Trying to quiet down L3+ - changing fans?

[exx1976]

Hi all, first post here, so please go easy.   

I recently FINALLY took delivery of 3 L3+ units.  They are in my basement, but you can still hear the faint hum of the fans throughout the house.  It's by no means loud enough to make me nuts, and you can't even hear it with the TV on - but I sure would like to quiet them down a bit if possible.

So I started Googling, and found that some people had replaced the fans on some of the other Antminer models (S7s, I think - I honestly don't recall, it was a few days ago).

So I ordered some 140mm Noctua 12V 3000 RPM fans and some 140mm to 120mm mounting adapters.

I installed the fans onto one L3+, and it powered up and started mining fine - for about a minute.  Then it stops hashing, and the fault light comes on.  The kernel log shows this:


Oct  6 17:28:39 (none) local0.err cgminer[26601]: Fan Err! Disable PIC! Fan1 speed is too low 1620 pwm 60



According to spec, these fans will push plenty of air to keep the miners cool, especially since the fans that the unit ships with (6000 RPM fans) have never spun over 3900RPM during normal operation - meaning they aren't moving the full 210CFM of air they are rated for anyway.


Has anybody successfully done this?

Thank you in advance for any help.

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[lunobird]

I managed to quite down the noise by more than 60 percent by putting it inside a simple $8 dollar home depot storage box and putting insulation wrap inside of it.  That's all it really needs to dampen the sound.

I've tested a 6" sound mufflers and it's a waste of money,  b/c 6" vent ducts will quiet it down the same amount almost,

I've also tested using a 6" can fan to help exhaust and had some interesting results.  It did manage to cool down the asics by 1-2 degrees and lower the asic fan speed down from 3900 rpm to 3725 rpm under 80 degree weather.  Doesn't sound like much but that's b/c I already have a 10" can fan exhausting out of the room so having a duct pusher fan is not needed if you already got a good exhaust vent setup.

[hagbase]

Login to your miner and search for something like fan control maybe?

[exx1976]

Login to your miner and search for something like fan control maybe?

Did that.  Manually set the speed on the fans and the miner wouldn't even start mining.

Somewhere, somehow, it knows that 100% fan power should be 6000RPM +/- some percentage.  I need to figure out where that number is, and change it.  Hoping that's possible, and that someone knows how.

[hagbase]

Yes, it is possible. Maybe under advanced options or something like that. A user here in german community is running his L3 with 33% fan speed with bitmain fans, no need to change the fans.

[exx1976]

Yes, it is possible. Maybe under advanced options or something like that. A user here in german community is running his L3 with 33% fan speed with bitmain fans, no need to change the fans.

Thanks, but that answer is not helpful.  Perhaps you don't understand what I'm trying to do?  Do you have an L3+, or are you repeating what you've read in here already?  I'm betting you don't, because if you did, you'd know that the only thing on the "advanced settings" tab is the clock frequency.  I mean, I appreciate your effort, but let's try to stay on topic and provide relevant information so that when someone else discovers this thread with a search engine, there is good info to be had.

The factory fans are terrible.  They are cheap, inefficient, have poorly designed blades, and noisy bearings.  Running them at 33% won't solve my issue.  They run at 60% right now, which gives me 52/59 PCB/Chip temps.  That's where I want to keep them, I don't want to slow down the existing shitty fans to make things hotter.  Rather, I want to replace those poorly designed fans with better, more efficient fans that can move the same amount of air, and be quieter while doing it.


Hopefully this detailed explanation helps you to understand my goal better.


Thanks!

[hagbase]

I guess you don't understand. If it's possible to lower fan speed and set a speed for the fans than it must be possible to determine  min/max speed for fans. Bitmain is still using wrt as os.

[exx1976]

I guess you don't understand. If it's possible to lower fan speed and set a speed for the fans than it must be possible to determine  min/max speed for fans. Bitmain is still using wrt as os.

You can't actually lower the "speed", per se; you can only control the fan percentage.  That's why you hear the guy from Germany say he's running them at 33%.

I don't want to change the fan percentage.  I want to change what the miner thinks the max speed should be.

[hagbase]

As i said look around for advanced option/config/params and no it is not under fan control. Or you need to ssh into your miner and mod the specifc cgminer file/option.

[exx1976]

As i said look around for advanced option/config/params and no it is not under fan control. Or you need to ssh into your miner and mod the specifc cgminer file/option.

It's not in the UI, promise.


I'm fine with SSH'ing into the miner and changing some parameters, I figured I would have to.  I just need to know where they are.

