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gyverlb
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June 23, 2014, 01:54:40 PM |
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As I can't reach warranty@minereu.com (overzealous antispam filter that bounces my emails), here is the message I sent 2 days ago to warranty@minereu.com, posted on the Google group used for support and retried sending to warranty@minereu.com a couple of minutes ago (with another bounce) : Hi,
out of the 3 miners in order #1664, one just died.
The Raspberry is still working fine, but it can't reach the 2 blades at all.
The main fan isn't spinning on startup either. I opened the top panel of
the a2mini to check for any obvious problem but couldn't find any (no
burn trace or physical damage visible).
It seems the problem comes from the controller board : the main fan and
the 2 blades are connected to it and stopped working at the same time
while the Raspberry is working fine.
Is it possible to get a replacement for the controller board ? Better :
can I purchase an additional one on top of the replacement one to avoid
too much downtime in the future if it happens again ?
Best regards,
(sig removed to avoid privacy problems)
How can I proceed to reach minereu.com support and deal with this problem? |
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emdje
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June 23, 2014, 02:01:26 PM |
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As I can't reach warranty@minereu.com (overzealous antispam filter that bounces my emails), here is the message I sent 2 days ago to warranty@minereu.com, posted on the Google group used for support and retried sending to warranty@minereu.com a couple of minutes ago (with another bounce) : Hi,
out of the 3 miners in order #1664, one just died.
The Raspberry is still working fine, but it can't reach the 2 blades at all.
The main fan isn't spinning on startup either. I opened the top panel of
the a2mini to check for any obvious problem but couldn't find any (no
burn trace or physical damage visible).
It seems the problem comes from the controller board : the main fan and
the 2 blades are connected to it and stopped working at the same time
while the Raspberry is working fine.
Is it possible to get a replacement for the controller board ? Better :
can I purchase an additional one on top of the replacement one to avoid
too much downtime in the future if it happens again ?
Best regards,
(sig removed to avoid privacy problems)
How can I proceed to reach minereu.com support and deal with this problem? You could get the blades working in the mean time by plugging them in (including the fan) the controller of one of your other working miners. It should work then, you then just have a 60 MH/s miner. Than you know for sure as well it is the controller. How to contact them otherwise then mail or PM I don't know |
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 02:39:00 PM |
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Well as usual there is a caveat with MinerEU. Firstly the delivery charge has gone up by $2, no biggy there. But instead of next day to the UK, it's now on a two day service. So mine dispatched today is not due with me until Wednesday according to Interlink. But of course it isn't Interlink because they don't do a two day service to UK, it is really DPD.
I'm sure that the cost charged for shipping is probably not enough anyway, but it would be nice to be able to choose the service you want.
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gyverlb
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June 23, 2014, 02:47:03 PM |
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As I can't reach warranty@minereu.com (overzealous antispam filter that bounces my emails), here is the message I sent 2 days ago to warranty@minereu.com, posted on the Google group used for support and retried sending to warranty@minereu.com a couple of minutes ago (with another bounce) : Hi,
out of the 3 miners in order #1664, one just died.
The Raspberry is still working fine, but it can't reach the 2 blades at all.
The main fan isn't spinning on startup either. I opened the top panel of
the a2mini to check for any obvious problem but couldn't find any (no
burn trace or physical damage visible).
It seems the problem comes from the controller board : the main fan and
the 2 blades are connected to it and stopped working at the same time
while the Raspberry is working fine.
Is it possible to get a replacement for the controller board ? Better :
can I purchase an additional one on top of the replacement one to avoid
too much downtime in the future if it happens again ?
