Bitcoin Forum

Hi miners!

This week some nice Scrypt mining ASIC machine landed on my doorstep! Antminer L3+ it is.
I wont repeat manufacturers full spec sheet, but just the key one:

Hash Rate: 504MH/s
Power Consumption: 800W

https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_1.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_2.jpg


I won’t give you any advice about where and how to buy one of these, but I’m very eager to share my experience on how this machine performs.

My setup:

https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_10.jpg

Mining pool - AntPool.com SCRYPT
PSU: 1500 W Corsair AX1500i (overkill, but has nice performance reporting tool :)


Ambient temps in the room were 22C / 72F with ventilation to supply fresh air.

What i wanted to test:
inspect machine build quality;
test power consumption;
test overclocking potential;
find our best settings for long term mining.

Build Quality


I think it is a decent quality machine and keeping in mind this is not a show room item some minor quirks are to be ignored.

Let the pictures tell the story:

https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_3.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_4.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_5.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_6.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_7.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_8.jpg
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_9.jpg


Sound  :o :o :o ??? ???

https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/AntMinerL3Plus_11.jpg

OMG! This unit is definitely not for residential facilities … the sound of fans on 100% will drive you nuts :) it’s over 80 db and is comparable to: average factory, freight train (at 15 meters); propeller plane flyover at 1000 ft (88 dB); diesel truck 40 mph at 50 ft (84 dB); diesel train at 45 mph at 100 ft (83 dB). Food blender (88 dB); milling machine (85 dB); garbage disposal (80 dB).

Even at 50% it is very loud. It has resonating sound that is very hard to bear for longer duration. It belongs to miner farms, so apartment miners keep that in mind ;)

Placed on hard surface machine had some vibration because no rubber cushions are installed and it’s just bare aluminium at contact.

Power consumption and Overclocking potential

This is not a scientific review by any means, but you can get the point of what this machine is capable of.

Stock settings

Machine runs as advertised ~500 MH/s mining SCRYPT coins. ASIC Chips runs at 384MHz and from PSU pulls very reasonable ~730 W. Corsair PSU over Link app is reporting Power in (from the socket): 779W and Power out (to the miner): 736W with calculated efficiency 94% :)
All 8 PCIe power lines draw 9 -11 Amps.

https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/power_stock.png
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/asic_stock.png

Why different Amps? because of ASIC chip quality. Some chips have less leak and perform better other draw more Amps.

Overclocking Antminer L3+ to 605 MH/s @ 462 Mhz @ 888 WATTs

It’s time to void that warranty :) ups I already void it by removing casing screws :/

Anyway I have performed some benchmarking with different chip frequency settings and observed power consumption, hash rates and temps.

Below is the table of different settings and results.

My goal was to achieve +20% hashing rate increase and I did that easily. 600+ MH/s was achieved increasing frequency to 462 Mhz (~+20% from stock settings) and machine pulled 888 WATTS from PSU (~+20% more power draw compared to stock speeds).

https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/power_overclocked.png
https://tweezers.tech/antminer_l3+/asic_overclocked.png

I have seen miners getting 600 MH/s @ 444Mhz, but pulling over 1kW from the socket. This is ASIC chip lottery and those results depend on ASIC quality.

I have contacted Antminer producer to get any advice on long term recommended settings or how far I can go :) the answer was very conservative - they don’t recommend overclocking, but suggested to observe chip temps. So keep them cool and your Anty L3+ shall be ok.

Anyway I’m very happy with results and all coins this machine will mine I will directed to the upcoming real business healthcare appointment booking ICO @ https://tweezers.tech this is very exciting ICO that !DISCLAIMER! I’m involved in. if you like this test i performed please visit our ICO site and maybe you will find it interesting and become part of our investor or team crowd!

