[Guide] Dogie's Comprehensive ASICMiner Cube Setup [HD]

[addzz]

ASIC_01-16: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_17-32: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_33-48: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_49-64: x x x x x x x x O O O O O O O O
ASIC_65-80: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_81-96: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

I had a faulty board and it would look like this ^ for a little bit before the entire cube would cease to function (usually 1 to 6 hours later).
After I took out that board, it runs non-stop with no issues.  I don't know if you have the same issue that I did... but some food for thought I guess.

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[Damnsammit]

The screws on the heatsinks are as tight as can be, could I possibly have a duff cube?? Would re-arranging the modules make a difference??

I'd try rearraging the modules, but I don't think it would make much difference.

Contact whoever you purchased the Cube from and let them know you have a bad board.  You might get a replacement blade for free like this guy:

Out of six cubes, I had one with a bad blade-- it showed a row of "xxx"s no matter which slot I put it in. I emailed asicminer.help@gmail.com on Dec. 6 about the single defective blade, and received no response.

Then I got home today and there was a package inside my door from Shenzhen. I actually thought to myself, "What the heck is this? I haven't ordered anything recently." But there was a replacement blade inside, and it works perfectly.

4 days, including the weekend, from the moment I emailed until the replacement blade arrived from China and was plugged in & hashing. Amazing. Amazing! Thank you CanaryInTheMine & friedcat. The ASICMiner legend grows.

[quetzalito]

Right now, I'm stucked waiting for a Corsair RM 750 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139055&Tpk=corsair%20rm%20750. I will probably get it delivered to my country in 10 days, I don't know if I should buy a Thermaltake, because it might or might not last the 10 days... if it even turns on (and the store that sells it sucks with returns)

I'm not sure where you are located, but Amazon in the US has a Thermaltake 850W with a 70A 12v rail for only $124.99:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007BDJ58C/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

What I meant by thermaltake is that it's the only "branded" psu I can buy locally.  Do you have that psu? because  if you do and it's working for you I can pick the exact same psu today.  I don't want to spend 10 days without mining.

I'm not in the US so I can't just buy a local psu and return it if it doesn't work for me, I would have to fight for a refund over here, and don't have the time for that

[qwertyasdfg]

The screws on the heatsinks are as tight as can be, could I possibly have a duff cube?? Would re-arranging the modules make a difference??

I'd try rearraging the modules, but I don't think it would make much difference.

Contact whoever you purchased the Cube from and let them know you have a bad board.  You might get a replacement blade for free like this guy:

Out of six cubes, I had one with a bad blade-- it showed a row of "xxx"s no matter which slot I put it in. I emailed asicminer.help@gmail.com on Dec. 6 about the single defective blade, and received no response.

Then I got home today and there was a package inside my door from Shenzhen. I actually thought to myself, "What the heck is this? I haven't ordered anything recently." But there was a replacement blade inside, and it works perfectly.

4 days, including the weekend, from the moment I emailed until the replacement blade arrived from China and was plugged in & hashing. Amazing. Amazing! Thank you CanaryInTheMine & friedcat. The ASICMiner legend grows.

Thanks, I tried rearranging but that didn't fix the problem, will get on to the seller!

[Damnsammit]

I am trying to use bfgminer as a proxy, I have the run parameters all set for connecting to BTCGuild but when I run the batch file bfgminer it says "Pool 0 is hiding blocks from us" and promptly closes. Anyone know how to fix that? Here is how I am running bfgminer:

bfgminer.exe --http-port 8330 -o http://stratum.btcguild.com:3333 -u <my worker username> -p x

Thanks!

You've gotten farther than me with bfgminer... I have the exact command line but mine says "looking for device, press [M] to add device, [Q] to quit" and then if I press M it closes.

I might try messing around with it later tonight, but I am happy with Slush's pool for now.  Just glad to have the damn thing running at 97% efficiency.

[Zoella]

Did you pull the cards out and make sure all the heatsinks were tight? In Blades, low efficiency is usually due to chips overheating from poor heatsink contact, and these Cubes are notorious for loose screws upon delivery.

Right I unscrewed the device, pulled all the cards out, screwed a few of the loose heatsink screws in tighter and put the unit back together.

Now I can get the cube to hash at 31693MHS with an efficiency of 96.58% in low clock speed, if I switch the clock to high both the hash rate and efficiency start dropping, I also noticed one X today which wasn't there yesterday after I put the device back together:

ASIC_01-16: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_17-32: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_33-48: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_49-64: O O O O O O x O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_65-80: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_81-96: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Can anyone shed any light on why my hash rate and efficiency might be dropping when I try to run the device in an overclocked state?

