My Impression of Avalon Machine (cooling info updated)

[techwtf]

I'm a first batch Avalon buyer in China, purchased via taobao / alipay (& paid RMB).
Avalon sent the machine on Feb 18 & I got my first machine (*: my order is 3 machines) on Feb 20 and it hashes well on HHTT.
The first buyer in China got his machine afternoon or evening on Feb 18 (+0800) I think. Mine delayed for 2 days.


Currently (Feb 22) even someone in China get their Avalon (5 is confirmed including mine, no more than 10) in their hands, they each has only ONE machine delivered no matter how many are ordered. Avalon planned to ship the remaining at the end of Feb.

Have not heard any new confirmed shipped machine in China as Feb 25, so the previous paragraph has NOT been invalidated.


Now I have all the 3 machines ...

Here is some unordered summaries & notices that may help you prepare.
You may ask other related questions & I'll try hard to answer.

Tips will be appreciated: 1HFhtvzNEiy9eooLSJRMyZ1XB2FXgYGvCH

You may want to see xiangfu's config guide as well:
http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Avalon

And ngzhang's advices:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137534.msg1604081#msg1604081

About the system (openwrt):
1 the embedded wr703n is MEM modded.
original 703n is 32M mem, it has been modded to 64M. but no flash mod. flash size is 4M, the same as original.
those who would like to have ipv6 may become disappointed. may have to use another machine & connect via USB.
(if you prepare to do so, longer USB A-to-B type cable or USB extension cable & teardown is required, see Update 2 blow)

Update: in the first sample machine, the cable is short & it would be nice if you have a replacement.
make sure the connector is fastened, "no_matching_work" in cgminer "stats" api should be always 0.
the newly sent machines have much better cable & protection, should be ok.

Update2: ngzhang says "it will not work if there is no hub between the 703N and controller board"

2 the miner is cgminer 2.10.5, should be the same as the git tree. it should have no memory leak bug (for stratum).
Update: please update to a newer firmware from http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/xiangfu/avalon/

3 fan control is a little buggy, should be fixed by xiangfu soon (already in tree).
Update: upgrade firmware should fix.

4 the jffs2 partition is so small (320k) & can only hold config files.
that means cant upgrade cgminer via jffs2 unless done firmware repackaging. cgminer is installed in squashfs.

5 default IP is 192.168.0.100/24, gateway 192.168.0.1 (you may have known)

6 there is some monitoring logic in cron, but it does NOT prevent the machine to get wonky (jgrazik & me both have experienced, crying~~).
Here is a snippet might be useful.
(default port is 4028. I'm not responsible for any loss if the snippet doesnt work as expected. you should know a little bash scripting)

IP=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
PORT=4028
RESTART_MONITOR="(echo -n 'devs' | nc ${IP} ${PORT} | grep 'MHS 5s=0.0') && (echo -n 'restart' | nc ${IP} ${PORT})"
echo $RESTART_MONITOR
while true; do date; sleep 10; sh -c "$RESTART_MONITOR"; done

7 version: openwrt rev r35097, flash chip info (should be the same as newer rev wr703n/wr720n):
[    0.480000] m25p80 spi0.0: found en25q32b, expected m25p80
[    0.480000] m25p80 spi0.0: en25q32b (4096 Kbytes)

About the packaging & machine:
1 package include a power cable, an wifi antenna (SMA connector, gain is 5dBi I think) and the machine it self.

2 no instruction included (hopefully yours may include one).

3 to teardown the box, use Hex Key Wrench of size M4.0. your fingers may get hurt, put on gloves first.

4 the USB cable may get dropped from the board during shipping, make sure there is a blue light on the 703n board when powered on, or you will be in trouble...

5 there is an 4 port USB hub included, unopened 3M double-sided tape pasted on the back of the hub.

6 the PSU is Antec EA-650 Green (80P Bronze, not the Platinum one)

7 There is a power board(?) power distribution board inside, on the board there are 2 * 6pin PCI-E power connectors remaining.
so if you want to replace a better PSU, make sure it have 2 more 6pin pci-e connectors MORE THAN EA-650.