Check out this table bellow. It shows very clearly that these bad boys ASIC chips scale very nice across all settings:

ASIC, Mhz	Power, W	Hash rate, MH/s
384 Mhz	740 W	502 MH/s
400 Mhz	760 W	523 MH/s
425 Mhz	n.a.	555 MH/s
444 Mhz	850 W	580 MH/s
450 Mhz	860 W	590 MH/s
462 Mhz	888 W	605 MH/s

Why does no one READ the very top thread in this section?  ::)
You posted this in the Bitcoin section and that is an altcoin miner.
Betcha the mods move this to here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=160.0) where it belongs....

Other than that, well done.

Be very VERY  careful with any thoughts of an Overclock, mines already broke, I used 444 Mhz   850 W   580 MH/s and now its dead. I'm not sure how to proceed now since Bitmain will know i've OC'd it no doubt. :(

pls tell us more what happened? did all cards died? do you have burned chips or what?
if you observe temps of asic chips i dont see problem overclocking.
i think other asic miner componenets are more at risk due increased temps because only chips have heatsinks. as well power supply must be decent.
anyway all chips and cards shouldn't die at once. if miner doesnt see any cards i would guess it's voltage regulator issue.

this looks like a very dangerous job, my friend! you can damage antminer l3+ because it looks like the temperature is above what it should be but it has been a beautiful post  ::)

reposted to see the pictures.

why do you think 60C is too high for Asic core? i think it is very ok temps. i would be concerned if temps go over 75C. the over all airflow is very high so you just need stable ambient temps to cool this miner. "tube" design is good idea for optimal airflow. what i do is lift the back of miner so hot air escapes better, but with such airflow this is overkill anyway ;D

i think next what is worth trying is putting rig in special liquid so all components are cooled better.

Per Bitmain support : Over clocking of antminer will void your warranty. Should at least wait until your warranty expires after 180 days otherwise its a big gamble.

i think this miner will be worth very little after warranty expires. it makes good deal to gamble and get 20% more coins. crypto value is very risky by ifself so overclocking miner imo is no bigger risk. i doubt all asics will die at once anyway.

My L3+ chains run at 60c,61c,60c,61c at stock speeds with fan on auto.   51c if manually setting fan to 100%. 

Thanks, this info was helpful, I have one question I have a PSU 1200W connected to my L3+ can this PSU handle the overclocking? I have a 110V power Outlet.

I think you can if it's a good PSU, some of them can't really give the same continuous power as wrote on package.
Anyways, you can try to go up to 400M, it will draw a bit more but not more than 1000W, but be sure they are well cooled !

My antminers L3+ are running O/C at 462M with a power draw of 890-930W.
I use 1600W PSU from Aliexpress.

https://i.imgur.com/zSjqoSP.png
https://i.imgur.com/Z5SJgiF.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/MkRhAL8.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iKcwRj4.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UdG3Yhf.jpg

Sorry, images won't displayed. don't know why.

Hi guys, I have few questions.

What represents the column HW in the Miner Status?
I see that after overclocking value in HW column changed for hash board (Chain#) 1 and 4.

What is your experience after month of L3+ works overclocked?
Is overclocking safe if the chip temps are OK?

i have 3 miners and one overloked...if you make good air conditioning system everything will be fine) 8)

I have 5 of these and tested 2 with watt meter.. 860 watts each not overclocked!  So I would say 2 out of 5 that is the typical wattage being used.  1765 Watts from the 2.

I'm super conservative if it comes to OC. I would rather mine longer with the same machine than having to deal with repairs and other stuff for a short-term gain.

However, I just OC one of mine to test it. The info in here is really nice and helped me a lot. This way i don't need to click it up 10 times to see what output is going to be :D

Any one know wath is the airflow in m3/h or CFM moved by originals ventilators? because 80dB is really louder.
But another ventilator with low r.pm but biger, something like 150mm or 170 to slow down the rpm and dB.

A majority of the noise is a by product of air flowing over the heat sinks creating turbulence. If they need say for example 250cfm flowing through the l3 to keep cool then it doesnt matter if its from a 24" fan or the stock fan. The same amount of air is going to flow through causing the same amount of noise. Now you might reduce it a little bit but not much.