I've opened this cube up again twice and removed and re seated the modules and am now back to square one. Thought I was making progress and now I'm right back to where I started

ASIC_01-16: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_17-32: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_33-48: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_49-64: x x x x x x x x O O O O O O O O
ASIC_65-80: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_81-96: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

MHS:29513 Efficieny:098.55% on the Low clock setting

The screws on the heatsinks are as tight as can be, could I possibly have a duff cube?? Would re-arranging the modules make a difference??

I don't know how tight "tight as can be" is, but I'm wondering if you may have damaged the board/chips by overtightening the screws?  You went from 0 bad chips to 1 bad chip to 8 bad chips.

[qwertyasdfg]

Did you pull the cards out and make sure all the heatsinks were tight? In Blades, low efficiency is usually due to chips overheating from poor heatsink contact, and these Cubes are notorious for loose screws upon delivery.

Right I unscrewed the device, pulled all the cards out, screwed a few of the loose heatsink screws in tighter and put the unit back together.

Now I can get the cube to hash at 31693MHS with an efficiency of 96.58% in low clock speed, if I switch the clock to high both the hash rate and efficiency start dropping, I also noticed one X today which wasn't there yesterday after I put the device back together:

ASIC_01-16: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_17-32: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_33-48: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_49-64: O O O O O O x O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_65-80: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_81-96: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Can anyone shed any light on why my hash rate and efficiency might be dropping when I try to run the device in an overclocked state?

I've opened this cube up again twice and removed and re seated the modules and am now back to square one. Thought I was making progress and now I'm right back to where I started

ASIC_01-16: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_17-32: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_33-48: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_49-64: x x x x x x x x O O O O O O O O
ASIC_65-80: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
ASIC_81-96: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

MHS:29513 Efficieny:098.55% on the Low clock setting

The screws on the heatsinks are as tight as can be, could I possibly have a duff cube?? Would re-arranging the modules make a difference??

I don't know how tight "tight as can be" is, but I'm wondering if you may have damaged the board/chips by overtightening the screws?  You went from 0 bad chips to 1 bad chip to 8 bad chips.

Initially when I received the cube, without any fiddling I had 8 x's, see my previous posts, then after the first time I opened it and tightened the screws I went down to 1 x, now I've opened it a further few times, not over tightened the screws but just made sure they weren't loose and I re-arranged the blades and am now back to 8 x's, plus the x's are always in the same row, so the problem must be the board, I have spoken to the seller and he is awaiting word back from the supplier, hopefully gets sorted soon!

[Damnsammit]

Initially when I received the cube, without any fiddling I had 8 x's, see my previous posts, then after the first time I opened it and tightened the screws I went down to 1 x, now I've opened it a further few times, not over tightened the screws but just made sure they weren't loose and I re-arranged the blades and am now back to 8 x's, plus the x's are always in the same row, so the problem must be the board, I have spoken to the seller and he is awaiting word back from the supplier, hopefully gets sorted soon!

ohhh, that might be better news for ya than a broken blade... you should get a replacement blade and a new main board, so you could run 7 blades (I think?) for the price of 6.

[zeuzzz]

My cube just arrived, I'm in two minds now about whether to sell it and buy bitcoins with the £££ or to set it up at the moment. Did some calculations, then realized the variables were so uncertain, and there are so many of them it was nearly pointless to even try to project profits. Also very quickly worked out that most 'online calculators' for mining profit (that I found) are pretty bad; there's much more unsupportable linear variable assumptions (in such an inherently chaotic system) than provable ones and many miss out crucial variables completely, giving very warped projections. Especially in recent days, it would imply I'd need a ten fold increase in the value of Bitcoin atm to make this even worthwhile in maaany months.

But I find the idea of mining really fun since my computer is on 24/7 anyway. What would you do? Selling on ebay for ~£1000 + each still ...

Since I'm obviously going to at least test it tomorrow a couple of questions:

1) If I go to a local computer hardware store and buy a cheap second hand ~500W PSU with two 6pin PCI-E connectors will that manage to run it? What PSU specs would you recommend for a single cube (I notice most posts in this thread are from people with multiple cubes, few are about smaller power ones for singular use)

2) If I plug my cube into my higher wattage (750W) PSU (Corsair TX750M I have here on my main desktop is that going to potentially damage the cube, or will the cube handle the power output to be just what a single cube needs?

I have a feeling I'm going to be so satisfied with it once it's set up I'll keep it for the novelty factor, but we'll see tomorrow when I've slept on it and (maybe) got it running

Oh and thanks for the great guide! I'll send a donation shortly.

