Bitcoin Forum

I bought 5 used S9 miners, it turns out that 4 of them have the C5 board in them, out of those 4 (2 are 11.85TH/s models) can I just buy replacement xilinx control boards and put into all 4?


Are hash boards all interchangeable or is each (S9, S9i, S9j, etc) take a certain type of board, I have seen them on E-bay and they sometimes list what model they came out of and sometimes do not?


I am sure I had more questions I wanted to ask but can not remember them right this second and I am getting ready to go to a Christmas party so will ask them later.

Thank You
Michael Grace

Not sure if this helps, but if you look at the bitmain site:
https://shop.bitmain.com/product/parts (https://shop.bitmain.com/product/parts)
You can see what parts are for what machine.

-Dave

Depends on just *how* old those miners are. The C5 were used from the batch-1 up to maybe batch-5 or so. From batch-6 on up you should be able to use the newer xilynx boards. If the hash boards have the big power inductor on them by the PCIe plugs you should be good.

It's the batch-1 through 5 that might not work because the early batches do not have the on-board Vcore regulator for the chips. Those early miners just directly used the PSU to power the chips. The later miners have the Vcore regulator on each board that allows you to set the voltage fed to the chips. The probable problem would be how the firmware handles no regulators.

I heard someone already did and replace the c5 control board with the T9 control board, not the t9+ it will not work.
R4 control can be also alternative but the price are all the same from Bitmain shop.

However, you can find someone on ebay who selling cheaper control board than Bitmain price.

Look at this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antminer-S9-S9i-S9J-Data-circuit-control-IO-board-bitcoin-miner-S9-USA/401952707968?hash=item5d963f9580:g:WS4AAOSwTflcN74h

But be aware of the shipping fee if the shipping fee is higher than the shipping cost from Bitmain better buy directly on Bitmain so calculate the cost of the shipping plus the price of the control board.

Hi, i'm pretty sur, the control board xilink is universal ! no problem for replace C5 ...

on m'y experiance, i plug T9+ control board on my S9 without any problem !!! just need connector 18pin and firmware for S9 on T9+ control board ! ;)

Just so you know these hash boards are all of different sizes, so despite the fact that technically they may be interchangeable but physically they won't fit, s9i boards for example have larger heatsinks and you can't fit 3 of them in a normal s9.

Was the C5 only on the S9 or was it in the S9i – 14 TH ?

I see some used for sale for only $125.00 including shipping I think that is without a PSU, but I think I might get a few and just use the PSU from these slower ones.

C5 control board works on both s9 and s9i and c5 cotrol board is mostly used old firmware and you will never upgrade it to latest firmware.

So I suggest you better to use any Xilinx control board as suggested above. It's compatible with any s9 series hashboard.

They have also supported the latest s9 firmware available from bitmain download page and supported SD card flashing compared to the c5 control board.

I know that, having discovered it when 4 out of the 5 S9 I bought have the C5 in them, I am looking at buying a few more S9 and am trying to avoid the C5 ones, so why I am asking if the C5 came in the S9i.

Also trying to determine if I can just buy some Xilinx control boards and put into these 4 that have C5 or if I am better off to part them out, (you answered this one it looks like), not sure if it will be worth it on the 2 11.85TH/s models though.

So you mean that if the c5 controllers came from s9i model units or s9? I think they are random there are some miner's receive s9i with c5 controller same on s9.

However, there are some ways to know if the miner is a c5 control board or Xilinx. Take a look at this image below as your reference.

https://miro.medium.com/max/1830/1*3-kgIxvPH1q-sV0aXdVA6g.jpeg (https://miro.medium.com/max/1830/1*3-kgIxvPH1q-sV0aXdVA6g.jpeg)

Did you notice the difference of their ethernet socket?

I have seen that, but it does not help if I can not see the ones I will be ordering.

The 2 11.85TH/s models look like the one on the right but are C5.