Delta PFB1212UHE looks good. Is it ok to tie the +12v and ground straight to a PSU and tie the tachometer and Pwm feeds to the miner?

Hi.
I have an S7 that needs a new fan.
Any ideas of a compatible fan I can buy in the UK?
Can solder bare wires if necessary and don't care about noise.
Thanks.

Hi Wayne.
Get the miner ready to run and hold a hair dryer blowing into it for a couple of minutes until it is pretty warm then turn it on. The controller boards are a pain up the ass and this used to work every time.
Hope this gets you running again.

Hi.
If you are very carefull, re-building the hash boards on the SP20's is VERY easy and has amazing benefits.
I no longer own any SP20's but can still do this in my sleep.

Turn off, allow to cool down.
Remove the screws that hold the top lid in place remove top lid.
Carefully remove screws from the controller board, lift up and remove the two ribbons and the fan cable.
Store the controller PCB very carefully!
Take a photo of the routing of the ribbon cables - dont skip it will help!
Remove screws take top chassis off to expose the hash boards.
Down by the fan, pull the small metal plate up and out (might be stiff) hash boards will now slide out.

Now the fun starts.
Im my opinion the assembly of the heat sinks was very poor but you can re-build them.
You need a hacksaw blade and a screwdriver and need to be very carefull!

Unscrew the heatsinks and in most cases they will just pop off. Put to one side.
Where they dont come off VERY CAREFULLY saw with the blade downwards into the block of epoxy and release them.
Take your time and dont rush or you will bugger the hash board.

When all the heatsinks are off do the board work first.
Adjacent to each heat sink there is now a big blob of epoxy resin which stops the heat sink reaching the chips.
Unfortunately this needs to go.

I found the best way to do this was to carefully put PVC tape around the epoxy and saw it off sideways with a hacksaw blade.
There is plenty of room to do it just go nice and slowly and take your time.
Get the cut as close to the PCB as you can.

Use Isopropyl alcohol and lint free wipes and polish the chips to remove ALL the old heatsink compound.
This will be hard and brittle and will probably stick in the gaps between the ASIC and the decoupling caps on the ASIC board.
I used a small flat bladed jewellers screwdriver and scraped it out the way.
Give another clean with alcohol.

Next clean the PCB using spray PCB cleaner to remove the debris.
Spray from the top of the PCB down and clean as much off as possible.
Stand upwards and allow the dry.

Depending on how well you want to do the job I certainly recomend:-

Use the saw blade and remove the copper strips off the heat sinks.
Use alcohol and clean all the heat sinks and copper pads.
Takes a long time to do and is a real pain in the ass.

Next, get some Alloy Wheel Cleaner and throw the heat sinks and copper strips into it and leave for 1 hour.
Remove and clean up. They look brand new and all the pitted corrosion is now gone.
Wash and allow to dry thoroughly.

Now ignore everything about how thick thermal compound should be applied to a chip.
It simply wont work with an SP20 trust me.

Apply a generous amount of thermal compound to the copper plate and locate into position onto the heat sink.
Put into a vise on a work bench and close until VERY tight.
As the thermal compund oozes out the edges, wipe it off.
No oozing, not enough thermal compound so re-do it until you get the hang of it.
I used cheaper conductive compound for this stage.

Next, put a large blob of themal compound (non conductive) onto the ASIC chip, locate the heat sink and tighten up.
Repeat for ALL has boards.

Get two sections of wood and sit the hash cards onto the wood along the edges so the power MOSFET devices on the rear side of the PCB dont touch the ground.
You will understand what I mean.

Next, I sat two lengths of wood over all the ASICS and put a fairly heavy weight on top to apply pressure to the heat sinks.

Mix up some epoxy resin and apply a dab over all four corners of the heat sink to hold it in place.
Get a tiny amount under the heat sink, up the edge so it has a good bind.

Take the fan off the chassis (mine was screwed if you have the rubbers pull them with a pair of long nose plyers) and throw the whole chassis into the allow wheel cleaner along with everything except the PCBs obviously and fan.

Clean the fan using alcohol and cotton buds set to one side.

Take the chassis out, clean with water and allow to dry.

Now go to sleep for the night.

In the morning put it all back together again.

Struggling with routing the ribbon cables, take a look at the photo you took yesterday it will all make sense.

Turn the beast back on and see the cooler chip temps.

Have fun!

Hey folks, been a tough last few days on the mining front.
Its sad that some folk have jumped off the pool and got the hash rate down a bit, but with the better btc price and a higher share, ill stay here.

