Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[texaslabrat]

Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.

And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure).  Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples

Even in the "launch video" you have footage of the kill-a-watt pulling ~850W at the wall at (I assume) 240V with (I assume) 8 VRMs per board.

Not insinuating anything malicious here..just saying that what was put out there ended up being inadequate given the issues that cropped up with some of the 850 PSU's (HX850 that you had so much fun with, for instance).

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[Bitcoinorama]

i'm sorry to correct you, but the initial firmware(0.90) was 890-910W

Exactly, which meant that 850W PSU's were put into an over-spec situation, and some of them handled it badly (eg the Corsair psu's that came back from the safety-shutdown mode and popped capacitors on the hashing boards).  Firmware all the way to .94 was pulling 900+ at the wall.

So in answer to CYPER's question...hell yes, it was a bad recommendation.  I'm glad I got a 1000W which accounted for KnC's screw-up in power estimation.  Granted, later firmware has rendered the issue moot..but for the initial release it was a swing-and-a-miss by KnC on that 850W recommendation for sure.

No. There's several hundred of the V850s running in the data centre. I have 3 on my desk, and have at some point used firmwares for, and not for public release. None of those PSUs haven't had anything thrown at them so far, they cannot handle. The 1000w I mentioned was for something entirely different to the Jupiters sold.

[texaslabrat]

i'm sorry to correct you, but the initial firmware(0.90) was 890-910W

Exactly, which meant that 850W PSU's were put into an over-spec situation, and some of them handled it badly (eg the Corsair psu's that came back from the safety-shutdown mode and popped capacitors on the hashing boards).  Firmware all the way to .94 was pulling 900+ at the wall.

So in answer to CYPER's question...hell yes, it was a bad recommendation.  I'm glad I got a 1000W which accounted for KnC's screw-up in power estimation.  Granted, later firmware has rendered the issue moot..but for the initial release it was a swing-and-a-miss by KnC on that 850W recommendation for sure.

No. There's several hundred of the V850s running in the data centre. I have 3 on my desk, and have at some point used firmwares for, and not for public release. None of those PSUs haven't had anything thrown at them so far, they cannot handle. The 1000w I mentioned was for something entirely different to the Jupiters sold.

I've never said that the V850's had problems..I am specifically referring to the corsair HX850's which were the center of the "exploding capacitor" investigation.  By leaving the recommendation so open (generic "850W" recommendation) without actually testing, many customers were set up for failure in the early days of delivery as you well know.  Thankfully, less power-hungry firmware was released later which fixed the issue.

[Biffa]

Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.

And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure).  Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples

So basically all you can say is that a few machines that you know of pulled high watts, you don't know how many right?

I'd guess that, relative to the entire Day1/Day2/October production run its probably just a few isolated units caused by manufacturing and/or production tolerances.

I don't know for sure, thats why I am saying "I guess" but at least I'm not making out like it was a huge problem for everyone. Plus it was like Day 1 units, almost prototypes in a way, cutting-edge-get-it-before-anyone type stuff.

Surely the discussion is about now, people coming into the thread recently to find out what they need for the next batch.

[Bitcoinorama]

Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.

And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure).  Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples

No, you are wrong. It was a standard unit I made when at the manufacturing facility. By that point I had not seen my hotel for a week, and certainly no one had had anytime or were confident enough to tweak a unit. Literally decided on going. Booked a flight at 11pm, the night before, for an 11am take-off. Then searched for a hotel, made a device, drove several hours back to Stockholm, washed, packed and made my way to the airport. Thing is no way was a clocked machine risked that early. We had only seen the chips 5 days earlier and just had to have something that worked. Why if something performed well, would it not be given to customers. Austin and Beccy Craig from Life on Bitcoin have had it in their possession since that Atlanta conference. Can we please stop this 8/4 VRM nonsense. The additional 4 vrms were surplus to reaching spec. They were in place in the beginning in case they were needed to achieve the spec. They weren't so they aren't.

[texaslabrat]

Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.

And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure).  Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples

So basically all you can say is that a few machines that you know of pulled high watts, you don't know how many right?

I'd guess that, relative to the entire Day1/Day2/October production run its probably just a few isolated units caused by manufacturing and/or production tolerances.

I don't know for sure, thats why I am saying "I guess" but at least I'm not making out like it was a huge problem for everyone. Plus it was like Day 1 units, almost prototypes in a way, cutting-edge-get-it-before-anyone type stuff.

Surely the discussion is about now, people coming into the thread recently to find out what they need for the next batch.

