0) General information + Hardware Needed
1) Unpacking
2) The Miner
3) Install
4) Running the miner
5) Conclusion
6) How to purchase

0) General Information + Hardware Needed to buy
The Avalon 6 miner is another solid miner to come from Canaan-Creative that is their new upgrade from it's previous Avalon 4.1 miner.  In the words of the maker "Avalon6 V6.0 consists of 80 A3218 18nm chips, which can be controlled by Raspberry Pi".  It does have a unique ability for scaling upwards if used in a commercial aspect "You can also manage 50 clusters by connecting controllers to USB HUB, with hash rate up to 183T."  Most users will not reach this level but the capability is there. Below is list of items you might need to buy in addition to the miner.

• Standard power supply with 4 PCI-E 6 Pin adapters (1200+ Watts is recommended)
• Raspberry Pi (version B or B+) or TP-Link TL-WR703N
• Network cable

1) Unpacking
Below shows a miner from BlockC being unpacked. I was impressed with how well it was packed.  The miner was in a box that was within another box.  The inner box has the miner using styrofoam to keep it centered and safe.  Then packing peanuts all around that inner box to encapsulate it within the other box safely. This made it where the miner easily made it safely to my door.




2) The Miner
Below are images to showcase the miner from BlockC.





3) Install
Very simple install with the Raspberry PI I recieved from BlockC. It was set to DHCP so install was plug and play.  I did change it to static IP as I like static with having multiple miners on my network.  BlockC sending the Raspberry Pi with a default of DHCP saves you from the install process you did on the 4.1's if you did it yourself.  It saved roughly 15 minutes or so and turned install into a breeze.

For those who did not get the Raspberry Pi kit from BlockC here is a link to a DHCP Raspberry Pi image. All thanks goes to BlockC for the image.  Just use a program such as Win32DiskImager and flash it to your SD card.  Then insert SD card into Raspberry PI and you now have a DHCP Avalon 6 controller.  Download is below:

DHCP RPI Image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5yGu5iTU6MjRlozQjg3a0xRUEE/view?usp=sharing

4) Running
For the first test of running I ran it with default settings.  You can affect the speed with the Input Voltage of the PSU. This is using a EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 it did a pretty constant 12.0.   I tested a Rosewill LIGHTNING-1300 and it was running at around 11.9 to 12 Input voltage, this PSU varied.  So I stuck with EVGA in below tests showing the Avalon 6 running:  

• Below is the advanced GUI showing the speed:

• A Kill-A-Watt showing watts used:

• The air temperature before and after being sent through exhaust:  It is interesting the fan is set to pull the heat through the back instead of a fan in the front pushing air. So a different design than most but it seems to work very well.

5) Conclusion

For me this was a nice addition to my mining gear.  I made it no secret from my past guide on the Avalon 4.1 that I really liked it, so it was natural to want to try out the Avalon 6.  The install with above image is very simple, plug and play as I put it.  I like that it has a solid metal case and so far it is a solid miner.  Over the coming weeks I will continue with using the miner and updating this review,  on some aspects such as underclocking and just general running. Over time I am able to better show results as I try different things.  So far it has been a great miner from the experience I have had.  

I will be trying it in a few areas of my house as I try it to enjoy the free heat from the miner.  Instead of going in my normal mining area this one likely will be used for free heat.  So if you have a cold winter like me, it's one free perk of running a miner inside your house.

5) How to purchase

This will depend on what region you are in:
BlockC - Global Master Distributor: http://www.blockc.co/collections/blockc-co-shop/products/avalon6-bitcoin-miner
Ehash - Sales within China: https://ehash.com/product/avalon6-v6-0/

Free Heat: I have been running in my room since it makes testing easier then going to my mining area.  i got the bonus of free heat from the miner by doing this.  I compared a room a little smaller on heat temp against my room with the miner.  It had raised the heat in my room around 8 degree F(possibly a tad more).

So it does have good potential for someone wanting to use it to heat up a room with it's free heat.  At a later date I hope to have my room with it off then after on, to get a even more accurate testing of the effect on a rooms temperature.   



Sound:  Below is  video that records sound of miner from 6 feet, 3 feet, then against the front of the miner intself.   Keep in mind this is with fan speed on default of 20 percent. Click the YouTube picture below to see the video.



Running at different frequencies:  Below shows my results of running the miner at multiple frequencies.  Keep in mind it is not exact with using kill-a-watt watts go up and down a little, and speed has a little variation.  But below is a very good general idea of speed at different frequencies.

I'm looking foward to yours aswell.  So far it is a very good miner I was impressed with install how quick it went really.

I think there is a lot of possibilities for PSU's with variable voltage.  And also Chip Maximum Frequency which has a range of 100-500, so far using the default 500 to test and get a baseline.  

Nice review Notlist3d. What are the sound levels like? Please post a video of it hashing, would be really nice. 

I've got it in my room tonight.  It has a little noise to it but considering how warm my room is right now I'm pretty happy with it considering they are thinking snow tonight were I live.  

I left the to add to part as there is some things I would like to get to such as noise.   But I want to see if I can get a accurate DB level with apps and such.   And a video is not out of question.  Just will be another day.   I am currently running default on fan which is 20 percent.  I wanted to get a baseline before I adjust it up or down.

But I did not forget it just wanting to give a more accurate anwser then I currently have.   I also would like to look up the room dimension's it's in and tell how much free heat I got from it so that is on the things to do aswell.

I did test that image out it was set to static 192.168.0.100 on it's IP.  So if you have a 192.168.0.X IP's on your network it will work great.   If not you have to hook up to it and switch it.  (If anyone needs a guide for that look at part 3 on my Avalon 4.1 review - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1008726.0 )

The image I posted is from BlockC and is set in DHCP.  So you can just log into it set static like i did in a minute or so.  I'm hoping it will save people a little bit of time.

I'm thinking the exact same, liking this more I look at it.

And thanks guys for putting this up.

yeah I am excited to get my 2 on tues.

I am thinking I can run at 10-11 volts  and freq 350  vs    11.8- 12.2 volts at freq 500  

 that would  make this better then the s-7

I want to get under .2  even .198 or .199 would be huge.

It would allow for low fans and low noise making the gear true home miner.

 see the 63.6 below too high for in a bedroom.  with a lot of soundproofing I got the s-7's down into the mid 50's

I have a quality sound meter waiting to see if the avalon's will do high 40's with no sound proofing just some undervolt-downclock

These thing look sweet i hope to have one in a week or two i like having a stand along controller a lot more then a built in one .

So true, I know I have 3 or 4 Pi's sitting around.