've never noticed it on previous antminers.

Mine sounds pretty much like the video. I'd say leave it be and make some $$$. I'd dump that surge protector though

....
Folks, the s9 whistle has been documented in the Official s9 thread and discussed to death there for nearly 2 years. To some extent it is present on ALL of them starting with batch-1 so long ago...

Yes it it worse on some and not too annoying on others but that is the nature of buying an INDUSTRIAL/COMMERCIAL-grade miner. As Haggs said, on some the sinks are aligned better and don't create as much turbulence. In any case, they were made to be ran where noise is not an issue -- not at home or in an office. Point is, hope you learned to do a little research before investing over 1k$ next time?

The sound is simply the siren effect caused by high speed blades moving air over slots/fins located perpendicular and very close to the blades. Look up how a mechanical siren works for pretty pictures. Don't know if anyone ever tried putting a short spacer tube between the intake fan and the body of the miner but that *could* break the coupling between the blades/fins to reduce it. Hell a tube say 2" long would probably eliminate it all together. Can't say I've tried simply because my farm is certainly not in my home..

Maybe the heat sink configuration in that unit is not in the perfect straight line, causes turbulence, and therefore whistling noise?

It sounds quite different than that. It's something mechanical in the fan or high pitch vibration caused by air movement. As I said this is my only S9, I'll need to compare with the next one I get in March. So maybe it's normal, it doesn't sound too much worse than this apparently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOEGC4yHbiM&t=5m20s And the guy actually refers to it a "whistling noise" and blames air acoustics too

That one is different. Are we sure the noise is from the exhaust fan though? Could it be the intake fan whistling? or something different in the geometry of the boards or inside the case creating a "siren" ?

Whatever it is, it sounds like the Jan ones are the ones affected.

(I wish I could say mine works fine, 4 days after getting it 1 board was dead)

It could be some simple improment, like using a better quality thermal adhesive with heat sinks, than with the previous batches.


Ah, okay. Your S9 does not have the Nidec fans.

I've never seen those fans before.

Your S9 fans are manufactured by Yate Loon Electronics.

This is the fan I have on the Jan batch S9. Yate Loon D12BM-12D

I will say that this Jan 13.5 TH S9 runs cooler than my Dec 14 TH, but who really knows why with the apparent variance of the hardware. But they are all doing their job and hashing away so I don't care what they sound like

It could be a bad quality cooling fan production batch and the fans having this issue --->  coil whine.

Yeah my Jan batch S9 sounds distinctly different from the Dec batch. I'll check on the fan brand.

Same Nidec fan for mine. From the beginning I thought this horrible noise was not normal. I don't have any other S9 to compare though. I do have an L3+ and a D3 and they are silent compared (even when they rev up i.e. during boot). This piece of shit sounds like a siren.

I have one S9 (January 21-30 2018 batch) and it is equipped with Nidec fans (see my review thread, link in signature space).

Are you guys having these whistle noise issues with the Nidec fans or some other manufacturer fans?

Yes!  They whistle and its maddening.

Yes, multiple of the S9 that I ordered from the Jan batch has this, was curious if I was really unlucky or if it's common

Anyone else with the Jan batch of S9's notice a distinct whistling sound when the miners are running? I've only noticed this with the latest batch. This is not to be confused with the normal sound of fans spinning.