Antminer S5 + Laser cutter mods...

[E]

Can the material on the surface affect camera's thermal readout?

Yes, definitely! And bare metal is among the worst affected materials -- it reads _much_ cooler than actual. You can coat it with black spray paint or spray-on boron nitride to bring the surface emissivity closer to what the imager assumes. Or, if you have an imager with adjustable emissivity assumption, set it to 0.02 or so and look only at the gold plated surfaces.

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[MarkAz]

Hey Vorta, in regards to why not printing the back of the case - I use the metal front and back as well as heat sinks for the screw mount points.  Otherwise with acrylic the only thing I've found to work is captured screws, but they can be a PIA to work with.

With your temps, what I've seen in fiddling around - and I generally don't let it go as high as yours, is that the hotter it gets, the less the ambient room temp seems to affect it.  Meaning if it's 35c in the room, and the miner is at 75, the room could go to 45c and the miner might only increase by a couple degrees.  It seems like airflow affects the miners temps more than ambient air temp, but I haven't really looked into it seriously.

innerchaos, the sides are critical - if it were open, then there would be no point to this mod.  Don't forget I'm enclosing the top and bottom - look closely at the pictures, it goes all the way across and overlaps the sides.

E, definitely true - the emissiveness is what dictates it, and things like aluminum (heat sink) are notoriously bad - the coated part of the PCB normally are what I focus on.  I've never used any kind of paint or coating (but I know you can use it) - typically I just use electrical tape, as that is what I was originally shown as a really good general purpose solution.

[notlist3d]

Around what cost do you have in acrylic to make 1 kit?    Looks very nice just wondering cost of this vs pla plastic type.

And keep up the cool looking mods.  Really does look great.

[opentoe]

Very nice indeed! Good work with all that! I see you also took the Scythe Ultra Kaze fans. They really are the best choice.

What I would suggest is try getting some mini heatsinks to glue them on the outside and see if that drops the temps. In your case they should drop them more than they do in open case versions. On my first miner, which came without external heatsinks, I used these: www.ebay.com/itm/171764372281. Glued them on with this thermal adhesive: http://www.ebay.com/itm/111172816819
I got a price of $30.00 for 60 heatsinks, so if you're buying them, make sure you click "Make offer" instead of just buying them at stated price.

I would definitely prefer to have acrylic side panels on my miners. You have me a very nice idea.

I bought these a while back but haven't used them yet. They also have thermal paste on there already sealed by like a sticker you need peel off. Press it on the chip and you are done! Remember, the thinnest layer of any thermal paste/grease is best for dissipating heat. That's why these are great, since the thermal "stuff" on these already is paper thin.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/100pcs-Aluminum-Computer-VGA-Card-Xbox360-DDR-RAM-Memory-Cooling-Cooler-Heatsink-/121331886647?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c3ff1aa37

[opentoe]

Not mine, from a photo I grabbed a while ago.

[opentoe]

Temp sensor on the S5. Hard to find.

[opentoe]

Just throwing another picture out. These are some of my miners. I have also purchased about 20 different fans and tried MANY different setups to keep these guys cool. Surrounding the miner, like putting a case around it did nothing. Temps stayed the same. The stock fans were a little too loud so I'm using 2 Noctura Industrial 3000's in a push/pull with no extra boxes or ducts. Temps keep stable and consistent at 57-60. I do have air conditioning, so of course that is a huge factor in temps. The air conditioning would be powered on regardless if the miners were there or not, so it is no extra expense for me. Although I do have to say around 3pm EST USA if the temps outside hit 95+ the room does heat up and temps will climb to a max of 63 (only with door closed), soon as I open the room door the heat just shoots out of the room into the rest of the house, which is also air conditioned and I would imagine the extra heat is expelled by the AC system. I can keep the room door closed %100 of the time, but I do not like 63c. I did think of just ducting the heat right out the window, but not good figuring out such a complicated duct system with the 6 miners in that room. How to expel the individual heat flow from 6 miners out the window would be something interesting to see work. I wish I could come up with something but haven't figured it out. So things will stay the way they are for now, they are working good and temps in check. If no air conditioning in the house, the miners would probably have blown up by now.

