Which USB hub to use with Block Erupters | NanoFury NF1 | BPMC Red Fury | Ant U1

[ssateneth]

I don't know. I find the Juiced hub to be just right. I can place a 120mm fan on top of the miners and it will cover all of them perfectly. Each miner also has a fair amount of space between each other. Theres no danger I see of a miner touching an adjacent one unless the usb hub is defective/malformed port.

[notlist3d]

Thanks for testing out the new Anker Canary.  I'm sad to see they made it smaller and lost a port. Was afraid that last port would be just charging.

[Nemo1024]

Thank you for the comparisons, CanaryInTheMine!
I've added the 9-port Anker to the table. I can add that it comes out more expensive in $/port.

[CanaryInTheMine]

I don't know. I find the Juiced hub to be just right. I can place a 120mm fan on top of the miners and it will cover all of them perfectly. Each miner also has a fair amount of space between each other. Theres no danger I see of a miner touching an adjacent one unless the usb hub is defective/malformed port.

Juiced is better than the new 9 port anker, but one should be aware that when you need to unplug a miner, you're bound to bump it into the miner behind it or in front of it.  you have to be super patient and have small fingers not to physically damage your miners when you need to unplug them from a full hub. thermal density is not an issue but it's a matter of understanding it and having an appropriate amount of air movement.  it would still be less and quieter than GPUs obviously.  physical access is the biggest issue with very dense hubs.

[batt01]

I don't know. I find the Juiced hub to be just right. I can place a 120mm fan on top of the miners and it will cover all of them perfectly. Each miner also has a fair amount of space between each other. Theres no danger I see of a miner touching an adjacent one unless the usb hub is defective/malformed port.

Juiced is better than the new 9 port anker, but one should be aware that when you need to unplug a miner, you're bound to bump it into the miner behind it or in front of it.  you have to be super patient and have small fingers not to physically damage your miners when you need to unplug them from a full hub. thermal density is not an issue but it's a matter of understanding it and having an appropriate amount of air movement.  it would still be less and quieter than GPUs obviously.  physical access is the biggest issue with very dense hubs.

I just ordered the Juiced Hub. I want the try it on my RPi. Currently I am using the DLink 7 port hub. I would like something that holds a few more and I dont really like that the DLink has side mounted ports rather than top.

[CanaryInTheMine]

I've updated my review of the 49 port hub: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=253749.msg2771960#msg2771960
PSU had issues

Nemo, you should update the price on this thing, you have the wrong price.  the price you have is for the charging station ONLY version of this hub.  it has no communications on it.

This hub, is more expensive since it's not just a power charging station.  Price: $1,160 + shipping so it's $23.67 per port!!!

[Nemo1024]

This hub, is more expensive since it's not just a power charging station.  Price: $1,160 + shipping so it's $23.67 per port!!!

Ouch! And I thought the previous price was steep! Updated.

batt01, don't RPi only support USB 2.0 hubs? Tell us how it goes.

[xjack]

Update 7/21/13: The Antec 550 PSU this came with has died.  I went and got an Corsair 750 and got all 49 miners going again.  Not a pleasant experience.  this hub is difficult to work with in Windows.

...snip...

More on the power issue: xjack pointed out to me that this 5V 28A ATX connector delivers 140W (is my math right?), however 49 miners, use 2.5*49= 122.5W, so 122.5/140= 87.5% load...  This is the load on the mobo ATX connector, not the whole PSU... I think this is pushing it and the manufacturer should consider utilizing one more power connector from the same PSU (it is modular afterall) to deliver more power so that there isn't such a high load on the single ATX power connector.  maybe i'm wrong in this assessment, but 87.5% load is beginning to push things.

I figured it in amps, but similar result - 49 Erupters * 0.5A = 24.5amps, not including however much the Hub Controller(s) are drawing.  Most ATX power supplies are +5V@30A or _less_.  My 450W(+5v@30A) has been shutting down intermittently while fully populated.  When I backed it down to 44 Erupters, the problems went completely away.

Installation: --- It is very difficult to operate this hub with all 49 USBs populated with ASICMiner Block Eruptors.  This 49 port hub actually consists of 7 hubs linked together from the point of the device manager.  If you plugin this 49 port to your computer USB interface and all 49 ports are populated with miners, only 14 are recognized and the rest don't even power on.  I'm not sure what happens but the driver installation when detecting this hub with all ports populated does not work well at all on Windows.  The solution, or the proper way to bring online is as follows:
-boot up
-connect the empty 49 port hub
-insert miners one at a time, till you see a message that the device is ready
-repeat above line 49 times
-start mining
in case you need to restart the computer, you need to unplug all Eruptors and repeat above steps.