I made a mistake!

the PDU board layout by ngzhang:

10pin (out to control board)
24pin (ATX input)
12pin | 12pin | 12pin | 12pin (out, each to power one module, one empty for expansion. it really looks like dual 6pin pci-e)
8pin | 8pin | 4pin | 4pin (in, 8pin ones are pci-e 8pin, 4pin ones are cpu 4pin)

so any PSU with 24pin ATX + 2 * 8pin pci-e + 2 * 4pin CPU would be ok.
if your PSU have 3 or more ways of 12V output, you may want to consider how to merge them.
I guess 650w should be ok for 4 modules?

8 the control board
10pin power input from PDU board
one B-type USB socket (provides power to USB hub reversely, then 703n get powered), so it is appeared as USB serial device.
4 * IDE-like sockets (for the data to each module, one empty for expansion)
3 * small 3pin temp sensor socket (1 empty, not sure what type of temp sensor. one at the smaller 3pin fan for air temp, one installed in the front, on the heat sink of 3rd / hottest module for module temp)
5 * 4pin PWM fan headers (the same size of cpu/chassis fans on motherboards. 2 fans are 4pin, 1 fan is 3pin, 2 headers empty, so you are able to install 2 fans at front. make sure the wire should be long)

Note: the speed of the two 4pin fans are controlled by the controller (cgminer driver call adjust_fan/temp), it is unknown that the exact relation between the command and RPM of EACH fan.

9 there is no thermal grease between the bottom of the heat sink (of the modules) and the upside of bottom aluminium board (& it is a little hot).
you may wish to mod them and do some work outside the machine to cool down the downside of bottom board.

10 lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 008: ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0         8
  idVendor           0x0403 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd
  idProduct          0x6001 FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC
  bcdDevice            6.00
  iManufacturer           1
  iProduct                2
  iSerial                 3
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           32
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0xa0
      (Bus Powered)
      Remote Wakeup
    MaxPower               90mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           2
      bInterfaceClass       255 Vendor Specific Class
      bInterfaceSubClass    255 Vendor Specific Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol    255 Vendor Specific Protocol
      iInterface              2
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0

11 the two main fans (for modules) are "4715KL-04W-B56"

About running:
1 you may wish to move all the 3 modules to the left, can lower the temperature about 3 degree.
aware: this may increase the difficulty of installing the 4th module (if released in the future).

Update: 1 on the left & 2 on the right would be a better choice.

2 64300-64500 MHash/s measured by submitted work units, 67000 MHash/s displayed by default.

3 HW Error about 0.55% ~ 0.65% @ 282. ~0.75% @ overclocking to 300. hashrate increase by 5% if overclocked.
I recommend not touch the last 45 in the options.

when do overclocking, there are some duplicated shares appeared, not sure it is cgminer or HW's fault.
the overclocking may have reduced the total efficiency, so I guess we should use something between 282~300.

4 please DO preconfigure the diff of ALL the pools (including the backup ones), var diff may slow down the machine at first until the diff is adjusted.

5 fans must remain 2000+ RPM to keep the heat out.
with optimized fan control, fan2 is 2640, fan3 is 2280 while temp is 46 deg (incoming air is 28 deg measured by temp1, outsite temp is 23 deg).
the noise level is comparable to a multi GPU cluster with 60-70% fan. I dont have a measure device to get the exact number.
(I tried to use some apps, 54dB for 1 meter away, details see the reply #38)

currently there's a bug in fan controlling (if not fixed),
but if that bug is not fixed, the full power of fans may help to cool down the machine & make the uptime a little longer.

so the conclusion is:
IF YOU WANT TO DO MOD, GO AHEAD & IT WILL INCREASE STABILITY!

personally I would guess there will be more problems if the machines are stacked.

