Bitcoin Forum

I received my review unit from Spondoolies on Monday. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=887807.0 As noted elsewhere, the unit was packed nicely. I appreciated the all-cardboard packaging which is fully recycled where I live.

Environment
Since I'm cold blooded, I like my place warm. Really warm. My old BitFury miners also love the heat. Let's see how the SP20 fares.

Setup
My Antec HCP-1300 Platinum 1300W PSU was ready and waiting. Most PSUs have a color coded mb connector wires, but this one has all black wires. I grabbed what I thought were the right two pins and plugged in my paperclip. Lights come on and the SP20 connects to the network. Must be the right two pins, right? I surf to myminer.io and see my machine up and running. I click on it and go to the Pools page and input my pool credentials. But the miner just won't mine. It's only using 4 watts and the supposedly loud fan isn't spinning. It finally occurs to me that the paperclip might be in the wrong pins. I switch to the right pins and this time the fan lets me know I found the right pins.
http://www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/WindFace10.jpg.

Tweaking
My BitFury miners are quite tweakable, but it's very difficult to do so (adding/removing cards, editing config files). But their modularity and tweakability allows me to maximize my hashrate per electrical circuit. While not modular, the SP20 allows very easy tweaking of voltage and power. Here are the results. All tests at 100% fan and 40c intake temperature.

Voltage	Wattage at wall	GH/s
.65	710	1240
.70	1005	1468
.75	1110	1520
.79	1150	1534

Since my PSU is more than sufficient, the limiting factor in performance is the temps. The SP20's single exhaust fan just doesn't move enough air when in a hot room. Half the chips get hot air from the other half, like the old dual GPU 5970, so they get clocked down significantly. I wish there was also an intake fan on the other end for a nice push-pull configuration. This would also lower fan noise, although noise is not a concern for me. A half-size SP20 where the airflow goes over a single set of chips would also work well.

Summary
The SP20 excels in quality construction and ease of setup. Provide a good PSU and turn it on. It'll adjust itself for maximum performance, even in a hot room.  Later when efficiency becomes more important, lowering the voltage will come in very handy. Recent price drops by Spondoolies make the SP20 one of the best buys in the market.

 :-\ 40 is quite a warm ambient


review made me LOL thanks.

This is what you get in California these days ..

Thank you for the review.

By opening the top cover and leave those two intake holes wide open for the highest temp ASIC, you can increase the cooling for the hottest ASICs thus improve the performance

http://photo.mystisland.org/sp20/sp20_22.jpg

opening the unit voids something .. not sure what ..

Ok, I'm not responsible for the damage cause by my advise, it is just some try and error experiment for my own amusement  8)

You made me Poke a SCREWDRIVER though my Mommaboard! Ima Sue you!