Its started getting cold in the uk so ive got all my miners now in the workshop which is free cooling for me so the server rooms not getting so much of a hammering.
Im no big player running 2 X S9's and 2 X S7's but i think the S7's need a new home now.
I think when the next batch of S9's drops on line, Im going to order one to replace 2X S7's and dump these on fleebay.
I cant afford another S9 just yet but the extra hash rate (only a little) and lower energy costs should make it proffitable for me.
Its been touch and go this week.

Ill stay, with the difficulty increase and increase in hash power this last few weeks things were bound to tighten up but hey shit can only get better.
Ive ridden out the luck on here and some of the bad times but its still a lucky pool, always should be.

We just need a little more (proven a few months back) to keep up.

If you are thinking of jumping to another pool then dont, just stay a while and you will see what happens when we get our hash rate back up again.

Sold a couple of my S7 miners on eBay and put this together to show how to use IBM Power Supplies with the miners.
Thought it could come in useful to others.

http://www.hamer.cx/s7-s9-miner-ibm-server-power-supplies/

Enjoy.

Turned out to be a good day for blocks huh?
Still a couple of hours to go as well.
Nice to come home from working away to see this!
 

Hi Folks.

So Ive been working away a couple of days and missed all the banter on here and wow, what a saga Bitfinex has ended up in.
Nice to see the pool is still rolling on and Im sure increased luck will hit.
Was hoping to see the difference the difficulty change (yesterday???) made but ive missed it all im afraid.
Ill start to check over some charts n stuff and see if I can work out for myself.

Just one thing that im sure all you fellow mining fans will already know, "Dont Keep Your BTC In An Exchange!"
If you are a newby, then Dont Keep Your BTC In An Exchange.

So, Im only home for a night, back to pipe fitting on the Power Station tomorrow and hopefully be back for the weekend.

Take Care, see you soon!

Kind of makes you want to reverse engineer the S9 hash boards and just make a rip off version.
A European Counterfeit S9, that would be a laugh .........

It is and would be easy. My S7's are in my workshop premises and we are on a water meter.
Being involved in energy efficient systems I cant bring myself to do this because of the water loss and costs.

In about 2 to 3 weeks ill post a "How To" with photos of the whole thing and some temp readings.
Further, im going to control the water cooling (Adiabatic) by external temp to further add some efficiency.
Pressurusing the system to maybe 1.5 Bar will also increase thermal heat transfer.
Next is to find a circulator pump that can be run from a small solar array, and battery so the energy to drive the cooling is kind of free.

Im also pretty sure that spraying cold ish water over the external coil wont suffer from the same problem of evaporative cooling would with high humidity.
Most of the time in the UK the unit will run just ambient and should work fairly efficiently.
The big crunch will be when I stick the S9 onto it and take it out of the server room.

Ive also just seen a post on here showing some rack mount shelves that the S7 and S9 fit into perfectly.
Maybe now time to build the internal coil directly inside a spare 19" rack cabinet, that kind of gave me an idea rather than using ducting.

Ive just put a couple of orders out for some raw materials to do this thing properly now that I have had it working.
Looking forward to a proper build, putting up a how to, photos and temp readings.
More importanly solving my heat problem for a low running cost.

Im not suffering as much as you guys with regards heat, but its been pretty warm here in the UK last week.

Im building up a cheap cooling system that seems to work pretty well.
At least the first test worked really well im currently making it properly now the idea seems to work.
Not saying this is going to be of any help but might give you guys a few ideas.

I have my S9 in the server room but the A/C is only 3kW so I dont want to push any more miners in there as im adfraid it might break.
(I actually trashed the old A/C with five Spondoolies SP20's over night).
As the S9 looks more heat tempremental its staying in there. The S7's are all in my warehouse hidden away.

Right. I got two large van radiators off eBay. I got two Ford Transit ones.
I linked the two together with braded hose and sealed up all the connections using jubilee clips.
On the inside one I covered it with a box and left some round connectors on it, to suit flexible ducting that connects to the miners.

The outside one is mounted with a 230V fan to blow ambient air over it.
I then have a pump that pumps water through a copper tube with small holes, to spray water over the coil in front of the fan.
The discharge turns upwards and makes the water drip back down into a tray to re-pump over the coil.

I filled the radiators with water and used a central heating circulator to pump water between the outside and inside coil.
Gives a massive temp drop with the water spraying over the coil.

When the water heats up, dump it and charge the tank with fresh cold water.
In the UK im getting approx 15 Deg tap water.

Currently working on an Arduino with a temp sensor to monitor the water then dump when it gets warm.
Just a solenoid valve to dump with a simple ball cock to fill with cold water again.

