Bitmain AntMiner U1 Tips & Tricks

[Jay_Pal]

The only thing that might be an issue is the noise from a fan due to the location of the setup, if I can get the same level of cooling from a heat sink I think I'd rather do it silently.

I'm using a normal 80mm computer case fan (12V@0,02A) with a 7.5V AC adapter and I guarantee you that it is quite noiseless.
I'm just waiting for a power adapter for my hub and I'll put all my BE's next to the Ants in the same hub, and then, put them on a "shoe box" to properly manage the heat and create some tunneling to improve airflow and have it neatly arranged.
But let me ask you: besides the noise, have you already tried to use 0981 frequency and a fan? even for one hour.
That way you'd check if it is some heat issue or not.
And you might have some USB Hub lying around that you could use instead the extension cable?
These are just some ideas to troubleshoot your problem.

[JONXLR8]

I'm using a normal 80mm computer case fan (12V@0,02A) with a 7.5V AC adapter and I guarantee you that it is quite noiseless.
I'm just waiting for a power adapter for my hub and I'll put all my BE's next to the Ants in the same hub, and then, put them on a "shoe box" to properly manage the heat and create some tunneling to improve airflow and have it neatly arranged.
But let me ask you: besides the noise, have you already tried to use 0981 frequency and a fan? even for one hour.
That way you'd check if it is some heat issue or not.
And you might have some USB Hub lying around that you could use instead the extension cable?
These are just some ideas to troubleshoot your problem.

Thanks for your advice, I will have a look into the hub and fan options, I dont have either to hand though. I just liked what chromosoma had done with his set up on top of that ali heat sink, I could acheive this quite easily and cheaply so I thought that would be the best way to go. I've been looking into the different thicknesses of thermal pads but can't really find any solid information on what thickness to go for.

I've been running it for about 25 minutes on the 4F02 setting, it's getting 4.8% HW so far.

I will try relocating it using the extension cable when that arrives and see about getting hold of a fan to see if I can improve things. Thanks again

[chromosoma]

BTW
Running at 2 GHS  at chip Temp.  just 40 C°  (room temp 21 C°)
Passive cooling FTW=)

Do you have a link to those thermal pads, and do you know their thickness, and thermal conductivity rating (w/mk)? Thanks

It is "Akasa thermal adhesive  tape " with 0.9W/mK

[wwwin]

I've been running my antminer for about 24-hours using the following instruction:

cgminer.exe --bmsc-options 115200:20 -o stratum+tcp://mint.bitminter.com:3333 -u user_worker -p 123 --bmsc-freq 0681

Does this look healthy to you? I should add, it's not plugged into a hub or anything, it's straight into the USB port on the front of the PC.

I'm considering running it at 0781 once I've got a heat sink and CPU pad to put on it, any thoughts on this appreciated, thanks

You have a quite extreme hardware error rate...!!
I'm running mine with 0981 and in less than 12h I get this:

Code:

 cgminer version 3.9.0 - Started: [2014-01-13 21:42:48]                                                                                                                                |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                       |
 (5s):10.34G (avg):10.87Gh/s | A:102450  R:0  HW:2298  WU:148.1/m                                                                                                                      |
 ST: 2  SS: 4  NB: 75  LW: 152113  GF: 1  RF: 0                                                                                                                                        |
 Connected to mmpool.bitparking.com diff 10 with stratum as user                                                                                                               |
 Block: bdc4fc94...  Diff:1.79G  Started: [08:58:47]  Best share: 1.52M                                                                                                                |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                       |
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit                                                                                                                                 |
 AMU  0:                | 335.6M/335.8Mh/s | A: 3110 R:0 HW:  20 WU: 4.8/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  1:                | 447.2M/447.8Mh/s | A: 4320 R:0 HW:  43 WU: 6.2/m                                                                                                             |
 ANT  0:                | 2.024G/2.009Gh/s | A:18920 R:0 HW: 151 WU:27.8/m                                                                                                             |
 ANT  1:                | 2.672G/2.012Gh/s | A:19970 R:0 HW: 148 WU:27.9/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  3:                | 335.4M/335.6Mh/s | A: 3290 R:0 HW:  41 WU: 4.6/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  4:                | 335.5M/335.5Mh/s | A: 2900 R:0 HW:  26 WU: 4.5/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  5:                | 335.7M/335.9Mh/s | A: 3010 R:0 HW:  25 WU: 4.6/m                                                                                                             |
 BAJ  1:  max 32C 0.99V | 4.676G/4.694Gh/s | A:37640 R:0 HW:  13 WU:65.4/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  6:                | 447.4M/447.7Mh/s | A: 1710 R:0 HW:1822 WU: 3.1/m                                                                                                             |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------        