This may be a YMMV situation.  I started this thing on a oc'd 3770k/z77 chipset with Win7.  Clearly device detection sucks in Windows, and I did have only 14 ports init on POST.  But after Win7 booted, it always picked these up for me given some delay (sometimes a few mins) while it farted around.  I did not have to pull erupters or reinstall drivers every time.  I did have to press the reset button on the hub periodically to get windows to detect everybody. 

Conclusion:  A very good hub to run 49 miners in a small amount of space (but it is not for a novice and I mean no disrespect by this!)  It would really be good to test it while mining on Linux, but I'm not  going to do it.  The only thing I use this on Linux for is to brand the Eruptors for Eligius mining pool.  I don't mine on Linux.
...snip...

Agreed on the novice statement.  I've now got this running on a headless xubuntu nettop running latest cgminer/anubis/mineninja.  Absolutely perfect w/ 44 erupters for the past 30 hours.  I will not be plugging it back into a Windows box anytime soon.

[CanaryInTheMine]

I figured it in amps, but similar result - 49 Erupters * 0.5A = 24.5amps, not including however much the Hub Controller(s) are drawing.  Most ATX power supplies are +5V@30A or _less_.  My 450W(+5v@30A) has been shutting down intermittently while fully populated.  When I backed it down to 44 Erupters, the problems went completely away.
<snip>
Agreed on the novice statement.  I've now got this running on a headless xubuntu nettop running latest cgminer/anubis/mineninja.  Absolutely perfect w/ 44 erupters for the past 30 hours.  I will not be plugging it back into a Windows box anytime soon.

20 hrs running OK with the replacement PSU... the ATX cable is warm, so the draw is high... lets see how long this gold rated Corsair 750 holds up for

I may have to go to platinum next... might do it anyway... don't like it when wires are warm...

[batt01]

This hub, is more expensive since it's not just a power charging station.  Price: $1,160 + shipping so it's $23.67 per port!!!

Ouch! And I thought the previous price was steep! Updated.

batt01, don't RPi only support USB 2.0 hubs? Tell us how it goes.

Hmmm I thought I had order a usb 2.0 hub. It came today and the RPi refused to mate with It is a very nice well made unit tho.

[Garfield]

Thanks for the review, Garfield. I've updated the table with a footnote and an accurate price per usable port.
I was actually considering hunting this hub down, when I saw on photos that it had to power connectors, which I thought would mean it could be powered from two adapters. Strange that only one of them is wired.

Just so there is no confusion, there seem to be two versions of this hub.  one with an aluminum enclosure
http://usb.brando.com/usb-20-port-hub_p03123c039d015.html  <- this is the one I actually bought, and that does not work with more than 12 miners.
(the one I purchased with 1 spot for a power adapter)
and there is another one that just has support plates, that has 2 AC adapter plugs available, but I do not have that one to determine if that one has the capability to run 20 miners at once.
similar to http://usb.brando.com/industrial-usb-16-port-hub_p01936c039d015.html but I have not been able to find a place to purchase it from that is reasonable.

[m-sean]

Hello all, I already posted this in the newbie section though to get the proper exposure I'm posting it here..

A co-worker and myself recently picked up two of the Satechi 10 port hubs to test out some of the ASICMiner USB Block Erupters and seem to be having nothing but issues so I was wondering if anyone else out there has used them with success?

Basically the situation goes like so:

With one block erupter it will run for a little over an hour and then I'll get the solid green light and CGMiner spams Comms Error.

With two or more block erupters they run for maybe 30 seconds if that and then I get solid green lights on random units, sometimes they will come back online and then just go back offline, same deal with CGMiner spamming Comms Error.

I then took my D-Link DUB-H7 hub and connected it to the Satechi 10 port with one erupter in the D-Link hub and now it has been running for days without issue.

I have contacted Satechi and they pretty much have said they have never heard of ASICMiner products and assume they will not work on their hub...

Also as a frame of reference, I have tested this on Windows 7, Windows 8 and even my Raspberry Pi running MinePeon, all of them run into the exact same issue.

