Braiins OS & Braiins OS+ custom ASIC firmware: optimize performance & efficiency

[philipma1957]

after 1 day of trial and error

board 0 at freq 500 volts at 8.1
board 1 at freq 500 volts at 8.0
board 2 at freq 500 volts at 8.0

yields 10030 gh/s at 823 watts  which is really good for an s9i  plus it is pretty quiet

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[philipma1957]

What are your deciding factors for Frequency and Voltage?

https://imgur.com/xVXIBq1

825 watts

well  I have lots of space I could fit 100 units easy

but I have 40kwatts of cheap power.

so getting close to 800 watts and 10000gh is a good goal for me and an s9i.

I settled in at freq 500 cause it gives close to 10000 gh

so all 3 boards have freq 500

I know that a board sometimes is a good over clock board
I know that a board sometimes is a good under clock board
much like a cpu some do better in one direction than another.

so if I can do 800 watts and 10000 gh I can run  50 x 800 = 40kwatts and 500th

my deal is 50-50 spilt of coins so 250th free hash

the location can fit 100 units but solar will only provide 40kwatts 24/7.

I set freq 500 on 3 boards and 8.7 volts on 3 boards

I kept dropping volts

hoping to get to 10000gh and 800 watts

board 0 did not work well at 8.0 volts it gives 3000 gh

board 1 gave 3400 gh at 8.0 volts
board 2 gave 3400 gh at 8.0 volts

so that was 815-820 watts and 9800 gh about 83 watts a th

I pushed board 0 to 8.1 volts

and I got
board 0 3240 gh   8.1
board 1 3400 gh   8.0
board 2 3400 gh   8.0

this is 10040gh at 815-825 watts or  81.17-82.17 watts a th

since I have 40 kwatts of cheap power runing 50 of these will be about 41.25 kwatts

I should run 48 of them   that is 39.6 k-watts.

The location can do 100kwatts but the 60kwatts over the solar array cost 11 cents a kwatt and don't pay to do.

Since I have lots of space I will have idle gear to add on if price spikes.

[Apprentice]

well in my case since power is super cheap, most of the miners are overclocked. like running around 14.2T and use BOS mainly to run my 13.5T at 14T and above.
slowly increasing the frequency and trying to reach 14.5T at the S9 14.5 got the same number of ASIC chips, so the miner should run OK at 14.5T (without ASIC boost)
Am running BOS now on 12 S9s without issues (since they released it) from SD cards.
In the next release I wish they add fan control.

[philipma1957]

The solar power is cheap real cheap. But it is 40k-watts

So a cheap s9i doing 80 or 81 watts a th works better since 49 x 10040 = about 500th of hash.

If I overclock and do 90 watts a th  I get about 40000/90 = 444 th of hash.

Yeah I only need say 35 units vs 49  but s9is are cheap enough it is not an issue.

[qctechno_isback]

I installed Braiins OS using SD card image

Burn SD card with this file :
https://feeds.braiins-os.org/braiins-os_am1-s9_sd_2018-11-27-0-c34516b0.img

Need to move JP4 on controller to boot on SD card.
https://docs.braiins-os.org/s9

Work great, but unchecking ASIC Boost option have no effect.
Always stuck on ASIC Boost mode.

Anyone you have same results ?

Switching to standard mode would be useful to mine alt-coin like DGB or profit for higher mining price on Nicehash compare to ASIC Boost mode.

[philipma1957]

mine appears to only work on asic pools even when not checked.

[qctechno_isback]

Thanks, I'm not alone with this glitch 

[Artemis3]

mine appears to only work on asic pools even when not checked.

Does it make any significant difference in power use or hashrate when checked vs unchecked?

[Apprentice]

checking asic boost is reducing the hashrate by around 0.3-0.5T but also reducing the power draw. working well on all miners.
I have noticed with asic boost enabled it is difficult to overclock it.

[Artemis3]

checking asic boost is reducing the hashrate by around 0.3-0.5T but also reducing the power draw. working well on all miners.
I have noticed with asic boost enabled it is difficult to overclock it.

