GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[sobe-it]

Good to know, I will tweak with it more tomorrow my good multi meter and solder are at work. I have some laying around here but I'm not going to rummage through boxes tonight. I will keep you guys updated!

[notlist3d]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick. I also had some stick on heat sinks from the s1s and put them on the back side of the pcb for a little extra cooling. OC is at 400 right now and running smooth for a few hours with 0 hw errors, I will have to mod my usb hub to get any higher clocks but this baby stays cool. I usually see 22 to 28 ghs. This baby will be pushed to the max and hopefully survive, I do have plans of getting a few more and doing other odd ball cooling and OC.

Holy crap that is the most awsome mod I have seen yet!  That massive heat-sink just looks right on there .

Thanks for sharing that is very impressive with a fan.  I'm wondering what that thing can do now.

[AJRGale]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick. I also had some stick on heat sinks from the s1s and put them on the back side of the pcb for a little extra cooling. OC is at 400 right now and running smooth for a few hours with 0 hw errors, I will have to mod my usb hub to get any higher clocks but this baby stays cool. I usually see 22 to 28 ghs. This baby will be pushed to the max and hopefully survive, I do have plans of getting a few more and doing other odd ball cooling and OC.



[imgwidth=100]https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtl1/v/t1.0-9/1506668_1121054111239550_9087065938270963885_n.jpg?oh=40e4c683a8a506a36e5c26f684965b9d&oe=56B662C3[/img]

Ive been waiting for this..

FWIW, BFGMiner can theoretically go up beyond 1000 MHz now... try at your own risk :p

Oh boy!

time to play the "Who has the fastest and hottest stick!"

looks like i may have to get a beefer Buck.. may have to get the stick to take 12V at 30A... /me hunts out old PoS 12V USB hub (for those people going "what the?!" http://www.poweredusb.org/pdf/PoweredUSB_v08g.pdf )

[sidehack]

If you can separate the power drive rail from everything else on 5V (the buck chip, USB chip, LDOs, and LED circuit) so they don't explode, maybe you can do it. With a higher input voltage you'll be reducing the overall duty cycle quite a bit which will make the input caps' job easier because the high-side current burst they have to buffer is shorter. Honestly, the weak link in the buck circuit with a 5V input is the USB jack, and after that it's the inductor. The USB jack is rated for 1.5A, probably because for USB applications the standard only defines current up to that point. If you trust it to 3A that's 15W right there. At 0.85V the theoretical max current is a little over 17A. How about that, the inductor is rated for 17A RMS. So if you can jimmy the input to be comfortable with more than 3A still at 5V, the next thing to replace is the inductor. A lot of old gear, from S1 to RBox, have 0.47uH inductors on them probably good for over 30A. Now you're cooking with gas. The FETs are actually rated for close to 100A if you can keep them cool, and at the gate voltages that driver gives them they should have an Rdson between 2 and 3 milliohm - on par with the internal drivers in everyone's favorite TPS53355 (which has a 2mOhm low side and 5mOhm high side switch). A lot of 30A 53355 VRMs have three 100uF ceramic output caps; so does the Compac, but it also adds a 470uF tantalum-poly cap with 30mOhm ESR for extra buffering.
If you do separate the 5V chip supply from the main power (which techically could be done by drilling out a single via) you can circumvent the Compac's real high-load Achilles heel, which is its lack of ripple isolation at the buck driver. I have a 2.2uF cap at the buck chip to help decouple, but that's not so useful when you're looking at 15-20A current kicks on the input during a high-side switching. If that kick drops the input voltage below about 4V the buck resets, which means you don't get stable power on the output and the RMS voltage is lower than your setpoint says it should be. Isolating the chip supply's 5V line from the power swiching supply with something between 2.2 and 4.7 ohms resistance will cut down a lot of the brief input voltage tanks and keep your core voltage stable, which will allow you to push the chip even further. It's humorous to say, but with a very few changes, that little stick miner could push enough power through your ASIC to catch it on fire even with that giant-ass heatsink and still on 5V.

[Mikestang]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick.

Holy cow, that looks awesome!  How warm to the touch does that massive sink get when you crank up the stick?

Weird question, but is it too much weight for the usb port?  All that mass at the end of the stick will produce a relatively big moment where it plugs in.  Sorry, the engineer in me wonders these things. 