0.79% in Ant 0 and 0.74% on Ant 1.
You are getting 3.04% on yours!!!
I have nothing else than the original heatsink and a fan blowing through them (not from the top but from the side).

Looks good except AMU 6...any idea why that one is so out of whack from the others?

[chromosoma]

Guys with  high HW rate.
Try to use  BFGMINER.
I had the same problem, and with Bfgminer i have 0% HW

[Jay_Pal]

Looks good except AMU 6...any idea why that one is so out of whack from the others?

Yap... I think I have some problems either with the PSU or some regulator/capacitor on the motherboard, so I had to plug the AMU6 directly on the back.
Since I'm having that problem, i can't use an extender or an hub to plug it.
Since I'm also waiting for a 5V@8A power adapter to my 10 port USB hub, I can't plug it there, neither.
So, it's heating away... with a very bad cooling from one of my case fans and a piece of cardboard.
I've spent about 1h trying to put them all up yesterday night.
BTW, I'm on Linux and I can't get the compiled BFGMiner to detect them... not even the the BES or the Jala even with "-S erupter:all -S antminer:all" or "-d?" (0 devices) so, i use Fractalbc's cgminer.
I wanted to test with bfgminer, but it's a no go.
Also, this cgminer usually takes long to find the hardware (about 2 minutes) and if I set the frequency to 0A81, the ants aren't even detected.


(mean while, I've found I've missed libusb-1.0... :p I'll recompile both cgminer and bfgminer and try again)

[cs2000]

Also try tightening the U1's Allen key bolts a little. On my 3 ants (that's a total of 6 bolts) 2 of them were fine, 2 needed half a turn and the other 2 were very loose needing over 1 full turn.

I haven't done them up to superhero tightness, just nipped them up. May help with heat & speed issues. Just for ref, my 3x ants in a raspberry pi (with powered hub) tend to average 0.40 or lower HW errors (they do have fans cooling them however).

Most Ant's will experience issues if overclocking to 0A81 (2.2ghs) due to voltage and obviously heat issues. My CGminer takes about 15-20 seconds to initialise and start mining.

[Jay_Pal]

Just recompiled with libusb-1.0 support and it took about 30 secs to start.
I can live with that!

Also try tightening the U1's Allen key bolts a little. On my 3 ants (that's a total of 6 bolts) 2 of them were fine, 2 needed half a turn and the other 2 were very loose needing over 1 full turn.

I haven't done them up to superhero tightness, just nipped them up. May help with heat & speed issues. Just for ref, my 3x ants in a raspberry pi (with powered hub) tend to average 0.40 or lower HW errors (they do have fans cooling them however).

Most Ant's will experience issues if overclocking to 0A81 (2.2ghs) due to voltage and obviously heat issues. My CGminer takes about 15-20 seconds to initialise and start mining.

Got to check mine then.
As for overclocking, 0A81 needs the resistor or not?
I thougt that the resistor was needed to 0B81 and up!
And yes, if overclocked, they would need to dissipate massive amounts of heat and in that case, bigger heat sinks.

[ithd]

Where did you get your resistors (what part #s?) and how did you adjust the frequency once cgminer was running?

Thanks

"....hash rate at only 1.5 Gh/s."

No, it is not he pool side, your miner  gets not enough power.