[philipma1957]

Just throwing another picture out. These are some of my miners. I have also purchased about 20 different fans and tried MANY different setups to keep these guys cool. Surrounding the miner, like putting a case around it did nothing. Temps stayed the same. The stock fans were a little too loud so I'm using 2 Noctura Industrial 3000's in a push/pull with no extra boxes or ducts. Temps keep stable and consistent at 57-60. I do have air conditioning, so of course that is a huge factor in temps. The air conditioning would be powered on regardless if the miners were there or not, so it is no extra expense for me. Although I do have to say around 3pm EST USA if the temps outside hit 95+ the room does heat up and temps will climb to a max of 63 (only with door closed), soon as I open the room door the heat just shoots out of the room into the rest of the house, which is also air conditioned and I would imagine the extra heat is expelled by the AC system. I can keep the room door closed %100 of the time, but I do not like 63c. I did think of just ducting the heat right out the window, but not good figuring out such a complicated duct system with the 6 miners in that room. How to expel the individual heat flow from 6 miners out the window would be something interesting to see work. I wish I could come up with something but haven't figured it out. So things will stay the way they are for now, they are working good and temps in check. If no air conditioning in the house, the miners would probably have blown up by now.

try a pad under the miner

 http://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Baking-Mat-Non-stick-Measurements/dp/B00CVQENUO/ref=pd_sim_79_4?

your miners base vibrates a bit and leaks air.  the pad above will lower sound and seal the miner to the table.

this forces air to go out the pull fan and some extra air goes up at the controller passing over the heat sensor.

put a little heat sink on the heat sensor .   I was able to get my s-5's to do freq 412  with decent errors  and decent sound. 

I used the silverstone  141 as a pull and a delta 120 x 38 as a push.

some where I posted a thread  on my results. around Jan or Feb.

[opentoe]

I already tried all that. I tinker with fixing watches and I had some of those semi-soft, malleable mats that a watch maker would work on. I sat a couple miners on it and since it was semi-soft it filled up any small cracks or holes. Temps stayed the same, didn't matter. I have also tried closing off the entire bottom and top with some thin aluminum I had. Sealed just about everywhere, and there was no difference.

NOTE: When the miners all had stock fans, doing the seal up did have a small affect when ambient temps increased a little. So I can't say it doesn't work at all, but when using two of the Noctura ippc 3000 fans no matter what I did the temps were always the same regardless of what I did. I have a feeling the stock fan just blows loud and all over the place and the Noctura fans are very directional and don't need such a setup. When watching TV in just the next room, even with the door open I don't hear anything. If I had the blasters (stock fans) on them I would always hear that hum/whine. I'm sticking with my expensive Noctura's. Never saw such good performing fans. I also bought two of those Sythe fans from Amazon and even though they are 38mm thick, they couldn't keep up with the Noctura's.

I have lots of fans. I have 10 or 15 brand new STOCK S5 fans that I received from Bitmain a while ago, plus another 6 STOCK S5 fans that I used for about 2 weeks. If anyone in the US interested in S5 STOCK fans, let me know.

[MarkAz]

opentoe, unless you full enclosed it like I did, with almost no airgaps, then you'll get very different results.  I had tried the Noctura's as well, but they were not even in the running compared to the Kaze - but since you're running in an air conditioned situation, then that's probably your biggest variable. 

On the heat sinks you linked to - they look nice, but you mention they have thermal paste already on them - are you sure they don't just have thermal stickers?  If it's paste, that's great, although I would probably just recommend using thermal adhesive and being done with it.  Also, contrary to what I've seen written on here, it is NOT a good idea putting a heat sink on the temperature IC - this makes an already marginal measurement almost completely worthless, and will increase the likelihood you're overheat your hardware substantially.

I've been converting all of my test rigs over to the cases - but I'm gone right now, so when I get back next week I'll finish it up.  Since I'm in AZ, I'm testing the worse case situation, where ambient temps surpass 110f... And what I'm interested in designing is something that works with the device using just airflow in that situation.  Right now if you have enough CFM for the room forced air, you can run machines using the stock fans just fine... The issue I have with that is how loud it is.   With my configuration so far I'm seeing temps that are a fair bit higher than stock in this super-heated situation, so let's say 5c above stock as reported by their IC, but the actual miner's heat pattern looks more even than stock.  One other plus is that this 5c temperature increase is regardless of spacing between machines - whereas the stock configuration gets hotter if you put them right next to eachother (whereas mine doesn't) - this is just really because stock it's venting hot air in all directions.  That's why ducting is interesting to me - if I can completely get it out of the mix, then I think that's a great gain.

notlist3d, hard to say what it will cost when done, since the thickness of the materials affects things a fair bit - but as it stands right now with 2mm bodywork and 5.6mm fan spacers, it's under $20/machine, and shipping should be cheap since it basically all becomes flat...