Just my 2cents

I dont think the noise come from the airflow between heatsinks. Because is not whisper sound is like you say turbulance and this are made by the blade of the fan.

Do you have by any chance the config file of cgminer for your L3+ ?!

it is in /etc/config/cgminer
i'm looking for the "option freq" part

Thx..

Ive been pushing mine...

Elapsed   MH/S(RT)   MH/S(avg)   FoundBlocks   LocalWork   Utility   WU   BestShare
1m29s
640.054
628.30
0
82
4.04
1,764,078.46
1278932


Just had a power outage before this it was running about 6 hours, Ill post update...

Pool   URL   User   Status   Diff   GetWorks   Priority   Accepted   Nonce#   DiffA#   DiffR#   DiffS#   Rejected   Discarded   Stale   LSDiff   LSTime
0
stratum+tcp://scrypt.usa.nicehash.com:3333
3CpwE7z4wxJ696B518qjq7HRUngzFrXjMS.rexrig1
Alive
524K
2
0
6
3,365
2,621,441
0
0
0
46
0
524,288
0:00:10
1
stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333
xxx
Alive
65.5K
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Never
2
stratum+tcp://us.litecoinpool.org:3333
xxx.xxx1
Alive
1
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Never
total
5
6
3,365
2,621,441
0
0
0
46
0
HW
163

AntMiner
Chain#   ASIC#   Frequency   MH/S(RT)   HW   Temp(PCB)   Temp(Chip)   ASIC status
1
72
500
158.99
39
I:0 O:45
I:0 O:54
oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo
2
72
500
161.48
25
I:0 O:44
I:0 O:53
oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo
3
72
500
159.46
64
I:0 O:44
I:0 O:53
oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo
4
72
500
160.12
35
I:0 O:44
I:0 O:52
oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo oooooooo
Fan#   Fan1   Fan2
Speed (r/min)   5,760   5,790

A screenshot would help a lot when you want us to analyze it :)

https://i.imgur.com/62OQCZQ.png
https://i.imgur.com/Khdj1lI.png

Currently at 444Mhz

The noise!!! It was always going to be a problem. I have got my family used to the gentle hum of Baikal.... ;D

Hello there,

Can you tell after all the costs that you have ... miner, power, etc. etc. how profitable is this miner ? What is the time that you need in order to be profitable, so to cover all the costs and get a profit out of mining ?

And how much does this miner cost btw ?

thanks a lot !

I can just advise you not to buy at this time. Wait for a new miner generation to be released.

They take way to much time to ROI and maybe they never do at this point in time. Just buy LTC and hold them

Got 2 running @ 475 so hashrate around 620Mh/s. temps always under 70, and less than 0.1% reject.
does anyone try more?

Why LTC ? Do you think this is one of the most profitable coins in the near future ? you think the price will go up up up ? i would like to know more about your opinion on holding LTC.
thanks

Well I think it is undervalued big time but then again its the shame of the crypto world really lol

I say that, because this is a thread for L3+ which are mostly used to mine LTC.  But you can also buy something else and hold.

Hm...interesting point of view. I never really looked up into details about this coin and what is it's true potential as there are so many coins right now on the market.

https://i.imgur.com/WWOWLjo.png

475M = 621MH/s
Outside Temp -6C
Chips 18C, 18C, 17C, 28C.

Thats actually not Chip temp, but PCB temp. Go to "Summary" to see Chip temp at the end. Probably a glitch from Awesome Miner.

https://i.imgur.com/6CR2Y8a.png
 ;D

-13C outside..
It died a few times because it was too cold, no lights at all when I reboot..
My box insulates for noise and vents the heat outside the box, but....
I have removed the hose so that it's just blowing out air into the box and what gets out, gets out so some of the heat is being recirculated and it works okay

which software is this?
thanks

its called awesome miner.
2 Miners are free but the soft is good and i plan to buy next year!

