[CLOSED] - Stumptown Miners - Avalon PCB Assembly - West Coast USA

[BitCsByBit]

You need to order power supplies and fans.

The recommended fan is the SilenX EFX-10-12 Effizio: http://amzn.to/1bCQDfj
(Affiliate link: trying to cut down costs however possible.)

If you're getting a lot of K16s, you could probably just put them all in front of a big box fan and be alright. I'm toying with the idea of making a platform and setting them out in front of my air conditioner's fan. From what I've read on the Klondike thread, the chips are pretty easy to cool if you have a decent-sized heatsink on the board.

There isn't a single recommended PSU, but you'll want a gold or platinum certified PSU from a respected brand like Corsair. The K16s are powered by a 6-pin PCIe connector, so you'll need to have enough of those to power your Klondikes. You can also get splitters and adapters to increase the number of PCIe connectors your PSU can handle. I'm thinking about getting this one myself: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153145

I also have a bunch of Corsair Gold PSUs left over from my GPU mining operation that I might use.

How many of those fans per k16?
Each k16 is ~75W and powered by one 6-pin pci-e connector, right?
Finally, we'll need a usb cable. What's the board end of the usb cable? How are they chained?

I would recommend a single rail PSU as that way you don't have to worry about load balancing the rails.

The 6 pin PCIe is rated 75W, while the 6+2 pin PCIe is rated 150W.

The K16s should be 32W but not confirmed, also it could be double that with some crazy overclocking  

So without overclocking, and using splitters, a 6 pin PCIe could power 2 K16s and a 6+2 pin PCIe could power 4 K16s or a K64.

Load balancing the rails?

I've got a PSU with 6 PCIe plugs, plus 2 from molex adapters. It'll need to power 8 boards. Is that a bad idea because the load will be so small on each rail? (PSU is 1000W)

You will be fine with that PSU for 8 boards. If anything, you may experience issues as the PSU will have only about 25% load. Some PSUs require 50% load to work efficiently   

[ryepdx]

Alright, I've sent out the order for the PCBs and I'll be grabbing the last of the components tomorrow. The ordering window has slammed shut! We're at a grand total of 220 miners now. :-)

[redphlegm]

Alright, I've sent out the order for the PCBs and I'll be grabbing the last of the components tomorrow. The ordering window has slammed shut! We're at a grand total of 220 miners now. :-)

Awesome.

Miners or boards?

[Kushedout]

Alright, I've sent out the order for the PCBs and I'll be grabbing the last of the components tomorrow. The ordering window has slammed shut! We're at a grand total of 220 miners now. :-)

Awesome.

Miners or boards?

Same thing. K16 = 1board

[redphlegm]

Alright, I've sent out the order for the PCBs and I'll be grabbing the last of the components tomorrow. The ordering window has slammed shut! We're at a grand total of 220 miners now. :-)

Awesome.

Miners or boards?

Same thing. K16 = 1board

I meant like miners (people) or boards. I consider myself a miner since I am into it and want to do it. We didn't call picks, sieves, or shovels "miners" during the gold rush. That's all I was asking. I was just curious how many people we were talking about.

[davecoin]

ryepdx,

tldr; Are the pcbs being manufactured at a facility other than the the assembly facility?  I ask because of time differences between the different group buys. What does the timeline look like now that BKKcoins has finished the design?  If memory serves me correct, ragingazn's group buy order was submitted on the 27th of April meaning those chips could potentially hit US soil within the next 2 weeks.

Thanks,
Dave

[ryepdx]

Hey davecoin, sorry I didn't reply to your post earlier. I've been pretty busy these last few days.

The PCBs are not being manufactured by Colin. Originally the plan was to go through Colin's usual PCB supplier, who resides in Taipei, but last week he recommended I go through BkkCoins to make sure we get the latest revision. I was also in favor of going through BkkCoins, not only because he is offering boards at a price below what we had budgeted, but also because he does deserve whatever business we can give him. Since we're ordering enough boards to fill a production run all by ourselves, BkkCoins is going to have the production plant he's working with ship the boards directly to Colin to save time. He's told me they should arrive the first week of August. Given the delays on Avalon's end, I think that'll be early enough.

Right now almost everything is together. The one thing I'm worried about is the shipment of 166 PICs from Microchip that was supposed to arrive ten days ago but still has not shipped. I've got a support ticket open with them and will be calling tomorrow. I'll also see if I can get blank PICs from BkkCoins in the event that Microchip completely falls through.