6 I dont think a tutorial is required if you use the web interface. if you have openwrt experiences...
just make sure you have a machine in the same subnet (192.168.0.0/24) and have a different IP, type in the default IP...
(I dont want to type the full steps, sorry... the only thing worth mentioning is, you can put http:// or stratum+tcp:// in the pool URL / address field.)

if you use telnet (first time to openwrt) / ssh (after set the root password), use vi / cat / sed to write or modify your config files.
please refer to openwrt docs to config /etc/config/network, and see the github repo below to modify /etc/config/cgminer.

you may get these file samples on https://github.com/BitSyncom/cgminer-openwrt-packages , as that is a source repo, so filename may different.

7 monitoring
monitoring is achieved via cgminer's api. https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/API-README

there is a command-line utility called cgminer-api stayed inside the openwrt system, it would parse the result into a more human readable format. use nc (netcat) is also ok by echo -n "command" | nc IP PORT.
if you like to try cgminer-api, just compile the api-example.c in cgminer and rename XD
just type cgminer-api in telnet / ssh it should display "summary".

the command syntax is:
cgminer-api [command [IP [PORT]]]

temp in included in "devs" query (only temp3 as the "Temperature" field) and "stats" query has more including temp1~3 & fan1~3.

8 monitoring again...
fan1 is alway 0 (no connect, add a 4pin PWM fan to trigger), fan2 / fan3 should >= 2000.
temp2 is always -1 (no connect, unknown sensor type if want a replacement), temp1 is income air temp (or machine temp?), temp3 is module temp (should be 40+ after working for a while)

it would be strange if fan2 & fan3 are 0, MHS 5s from devs is 0.0, it may require hard power off & (maybe) wait several sec for the back light to be off, then power on again.

Note: I may update the main thread for updates.

[Bowjob]

Thank you for your review.

[loshia]

3 HW Error about 0.55% ~ 0.65% @ 282. ~0.75% @ overclocking to 300. hashrate increase by 5% if overclocked.

Dude,
The review is just great!

Please, can you confirm what options are you using for overclocking

--avalon-options 115200:24:10:45:300? Particularity i am interested in time-out value --avalon-options 115200:24:10:40-45??:300. Have you tried with something smaller than 45 (default)

Best

[techwtf]

3 HW Error about 0.55% ~ 0.65% @ 282. ~0.75% @ overclocking to 300. hashrate increase by 5% if overclocked.

Dude,
The review is just great!

Please, can you confirm what options are you using for overclocking

--avalon-options 115200:24:10:45:300? Particularity i am interested in time-out value --avalon-options 115200:24:10:40-45??:300. Have you tried with something smaller than 45 (default)

Best

I'll try 42:300 soon.

[cedivad]

I'm really happy of this, let's hope that they find a way to make the process smoother and respect the deadlines.

[loshia]

3 HW Error about 0.55% ~ 0.65% @ 282. ~0.75% @ overclocking to 300. hashrate increase by 5% if overclocked.

Dude,
The review is just great!

Please, can you confirm what options are you using for overclocking

--avalon-options 115200:24:10:45:300? Particularity i am interested in time-out value --avalon-options 115200:24:10:40-45??:300. Have you tried with something smaller than 45 (default)

Best

I'll try 42:300 soon.

Great!
I am very curious if that will increase the hash rate a little bit more:)

Best

[iCEBREAKER]

Overclocked Avalon?

Magnificent.

Water cool that suxor!

[techwtf]

3 HW Error about 0.55% ~ 0.65% @ 282. ~0.75% @ overclocking to 300. hashrate increase by 5% if overclocked.

Dude,
The review is just great!

Please, can you confirm what options are you using for overclocking

--avalon-options 115200:24:10:45:300? Particularity i am interested in time-out value --avalon-options 115200:24:10:40-45??:300. Have you tried with something smaller than 45 (default)

Best

I'll try 42:300 soon.