I'm saying that all of the Day1/Day2 machines that were delivered with pre-.95 firmware pulled very high wattage..and in some cases that translated to hardware failures when coupled with PSU's like the Corsair HX850 that contributed to exploding capacitors.  Actually testing specific PSU's and making specific recommendations based on known-working models would have been better instead of leaving it to chance for customers to figure it out on their own.  I, myself, bought the same model as KnC's hosting but gave myself some extra margin with higher wattage rating so my machine was never running over-spec of the PSU at any time on any firmware (the VRMs themselves, well, that's another story).

[texaslabrat]

Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.

And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure).  Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples

No, you are wrong. It was a standard unit I made when at the manufacturing facility. By that point I had not seen my hotel for a week, and certainly no one had had anytime or were confident enough to tweak a unit. Literally decided on going. Booked a flight at 11pm, the night before, for an 11am take-off. Then searched for a hotel, made a device, drove several hours back to Stockholm, washed, packed and made my way to the airport. Thing is no way was a clocked machine risked that early. We had only seen the chips 5 days earlier and just had to have something that worked. Why if something performed well, would it not be given to customers. Austin and Beccy Craig from Life on Bitcoin have had it in their possession since that Atlanta conference. Can we please stop this 8/4 VRM nonsense. The additional 4 vrms were surplus to reaching spec. They were in place in the beginning in case they were needed to achieve the spec. They weren't so they aren't.

Well that is surprising given the results that later cropped up with overcurrent PSU's and exploding capacitors..do you have a link to those kill-a-watt photos from Atlanta?  I don't remember the values you saw there versus what was in the youtube video in Sweden.  And just to clarify..when I said "tweaked" I meant subsequent production machines, not the one you took to Atlanta.  In other words, my assumption was that the initial "beta" firmware or whatever you had then was running at say .8V and then when you guys decided on the production values for the boxes that were going to start shipping it was bumped to .9V for the added stability/speed benefits that brings.  I wasn't suggesting that you custom-tuned the Atlanta box.  But however it worked out in the order of events...there were definitely some growing pains in relation to power at the PSU and the power through the VRMs that had to be ironed out, as I know you are extremely familiar with

As for the 8/4 thing...well, you keep saying it didn't matter when the facts showed that it did.  There was a material difference in how those things ran before/after the change which had to be accounted for in new firmware.  Again, I don't think it was some malicious conspiracy or anything..but I do think it was a reckless change that was done without adequate testing which caused issues that had to be addressed further down the road.

[Phoenix1969]

My machines were no "Bed of roses" either, but you won't hear me complain...
I got them running just fine.
You could always decide to wait until they are perfected before you buy...
I, on the other hand, am glad to be a Beta-tester, Guinea pig; and fully
understand that there will be problems that arise in such a "rush to market"
circumstance....  IMHO, anyone with half a brain should realize that.
People in here seem to just "pick apart" every little thing that's not just perfect....
IMHO the PSU Corsair model HX850 is a substandard one. They offer other models that work fine.
I personally always buy bigger anyway.

BTW... They recommended 80+ Gold, not "Generic"
 

[texaslabrat]

My machines were no "Bed of roses" either, but you won't hear me complain...
I got them running just fine.
You could always decide to wait until they are perfected before you buy...
I, on the other hand, am glad to be a Beta-tester, Guinea pig; and fully
understand that there will be problems that arise in such a "rush to market"
circumstance....  IMHO, anyone with half a brain should realize that.

Yeah good points..though I will counter by saying it depends on what sort of issues one runs into as said beta tester.  When you've had the luck that you and I have had with the machines (working as expected after extensive tinkering/testing/praying to the BTC gods for the perfect firmware to arrive) then it's easy to dismiss the problems as mostly trivial and surmountable.  But, when you have had issues that have required physical RMA's to resolve due to aforementioned exploding capacitors,  etc...well, I'm not sure even you would be quite so chipper about it given the time-is-money aspect of mining

I count myself very fortunate to have a machine that is working very close to intended specs (finally) that hopefully will fully break-even before the New Year...perhaps sooner if the current rise in BTC prices becomes the new normal.  However, I think it's also important to take KnC to task on issues that they should learn from in the future.

Anyway...just so I'm not misunderstood....to all new prospective buyers of KnC gear:  I can give a recommendation to the company as a whole and the gear has functioned as advertised (eventually).  There is a lot of lessons that I *hope* they learned from this first go-round which will make future offerings that much better...though with the marked lack of direct communication from them it's hard to tell if that is the case so I guess just put down your money and hope for the best  Good luck!

Edit re: your edit

Yep, and the HX850's fall into that category yet were implicated as the cause of the catastrophic failures.  It was a generic recommendation without specific brands/models mentioned...so to me that's a generic recommendation which led some customers to have issues that could have been avoided with a different PSU.
http://www.corsair.com/en/media/cms/manual/corsair-psu-spec-table-091813.pdf

Further, pointing to the FAQ as it now exists is a bit revisionist.  Let's see what they told us "way back then", shall we?
https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-31

Power Supply Recommendation.