[innerchaos]

I already tried all that. I tinker with fixing watches and I had some of those semi-soft, malleable mats that a watch maker would work on. I sat a couple miners on it and since it was semi-soft it filled up any small cracks or holes. Temps stayed the same, didn't matter. I have also tried closing off the entire bottom and top with some thin aluminum I had. Sealed just about everywhere, and there was no difference.

NOTE: When the miners all had stock fans, doing the seal up did have a small affect when ambient temps increased a little. So I can't say it doesn't work at all, but when using two of the Noctura ippc 3000 fans no matter what I did the temps were always the same regardless of what I did. I have a feeling the stock fan just blows loud and all over the place and the Noctura fans are very directional and don't need such a setup. When watching TV in just the next room, even with the door open I don't hear anything. If I had the blasters (stock fans) on them I would always hear that hum/whine. I'm sticking with my expensive Noctura's. Never saw such good performing fans. I also bought two of those Sythe fans from Amazon and even though they are 38mm thick, they couldn't keep up with the Noctura's.

I have lots of fans. I have 10 or 15 brand new STOCK S5 fans that I received from Bitmain a while ago, plus another 6 STOCK S5 fans that I used for about 2 weeks. If anyone in the US interested in S5 STOCK fans, let me know.

I would love to get 6 of those stock fans I don't mind the noise.. I just want to be able to keep em cool and having six extra will allow me to do  quick swap out for cleaning

[MarkAz]

I've started converting over my test S5 setup at my house, and I'm leaving one of them stock, so I can use as a comparison.  Right now I'm running them at basically ambient air temperatures, which are brutal here right now, so let's say between 44c and 46c during the day - so if you're interested in how the Antminer does under high temps, then you'll be interested in this. 

The stock unit (with spacer, I don't run any without it, so figure it's about 1c lower than without) runs out at about 67/64 in the temperatures mentioned above.  I also tried for the heck of it just doing on in pull configuration, but the unit started sounding the thermal warning after a couple minutes (80c), so that ends any of my tests.

With my enclosure (plus spacer), in the same push configuration, it runs about 71/65, so about +4c on average.  In the pull configuration (my normal one), it runs 69/63, so about +2c on average.  Now while this may sound worse, I argue that it's actually better - when I do the thermal imaging on the boards, the heat tends to be more even across the board than in the stock configuration.  One other advantage is that point it's the hottest is towards the fan side (in pull), which I suspect means I could create some inlets in order to allow channeling some cold air in later in the path - the trick being not to make these holes so large that they starve the main intake.

After mounting them on 20+ S5's, I've refined the screw hole size/positions, as there is a fair amount of variation between units.  When I originally put together my test rig, I bought all of them used so I could get a nice cross-section of devices, but there was alot more variation than I expected.

I'll have more this week, I'm finishing up a logging and management application for the S5's, so I can get a better sense of their status over time - and then combine it with the networked temperature monitors I built.

[MarkAz]

I added the heat sinks that Vorta linked to earlier - and as Tony the Tiger would say, "They're Great!"

I used Arctic thermal adhesive - not thermal paste:

http://amzn.to/1dYPRyw

I figured that I would leave them on either way, so might as well stick them on for good... The adhesive is the two part kind, so a bit of a pain but nothing major.  I cleaned the surface first with Isopropyl alcohol - I prefer these wipes because the wipe doesn't leave any fibers, it's 99%, and they don't skimp on the alcohol:

http://amzn.to/1Gh8xRH

I applied the adhesive to the base of the heat sink, and then just stuck it to the miner - you don't need a thick layer of the stuff, just enough to cover the bottom, so I imagine the thermal paste kit above would be enough to do two miners (or at least that's what I would probably be able to manage).  Here's what they look like:



So I have a bit less envy about those lucky enough to get factory ones.  I would point out that it took me about 30 minutes to apply them all, so not super long, but not fast either.