I'm also somewhat worried about steamboat's ability to supply heatsinks. I've been talking with him on the boards and responses from him are generally pretty slow. I've got the final price on the heatsinks from him, but I'm still waiting on a payment address.

Aside from that, all components have either been received or are in transit and should arrive sometime next week.

I've also bought a bunch of these for anyone who wants to connect their K16s together: https://klondikedesign.com/?product=klego-connector

[fasmax]

What version of PCB are you ordering the one using the PIC QNF ?

[DPoS]

also I guess those of us with chips from ragin have to wonder about those shipping to you....

[ryepdx]

What version of PCB are you ordering the one using the PIC QNF ?

I'm using the SSOP version. I already have 90 of them on hand and I'm trying to get more from Microchip. (More on that further down.)

also I guess those of us with chips from ragin have to wonder about those shipping to you....

I imagine he's pretty busy with moving, but the fact that he's moving to a new house at an address unknown to the escrow holder does make me a little nervous as well. Still, it's too early to freak out. I did that prematurely during his group buy and I'm going to try to not do that again.

Regarding the PICs I ordered from Microchip, I called them first thing this morning and waited on hold for about an hour before someone picked up. According to the customer service representative, the PICs that were *supposed* to arrive July 11th won't be arriving until August 21st "due to availability issues." They said I should have received an email notifying me of this change. (I didn't.) The "arrival date" on my order still says July 11th as well.

I'm pretty pissed off. This won't affect those of you coming from Zefir's batch 1, though, since it looks like those chips will be arriving first. I have 90 PICs on hand and only 21 miners belonging to Zefir's batch 1. That means I'll have 69 PICs on hand to handle whoever's chips come in next.

I did manage to find a vendor who appears to have the PICs in stock. Unfortunately the stock displayed on their website did not update after I placed my order, and my order is still "processing," so it's entirely possible that it's just giving me false hope. Still, I called the vendor's customer support line to verify that the stock was actually there and that my order would be shipping today, and the representative said, "oh yeah, you're fine." I plan to continue bugging them at various points throughout the day until I get a tracking number.

[ryepdx]

Alright, I called the vendor I mentioned earlier and talked to another customer representative. Their system is apparently broken, such that orders from their website were not registering, and there's apparently nothing they can do to route me around the damage. I tried to get him to escalate my call, and got told "it's a system thing and there's nothing we can do until we get the system fixed" about three or four times. He told me to call back later and maybe they'd have the system fixed, but that they couldn't help me until then.

The guy I spoke to also told me they were seeing lead times on that part well into September, so I'm glad I did not cancel my order with Microchip. I'm still very frustrated, given that there is about a month's difference between the shipping time I was promised and the shipping time I'm actually getting.

I'm going to call Microchip again and see if I can at least fix our place in line. I have a feeling we've been getting bumped in favor of bigger customers, based on some observations BkkCoins made to me in a recent PM. If I can't get our place in line fixed, then I'll see if I can find out if any of the customers we've been bumped by are resellers.

[ryepdx]

Turns out the vendor I was speaking to earlier (Newark) didn't even get my order in their system, despite the fact that I called about it several times throughout the day. The last guy I spoke to said someone bought their entire stock of PICs and, since my order wasn't even in their system, there was nothing they could do about it.

Again, I'm pretty pissed off about this. Not only has Microchip failed to deliver on the date they promised, but Newark's broken system and crappy customer support screwed us out of our chance to get them earlier than we would have with Microchip. So right now I'm going to be able to deliver 90 miners and then there's going to be a delay while we wait for Microchip to *finally* ship us our PICs. The projected delivery date as of now is August 21st. I'm going to be calling them just about every day to make sure that date doesn't slip again.

If any of you happen to hear of a way we can get our hands on a few PIC16LF1459-I/SS or PIC16LF1459-E/SS, please let me know. Or just buy them and I'll happily reimburse you. I want to get these miners hashing as soon as possible.

[ryepdx]

Things are starting to look better today. Yesterday I managed to get in contact with a vendor on Alibaba who said they can supply the chips within 7 to 10 days, and then later Steamboat messaged me to offer some of his chips. I think we're covered. If both of those fall through, then any K16s beyond the first 90 will be most likely stuck in the queue until August 21st, when the PICs from Microchip should finally come in.