[zeuzzz]

[double post]

[Damnsammit]

My cube just arrived, I'm in two minds now about whether to sell it and buy bitcoins with the £££ or to set it up at the moment. Did some calculations, then realized the variables were so uncertain, and there are so many of them it was nearly pointless to even try to project profits. Also very quickly worked out that most 'online calculators' for mining profit (that I found) are pretty bad; there's much more unsupportable linear variable assumptions (in such an inherently chaotic system) than provable ones and many miss out crucial variables completely, giving very warped projections. Especially in recent days, it would imply I'd need a ten fold increase in the value of Bitcoin atm to make this even worthwhile in maaany months.

But I find the idea of mining really fun since my computer is on 24/7 anyway. What would you do? Selling on ebay for ~£1000 + each still ...

The thought has definitely crossed my mind to sell it.  I listed mine on Craigslist for $1200 and got three responses... would have been enough to buy enough BTC to more than double my investment.  However, after I got it up and running I decided that I definitely needed to mine with it for a little bit.  Still might sell it in the next few weeks, but it will probably be after the first of the year.

Since I'm obviously going to at least test it tomorrow a couple of questions:

1) If I go to a local computer hardware store and buy a cheap second hand ~500W PSU with two 6pin PCI-E connectors will that manage to run it? What PSU specs would you recommend for a single cube (I notice most posts in this thread are from people with multiple cubes, few are about smaller power ones for singular use)

2) If I plug my cube into my substantially higher wattage (900W) PSU I have here is that going to potentially damage the cube or will the PSU/cube handle the power output to be just what a single cube needs?

I have a feeling I'm going to be so satisfied with it once it's set up I'll keep it for the novelty factor, but we'll see tomorrow when I've slept on it and (maybe) got it running

Oh and thanks for the great guide! I'll send a donation shortly.

1)  I don't know if I would trust it.  I first tried with a 630W Antec PSU.  It did not run one Cube effectively.  It would randomly power off after a few minutes, however this was before I had it properly set up.  Not sure if I am going to try it again now that it's set up right or not but I might.  Right now it's using a 850W PSU that I was using in a Scrypt miner that is currently out of commission until after Christmas... my wife invaded my mining space

2) I sure hope that it won't hurt the PSU since I am using an 850W

[Swimmer63]

I am having trouble getting my cube up and running in a data center.
They have no DNS.  Does anybody know what I should put in the two fields for primary and secondary DNS?
Not sure about ports either.
Any help appreciated.

[Jobe7]

Hey guys, all fixed now had to buy a separate router then linked through that.


Has anyone looked at the USB port on these, anything you can do with it?

[Henchman24]

I am having trouble getting my cube up and running in a data center.
They have no DNS.  Does anybody know what I should put in the two fields for primary and secondary DNS?
Not sure about ports either.
Any help appreciated.

You could try using Google's Public DNS at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 or OpenDNS at 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

Ports are dependent on the pool to which you're connecting.

[Damnsammit]

Hey guys, all fixed now had to buy a separate router then linked through that.


Has anyone looked at the USB port on these, anything you can do with it?

Congrats!  The USB port is only for making updates to the board I believe... they are not made to connect to a computer via the USB at this time AFAIK.

[Swimmer63]

I am having trouble getting my cube up and running in a data center.
They have no DNS.  Does anybody know what I should put in the two fields for primary and secondary DNS?
Not sure about ports either.
Any help appreciated.

You could try using Google's Public DNS at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 or OpenDNS at 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

Ports are dependent on the pool to which you're connecting.

OK - ports are good.
I have 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in there.  I have not tried the opendns though.
My ip addresses are a bit odd, at least compared to simple home/office ones.

My ip is 216.224.236.66
The gateway is 65 instead of 66
But when I run my "ip finder" program everything is 172.16.42.1 up to 254 (available)
My PC is 172.16.42.3

I updated the cubes to 172.16.42.10 - 12. (3 of them)
But still can't get them to come up.

What do I put in for the gateway? 172.16.42.0? or 216.224.236.65
And could the Web Port be something different than 8000?

[bitterdog]

I use a a WRT54g router with custom firmware (dd-wrt).  Real easy to setup.  You can also flash dd-wrt on lots of different routers.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

Thanks,
This would work?
http://www.amazon.com/BUFFALO-AirStation-HighPower-Wireless-WZR-300HP/dp/B0096239FG/ref=pd_sim_pc_1

Yep....

Or you could go a little cheaper and buy a used one with DD-WRT installed from ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=wrt54g&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR2.TRC1.A0.Xwrt54g+dd-wrt&_nkw=wrt54g+dd-wrt&_sacat=0

thx I went ahead and got one from eBay.. http://www.ebay.com/itm/331088232778

 hopefully its here before I leave on vacation. that should work perfect for me to run my 4 cubes out in the workshop and not heating my house

 Got my router today. Setup took literally 5 mins .. Now I am heating up the garage instead of my house!! =)


Thanks again!!

