T17 Capacitors Hashboard loose

[Petzhold]

I just got my used T17 42T today and when unpacking i heard a rattling noise inside 3 miner. so i decided to have a look at one inside before i plug them in.

At one hasboard 2 capacitors became loose. as i have soldered such a thing ages ago i wont do it by myself (also dont have a good workspace for that).

is there anything to take extremely care or is it just resoldering? for what are these capacitors needed i just found voltagemonitoring? (would they work without x)? can i just take one hashboard put it into another same model so i can make 1 good miner from 2 or are the boards "bound" to their miner or place in the miner? (left middle right)

picture: https://ibb.co/yW92S1p

[Pendrak]

Just ask someone to test then and put then back, also try to resolder all of then with some good flux, is easy and something fast for someone who know.

[wndsnb]

Replacing those caps is pretty easy. Only thing you need to be careful about is to make sure you flow the solder so a good connection is made. The pins are tied to big power planes so getting them hot enough can be a challenge.

They are just there to help filter out voltage variations caused by the quickly changing current usage of the hashboard. It might work fine without them. It would not damage anything to try.

With stock firmware you can sometimes mix and match hashboards, but not all hashboards will work with each other. I believe settings stored in memory on the hashboard need to be compatible. It won't damage anything to try, if it doesn't work the miner just won't get through it's initialization.

With aftermarket firmware, you can mix and match all you want.

[Petzhold]

Thank you so much for your fast reply, helped me a lot!

[Petzhold]

I brought  it to a professional repair and he said it was really easy to fix so this one is hashing again!




But I have got another problem in an other miner:

On one hasboard three heatsinks fell off the chips!
Can i use a normal 2 component thermal paste or do i have to order and wait for the orignial Antminer thermosetting adhesive?


thank you all again  

[wndsnb]

Thanks for giving us the update.

Heatsinks on 17 series miners are not glued on, they are attached with solder. Most of the time I see heatsinks that have fallen off, it's because the copper plating on the top of the chip has delaminated. Without the plating, it is not possible to solder it back on. You could try to glue them on with any thermally conductive adhesive. Can't say if or how well it will work. I always replace chips that have lost their plating.

The thermally conductive epoxies I was able to find technical datasheets on had much worse performance than solder. Low temperature solder (Sn60Bi40) solder conducts heat about 30 times better than the epoxy. So the epoxy might not work well enough and the chip may overheat. If it isn't on one of the 4 chips that is monitored for temperature, it could get hot enough to permanently damage the board, or melt the solder so the chip will slide out of position.

Here's a link that has the thermal conductivity of many solder types: http://alasir.com/reference/solder_alloys/

And here's a thermally conductive epoxy: https://www.mgchemicals.com/downloads/tds/tds-8329tff-2parts.pdf