Well finally got my BTMine's on 2/15 that I ordered on 1/9. Apparently they forgot about them on HK and then went on CNY. Awesome for me.
Bought two units, opened them up to find them destroyed inside. Average of 8 caps broken off per unit, and one had a backplane with EVERY SINGLE pin bent.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FsBm93b7.jpg&t=663&c=zBH-oxjWce3sDw)
All of the module power units were cut and sticking out the side of the case:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FmuMUbNL.jpg&t=663&c=j2geZyctoaMDuw)
The fan's cables were torn out:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F615Cb2K.jpg&t=663&c=5ExDcgnIBRh0fQ)
Just randomly floating on the bottom of the cardboard box:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FTG0k3NG.jpg&t=663&c=SfQV0qwvF7hCZg)
After waiting over a month for my shipment, I figured it's up to me to fix this disaster.
Soldered the capacitor located near the IDE cable connector slightly angled to prevent it from falling off:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FvFioUeu.jpg&t=663&c=odlvwji0NdKtsQ)
Cut and resoldered all the cut wires:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FgEAHb7H.jpg&t=663&c=5rk_sQDMaLmSWg)
Finally, after spending all day soldering capacitors and wires back together, got one up and hashing... only to find that 5 of the boards aren't working, I'll have to try shorting the fuses tomorrow.
Second unit wouldn't boot and after a while of troubleshooting I realized that a capacitor on the backplane had the legs touching:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FARRqoYN.jpg&t=663&c=CJ8V4VJ-i_TSRw)
Bent those away from each other and now that's up and running.
I have a few questions...
1) One of the units reports a FAN RPM of 0 across both fans. I saw in the thread that another person had this issue, I cut and resoldered all the fan wires to double check that BTMine didn't just forget to do this, and I cross referenced the working unit I have for pin placement and correct fan plugs. I can't get this one NOT to run 100% fan (since it doesn't report any RPM). Anybody fix this?
2) After reading about the original avalon design, I see that the case itself is used to extend the heatsink on the chips themselves... well my heatsink's are so bent out of shape due to DHL / BTMine they won't screw back in the case, I'm seeing 40-50c temps with fans up. Am I OK to move these OUT of this wreaked case on to a shelve or something with proper airflow or should I get dangerous and try to bend all this crap back in place?
Overall this has been the most horrible experience yet buying Crypto mining hardware.