Great!
I am very curious if that will increase the hash rate a little bit more:)

Best

Sorry, no increasing. may have hurt normal shares & rolled back. seems not touching that number yield better results. I think 43-44 do not worth testing because the change should be minimal.

[goxed]

Nice synopsis OP. Thanks!
Glad that Avalons are already being delivered! This is an excellent sign. Just hoping customers outside China would also be shown some love.

[loshia]

Overclocked Avalon?

Magnificent.

Water cool that suxor!

Mineral Oil - Transformer oil in my case to safe some bugs:)
ate least that is what i am going to do if i need to. As long as capacitors are on top of the PCB precisely one can sunk avalon board and leave the capacitors dry - that will be best solution from my point of view:)  Oh yeah and when pcb is oil cooled stock heat sinks will be removed (or sealed) for sure to avoid air pockets:)

[loshia]

Sorry, no increasing. may have hurt normal shares & rolled back. seems not touching that number yield better results. I think 43-44 do not worth testing because the change should be minimal.

Thanks!

One final question. I know that your shipment was a domestic one. were there any invoice or documents with your order?  If there were I am particularity interested what was written inside - especially how  avalon unit was named? Something like PC, PC parts or whatever?

[kaerf]

thanks for the review. useful info. glad to hear people are actually getting their units now.

[techwtf]

Sorry, no increasing. may have hurt normal shares & rolled back. seems not touching that number yield better results. I think 43-44 do not worth testing because the change should be minimal.

Thanks!

One final question. I know that your shipment was a domestic one. were there any invoice or documents with your order?  If there were am particularity interested what was written inside - especially how  avalon unit was named? Something like PC. PC parts or whatever?

There was taobao transaction history but the item is now pulled off (not for sale long ago) by ngzhang. there is only a snapshot that I can get. payment is done via alipay.
on Chinese bitcoin related forums, it is called "阿瓦隆矿机" (Avalon Miner) or "南瓜矿机" (literally pumpkin miner, pumpkin is nan2gua1 in pinyin, which is first 2 character of ngzhang's nickname)

--- (checking the box)

Ah~~~~!!! I found it!
"控制箱" (control box) on the delivery receipt! the outer box is a typical unprinted big one, no printed pic/text.

I guess ngzhang would come up with many names to let your package pass

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I'm a first batch Avalon buyer in China, purchased RMB via taobao / alipay.
Avalon sent the machine on Feb 18 & I got my first machine (*: my order is 3 machines) on Feb 20 and it hashes well on HHTT.
The first buyer in China got his machine afternoon or evening on Feb 18 (+0800) I think. Mine delayed for 2 days.

Currently even someone in China get their Avalon (5 is confirmed including mine, no more than 10) in their hands, they each has only ONE machine delivered no matter how many are ordered. Avalon planned to ship the remaining at the end of Feb.

Here is some unordered summaries & notices that may help you prepare.
You may ask other related questions & I'll try hard to answer.

Tip will be appreciated: 1HFhtvzNEiy9eooLSJRMyZ1XB2FXgYGvCH

About the system:
1 the embedded wr703n is MEM modded.
original 703n is 32M mem, it has been modded to 64M. but no flash mod. flash size is 4M, the same as original.
those who would like to have ipv6 may become disappointed. may have to use another machine & connect via USB.
(if you prepare to do so, longer USB A-to-B type cable & teardown is required)

2 the miner is cgminer 2.10.5, should be the same as the git tree. it should have no memory leak bug (for stratum).

3 fan control is a little buggy, should be fixed by xiangfu soon (already in tree).

4 the jffs2 partition is so small (320k) & can only hold config files.
that means cant upgrade cgminer via jffs2 unless done firmware repackaging. cgminer is installed in squashfs.

5 default IP is 192.168.0.100/24, gateway 192.168.0.1 (you may have known)

About the packaging & machine:
1 package include a power cable, an wifi antenna (SMA connector, gain is 5dBi I think) and the machine it self.

2 no instruction included (hopefully yours may include one).