Miners suck air from over the indoor coil which cools the incoming air significantly.
The adiabatic cooling to the outdoor coil really works.

Im hoping to build the thing properly in some stainless steel boxes and install it permanantly over the next few weeks.

Hi MiningRonnie.

Looks like the Server PSU's are expensive in your part of the world.
I just ordered two more for £19.00 the pair from eBay with free shipping!

If you get stuck I can see if I can source in the UK and ship over to you, just a thought.

Sorry folks been one of those days but :-

I adjusted the S9 to 95% fan speed this morning before I went out.
Server room AC is set at 18 Deg C.
Uptime 11hrs 21 Mins
Chain 1 22 HW Errors 54 Degree Board, 86 Deg Chips
Chain 3 13 HW Errors 55 Degree Board, 87 Deg Chips
Chain 4 253 HW Errors 56 Degree Board, 88 Deg Chips
GH/s Av 12,990.22
HW Error rate is low at 0.0001%

I spent an hour this morning adjusting the fan speed for 15 min intervals.
Adjusting the fan speed between 75% and 95% only shows a slight difference in chip temps and board temps (maybe 3 to 4 degree difference).
I noted that the average hash speed comes down ever so slightly with each drop but I assume 15 mins was not enough time to take an accurate reading.
I also noted that hardware errors are much lower at 95% fan speed.
Im probably just going to leave the fan speed at 95% as I think the cooler I keep the unit the longer life it may have.
No idea on noise as its in the server room at work and Im at home today.

EDIT
Just 288 hardware errors over all three hash cards now since early this morning (11hrs 21 mins).

Hi MineRonnie.

I buy ALL the power supplies from eBay, generally from computer recyclers.
I have never paid more than £15 for a Power Supply, normally around £12 to £14 each.
That makes a pair of power supplies max £30.00.

The IBM 1300W power supplies are very reliable and although I have one which is a little noisy on start up, they just run really reliable.
Just eBay search for IBM 1300W and you should recognise them.
If you look at my photo with the power strip at the bottom, solder bottom LH and the pin directly above it.
Power supply just runs straight up on power up.

Have fun!

Hi.

I run in the UK at 230 volt.
I have never purchased a Bitmain PSU. I started using IBM Server Power Supplies a couple of years ago on my Spondoolises SP20's.
I carried these over to the S7's and the S9's.
Just two pins to solder together to get the PSU to run up and I use 1/4" Lucar Crimps to connect the wires onto the PSU.
I use two per miner, both rated at 1300W, they are DPS-1300 PSU's and have always been reliable for me.

Just left the fans to Auto.
Ill adjust the fan speeds as you suggested.
I left them auto as I did this with the S7's.
I read some place the Antminers prefer to be a little "hot" rather than cold.

Ill post the results maybe tomorrow, going to take a while to run them for say half hour each.

Thanks for the advice on the errors, as you stated the % is way small so no issue to worry about.

Thanks for the reply!

Just a side note.
I was worried about the high error rate on my third chain.
Looking at the other posted stats on here, it appears everyones 3rd chain runs with high errors.

Any ideas why??

This is my only S9 (slowly upgrading from S7's) running for three days in a fully air conditioned server room.
Ambient is maintained at 18 Deg within the server room.
Miner is on top of the rack cabinet and has plenty of space.

I was worried about chip temps even in a cooled room!

Im only three days in with my S9 and I had a bumpy start.
I dont know much about the S9 yet as Im upgrading from S7's so im no expert.

First, I had trouble changing the IP to a static one.
Booting up was troublesome and I had network connection errors and could not get it to mine.
During boot up the "Error" light flashes until the miner starts.

In the end I swapped both PSU's out (i use 2 X 1300W PSU) with two from an S7 that gets very little hardware errors.
This seemed to solve all my problems and the S7 works just fine with the PSU's that were on the S9.

Its ran continually now for 1 Day, 22 Hrs and 35 Mins.
Fingers crossed that it continues to hash OK.

Hi folks.
Ive had an S9 running for three days now just wanted some feedback on a couple of things.
I run some S7's but have a few questions.

When booting the "Error" light blinks for a few minutes before the miner starts. Is this a normal boot up?

I run one hash card and the controller board on one PSU, then the other two hash cards on a second PSU.
PSU's are 1300W each.
At first I was getting numerous xxxx in the ASIC stats. I swapped the PSU's out with the S7's until I got a trouble free boot up.
Running in my server room at work cooled to about 18 Deg.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated, just while I get used to the new hardware.
Thanks folks.