I had assumed that being a 10 port hub with a 5V 5A power supply it would be perfect for a USB mining rig though it looks like at this point I was wrong.

Anyways, just wanted to let others know as I haven't seen anyone else testing these hubs.

[hanti]

I figured it in amps, but similar result - 49 Erupters * 0.5A = 24.5amps, not including however much the Hub Controller(s) are drawing.  Most ATX power supplies are +5V@30A or _less_.  My 450W(+5v@30A) has been shutting down intermittently while fully populated.  When I backed it down to 44 Erupters, the problems went completely away.
<snip>
Agreed on the novice statement.  I've now got this running on a headless xubuntu nettop running latest cgminer/anubis/mineninja.  Absolutely perfect w/ 44 erupters for the past 30 hours.  I will not be plugging it back into a Windows box anytime soon.

20 hrs running OK with the replacement PSU... the ATX cable is warm, so the draw is high... lets see how long this gold rated Corsair 750 holds up for

I may have to go to platinum next... might do it anyway... don't like it when wires are warm...

platinum wont change anything. new psus just sux at 5V bcoz its not used anymore to anything except usb
try to find something old like Fortron FSP400-60PFN with 40A on 5V
or something new like Silverstone Strider 1500W or Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W

[CanaryInTheMine]

I figured it in amps, but similar result - 49 Erupters * 0.5A = 24.5amps, not including however much the Hub Controller(s) are drawing.  Most ATX power supplies are +5V@30A or _less_.  My 450W(+5v@30A) has been shutting down intermittently while fully populated.  When I backed it down to 44 Erupters, the problems went completely away.
<snip>
Agreed on the novice statement.  I've now got this running on a headless xubuntu nettop running latest cgminer/anubis/mineninja.  Absolutely perfect w/ 44 erupters for the past 30 hours.  I will not be plugging it back into a Windows box anytime soon.

20 hrs running OK with the replacement PSU... the ATX cable is warm, so the draw is high... lets see how long this gold rated Corsair 750 holds up for

I may have to go to platinum next... might do it anyway... don't like it when wires are warm...

platinum wont change anything. new psus just sux at 5V bcoz its not used anymore to anything except usb
try to find something old like Fortron FSP400-60PFN with 40A on 5V
or something new like Silverstone Strider 1500W or Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W

holy moley... the AX750 i got is  rated for +5V@25A (125W) on ATX... how the hell is it working then with 2.5W*49  122.5W ? Huh???

[Nemo1024]

Might it be that the hub draws on the 12V rail and then transforms it to 5V?
Very many newer PSUs have less and less output on 5V.

[CanaryInTheMine]

Might it be that the hub draws on the 12V rail and then transforms it to 5V?
Very many newer PSUs have less and less output on 5V.

It's ATX connector (motherboard) I believe it's 5V, the marking on the hub next to the female receptacle displays 5V 28A (should be in pic)

[hanti]

I figured it in amps, but similar result - 49 Erupters * 0.5A = 24.5amps, not including however much the Hub Controller(s) are drawing.  Most ATX power supplies are +5V@30A or _less_.  My 450W(+5v@30A) has been shutting down intermittently while fully populated.  When I backed it down to 44 Erupters, the problems went completely away.
<snip>
Agreed on the novice statement.  I've now got this running on a headless xubuntu nettop running latest cgminer/anubis/mineninja.  Absolutely perfect w/ 44 erupters for the past 30 hours.  I will not be plugging it back into a Windows box anytime soon.

20 hrs running OK with the replacement PSU... the ATX cable is warm, so the draw is high... lets see how long this gold rated Corsair 750 holds up for

I may have to go to platinum next... might do it anyway... don't like it when wires are warm...

platinum wont change anything. new psus just sux at 5V bcoz its not used anymore to anything except usb
try to find something old like Fortron FSP400-60PFN with 40A on 5V
or something new like Silverstone Strider 1500W or Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W

holy moley... the AX750 i got is  rated for +5V@25A (125W) on ATX... how the hell is it working then with 2.5W*49  122.5W ? Huh???

? 125>122.5 so why it should not work ;p
i ment only that its hard to get something strong on 5V line today and i told you models with 40A on 5V

[philipma1957]

Might it be that the hub draws on the 12V rail and then transforms it to 5V?
Very many newer PSUs have less and less output on 5V.