[Vann]

I managed to quite down the noise by more than 60 percent by putting it inside a simple $8 dollar home depot storage box and putting insulation wrap inside of it.  That's all it really needs to dampen the sound.

I've tested a 6" sound mufflers and it's a waste of money,  b/c 6" vent ducts will quiet it down the same amount almost,

I've also tested using a 6" can fan to help exhaust and had some interesting results.  It did manage to cool down the asics by 1-2 degrees and lower the asic fan speed down from 3900 rpm to 3725 rpm under 80 degree weather.  Doesn't sound like much but that's b/c I already have a 10" can fan exhausting out of the room so having a duct pusher fan is not needed if you already got a good exhaust vent setup.

I don't have Antminers, but this sounds like the most effective solution. I would build a custom box out of plywood to put the Antminers in and use a small squirrel cage vent fan to keep air flowing through the box. Sort of like a smaller version of what this guy did for his GPU miners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qbLkivgxps

[blackhorse7]

Get a small, high rpm fan (3-4cm in diameter, they are usually speedy ones), hide it in a small box, cover by foam if still noisy, plug in as factory fan. Noctua fans connect to 12V directly or by a regulator. Motherboard should detect hi speed of minifan and go.
You could use 20-30cm room air circulator too - they have huge effectivity and could be adapted to this job if you have tools and flair

[exx1976]

Get a small, high rpm fan (3-4cm in diameter, they are usually speedy ones), hide it in a small box, cover by foam if still noisy, plug in as factory fan. Noctua fans connect to 12V directly or by a regulator. Motherboard should detect hi speed of minifan and go

The noctua fans I bought are the 4-pin ones with the speed regulator on them.

Yours is a novel idea, but - how would I power the Noctua fans if I am using the headers on the miner to run those little high-speed fans?

[blackhorse7]

I dont know if this miner has 3 or 4 pin connectors - but cable returning rpm from fan is present in both models (usually 3rd - 1. ground, 2. 12V, 3. rpm return, 4. pwm control). Some 4pin fans wont to run correctly if they are connected into 3pin socket (usually runs without any problem).
You wrote that in miner are mounted low quality fant, so ther are probably 3pin. Please tell me what socket in on miner's motherboard - 3pin or 4pin, and if it is 1 socket or more.
To connect more than 1 fan to socket, be careful to not overload socket - sometimes they could have to low current capability and could smash out. Best and safe method is to use a splitter with power connector (molex) like that:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Evercool-EC-DF001-4-pin-Molex-to-5-x-4-pin-PWM-Fan-Splitter-Cable-Adapter-17-72-/400712293079
In this splitter usually only 1 output socket is returning rpm to motherboard - in that socket you then should connect this little tricky high speed fan to cheat the miner.
Of course after all you must control temperatures, if radiators on cpus are not overheated - fail could change ROI to 'never'

[adaseb]

I don't think this Noctua fan will be able to provide enough airflow for something that uses 800 Watts.

Back in the day you could get away with using some high flow case fans for an Antminer S3 but that used about 350 Watts or so.

You best bet is just to either find a way to make the fans run at a slower RPM OR put it inside some insulted box.

[blackhorse7]

If it converts 800W into heat, it would be really hard to properly cool this machine with standard PC fans. So maybe my second idea with 20-30cm room air circulator with a tunel sending all flow into miner (+trick with small fan simulating work of factory fans) would create enough air flow and pressure to get the heat out from the miner with some less noise (bigger diameter always give less noise with similar air flow).
In my opinion producers of those miners should add to construction a pipe inlet/outlet to water cooling - with this level of heat users should have an option to connect their miners to water cooling system (car refrigerator or directly from plumbing system could definitely end noise and overheating problems).

[jv357]

At this flow rate the air passing through the heat sinks of the hashing chips created the worst noise in my opinion. The  best solution i have found so far is to run my L3s at room temperature around 5C.

[BGRUN]

So the bitmain fan has 4pins and
- in order to trick the board do we need 1 or 2 little fans ?
- the little 4 pin fans do they have to be 6000 rpm ?
I am putting my own ventilators so can i just plug outside the original fans and set them to 5% ? so they will just spin without noise ?

[lunobird]

 I would just use two real fans 4" or 6" Max can fan  ducts that run off of 120 volt.Have it directly attach to a 3d printed flange to anyminer and remove those loud and noisey antminer fans.  I never tried this but technically it's possible, quieter , and flows more cfm. this setup is more pricey.

[BGRUN]

Max can fans costs $120....
Can someone help by answering my previous questions ?