[AJRGale]

If you can separate the power drive rail from everything else on 5V (the buck chip, USB chip, LDOs, and LED circuit) so they don't explode, maybe you can do it. With a higher input voltage you'll be reducing the overall duty cycle quite a bit which will make the input caps' job easier because the high-side current burst they have to buffer is shorter. Honestly, the weak link in the buck circuit with a 5V input is the USB jack, and after that it's the inductor. The USB jack is rated for 1.5A, probably because for USB applications the standard only defines current up to that point. If you trust it to 3A that's 15W right there. At 0.85V the theoretical max current is a little over 17A. How about that, the inductor is rated for 17A RMS. So if you can jimmy the input to be comfortable with more than 3A still at 5V, the next thing to replace is the inductor. A lot of old gear, from S1 to RBox, have 0.47uH inductors on them probably good for over 30A. Now you're cooking with gas. The FETs are actually rated for close to 100A if you can keep them cool, and at the gate voltages that driver gives them they should have an Rdson between 2 and 3 milliohm - on par with the internal drivers in everyone's favorite TPS53355 (which has a 2mOhm low side and 5mOhm high side switch). A lot of 30A 53355 VRMs have three 100uF ceramic output caps; so does the Compac, but it also adds a 470uF tantalum-poly cap with 30mOhm ESR for extra buffering.
If you do separate the 5V chip supply from the main power (which techically could be done by drilling out a single via) you can circumvent the Compac's real high-load Achilles heel, which is its lack of ripple isolation at the buck driver. I have a 2.2uF cap at the buck chip to help decouple, but that's not so useful when you're looking at 15-20A current kicks on the input during a high-side switching. If that kick drops the input voltage below about 4V the buck resets, which means you don't get stable power on the output and the RMS voltage is lower than your setpoint says it should be. Isolating the chip supply's 5V line from the power swiching supply with something between 2.2 and 4.7 ohms resistance will cut down a lot of the brief input voltage tanks and keep your core voltage stable, which will allow you to push the chip even further. It's humorous to say, but with a very few changes, that little stick miner could push enough power through your ASIC to catch it on fire even with that giant-ass heatsink and still on 5V.

Im'a look to see what I can jimmy up from my dead NRBs I'm sure they are running with them TPS53355, nothing beats hashing out the magical blue smoke

just for lolz, reading your writeup on cube OC'ing on your website (all about the TPS53355 and feeding the BE100s with more power), relevant information is still relevant!

[sidehack]

It's not that relevant since the Compac doesn't have that chip on it, but I guess the general overclocking concept does still apply.

I should probably have put an S1 underclocking writeup on there, since I spent a week generating a full chart of efficiencies at every 10mV interval between stock and the point the chips stopped working. I should probably have put a lot more stuff on there, really. The website's been pretty neglected lately.

[AJRGale]

It's not that relevant since the Compac doesn't have that chip on it, but I guess the general overclocking concept does still apply.

I should probably have put an S1 underclocking writeup on there, since I spent a week generating a full chart of efficiencies at every 10mV interval between stock and the point the chips stopped working. I should probably have put a lot more stuff on there, really. The website's been pretty neglected lately.

that is true, this is what I get for googling the TPS53355.. but as you said, the Infineon is superior to it (100A over the 53355s 30A).. as you said, split the voltage planes, feed it 12V go OH SHI- and enjoy hot boxing the blue smoke

[AJRGale]

It's not that relevant since the Compac doesn't have that chip on it, but I guess the general overclocking concept does still apply.

I should probably have put an S1 underclocking writeup on there, since I spent a week generating a full chart of efficiencies at every 10mV interval between stock and the point the chips stopped working. I should probably have put a lot more stuff on there, really. The website's been pretty neglected lately.

that is true, this is what I get for googling the TPS53355.. but as you said, the Infineon is superior to it (100A over the 53355s 30A).. as you said, split the voltage planes, feed it 12V go OH SHI- and enjoy hot boxing the blue smoke

I'm notorious for leading these official Thread off topic eh?

[sobe-it]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick.

Holy cow, that looks awesome!  How warm to the touch does that massive sink get when you crank up the stick?

Not warm at all. The fan is 12v but I connected it to a usb plug 5v and it moves some good air and is also pretty much silent. The back heat sink is a little warm, I have a temp gun and will post stats when i get home from work.

{"hashrate1m": "27.6G", "hashrate5m": "26.5G", "hashrate1hr": "24.5G", "hashrate1d": "12.6G", "hashrate7d": "2.55G", "workers": 1, "bestshare": 17383283.667868529}

edit: mikestang look at the last picture, i have the old GS heatsink between the usb hub and the bfl heatsink. All the weight of the heatsink is resting on that. Plus the hub has a shroud around the jack, it really didnt sag without the green heatsink but i put it there for piece of mind.... kinda how you were thinking.

