Bitcoin Forum

I would like to switch to water cooling for my Antminer S7.
Is there a safe way to remove all the aluminum heat sinks from chips?

please someone do it! ;D
syscooling or whoever, whatever if it get done it will be big ;D

right now wait for kit is my advise :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\

I don't see kits personally coming for this.  I think it will be the moding community that has one first.  The S5 there was a kit, but I don't think a ton of them sold. A lot were made from C1's being modded.

One problem is 3 blades... so a odd number so really it makes more sense if you you do 2 S7's and then have a even blade number of 6.  So you can put one on each side and not have a side wasted with nothing on it. (Suppose you could buy 1 blade and get a 4 blade S7).

But I don't see a kit coming, I think there will be a mod or two as there always is eventually  with water cooling.

oke,
keep me updated please, on all water cooling mods for S7

I personally think it is very unlikely to have S7 kits ever.
So we should start with what we have.

For this project to be successful we need:
1. Remove safely all the heat sinks at least from the side with chips
2. One S7 will require 2 water blocks, or 3 water blocks for 2 x S7. I'm working on this right now. I'm, pretty sure my S7 water block will be lighter and higher quality that C1 water blocks.
3. Other water cooling parts are required, but they are available everywhere

But there is still point 1, this miner is expensive, damaging even a single chip will probably affect an entire array of chips which will affect significantly the hash rate.

Any ideas how to safely remove the heat sinks from chips?

 

No. I think that this is impossible.

https://i.imgur.com/VMd3Zd1.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/VMd3Zd1.jpg)
Click to enlarge

From soldering melting radiators (S5+ blade)

https://i.imgur.com/TxuIy5Y.jpg?1 (https://i.imgur.com/TxuIy5Y.jpg?1)
Click to enlarge

From overheating fallen S5+ ships, but still glued.

Looks very bad.
It just proves once again that the existing cooling design is bad and needs improvement.
At the same time, if heat sinks can not be removed safely from chips, then they can probably be removed safely from the back side of the board.
According to photos, there will be a good heat transfer from the back side of the board through some thick thermal pads to water block, or even better, through some thin thermal pads to a more sophisticated water block.
The temps should go lower by 10-15 degrees allowing some overclocking or safe quiet long term operation.

keep calm, overheated chips are unsoldered by melting solder at melting temperature point, glue has it's own strengthness at wider temperature range, but still less than solder.

Twisting the heatsinks usually works well instead of pulling, but I haven't tried on S5/S7

What we need  is someone to overengineer it a ton and look as cool as this case: http://digg.com/video/liquid-cooled-computer-video

Possibly the most sexy watercooled PC I've seen.  Know it makes no financial sense on a bitcoin miner to over engineer the liquid cooling this much, but would be fun to watch mine.

Wow that'S crazy  ;D A lot of work for 1 small pc.

I don't think taking the heat syncs off is the way to do it.  They are very soft aluminum. Just put the board on an endmill and plunge cut the fins off. You still have the bottom surface of the heatsink, but you have a flat surface to attach the water block.

You want to heat up the heatsinks with a heatgun and then roll the heatsink off by rocking it back and forth. Dont twist or pull.

VERY IMPORTANT - take the larger heatsinks off first, if you heat up the smaller ones and pull them first the solder on the board will be too pliable nad you will rip the chip right off when attempting to pull the heatsink off. This can also happen if you overheat the heatsink before attempting removal. I would do it slowly with small amounts of heat in stages until you get the feel for how its done.