With our shipment date approaching this update addresses the power demands of our mining devices.

We realise we are currently being compared to our competitors with respect to power consumption and would like to clarify our position.

Today we can reveal that our maximal power consumption will be below 1.6 W/GH/s.

We understand the need for some of our more remote customers to be able to secure a purchase of a power supply (PSU) within the given timeframe.

So today we can reveal the following recommendations;

We recommend an 850 Watt PSU with a minimum of 4x PCI-E adaptors for our Jupiter model.

We recommend a 600 Watt PSU with a minimum of 2x PCI-E adaptors for our Saturn model.

We recommend a 400 Watt PSU with a minimum of a PCI-E adaptor for our Mercury model.

This recommended power wattage figure is calculated upon our max. power consumption of total device including all of its components.

We aim to ensure you use a power supply unit capable of outputting in excess of the current recommended wattage to prevent any problems caused due to insufficient power.

Note: Powers supplies must contain a sufficient number of PCI-E adaptors for each respective unit.

 

Thanks

 

KnCMiner Team

Seems REALLY generic...but maybe it's just me :p

[ElGabo]

Hey O'rama!

They should make a firmware which doesn't care about watts and other bitching.....

Just run as fast as possible (maybe if it needs proper cooling). I think lots of us can do proper cooling and don't care this time about watts, just the hash power.

And yes, apply this FW for your own risk....

Just an idea....

[Phoenix1969]

Hey O'rama!

They should make a firmware which doesn't care about watts and other bitching.....

Just run as fast as possible (maybe if it needs proper cooling). I think lots of us can do proper cooling and don't care this time about watts, just the hash power.

And yes, apply this FW for your own risk....

Just an idea....

A HUGE +1

[markm]

There is still no sign of a fix for the out of memory condition killing cgminer. I wouldn't be pleased to have a nice shiny new november order Jupiter dying periodically for such a simple well known reason, losing hours sitting there waiting for me to wake up and notice because they neglected to include a watchdog to keep the thing running and/or neglected to ensure their software fit into the amount of RAM they saw fit to build into the unit...

-MarkM-

[Phoenix1969]

Right on TexasBrat... I hear where you are comin' from...
learning curve...  

To all...
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Single 12v Rail  PSU's Only.
As an example, I powered Two hashing boards alone
on a CB700 watt ATX-PSU that over-heated in less than 5 minutes!
Totally fried, non functional.
**The unit was/is equipped with three separate 12v rails.
The online spec sheet said 150 watt max per pci plug, I never knew it.
A single 12v rail is much safer, no matter what the rating.
This was my Friend's PSU out of his computer which I "Borrowed", without asking...
while he's on vacation!...  oops! I did call him and tell him about it, although I have one being delivered tomorrow, and should be all fixed before he returns...lol

[Phoenix1969]

There is still no sign of a fix for the out of memory condition killing cgminer. I wouldn't be pleased to have a nice shiny new november order Jupiter dying periodically for such a simple well known reason, losing hours sitting there waiting for me to wake up and notice because they neglected to include a watchdog to keep the thing running and/or neglected to ensure their software fit into the amount of RAM they saw fit to build into the unit...

-MarkM-

I believe the issue there is/was while using Bertmod, the ram is otherwise sufficient.
It has 512MB of DDR3
You have something else going on?

[Crypto_Cumbrian]

Right on TexasBrat... I hear where you are comin' from...
learning curve...  

To all...
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Single 12v Rail  PSU's Only.
As an example, I powered Two hashing boards alone
on a CB700 watt ATX-PSU that over-heated in less than 5 minutes!
Totally fried, non functional.
**The unit was/is equipped with three separate 12v rails.
The online spec sheet said 150 watt max per pci plug, I never knew it.
A single 12v rail is much safer, no matter what the rating.
This was my Friend's PSU out of his computer which I "Borrowed", without asking...
while he's on vacation!...  oops! I did call him and tell him about it, although I have one being delivered tomorrow, and should be all fixed before he returns...lol

I agree, not all PSU are created equal.

I have a 850W AKASA Cobra 82% Efficient (so it says on the box) Single 12V Rail.

I am pulling 748W from the Wall for my Jupiter (0.98.1)

[smooth]

This is where the "aim for 50% load" rule of thumb came from and while it was good advice at one time, its day has past.

Yes I agree 50% might be extreme, but aiming for lower load rather than higher is still advantageous.

