Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I have AntMinters S9 14TH/s model.

It is working very well, but I think that miner can produce much more hash power than 14Th/s.

I know that old models have "Advanced settings" tab where owner can change the frequency of the chips, to change fan speed and etc.

Unfortunately my miner does not have such option. So I used the trick explained here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1827106.msg18191687#msg18191687)

Now I see "Advanced Settings" and I can change the Frequency betwen 100 and 1000Mhz.

My current Frequency(avg) is 626.61MHz.

The question is what will happens if I increase the Frequency to 650 or 700Mhz?

I afraid that the miner can die.

In that worst case scenario can I restore the default frequency with hardware reset button ? or if the new frequency is not OK, I will lost the whole device.

Thank you in advance!

worst case scenario the chips die and you now have a paperweight.

I never heard to increase more than 650Mhz possible that your miner could not run properly or getting error while running it with higher than 650Mhz and can be damaged any parts or chips of your hardware. Honestly 650Mhz frequency is not recommended..
Overclocking can be really damage your hardware and i think much better to use the default setup instead if you wanted to run your hardware for too long and for safety purposes.

Overclock S9 is possible. Note you will damage your chips if you get wrong and will kill miner!
Best to leave set at standard with overclocking issues can show more HW/Error /Reject +more issue can happen.

Stick to standard unless you are feeling brave.

Asicworld

I have previous experience with overclocking CPUs and GPUs. I think that I have all prereuisits for overclocking - reliable 2000W power supply, cold place (15 Celsius degree or less) where the minner is placed. I will monitor the temperature of the chips and fan speeds.

My main fear is Do I have a way to return the old frequency to the device in case it does not work?

For example when I overclock CPUs I can make hardware reset with jumpers of the motherboard bios setting. As result the device start wotking normally with default settings.

Can I do the same with AntMiner or if the configuration is wrong the whole miner will die without way to restore default configuration?

when you overclock you can change the values back if you have an issue but note if you damage the chips then you have a very expensive paperweight.

I'm also pretty sure overclocking Antminers with an active warranty voids it. Shipping costs and return costs for Bitmain are already expensive on their own, and it's really not worth overclocking an S9 when it's already good enough. You'll just end up with a brick that's barely salvageable.

Overclocking bitmain hardware is flat out stupid. You will kill your miner, then you will come to the forum and whine about it.

This isnt a PC, it doesnt process data like a PC, you dont overclock it like a PC.

Yes there is a reset that can restore  default your s9 miner you can found  the reset near to ethernet but first you need to wait for 2 minutes afte bootup before you can reset it tp default config..
There is also other way to reset that can be called soft reset just login to control panel and goto upgrade  you can see the reset to default and perform the reset..
Hope that it can help you to reset your hardware if ever you made a wrong setup then just do a reset... make sure that everything is fixed in the socket because there are sometimes having a firmware fault when resetting..

What if I use those settings to underclock it? Will that work. Will it void my warranty or not?

The new firmware already ramps up the speed until it gets hardware errors, and uses that as Max speed.

That's what's happening at startup when the fans Max out, it's called singleboardtest in the Linux system.

There would be no advantage to trying to set the frequency higher, because your chips would just generate bad shares and hardware errors.

One thing you can do is let it run a bit to warm up, and reboot to do another singleboardtest when warm.  You might get a few more percent.

Any good way to underclock it? I prefer if they run abit cooler than 77-90 degrees throughout the day

I couldn't find a way to underclock, even hacking the configuration files directly.    I hear you can install a fixed frequency firmware, and you are free to choose a slower one.  But I never tried it and the switch over would take a bit of time

so anyone tried it yet?  thinking of changing the frequency from 650 to 800....
i tried it on my antminer L3+ and it upped my hash rate by 20%...
havent tried the S9s yet... looking for someone braver than me so i can follow.

Personally, I applaud anyone brave enough to void their warrantee and risk miner meltdown to advance knowledge and push the boundaries of what's possible. It's just this kind of spirit that made the cool S7 mods a reality.

Let's say you miraculously find a way to overclock it by 20%, but reduce the life by 50% (not to mention wrecking stability). What have you accomplished?

Our collective knowledge to 20% might be a little too much? Why discount the value of knowledge. Should we really be policing others, protecting them and their hardware from themselves like a nanny? I feel it goes against the spirit of the Freedom and independence crypto currency promises to fortify.