[sobe-it]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick. I also had some stick on heat sinks from the s1s and put them on the back side of the pcb for a little extra cooling. OC is at 400 right now and running smooth for a few hours with 0 hw errors, I will have to mod my usb hub to get any higher clocks but this baby stays cool. I usually see 22 to 28 ghs. This baby will be pushed to the max and hopefully survive, I do have plans of getting a few more and doing other odd ball cooling and OC.

Holy crap that is the most awsome mod I have seen yet!  That massive heat-sink just looks right on there .

Thanks for sharing that is very impressive with a fan.  I'm wondering what that thing can do now.

Will play with more it when I get home, I have alot of heatsinks laying around and a watercooling loop   It would be pretty bad ass if i can get this heat sink green!

[AJRGale]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick. I also had some stick on heat sinks from the s1s and put them on the back side of the pcb for a little extra cooling. OC is at 400 right now and running smooth for a few hours with 0 hw errors, I will have to mod my usb hub to get any higher clocks but this baby stays cool. I usually see 22 to 28 ghs. This baby will be pushed to the max and hopefully survive, I do have plans of getting a few more and doing other odd ball cooling and OC.

Holy crap that is the most awsome mod I have seen yet!  That massive heat-sink just looks right on there .

Thanks for sharing that is very impressive with a fan.  I'm wondering what that thing can do now.

Will play with more it when I get home, I have alot of heatsinks laying around and a watercooling loop   It would be pretty bad ass if i can get this heat sink green!

Water cooled Compacs.. now that shouldn't be hard to do, just use northbridge water blocks, and put them in series or parallel the blocks..

[Meech]

So it begins...... Nice!

[sobe-it]

So it begins...... Nice!

Toys are meant to be played with......    I have to tinker..... is who I am, but why the hell not right?

[HerbPean]

Running my  stick at 125 mhz (waiting for some Y usb to push it) for 14 days ... 0 HW. 6.868 GH/s

Insane stick !!!

Hats off to Sidehack and Novak !

[sobe-it]

Running my  stick at 125 mhz (waiting for some Y usb to push it) for 14 days ... 0 HW. 6.868 GH/s

Insane stick !!!

Hats off to Sidehack and Novak !

you can do 150 with no issues at all!

[notlist3d]

I had an old burnt up bfl jalapeno, so I took the heat sink fan combo and mounted it onto a GS stick.

Holy cow, that looks awesome!  How warm to the touch does that massive sink get when you crank up the stick?

Not warm at all. The fan is 12v but I connected it to a usb plug 5v and it moves some good air and is also pretty much silent. The back heat sink is a little warm, I have a temp gun and will post stats when i get home from work.

{"hashrate1m": "27.6G", "hashrate5m": "26.5G", "hashrate1hr": "24.5G", "hashrate1d": "12.6G", "hashrate7d": "2.55G", "workers": 1, "bestshare": 17383283.667868529}

edit: mikestang look at the last picture, i have the old GS heatsink between the usb hub and the bfl heatsink. All the weight of the heatsink is resting on that. Plus the hub has a shroud around the jack, it really didnt sag without the green heatsink but i put it there for piece of mind.... kinda how you were thinking.

The numbers alone on the compac are pretty amazing on OC each time I am amazed wen someone goes up in 20+.   I mean 24G is insane for one stick miner.  I would love to see a comparison of how many of some of the old sticks to get to this.  

That is like 72 or so block erupters packed into one usb stick.  Looking that it's just insane what these sticks are capable of doing.  I truly enjoy playing with them fun toys to say the least.

[sobe-it]

The numbers alone on the compac are pretty amazing on OC each time I am amazed wen someone goes up in 20+.   I mean 24G is insane for one stick miner.  I would love to see a comparison of how many of some of the old sticks to get to this.  

That is like 72 or so block erupters packed into one usb stick.  Looking that it's just insane what these sticks are capable of doing.  I truly enjoy playing with them fun toys to say the least.

Well get ready for more speed.... I am tinkering!

[HerbPean]

Running my  stick at 125 mhz (waiting for some Y usb to push it) for 14 days ... 0 HW. 6.868 GH/s

Insane stick !!!

Hats off to Sidehack and Novak !

you can do 150 with no issues at all!

Nah I tried, looks like my USB doesn't like it. I tried to tweek the pot and I couldn't stabilize it.

I'm sure it's all power related with my USB port.

[sidehack]

The ASIC is darn good, but a lot of it's in the buck. We overbuilt the heck out of it, probably three times the current capacity of the next best stick miner to allow for exactly the kind of stuff y'all are doing. Adds just a bit to the cost but greatly increases the fun.