I'm not sure if it's the power as I've tested the hub with only one U1 and I get the same hash rate at 0981 using BFG Miner. 

To compare I reverted back to the CG Miner recommended by BitMain for the U1 and after all the plugging in one U1 at a time it's sitting steady at 2Gh/s each.  I can confirm this by the reported hash rate that the pool tells me.

For some reason BFG Miner doesn't allow the U1's to go above 1.6 Gh/s for me, often less than that.  But since I'm using the same BFG Miner version as everyone else here and CG Miner does set the hash rate of the U1's properly I'm unsure what to think.

I used to get stuck at 1.6 Gh/s in bfgminer too. I got to 2 Gh/s after using the new command. The new format is :

bfgminer --set-device antiminer:clock=x0981

Try this and see if it works. Hope this helps

[fractalbc]

Also, this cgminer usually takes long to find the hardware (about 2 minutes) and if I set the frequency to 0A81, the ants aren't even detected.

I noticed this as well.  It is especially bad if you have both BE's and ANT's.  The BE's have to fail ANT validation 3 times each, and this takes time.  I have thought it would be nice to fix that but given that I restart my miners once a month or so I figured I can live with it.

[Jay_Pal]

Also, this cgminer usually takes long to find the hardware (about 2 minutes) and if I set the frequency to 0A81, the ants aren't even detected.

I noticed this as well.  It is especially bad if you have both BE's and ANT's.  The BE's have to fail ANT validation 3 times each, and this takes time.  I have thought it would be nice to fix that but given that I restart my miners once a month or so I figured I can live with it.

Even if for some reason I have to restart once or twice a week, I can also live quite well with it!!!
I'd even wait for 5 minutes as long as it worked!
(Just got "scared" in the first few times! :p)
Once again, great work, Fractalbc!!

[captplanet]

So one of my miners is accepting very little blocks, while the rest are cranking away like mad men. Is there anything to do to fix this?


EDIT: So I've got only that miner plugged into the hub, and it's been about 3 minutes. It has only accepted one block for 1k/4 diff. Is this just a bad miner?

Another EDIT: 6 minutes, and it's accepted 4 blocks.

[cs2000]

Yeah id say theres something wrong there, the ants can do 4 blocks in about 10 seconds id guess.

[saldi]

Hi!

I've one antminer running on my small home linux server, but I'm planning to buy 2-3 more.

What is the best source for them in EU and what is the best price for them?

 I've checked the bitcointalk forum as well, there are some sellers, but not too communicative 

[Jay_Pal]

After more than 12h, it's looking good!!!
(Even AMU3, the one with bad cooling...)

Code:

 cgminer version 3.9.0 - Started: [2014-01-14 17:39:51]                          |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
 (5s):10.63G (avg):10.93Gh/s | A:150150  R:0  HW:2785  WU:149.8/m                |
 ST: 2  SS: 0  NB: 116  LW: 222809  GF: 0  RF: 0                                 |
 Connected to mmpool.bitparking.com diff 10 with stratum as user                 |
 Block: dccc7e00...  Diff:1.79G  Started: [10:22:46]  Best share: 506K           |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit                           |
 AMU 0:                | 337.4M/341.4Mh/s | A: 4620 R:0 HW:  59 WU: 4.6/m        |
 AMU 1:                | 339.3M/341.3Mh/s | A: 4820 R:0 HW:  37 WU: 4.7/m        |
 AMU 2:                | 449.4M/453.0Mh/s | A: 6260 R:0 HW:  78 WU: 6.2/m        |
 AMU 3:                | 448.0M/448.1Mh/s | A: 4290 R:0 HW:2084 WU: 4.3/m        |
 AMU 4:                | 335.7M/336.0Mh/s | A: 4710 R:0 HW:  36 WU: 4.7/m        |
 AMU 5:                | 335.6M/335.9Mh/s | A: 4240 R:0 HW:  50 WU: 4.6/m        |
 BAJ 0:  max 34C 0.99V | 4.576G/4.690Gh/s | A:65680 R:0 HW:  30 WU:65.3/m        |
 ANT 0:                | 2.364G/2.015Gh/s | A:28160 R:0 HW: 213 WU:27.9/m        |
 ANT 1:                | 2.287G/1.972Gh/s | A:27400 R:0 HW: 198 WU:27.4/m        |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

[bitcoiner49er]

I needed to add "-S" before BFG would find my USB miners, but they are now all happy, happy.