I'll be putting my own order at the back of the line until we've got all the PICs we need. I think it's a business's duty to do whatever is in its power to make sure its customers are not left with the short end of the stick, and that's exactly what I intend to do here.

[eabedry]

Things are starting to look better today. Yesterday I managed to get in contact with a vendor on Alibaba who said they can supply the chips within 7 to 10 days, and then later Steamboat messaged me to offer some of his chips. I think we're covered. If both of those fall through, then any K16s beyond the first 90 will be most likely stuck in the queue until August 21st, when the PICs from Microchip should finally come in.

I'll be putting my own order at the back of the line until we've got all the PICs we need. I think it's a business's duty to do whatever is in its power to make sure its customers are not left with the short end of the stick, and that's exactly what I intend to do here.

Thanks for the hard work ryepdx. Not that I'm wishing chip deliveries to be delayed, but it looks like there will be some time before some of our orders arrive. Hopefully that means you'll get the opportunity to build your hard earned miners

[Vycid]

Things are starting to look better today. Yesterday I managed to get in contact with a vendor on Alibaba who said they can supply the chips within 7 to 10 days, and then later Steamboat messaged me to offer some of his chips. I think we're covered. If both of those fall through, then any K16s beyond the first 90 will be most likely stuck in the queue until August 21st, when the PICs from Microchip should finally come in.

I'll be putting my own order at the back of the line until we've got all the PICs we need. I think it's a business's duty to do whatever is in its power to make sure its customers are not left with the short end of the stick, and that's exactly what I intend to do here.

This is very good to hear. I wish I had the confidence in ragingazn628 that I do in this group.

In my opinion: certainly pursue the Alibaba option (since it's probably cheaper) - but don't take their commit dates for granted.

If Steamboat has chips in hand, I would trust his offer much more than I'd trust something on Alibaba. Better to snap it up if he's made a reasonable offer - it'd be quite unfortunate to be stuck without PICs because somebody in China didn't ship on time.

If Microchip didn't come through, then Alibaba seems risky. That's probably where Microchip gets THEIR chips...

[TomKeddie]

If Microchip didn't come through, then Alibaba seems risky. That's probably where Microchip gets THEIR chips...

Microchip is the designer, they get their chips from a fab.  The problem is they plan production a long time ahead and, unless somebody tells them, they can't plan for blibs in consumption like this.  I can see them puzzling over why everyone is buying these chips, because of the open source nature of the project, the buyers will be all over the world buying hugely varied quantities.

[ryepdx]

Microchip is the designer, they get their chips from a fab.  The problem is they plan production a long time ahead and, unless somebody tells them, they can't plan for blibs in consumption like this.  I can see them puzzling over why everyone is buying these chips, because of the open source nature of the project, the buyers will be all over the world buying hugely varied quantities.

True facts. I had a feeling that components would be the bottleneck for most of the DIYers, and we're starting to see that a bit on the Klondike thread.

Steamboat does have QFN PICs in hand and has agreed to sell them to us at a reasonable price. He's going to be shipping them today, along with the heatsinks he's supplying us. I am quite grateful to him for stepping in and helping out when Microchip started stringing us along. Without his assistance, 59% of our miners would have been delayed until the rest of the PICs came in on August 21st, assuming Microchip didn't bump us again.

With everything ordered and either in Colin's hands or on the way, all that's left for now is to wait. :-)

BTW, these miners should be stackable, as I've decided to go with the right-angled molex connectors. Sorry I didn't discuss that particular point with you all before making the decision. I figure this will give us more configuration options, though. If any of you are interested in keeping your Klondikes stacked, let me know. I may look at sourcing some spacers and cables for shipping with the miners for those of you who want them and are willing to pay a little extra. (At this point, though, it looks like your partial refund should easily cover the cost, if that's the way you want to go.)

[bitrocket]

The first batch of Avalon chips have shipped!
http://imgur.com/YEi58QQ

Zefir received the first batch last night, repackaged them and is shipping them out from Germany today. Let the games begin!!

[ryepdx]

Let the games begin!!

May the odds be ever in your favor.

[redphlegm]

Out of curiosity, does anyone have a timeline of the different group buys? Zefir, Ragin, et al? I'm part of Ragin's first group buy and would just like to get a rough feeling for the time lag between group buy orders.