3 to teardown the box, use Hex Key of size M4.0. your fingers may get hurt, put on gloves first.

4 the USB cable may get dropped from the board during shipping, make sure there is a blue light on the 703n board when powered on, or you will be in trouble...

5 there is an USB hub included, unopened 3M double-sided tape pasted on the back of the hub.

6 the PSU is Antec EA-650 Green (80P Bronze, not the Platinum one)

About running:
1 you may wish to move all the 3 modules to the left, can lower the temperature about 3 degree.
aware: this may increase the difficulty of installing the 4th module (if released in the future).

2 64300-64500 MHash/s measured by work units, 67000 MHash/s displayed by default.

3 HW Error about 0.55% ~ 0.65% @ 282. ~0.75% @ overclocking to 300. hashrate increase by 5% if overclocked.
I recommend not touch the last 45 in the options.

when do overclocking, there are some duplicated shares appeared, not sure it is cgminer or HW's fault.

4 please DO preconfigure the diff of ALL the pools (including the backup ones), var diff may slow down the machine at first until the diff is adjusted.

5 fans must remain 2000 RPM/min to keep the heat out.
with optimized fan control, fan2 is 2640, fan3 is 2280 while temp is 46 deg (incoming air is 28 deg measured by temp1).
the noise level is comparable to a multi GPU cluster with 60-70% fan. I dont have a measure device to get the exact number.

6 there is no thermal grease between the bottom of the heat sink (of the modules) and the upside of bottom aluminium board (& it is a little hot).
you may wish to mod them and do some work outside the machine to cool down the downside of bottom board.

Note: I may update the main thread for updates.

Quoted from above:

Currently even someone in China get their Avalon (5 is confirmed including mine, no more than 10) in their hands, they each has only ONE machine delivered no matter how many are ordered.

Doesn't that negate the following?: (in yellow)

................ and everything will be clear then.

This includes also, that the other customers will know when they get their units?
Currently you would have sent about 108 units!

Ah actually, this is probably something I should update, the original plan is to assemble one and send one, of course this isn't working out, we currently have sent a batch of 53 to a different route, as it currently stands, this 53 has the biggest chance to make it out of the country, then we can attempt again if the news make it back to us before Feb 2. which is the deadline for getting things out of the country before CNY.

Honestly, this is probably something we underestimated and I'd like to personally apologize for having similarity with BFL, it is so pathetic. Then again though, since we did originally promise to ship everything out before Feb ends I don't really see a problem with this.

As for new information, we are still dealing with the custom issues I've previously mentioned, but Jeff should receive his units within this week, and everything will be clear then.

You seriously believe that shipping one unit to one customer will make you earn 750k$ in preorders? During the weekend, maybe?

Dude,
It is up to us. He has nothing to believe in. We are the ones to decide if he will get 750K or zero. From what i see here the answer is yes he will sell 500 batch in 20 mins max if the site does not hang:) Let me refresh your memory first batch 300 units was sold for less than 20 minutes or so even though Avalon was about three mounts behind from shipping compared to BTCFPGA and BFL promises

Couldn't have said it better myself, I'm writing up the batch #2 pre-sale thread right now.

[loshia]

Sorry, no increasing. may have hurt normal shares & rolled back. seems not touching that number yield better results. I think 43-44 do not worth testing because the change should be minimal.

Thanks!

One final question. I know that your shipment was a domestic one. were there any invoice or documents with your order?  If there were am particularity interested what was written inside - especially how  avalon unit was named? Something like PC. PC parts or whatever?

There was taobao transaction history but the item is now pulled off (not for sale long ago) by ngzhang. there is only a snapshot that I can get. payment is done via alipay.
on Chinese bitcoin related forums, it is called "阿瓦隆矿机" (Avalon Miner) or "南瓜矿机" (literally pumpkin miner, pumpkin is nan2gua1 in pinyin, which is first 2 character of ngzhang's nickname)

--- (checking the box)

Ah~~~~!!! I found it!
"控制箱" (control box) on the delivery receipt! the outer box is a typical unprinted big one, no printed pic/text.