Is the Awesome app. available for OSX (MACBook) or IOS (iPhone) ?!

Hi,

Can somebody confirm to what highest level of frequency we can overclock antminers.

I see in the post mentioned about overclocking to frequency 462M..

Why we can not overclock to 650M frequency ?

Regards,

the main problem is that at some point the workload and the electrical capacity of the chip is reached and they start getting hot. If they get to hot, they burn.

You only know how high you can go by try and error and tbh its to expensive to risk it. I have mine OC to 580MHs now after i let them mine for 2 months of default to make sure everything works fine. And I did not want to void warranty.

I rather take less but mine constantly and risk free (if that is even possible)

My friend has several Antminer L3+ miners running off of 120V, and uses HP 1200W Platinum PSU's with capable breakout boards. Other than keeping the room cooled where the miners are setup, there have been no issues raising the frequency up to 425MH/z (so far). Obviously, you have to use 120V outlets/receptacles that are on different circuits and run only one unit on a single line. Always overclock at your own risk, as everyone's miners and setups are completely different!

So in the end which is the best OC without damaging our miner?

Nice... I wonder what is considered as hot or overheating for these miners. 80 degrees? I am currently running L3+ miner on 469m freq with 613.029 MH/S and the temp for chips are between 60-62 with 42% fan speed percentage.  Is that ok? I live in Australia, in an air-cooled apartment and it's pretty hot here...  8)

That is actually pretty low for the hashing power you got. I run mine on 580Mhs since a couple of weeks and got the same temp but mine are in a data center with 18°C cold air

They are cold. Are they in a cooled space? how do you cool them?


And go to miner settings under advanced I think. There is the fan speed control. You cant however see what % you got right now on the miner overview page.

you can set the speed in % though

curious -  whats the lifespan of the L3+ after overclocking? I'm sure some of the orders that were placed in april 2017 have been OC-ed... does anyone have one of those? are they still running?

I have had my L3+ for several months now, all running at 419 MH/z frequency, hashing at ~550 MH/s. I have three 240V receptacles installed specifically for my miners. I use a 240V PDU (power distribution unit) made by TrippLite, each gives me 8 C13 and 2 C19 outlets which are capable of distributing a total of 20 Amps (de-rated to ~18 Amps) each. I always keep spare/backup parts on hand, including several HP Platinum 1200W and 1500W PSU's which I have accumulated over time. In addition to my backups, I discovered 2 HP 1500W Platinum PSU's in a box a few days ago and decided to use them on 2 Antminer L3+ miners (which were using HP 1200W Platinum PSU's). I have observed them for ~72 hours now, and the results have been phenomenal!

The L3+'s that are using the 1500W PSU's have been running a few about 2 degrees cooler than the others (which are right next to one another), have seen very little (HW) hardware errors (very minimal comparatively), and so I've decided to overclock them a bit more, and came across this thread while doing some research to see what frequencies others have been successfully using.

I have decided on starting with 475MH/z and will closely observe for a day or two. I will also report back with the results afterwards. In regards to anyone wondering what the best PSU might be for an L3+, I would most definitely spend an extra few dollars to purchase an HP 1500W Common Slot Platinum PSU as opposed to the 1200W ones in the same HP line! Keep in mind that the 1500W PSU's can ONLY run on 240V lines, and you will also need a quality breakout board that can safely handle the power (according to the meters on my PDU's, the L3+ miners are drawing ~3.5 Amps each).

I run my own L3+ using APW3++ (1600W) on 220v supply. With these I find the best results with the following settings:
475M 100% manual fan speed - 620Mhash
462M 100% manual fan speed - 600Mhash

Some miners get higher hardware errors above an acceptable level at 475M so they are set at 462M. We are able to run all miners at these two settings and have consistently low hardware errors (max 0.2% and usually less than 0.1%). We have not had hardware failures over many months on these settings.