Take another look at that chart in the review above. Dropping from 80% to 60% the fan speed goes from 1500 to 800 rpm. That's a big difference in noise, fan wear, and vulnerability to PSU overheating.

The power savings from using platinum-rated PSUs and 240V is incremental on top of loading issues.

Don't spend unlimited money on this but err on the side of bigger.

[markm]

There is still no sign of a fix for the out of memory condition killing cgminer. I wouldn't be pleased to have a nice shiny new november order Jupiter dying periodically for such a simple well known reason, losing hours sitting there waiting for me to wake up and notice because they neglected to include a watchdog to keep the thing running and/or neglected to ensure their software fit into the amount of RAM they saw fit to build into the unit...

-MarkM-

I believe the issue there is/was while using Bertmod, the ram is otherwise sufficient.
It has 512MB of DDR3
You have something else going on?

I have never used bertmod.

I have a stock Saturn running stock firmwares, currently 0.98 I think.

I do not know for sure but it seems possible that the problem might not have started until they put a real cgminer from ckolivas instead of their own version.

I do not know though, I just vaguely have impression that at first it went many days but lately I am lucky to get a day or two out of it without it dying, and sometimes it dies within hours of a restart.

-MarkM-

[Biffa]

Umm, that's cool, but I can assure you not that's clearly not he case on all units. I have pictures of the one I took to Atlanta using a Kill-A-Watt, and there were enough witnesses that were present, including members of this forum (Bargraphics, Phin Gage), and representatives from competing companies that saw this for their own eyes. Also there's plenty in this thread amongst the first recipients to verify otherwise.

And I'd be willing to bet a few satoshi's that the unit you took to Atlanta did not have the same firmware as those units that were subsequently shipped out to Day 1 customers onwards...and that the voltage was tweaked upwards in the interim thus increasing the power requirements (in the name of increasing performance/stability, I'm sure).  Couple the fact that the actual physical design of the product was changed quite substantially (8 VRMs to 4 VRMs) and it's not exactly apples-to-apples

So basically all you can say is that a few machines that you know of pulled high watts, you don't know how many right?

I'd guess that, relative to the entire Day1/Day2/October production run its probably just a few isolated units caused by manufacturing and/or production tolerances.

I don't know for sure, thats why I am saying "I guess" but at least I'm not making out like it was a huge problem for everyone. Plus it was like Day 1 units, almost prototypes in a way, cutting-edge-get-it-before-anyone type stuff.

Surely the discussion is about now, people coming into the thread recently to find out what they need for the next batch.

I'm saying that all of the Day1/Day2 machines that were delivered with pre-.95 firmware pulled very high wattage..and in some cases that translated to hardware failures when coupled with PSU's like the Corsair HX850 that contributed to exploding capacitors.  Actually testing specific PSU's and making specific recommendations based on known-working models would have been better instead of leaving it to chance for customers to figure it out on their own.  I, myself, bought the same model as KnC's hosting but gave myself some extra margin with higher wattage rating so my machine was never running over-spec of the PSU at any time on any firmware (the VRMs themselves, well, that's another story).

I don't know how you think you can say that ALL of them had the same issue, especially with the variation in ability of the devices. e.g. My Jupiter is happiest running 0.96 with any variation of cgminer however its not happy running any firmware above that. I don't know why, I think its to do with it not liking what the newer firmware does to the voltage to try and stabilize machines with flakey cores.

But I firmly believe that my machine is probably in the minority, just as I believe that the ones you are talking about are a drop in the ocean compared to the number of non-problematic machines they have shifted that we just never hear about.

[Biffa]

There is still no sign of a fix for the out of memory condition killing cgminer. I wouldn't be pleased to have a nice shiny new november order Jupiter dying periodically for such a simple well known reason, losing hours sitting there waiting for me to wake up and notice because they neglected to include a watchdog to keep the thing running and/or neglected to ensure their software fit into the amount of RAM they saw fit to build into the unit...

-MarkM-

I believe the issue there is/was while using Bertmod, the ram is otherwise sufficient.
It has 512MB of DDR3
You have something else going on?

I agree with Mark there is a memory leak somewhere, on some machines at least.

I've had the best luck with running cgminer 3.7.2 manually after killing the one that comes with the knc firmware, but even then after 3 days free memory has dropped 100MB, from 250MB down to 150MB free, I haven't had it drop so low that it stops mining like Mark has, but I've seen it drop down to the 12MB free mark before I rebooted.

[Templer]

Hey O'rama!

They should make a firmware which doesn't care about watts and other bitching.....

Just run as fast as possible (maybe if it needs proper cooling). I think lots of us can do proper cooling and don't care this time about watts, just the hash power.

And yes, apply this FW for your own risk....

Just an idea....

A HUGE +1

+1