Code:

bfgminer.exe -S erupter:all -S antminer:all -S all --set-device antminer:clock=x0981 --icarus-options 115200:2:2 --icarus-timing 2.5=90

[chromosoma]

Hi!

I've one antminer running on my small home linux server, but I'm planning to buy 2-3 more.

What is the best source for them in EU and what is the best price for them?

 I've checked the bitcointalk forum as well, there are some sellers, but not too communicative  

Hi, im am currently selling my Antminers via ebay:http://www.ebay.de/itm/221354427920?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649.
I can make you small discount if you buy it outside ebay (so i will not have to pay 10% of selling price)

[Mudbankkeith]

Hi!

I've one antminer running on my small home linux server, but I'm planning to buy 2-3 more.

What is the best source for them in EU and what is the best price for them?

 I've checked the bitcointalk forum as well, there are some sellers, but not too communicative 

Lots of group buys around on these pages.

[SpaceCadet]

You have a quite extreme hardware error rate...!!
I'm running mine with 0981 and in less than 12h I get this:

Code:

 cgminer version 3.9.0 - Started: [2014-01-13 21:42:48]                                                                                                                                |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                       |
 (5s):10.34G (avg):10.87Gh/s | A:102450  R:0  HW:2298  WU:148.1/m                                                                                                                      |
 ST: 2  SS: 4  NB: 75  LW: 152113  GF: 1  RF: 0                                                                                                                                        |
 Connected to mmpool.bitparking.com diff 10 with stratum as user                                                                                                               |
 Block: bdc4fc94...  Diff:1.79G  Started: [08:58:47]  Best share: 1.52M                                                                                                                |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                       |
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit                                                                                                                                 |
 AMU  0:                | 335.6M/335.8Mh/s | A: 3110 R:0 HW:  20 WU: 4.8/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  1:                | 447.2M/447.8Mh/s | A: 4320 R:0 HW:  43 WU: 6.2/m                                                                                                             |
 ANT  0:                | 2.024G/2.009Gh/s | A:18920 R:0 HW: 151 WU:27.8/m                                                                                                             |
 ANT  1:                | 2.672G/2.012Gh/s | A:19970 R:0 HW: 148 WU:27.9/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  3:                | 335.4M/335.6Mh/s | A: 3290 R:0 HW:  41 WU: 4.6/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  4:                | 335.5M/335.5Mh/s | A: 2900 R:0 HW:  26 WU: 4.5/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  5:                | 335.7M/335.9Mh/s | A: 3010 R:0 HW:  25 WU: 4.6/m                                                                                                             |
 BAJ  1:  max 32C 0.99V | 4.676G/4.694Gh/s | A:37640 R:0 HW:  13 WU:65.4/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  6:                | 447.4M/447.7Mh/s | A: 1710 R:0 HW:1822 WU: 3.1/m                                                                                                             |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------        

0.79% in Ant 0 and 0.74% on Ant 1.
You are getting 3.04% on yours!!!
I have nothing else than the original heatsink and a fan blowing through them (not from the top but from the side).

How are you getting your U1s to run at full speed with your BEs on 3.9.0??  What is your command line or .conf?  When I try running my U1s and BEs together, the U1s run just 20% or so faster than the BEs on my win7 box.

TIA!

[addzz]

hey cs2000...

I'm using your instructions from several pages back.... thanks for the download.

Will this work with the older USB Erupters as well?  I have a mixed setup (49 port hub, gradually replacing old erupters with AntMiner U1s).

I did a test with 1 erupter and I don't think it was hashing with it.