What temperatures do your chips have and how do you cool them?  Mine are in a data center with 18°C cold air but my chips run as hot as 65-70°C with only 450M and 580MH

I have overclocked to 450M and chip temps are  60-65.

I have been running my puppy on 438 MHz for 2 months now at 570 Mhs. inlet temp is 25 C and hottest chip is 63 C. Fan 1 @ 3,594 RPM / Fan 2 @ 2,076 RPM
I think it's a sweet spot for me. I measured the power draw but I forgot. It was a tad higher than stock.
More hash gain then power draw. If any1 wants I could pull the plug and place my meter.

Been running for like half a year or so like this.
https://preview.ibb.co/fQnHxc/l3plus.png

I would NOT recommend overclocking any other Bitmain product like this, only L3 can do this primary because its not as much a prosessor heavy algo but more memory hard.

very useful article, thanks for spelling. can you tell me about the results after a month of work? What is the temperature of the chips?

I have 4 L3+`s and i have been mixing the hashboard between them to end up with 2 that have been running stable at 500 Mhz for 4 months now, 1 that is set to 487 Mhz stable for same period and the last one at 481 Mhz stable for same period. There is no problem overclocking these units quite much. Those at 500 Mhz is using about 970w at wall with 94% eff. psu. Temps are about 55c to 68c, with fans @ 80%.

That's a cool admin/management tool you have there.  What system that?

With blissh mode 504mh at 700w.
You guys talk about overclocking. Temps etc what about HW errors tho? What's acceptable level per day per board?

Be aware there a two different Hashboards actually.

https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002072833-L3-Different-Version-Comparison

Hashboard L3+ (S) is the old PCB and could handle Overclocking up to 600 MHs
Hashboard L3+ (N) is the new PCB and is very poor in Terms of Overclocking (around 540 Mhs only)

So be aware when overclocking newer L3+ they have changed the Boards somewhere in early 2018.

Wow, bastards took out nice polymer caps for aluminum ones. That is saving them like 25 bucks per board.

Hi Sakl,
I do have L3+ miners delivered in Feb 18 and was about to play with one when I stumbled on this post.

Miners are in a hosting centre so will have to wait for me to check which version hasboards they have but has anyone tried to overclock the Hashboard L3+ (N) and if so what speeds was achieved?

Hi there if you are using the new PCB i wont use more than 412M.
Thats around 540 MHash.

Thank you for the info about the board types, I have the newer (worse) type in my L3+.

Would this mean that using the OC of 412M is "pushing" the OC to the limit for this board type and therefore may/will compromise the chips etc in the long term?

Anyone have experience OCing the newer board type and had it running for the past few months?

Good Morning,

actually my new L3+ (with N-Boards) are running with 425 MHz (that´s around 555 MHs).
They are doing well and HW-Error rate is very low.

I heard from other Miners that they can handle 450 MHz also.
But in my humble Opinion it´s a Lottery with the new Boards.

Anyone here with December and January Batch ?

It would be interesting to know when Bitmain changed the Boards.

I have had mine at 412Mhz for 3 hours and am getting around 540Mhs, so far I have 4 HW errors on one of the boards and 0 on the others. Temps are 44 PCB and 51 Chip, Fan 1  3,630 Fan 2  3,540 . What is an acceptable amount of HW errors to be getting?

HW Errors are specific to each Hashboard.

If they rise significantly with OC that´s a bad sign.

https://imgur.com/Iaz9Qrx


my l3+ run solid everyday with 1-2hw/min at 640+ and about 3 rejects in 16hrs // stable around 60°c on 85% maunal fan 1088w apw7 on 120



one of my L3+ has a lazy board that wants to work when it feels like it... loose contact somewhere... i quit messing with it... EVEN THAT one hashes around 490,mh/s ON 3 boards...

https://imgur.com/dbzC7wg

https://imgur.com/qCLciw5

To much OC. My L3+ runs with 580mh @ 820w and the other one with 620mh @ 920w and fan lowered to 40%