Unless you have very cheap electricity, I think it is in your best interest to improve the efficiency, not the TH/s. Overclocking will do you no good if each TH consumes more watts. Its best to underclock if this makes every TH cost less, like philipma1957 just did by putting them into 500M@8.0~1 volts and achieving 82 watt per TH on the S9i.

Just divide your current watts with the hashrate to see if you are being more or less efficient than normal, or under-clocking.

[Bitcguru77]

On the other hand...

If you, like me, only have one or a few miners and can afford the electric bill without selling off your mined btc, you will have more btc to sell later when price goes up (if it ever goes up).

I'm taking a shot at this running 15,3 THs at 1470 W (equals app. 96 W/THs) with Asic Boost enabled.

I haven't counted though at what price I would need to sell at so that running 15,3 THs at 1470 W now would be more profitable than running 10 THs at 800 W. This would be interesting maths, but you need to include your electric price, bitcoin difficulty, luck, time period etc. into the equation so it might be difficult to get a correct answer.

However, if we simplify it:

Mining for one year with 15.3 THs /1470 W
With my electricity costs (in EUR): 110 €/month = 1320 €
Lets assume i would make 0.25 btc
Selling at a btc price of 3500 € (as now) would give 875 €
Loss: 445 €

Mining for one year with 10 THs / 800 W
With my electricity costs: 60 €/month = 720 €
Compared to above I would have mined 0.25 btc/15.3 THs*10 THs = 0,163 btc
Selling at a btc price of 3500 € (as now) would give app. 570 €
Loss: 150 €

If we go forward and lets say that X = btc price to sell at (in EUR also)

-1320 + 0,25X = -720 + 0,163X
0,25X - 0,163X = 1320 - 720
0,087X = 600
X = 600 / 0,087
X = 6896,55 €

So in this case the sweet spot is at app. 6900 €/btc. In other words my setup would be more profitable selling off the btc above the sweet spot and philipma1957's setup would be more profitable selling off under.

However this is not this simple as difficulty, luck, electric price changes etc. all would need to be included in the equation, as also mentioned above, to get it correct.

I also might have got something wrong as I was counting while writing, but hopefully you understand the principle.

Apprentice:
I've also noticed that overclocking is much easier with Asic Boost turned off, but with Asic Boost off my miner pulls 120-140 W (at unchanged hashrate) more out of the wall. My PSU is rated 1600 W so with the settings I have now I would be at max without Asic Boost. Obviously the above mentioned sweet spot would also be much higher even though I probably could pull out a little more THs adding who knows how much watts.

Artemis3: Just reread your input. 82 THs/W is pretty good. What firmware are you using? (I assume you menth dividing watts with hashrate and got 82 W/THs.)

BR.
Steff

[Artemis3]

Artemis3: Just reread your input. 82 THs/W is pretty good. What firmware are you using? (I assume you menth dividing watts with hashrate and got 82 W/THs.)

Oops, sorry my mistake. Fixed it, thanks!

[Bitcguru77]

Hi.

I'm wondering if someone could help me with the scheduled tasks in BOS.

I'dont have my miner at home so I can't check it from the miner's web interface right now, but out of my memory there is a window in BOS web interface where you can add scheduled tasks, probably by writing some Linux commands.

As background info I'm running app. 15.5 THs with Asic Boost enabled on an S9 Jan 2018 batch 13.5 THs. The miner seems to be more sensitive when overclocked + AB and after a few days hashrate seems to drop a little bit (Now at app. 15.2 after three days). It also, if not completely, seems to be dependent of weather conditions as the miner is in a "cold" garage which changes temperature with outside temperature.

However by simply pressing "Save&Apply" in CG Miner window the speed goes right back upp where it needs to be (lets call it a soft reboot). Reboot in it's correct term doesn't do the trick so after a while (a few hours) after deep reboot i need to press the Save&Apply (soft reboot) to get the hashrate where it should be.

So I would like to schedule the "Save&Apply"-command once every 24 or 48 hours. Anyone that can help or point me in the right diection? I've been looking for a "users manual" or similar for BOS, but no luck so far and Linux is not one of my strong sides.