It's ATX connector (motherboard) I believe it's 5V, the marking on the hub next to the female receptacle displays 5V 28A (should be in pic)

this review makes me think 5v is not the best part of your psu

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=236 look at the crossroad cl 1 cl 2 on page 3 then go to the 4th page and see the hot box results


let me link you to a better one

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=264  

look at the test results for crossload cl1 and cl2 on the 2nd page  go to the hot box results on page 3 . you will see the sea sonic handles it better.  I ran 2 1000 watt sea sonic plats from sept of last year until june of this year.  i ran then 24/7 at about 650 watts for gnu mining. they never missed a beat. still have them .

 my 750 watt seasonic gold which is a clone of your corsair ax 750 watt (IIRC) fried in 7 months. i rma'd it I do think that it is the same as yours. i will try to confirm.

confirmed
they are one and the same.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=59797   

 pm me if you need more info.   btw nice review on the 49 hub unit.

[CanaryInTheMine]

I figured it in amps, but similar result - 49 Erupters * 0.5A = 24.5amps, not including however much the Hub Controller(s) are drawing.  Most ATX power supplies are +5V@30A or _less_.  My 450W(+5v@30A) has been shutting down intermittently while fully populated.  When I backed it down to 44 Erupters, the problems went completely away.
<snip>
Agreed on the novice statement.  I've now got this running on a headless xubuntu nettop running latest cgminer/anubis/mineninja.  Absolutely perfect w/ 44 erupters for the past 30 hours.  I will not be plugging it back into a Windows box anytime soon.

20 hrs running OK with the replacement PSU... the ATX cable is warm, so the draw is high... lets see how long this gold rated Corsair 750 holds up for

I may have to go to platinum next... might do it anyway... don't like it when wires are warm...

platinum wont change anything. new psus just sux at 5V bcoz its not used anymore to anything except usb
try to find something old like Fortron FSP400-60PFN with 40A on 5V
or something new like Silverstone Strider 1500W or Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W

holy moley... the AX750 i got is  rated for +5V@25A (125W) on ATX... how the hell is it working then with 2.5W*49  122.5W ? Huh???

? 125>122.5 so why it should not work ;p
i ment only that its hard to get something strong on 5V line today and i told you models with 40A on 5V

122.5/125= 98%; when was the last time anything worked for a long time at 98% utilization? 

[pidge]

A few weeks ago I ordered four of these 10-port hubs from Deal Extreme, with the intention of running the hubs of the PC PSU.  
http://dx.com/p/high-speed-10-port-usb-2-0-hub-w-2a-power-supply-black-silver-gray-194655

Had a go at running one hub of a PC PSU, and not all the devices were recognized and CGMINER was spamming errors.  I reverted back to running 4 miners in the off a 5V 1.5A supply with success - I suspect extra current was coming down the USB cable, as the USB power is not isolated from the DC Barrel connector input!

Finally decided to get a dedicated 5V supply (2nd hand 5V 20A, open frame, similar to this http://dx.com/p/5v-20a-iron-case-power-supply-silver-ac-110-220v-124499, voltage adjusted to 5.2V), shortened the cable on the pathetic 5.5mmx2.5mm barrel connector cable I was using, powered, connected, and have 9 miners running happily, with the 10-port hub running off a UNITEK Y-2028 hub

I also have some UNITEK Y-2143  hubs, which are also another good hub, at least the ones I was buying locally, supplied with a 5V 2A supply, and will happily run 4 miners.

If you want to run of a PC power supply, I recommend that making use of the 12V line with a 12V to 5V "Buck" converter, as this is what the ATX power supplies expect power to be drawn from.(e.g. http://dx.com/p/15a-dc-4-32v-to-dc-1-2-32v-converter-buck-adjustable-electronic-power-regulator-219807 or http://dx.com/p/149111).   The PSU in a previous post probably died because no 12V current was being used.

For cooling, I have a ghetto solution - I cut a handy 17cm wide by 40cm long box down to 9cm high, cut open the ends, mounted 2 x 8cm PC fans in one end, and placed that over the hub.  This keeps the miners nice and cool.

Ghetto cooling duct at the back, 9 miners in the hub (10th port is on the end), 5V 20A "open frame" sitting dangerously on the right, waiting for someone to put their fingers across the 230V input  


View inside the duct.


Edit - fix sentence parsing error
Edit #2 fixed image links...