New Version (unoverclockable) ASICMiner Blade Overclock Kit - IN STOCK

[sidehack]

It's probably gidi337, the UK reseller.

[WinterParker]

do you have any left for sale??

[sidehack]

Yeah, about half a dozen.

[elaramus]

Sidehack, you sir are a genius!! I had no luck with 16.384, but 14.318 worked beautifully and turned all of my V2's into V1 like performers..




No heatsinks required... runs just a little warmer than stock. Notice the single V1 in the upper left corner.

You da man!!

[sidehack]

Nifty, great to hear. I've worked up at least 10 of these boards and within my experience, running at 16.384 they really like airflow. Cooling is a bit finicky. Good to know they run without issue at the 14.3 - that's still a pretty good upgrade from standard.

Hopefully I can get my hands on more hardware as it comes out, keep the streak going giving you guys a boost.

[Scrappy Do]

Sidehack, you sir are a genius!! I had no luck with 16.384, but 14.318 worked beautifully and turned all of my V2's into V1 like performers..




No heatsinks required... runs just a little warmer than stock. Notice the single V1 in the upper left corner.

You da man!!

 How difficult is the install? and approximately how long does it take please. Can this be done with a regular 7.00 soldering iron?

[elaramus]

How difficult is the install? and approximately how long does it take please. Can this be done with a regular 7.00 soldering iron?

I would not attempt this with a traditional soldering iron. I used a hot air SMD rework station. Temp set to 431C.

Air Pump for the resistors set low to about 3.75 (just enough to blow air out the tip) any higher and you blow the resistor off the board or loosen adjacent components.

Air Pump for the crystal set to 6.5, takes quite a bit of heat to get this guy loose. This is the primary reason for using the rework station.

Air nozzle should be the same size (in diameter) as the component you are working, so you need to swap tips.

Once I got rolling and built up confidence, it would take about 15-20 minutes per board to disconnect, remove old components, install new components and test.

[sidehack]

It's possible with a standard soldering iron, but the crystal is definitely the tricky part - either a lot of time and care, or two soldering irons and a bit of finagling. Air station is definitely highly recommended.

[r00t$]

After some heat sinks and another fan, my OC bladev2 has been running for 3 weeks at 14.9 GH/s with no issues!

I can't wait to see what sidehack can do with the new cubes coming out. I ordered a couple from China yesterday 

[twib2]

If you don't have a hot air station, you can make your own for about $25 or so.  I put one together last night after no good luck with a soldering iron.  Will try out the new hot air setup tonight, practicing on a dead board.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/07/how-to-make-a-surface-mount-soldering-iron/

[sidehack]

For anyone with blades - I'm thinking of doing another round of kits, this time with select-an-overclock. I'll have parts included to run the same overclock as on the V1 blades (~13GH), as well as ~14.4GH and ~15GH, so you could put it to the highest speed you can keep stable.

Super discounts this time, since blade prices are at an all-time low and the BTC exchange is at an all-time high.

Let's say 0.025BTC per kit, flat shipping 0.01BTC for orders of one to whatever.

If there's enough interest I'll make them available, so folks gotta let me know. Is it worth 0.025BTC and an hour of work to get 2-4GH more out of your existing equipment?

[EzCheese]

For anyone with blades - I'm thinking of doing another round of kits, this time with select-an-overclock. I'll have parts included to run the same overclock as on the V1 blades (~13GH), as well as ~14.4GH and ~15GH, so you could put it to the highest speed you can keep stable.

Super discounts this time, since blade prices are at an all-time low and the BTC exchange is at an all-time high.

Let's say 0.025BTC per kit, flat shipping 0.01BTC for orders of one to whatever.

If there's enough interest I'll make them available, so folks gotta let me know. Is it worth 0.025BTC and an hour of work to get 2-4GH more out of your existing equipment?

I'd on the fence, I'd love to bump blade speeds but it's finding someone locally who can do the upgrade.   

[eman5oh]

FWIW I oc's one of my blades and managed to damage it. I went with parts to set to ~13 GH @ 1.2 volts. Took it slow and did the oscillator and then one vrm. Looked good so I removed the rest of the vrm resistors and soldered new ones in. Fired the blade back up and found four chips XXXX chips 13-16. A quick look and I see that I forgot to install the new resistor for this lane, it was showing 0 volts. I powered it down and installed the proper resistor. No dice still does not work. I tried a bunch of things including going back to stock speed and voltage and the blade still does not work.  Those 4 chips show XXXX now no matter what. The board will only hash at 300-500 m/hash with about  96% error rate. I believe that all the hashing chips must be working or the board will not function properly.Had two blades now only one.  3 more on the way. Hope this saves someone else the headache.

[sidehack]

Likely what happened is, since the VRM wasn't getting feedback from the output voltage, it basically locked onto the highest voltage output and possibly fried your chips.