BR.
Steff

[philipma1957]

Does it make any significant difference in power use or hashrate when checked vs unchecked?

Sorry busy  with setup of new solar array.

That  check on or off seems to do nothing in any way if you are pointed to a pool with asic boost.

As for cranking it up and doing 16 to 15.5 th  hoping for a btc jump

instead of going low like 10 th.

Super complex  to really tell ahead of time what to do.

But I am doing this in a 40kwatt to 90kwatt build.

First 40kwatts are solar and will be free next 50kwatts are at 13cents a kwatt.

there is a shit ton of math for figuring that out.

variables all over the place.

I'd discuss it but maybe in a different thread.

Say one on over vs under clocking the why's to do it one way over the other.  Might be a fun thread.

[Bitcguru77]

I agree. Might be really fun.  

In your case, when electricity is free (at least up to 40 kW), I do understand your reasons as you can run a certain amount of miners up to 40 kW. Until you reach 40 kW you can just add more miners and if you reach 40 kW you just remove a few. In this case the only thing that matters is minimum W/THs (if you already have enough miners and don't need to take miner investment costs into the calculations). With the 13 cents/kW the situation is probably pretty much the same.

In my case with my electricity costs the fact is that the only reasonable thing to do would be to just unplug and buy the bitcoins. The BTC I'm mining at the moment I would need to sell at 5.500 € (with present difficulty) to even break even and at present BTC price I would get not far from double amount of BTC buying instead of mining.

Sad but true.  

BR.
Steff

[Artemis3]

In my case with my electricity costs the fact is that the only reasonable thing to do would be to just unplug and buy the bitcoins. The BTC I'm mining at the moment I would need to sell at 5.500 € (with present difficulty) to even break even and at present BTC price I would get not far from double amount of BTC buying instead of mining.

Logically it makes no sense to keep it running and incur in loses. But perhaps investing in solar/wind energy could later help reduce your power bills? All you need is a grid tie inverter and panels/wind turbine/etc, no batteries (the grid is your battery).

[philipma1957]

Long term power is king.  A retreat to a base camp of a 20 amp 240 volt solar system  will allow for 2 s9s or one m10.  When times are better you can go beyond the base camp and mine on the grid.

[Artemis3]

Long term power is king.  A retreat to a base camp of a 20 amp 240 volt solar system  will allow for 2 s9s or one m10.  When times are better you can go beyond the base camp and mine on the grid.

This is solid advice, and it might be what future miners will be anyway. When mining becomes unprofitable at any price, those large operations will have to shutdown anyway... And those who installed renewable can continue up to their generation capacity.

[somename]

I'm wondering if someone could help me with the scheduled tasks in BOS...

I tested it via SSH and command you want to run is /etc/init.d/cgminer reload as root. I believe that you need to add

Code:

0 */6 * * * /etc/init.d/cgminer reload

to BOS Scheduled tasks and restart miner to load crontab changes. That command will reload cgminer every 6 hours (please refer to https://crontab-generator.org/ to understand crontab syntax).

EDIT: I just tested it and its working like a charm.

[Bitcguru77]

I tested it via SSH and command you want to run is /etc/init.d/cgminer reload as root. I believe that you need to add

Code:

0 */6 * * * /etc/init.d/cgminer reload

to BOS Scheduled tasks and restart miner to load crontab changes. That command will reload cgminer every 6 hours (please refer to https://crontab-generator.org/ to understand crontab syntax).

EDIT: I just tested it and its working like a charm.

Hi.

Thank you very much for this info. I will do som reading and next time I go check my miner I will try it out.

Sorry for the stupic questins, but:
- Can this be written straight into the scheduled task window in BOS web interface?
- Should I write it just as you wrote, or should there be something else instead of the stars?
- I assume the "6" stands for hours. Is there possibel to put in minutes also? Like 0 hours and 5 minutes? Just to check if it works.

I might find the info myself when I get to read the info on https://crontab-generator.org/, but I don't have the time right now.

BR.
Steff