Either that sarcasm was completely over my head (which is most likely the case) or I should have included a disclaimer that I was making numbers up :)

Legit - i tried it... 20% on L3+

Stock          384M @ 500 mh/s
Overclocked 462M @ 600 mh/s

earnings reflect that too....

and well to the person asking what if i increase output by 20% and decrease life by 50%... i would say they become almost useless with difficulty change in the latter 50% of their life at which point there is more efficient and powerful machinery.... please tell me if i am wrong - i AM still new to this... and did that guy ever overclock his machine?

If you brick it you lose a lot of miner's resale value. Go check out what S7s are going for on Ebay. I made those % numbers up, just as a way to illustrate that overclocking, to me, appears to be a short term goal because you sacrifice the life of the equipment and most likely completely void the warranty. I am sure Bitmain can tell an overclocked burned up miner easily.

On edit: Because, as pointed out, in today's market even a busted miner can sell. Just not as much :)

Funny thing is nonfunctional hardware still fetching an impressive amount.

Solid point, people are selling miners for parts and asking/getting dumb prices!

i have a bunch of S9s - if i can overclock those too, it would be amazing...
saw old vids saying to set frequency to 800, any feedback? 

oh and in regards to warranty - with my shipping costs and wait times, i would not be able to utilize it anyway.... but thanks for the input
had a bad experience?  can i learn from your experience?  i mean it seems to be working fine... just making sure temps and power are good...

i tried it

So????
What happened???

I do have a few suggestions.

First, only use one hash board. Maybe even use a has board with one or two ASIC strings dead. So one that's barely working so there's much less at risk.

Install old firmware to get control of the clock.

Reduce intake air to <15C. Every 10C temp reduction should double lifespan.

Start at 600M and increment clock the smallest increments possible with 1 hour run at each setting. Document all parameters. Continue to increase clock rate until excessive HW failures, >1000 within the hour occur, or ASIC strings dies, whichever comes first. 

Report findings here to give others an opportunity to learn from the data and create a new tactic. Build knowledge base to allow aggressive miner types to maximize benefit.

 

http://192.168.x.x/cgi-bin/minerAdvanced.cgi (change ip address to your miner's actual address)

There's the direct call to the Advanced tab. That's really cool as you don't have to use old firmware.

I went there and it offers the starting clock scan frequency as the only menu item. Mine was set at 550MHz but my hash boards are running at 665. I guess it started at 550 then worked up  to 665. Each hash board looks to be independently controlled. I have one much older hash board in this miner which is running at 550 while the new boards are at 665.xx

When I selected 575 as the starting clock speed and hit Save,  a warning popped up saying;
It will take about 3 hours on search frequency before mining! Are you sure?

hmmm. I'll set a miner up with a single hash board to play with.

ok well i somewhat failed.... nothing happened to the miner.... but.... nothing was faster than auto frequency (speaking of -- to the comment above me, you are on autofrequency firmware.)

like you suggested i had to go back to older firmware to control frequency; however frequencies i chose resulted in lower hashrates... tried 800, and 812 i think was the next but registered as 850 on status page....

do you think there is a frequency that could enhance it? i realized 650 even slows it down.  Does it take time to adjust to new frequency?

This is a very bad idea. Reliability and safety is more important.

Hmmm. not sure. The "ideal" rate is just a math function with the "RT" result is measured. If the RT is very near the ideal then all is working well.

As an example I have an old and new board in one miner with auto freq.

Freq.     GH/s(ideal)  GH/s(RT)
550.00   3950.10      3974.35
666.28   4785.26      4709.43   

The auto freq board sets the older board at 550 by default. It does not try to optimize the clock speed on this older board. I used to run this board at 625 on the older firmware.

When you increase clock speed you should see a proportional increase in ideal hash rate. If the RT rate is far from the ideal rate you can see the clock rate is causing some problems.

I'm not sure the clock setting on the new firmware sets the minimum clock speed as it says the starting clock speed. The firmware may reduce the clock speed from this starting point to find the optimum freq. I'm thinking this setting may get the miner started sooner upon restart if I program a starting freq very near the found optimum frequency. I may give it a try on one of the miners with 3 new boards in it.