As I mentioned above, I'm running these miners in what would best be described as a 'harsh' environment - so it was hot when I test it.  This particular miner runs typically about 73/73 - this is with the case mod and the Kaze fan in pull configuration.  I got it up and running again and let it roll for about an hour, then checked how the temps were doing, and it was a solid 67/66, so about 6c decrease in temp - of course that's just what the internal sensor says, let's take a look at what Mr Flir has to say:



They're definitely running hot, but if you look at the surrounding areas, they're running much cooler, so they definitely seem to be pulling heat from the board.  I would guess that the impact on a case without the airflow being as controlled as mine may not be as dramatic - but with mine I'm forcing air over the sides somewhat evenly, so probably a more pronounced effect.

Either way, if you've wondered if and how much of an effect heat sinks on that side can make, now you know.  I would classify the ones I got as somewhere inbetween the nice ones that Bitmain put on some of there, and definitely better than those small silver ones most people put on them.

[opentoe]

These heatsinks are pretty good. They use the high quality Sony T4000 thermal tape, so you don't need an extra cost for thermal grease/paste/tape.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bitcoin-Miner-Antminer-ASIC-BTC-180GH-s-Cooling-kit-72pcs-DIY-Aluminum-Heatsink-/121331886591?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c3ff1a9ff

[MarkAz]

These heatsinks are pretty good. They use the high quality Sony T4000 thermal tape, so you don't need an extra cost for thermal grease/paste/tape.

I'm using thermal adhesive, as I don't really see much of a reason to ever remove them - get them done right once and not have to worry about them falling off.

As far as those, I've purchased some in the past, but as you pointed out the ones you linked to have much better thermal tape (the ones I got had crap tape, next to useless).  One of the used miners I bought actually had those applied with presumably thermal adhesive as well, although whoever did it installed them perpendicular to airflow, which sucks.  This particular unit doesn't perform as well as the other heatsinks mentioned, but it's hard to say how much off it is because of the wonky orientation. 

All things being equal, if I'm going to spend the time to mount these on a machine, I'm going to use the best heat sink I can lay my hands on.  I really like the ones that Bitmain put on the rare few machines (I have two), but I think those long finned ones are the next best thing - I can't really see much of a difference between my machines with them vs the Bitmain ones, but I haven't done really extensive testing yet.

Here's a shot of my test setup prior to mounting all the heat sinks, and I think I still had one or two with the stock case - now they're all running my custom case + kaze fan + spacer + heat sinks - so nothing else I can really think of to keep them cool mod-wise.

[innerchaos]

how do you get rid of the heat in your garage. I had mine in the garage with a 1500btu AC unit and it was still so hot I had to underclock them just to keep them under 65c.

temperature here is 105F day high 85F overnight low

[MarkAz]

how do you get rid of the heat in your garage. I had mine in the garage with a 1500btu AC unit and it was still so hot I had to underclock them just to keep them under 65c.

temperature here is 105F day high 85F overnight low

I have forced air (coming via an 18" duct from outside air) coming in on the 'cold' side if you can all it that in AZ, and on the hot side I have a big exhaust fan that dumps the air into the attic.  The whole situation works pretty well, although it definitely does get hot in there... I've written an app that changes the speed of the S5's based on the ambient temperatures, so that keeps them within range at all times.  I have Environsense modules on all the PDU's, plus I built my own WiFi temperature sensors that I scattered around to also get a feel of what outside, garage, attic, etc temps were.

With my case mods, the airflow is much more controllable - although ultimately I'd like to duct them into a plenum, and then exhaust that separately.  As it stands now, it's much more about airflow than air temperature - at least from what I've experienced.  I've considered doing some sort of cooling, but doing AC just wouldn't pencil out - I've been looking more at direct-indirect evaporator cooling.  The big advantage with these kinds of systems is you get the cheap price of evap, but also don't raise the humidity - at the cost of a bit more complexity, and slightly less effective cooling.  There are some of these kind of coolers that are up around 40 SEER, which is outstanding.  They're not going to work in all environments, but in a desert setting, they rock.

[Hytech2k]

Is there anyway I could get the dxf files or drawing for the enclosure? I run a sign shop with a couple CNC's and just bought 2 x S5's and possibly a few more in the near future. Enclosing the whole thing with heatsinks over the chips ducting the air across them seems much more sensible.

Thanks

Gerald  

[l8nit3]

absolutely beautiful! Have you thought of selling these once youve got the design down? I know i would be interested, and likely know a few others who would aswell!

[Roccdrummer]

This is the best fan,  better than ultra kazes...

http://www.enermax.co.uk/fans/twisterstorm/


up to 154.53 cfm at 38 decibels ...  3500 rpm