I guess ngzhang would come up with many names to let your package pass

I guess so:)
Thank You!
Best

[techwtf]

Quoted from above:

Currently even someone in China get their Avalon (5 is confirmed including mine, no more than 10) in their hands, they each has only ONE machine delivered no matter how many are ordered.

Doesn't that negate the following?: (in bold)

................ and everything will be clear then.

This includes also, that the other customers will know when they get their units?
Currently you would have sent about 108 units!

Ah actually, this is probably something I should update, the original plan is to assemble one and send one, of course this isn't working out, we currently have sent a batch of 53 to a different route, as it currently stands, this 53 has the biggest chance to make it out of the country, then we can attempt again if the news make it back to us before Feb 2. which is the deadline for getting things out of the country before CNY.

Honestly, this is probably something we underestimated and I'd like to personally apologize for having similarity with BFL, it is so pathetic. Then again though, since we did originally promise to ship everything out before Feb ends I don't really see a problem with this.

As for new information, we are still dealing with the custom issues I've previously mentioned, but Jeff should receive his units within this week, and everything will be clear then.

You seriously believe that shipping one unit to one customer will make you earn 750k$ in preorders? During the weekend, maybe?

Dude,
It is up to us. He has nothing to believe in. We are the ones to decide if he will get 750K or zero. From what i see here the answer is yes he will sell 500 batch in 20 mins max if the site does not hang:) Let me refresh your memory first batch 300 units was sold for less than 20 minutes or so even though Avalon was about three mounts behind from shipping compared to BTCFPGA and BFL promises

Couldn't have said it better myself, I'm writing up the batch #2 pre-sale thread right now.

Yes, in the Chinese forum someone argued this shipping speed have violated the original plan, he says ngzhang has said to have delivered before CNY. I'm not sure about how foreign orders are really going.

[thorvald]

grate review

10x

[loshia]

Hello ,
Can you check what dmseg is saying about flash size and post the results.

On my tp-link host used with Lancelots with 8Mb flash it says

dmesg
-------------------------------------
[    0.730000] ath79-spi ath79-spi: master is unqueued, this is deprecated
[    0.740000] m25p80 spi0.0: found s25fl064k, expected m25p80
[    0.740000] m25p80 spi0.0: s25fl064k (8192 Kbytes)

I am curious because i am planning to build own image with some more applications (php, openvpn, 3g support and so on) and i am not quite sure if 4M will be enough. I will disable wireless drivers/apps whch is going to give me some free space but...it might be not enough

10X

[repentance]

I guess ngzhang would come up with many names to let your package pass

I hope they don't do that on the customs documentation for Australia.  Computers and computer parts are declarable items here and a 33 lb package isn't exactly inconspicuous.

[techwtf]

Hello ,
Can you check what dmseg is saying about flash size and post the results.

On my tp-link host used with Lancelots with 8Mb flash it says

dmesg
-------------------------------------
[    0.730000] ath79-spi ath79-spi: master is unqueued, this is deprecated
[    0.740000] m25p80 spi0.0: found s25fl064k, expected m25p80
[    0.740000] m25p80 spi0.0: s25fl064k (8192 Kbytes)

I am curious because i am planning to build own image with some more applications (php, openvpn, 3g support and so on) and i am not quite sure if 4M will be enough. I will disable wireless drivers/apps whch is going to give me some free space but...it might be not enough

10X

openwrt rev r35097.
[    0.480000] m25p80 spi0.0: found en25q32b, expected m25p80
[    0.480000] m25p80 spi0.0: en25q32b (4096 Kbytes)

this kind of flash can be found in newer revision of wr703n / wr720n.

You may not success I think. including openvpn may eat a lot of space.
just for cgminer, if you can build a libcurl without openssl maybe there is chance. you should use a router instead.

remove the ppp support should free some space to allow updating cgminer to jffs2.