BTW I used this video tutorial to guide me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-Jk-v0Aaw

[Singlebyte]

I use a a WRT54g router with custom firmware (dd-wrt).  Real easy to setup.  You can also flash dd-wrt on lots of different routers.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

Thanks,
This would work?
http://www.amazon.com/BUFFALO-AirStation-HighPower-Wireless-WZR-300HP/dp/B0096239FG/ref=pd_sim_pc_1

Yep....

Or you could go a little cheaper and buy a used one with DD-WRT installed from ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=wrt54g&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR2.TRC1.A0.Xwrt54g+dd-wrt&_nkw=wrt54g+dd-wrt&_sacat=0

thx I went ahead and got one from eBay.. http://www.ebay.com/itm/331088232778

 hopefully its here before I leave on vacation. that should work perfect for me to run my 4 cubes out in the workshop and not heating my house

 Got my router today. Setup took literally 5 mins .. Now I am heating up the garage instead of my house!! =)


Thanks again!!

BTW I used this video tutorial to guide me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-Jk-v0Aaw

Awesome!  Glad you was able to get them working so easily.  I think I might move mine to the garage as well during the winter.  It's basically an icebox right now in there.

[mobile]

I use a a WRT54g router with custom firmware (dd-wrt).  Real easy to setup.  You can also flash dd-wrt on lots of different routers.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

Thanks,
This would work?
http://www.amazon.com/BUFFALO-AirStation-HighPower-Wireless-WZR-300HP/dp/B0096239FG/ref=pd_sim_pc_1

Yep....

Or you could go a little cheaper and buy a used one with DD-WRT installed from ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=wrt54g&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR2.TRC1.A0.Xwrt54g+dd-wrt&_nkw=wrt54g+dd-wrt&_sacat=0

thx I went ahead and got one from eBay.. http://www.ebay.com/itm/331088232778

 hopefully its here before I leave on vacation. that should work perfect for me to run my 4 cubes out in the workshop and not heating my house

 Got my router today. Setup took literally 5 mins .. Now I am heating up the garage instead of my house!! =)


Thanks again!!

BTW I used this video tutorial to guide me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-Jk-v0Aaw

Awesome!  Glad you was able to get them working so easily.  I think I might move mine to the garage as well during the winter.  It's basically an icebox right now in there.

DD-WRT, what a great opensource project. I would not have half of the Linksys WRT54G's (in which ive accumulated to build a reliable & robust wireless mesh) if it wasn't the discovery of this firmware. Back on topic, the firmware came in handy with my cube efforts, converting 1 of my WRT54G's to run in client bridged mode as mention previously.

My garage acts as my secondary "man cave", that was mostly used in the summer months. It soon became apparent that the ice cold & dry environment made the most optimal location for my mining efforts.

I have a nagging question. That I cannot seem to find an answer via google, this thread or past threads. The question has to do with the built in overclocking capabilities. We all know that overclocking a device creates more heat, which in turn decreases any electronics service life etc etc. Now granted there are a number of "overclocking extremes" that a device can be put through. For lack of proper vernacular well call these levels; mild (safe)over clocking, medium OC and extreme OC.  Now back on point to my question....

What are the pros and cons of choosing to enable the overclocked mode in these cubes?

The pros are obvious but as far as the cons go? Would overclocking these cubes from 30GH/s to 38GH/s be considered a mild/safe range in overclocking? Basically with all the reports of bad boards and chips rearing their head with these things. Im left considering whether or not I should keep the clocks in low mode or high? Thinking out loud I am just going to assume that a factory overclock option must mean its overclocked within a reasonable range, a range that is not going to cut the service life of these things in half.

Wanted to hear some of your thoughts and/or experience in the matter. I guess being its winter time and the fact that we are about to experience another difficulty readjustment, now would be the time to run it overclocked but Im still hesitant.

Thanks Dogie for the thread facilitation and to all of those that have contributed. Cheers...

[sidehack]

I've only had Cubes running overclocked for two or three weeks, but no issues past a single X'd card - just haven't had time to fix it. About half my cards have actually been jacked to a higher-than-factory overclock just because.

I have a Blade that's been in continual operation at 20% faster than these Cubes' overclock frequency, for two months without a single issue. The way I figure, as long as you keep them cool enough, they should last their expected (profitable) lifetime.

Also, effin' YES on the DDWRT. My last two wireless routers were both flashed to said firmware, and I have another running around which needs to be given "the treatment".