As for running at 300-500MH/s, that's probably a cooling issue. All the ASICs on these guys are fairly independent, and one or a few dropping out shouldn't hinder the rest. The thing is at higher voltage and higher clock, more power is consumed in the chips so they get warm, and the V2 blades are legendarily bad at stock heatsink contact. Chipside heatsinks (as would be provided), and if possible a slight warp of the stock heatsink to pull the blade's board down firmly over it instead of floating with no pressure and very bad contact, will get these guys running well. I just the other day worked up a board to a 33% over-spec oscillator, that was running 14.5GH 99% efficient with nothing fancy but good airflow. Improving heatsink efficiency on these guys goes a LONG way. I've worked up about a dozen blades and had zero X'd chips that weren't from improper cooling.

[eman5oh]

I think that something definty got fried when it was powered up without the resistor. Anyhow even after returning it to stock it would only hash at 500 mhash max with good cooling.  Sold it on eBay for parts so not a total loss , but it still sucks. Maybe someone will have luck fixxing it or harvest the asics.

[sidehack]

Huh, wow that is weird. I can see low numbers at high clock without adequate cooling, but not put back to stock. Never had that problem.

I did have one guy didn't connect a resistor properly and it blew out a buck regulator chip down around the control hardware at the end of the board, never came back to life. I wonder if the extreme overvolt on yours (from the miswired VRM likely outputting full power in open-loop) might have somehow affected a logic input to one of the interface or firmware controllers? Sucks that happened.

[eman5oh]

Something bad happened, that is all that I know. I took the resistor back off after I could not get it working and checked the voltage and it shows 0 volts with no resistor and the vrm seems to work after putting the resistor back, I see ~1.03 volts or so with the 68k in place and had 1.20 with 110k. It is an odd one and has me trigger shy on doing  any more.

[artbatista]

I have a question. I have one blade that consistently gives me a high hardware error rate. I have noticed that if I lower the p/s voltage the error rate also drops, but below a certain voltage, some chips stop running. If I send this blade for the overclocking job, would you be able to fix that?

I believe that this is a voltage noise issue.

As an example at 11.80 VDC power supplied, I have one chip not running, and I still get 7% hardware error rate. At the normal 12.8 VDC the normal p/s (not adjustable) puts out, this one blade gives me 20+% error rate.

I have plenty of cooling and the heatsing does not get very warm, even without fans. Maybe I need to jimmy the heatsink a bit.

What are your thoughts on this?

Art

[sidehack]

The best luck I've ever had was with a three-point warp to the stock heatsink. Basically, laying it across two wood blocks and hitting it with a hammer through another wood block in the middle, and then halfway between the middle and the ends, to give the heatsink a fairly continuous slight curve - less than 1/8 inch total deviation, probably closer to 1/16 inch. When the board is screwed down over it, the backside of the board will flex slightly to press up against the heatsink, which will allow better heat transfer. I also used some thermal compound between the heatsink, pad and board and buffed the heatsink face smooth - the ones I've seen have been very rough, so not a good contact surface at all.
A three-point warp is good because it leaves a fairly continuous curve to the heatsink surface - just a single bend in the middle will make more like a triangle, so when the board flexes (into a continuous curve) it won't mate with the heatsink face evenly and could leave gaps under some rows of chips.

Between that and the simple chipside heatsinks in the kit, I've had a blade running at 14.5GH with good airflow, more stable than some of the stock boards I've seen under the same fan. It's pretty much the best bet without having to machine a plate to screw over the boards for heat spreading and pressure on the sink.

If you want to send the board in, I can see about improving stock cooling and, if that works well enough, try pushing some more hashes out of it for you. If it is a voltage issue I can look into that too, see if the VRM outputs are noisy and add some filtering to clean it up.

[artbatista]

The best luck I've ever had was with a three-point warp to the stock heatsink. Basically, laying it across two wood blocks and hitting it with a hammer through another wood block in the middle, and then halfway between the middle and the ends, to give the heatsink a fairly continuous slight curve - less than 1/8 inch total deviation, probably closer to 1/16 inch. When the board is screwed down over it, the backside of the board will flex slightly to press up against the heatsink, which will allow better heat transfer. I also used some thermal compound between the heatsink, pad and board and buffed the heatsink face smooth - the ones I've seen have been very rough, so not a good contact surface at all.
A three-point warp is good because it leaves a fairly continuous curve to the heatsink surface - just a single bend in the middle will make more like a triangle, so when the board flexes (into a continuous curve) it won't mate with the heatsink face evenly and could leave gaps under some rows of chips.

Between that and the simple chipside heatsinks in the kit, I've had a blade running at 14.5GH with good airflow, more stable than some of the stock boards I've seen under the same fan. It's pretty much the best bet without having to machine a plate to screw over the boards for heat spreading and pressure on the sink.

If you want to send the board in, I can see about improving stock cooling and, if that works well enough, try pushing some more hashes out of it for you. If it is a voltage issue I can look into that too, see if the VRM outputs are noisy and add some filtering to clean it up.

That sounds good. Please PM the snail mail address info I need to send the board to, as well as total BTC and a wallet address for your fees.

Art