Best regards,
(sig removed to avoid privacy problems)
How can I proceed to reach minereu.com support and deal with this problem? You could get the blades working in the mean time by plugging them in (including the fan) the controller of one of your other working miners. It should work then, you then just have a 60 MH/s miner. Than you know for sure as well it is the controller. How to contact them otherwise then mail or PM I don't know Yes I realized that the controller had free ports and I thought about connecting the blades and the fans to another controller (I didn't take the miner apart yet so I didn't find a free port for a second fan though). What worries me is that I would connect the two PSUs together at least by their ground. They are clearly cheap PSUs and if there's any defect where the grounds aren't properly grounded there will be leakage current and this could fry something. Unless minereu.com tells me it's fine to use the miners like this while waiting for a replacement, I'll probably remove both PSUs and use a common standard PC 80+ Gold PSU instead to avoid any problem, this is far more invasive and I would like to avoid it. Will try a PM too, thanks for the suggestion. |
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 02:56:38 PM |
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IIRC correctly the controller board has headers for at least three fans
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JPS2K5
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June 23, 2014, 03:06:34 PM |
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Crap ass chinese PSU! My A2 just broke down  well the psu! That in two weeks The LED on the blades.. what color were they ? Mine are green, but what difference does this make? The difference is, I had one with green LED and one with blue. The green one broke down within a week  |
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gyverlb
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June 23, 2014, 03:25:18 PM |
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IIRC correctly the controller board has headers for at least three fans
Yes, I saw at least a second one on close inspection. My initial diagnosis was wrong though: the Raspberry is connected to the controller board and is working fine. But I realized that the Raspberry should use a 5V power line (when it's powered by USB this is what is available to it) and not the 12V used by the fan and blades. I looked more closely at the power supply and the cause of death is now quite obvious: through the vents one can see 3 blown capacitors and a dust-like material clinging to the vents and projected on the controller board in front of the vents. By the look of it the material is the same as what is protruding from the blown capacitors. Most likely scenario: these capacitors are part of the 12V transformer and the 5V transformer is independent on this PSU. The PSU replacement seems the only option... These are run in ideal conditions : 23°C ambient temperature but I fear the two other miners PSUs might not survive (they seem identical)... |
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 03:30:49 PM |
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No the power supply provides only 12V, there is a subsequent transformer actually on the ATX plug. This is what powers the interface board, the fan and the Pi. It could well be that which is blown, at least partially
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gyverlb
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June 23, 2014, 03:37:46 PM |
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No the power supply provides only 12V, there is a subsequent transformer actually on the ATX plug. This is what powers the interface board, the fan and the Pi. It could well be that which is blown, at least partially
Are you sure? There are yellow wires for all 12V related components (including the controller board) and a red wire from a different connector on the PSU connected to the controller board (through the plug you speak of IIRC). I assume the red wire is 5V as it's the standard coloring for this voltage (at least on PC equipments) and I don't see the reason why 2 separate 12V lines would be connected to the controller board with 2 different colors. Edit: maybe there are different a2mini generations with different power supply solutions? |
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 03:43:58 PM |
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It's a standard ATX connector as far as I am aware with the same pinouts. So should have both +12V and -12V if it is fully wired, on yellow and blue cables respectively.
The hashing boards are directly wired to the 12V supply. If your controller board has blown (or that little ATX adapter), I would put it down to running the fan through it. It's quite a high current fan, would have been more sensible to hook it straight to the 12V power supply
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gyverlb
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June 23, 2014, 04:20:35 PM |
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It's a standard ATX connector as far as I am aware with the same pinouts. So should have both +12V and -12V if it is fully wired, on yellow and blue cables respectively.
The hashing boards are directly wired to the 12V supply. If your controller board has blown (or that little ATX adapter), I would put it down to running the fan through it. It's quite a high current fan, would have been more sensible to hook it straight to the 12V power supply
Currently the PSU is clearly defective: there's no way a PSU can run correctly with 3 large capacitors blown so I can't test much until I swap it (I can only hope it didn't take anything else with it). |
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 04:24:24 PM |
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Do you have pictures of the defective area?
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 05:00:32 PM |
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Update from Interlink/DPD, they have my A2 Mini in their grubby hands and it'll be with me tomorrow :-) A little faith restored in MinerEU at last
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emdje
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June 23, 2014, 05:04:59 PM |
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I have connected everything directly to 12 volts of a ATX PSU, but be aware because in my case the + and - of the connectors on the blade are reversed from the ones from my PSU.
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JoostB
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June 23, 2014, 05:10:40 PM |
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Just measured the current through the blades of the A2Mini, for 2 blades it takes 22A. that is 264W.
I wonder where the other 100W goes, maybe dissipated in the PSU, seems like a very bad efficiency of 72.5%.
I assume the controller wont take much.
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 05:17:19 PM |
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Chips should use 12W each at 1200Mhz, so 96W per blade theoretically. So assuming everything is efficient (which it isn't), 192W for both blades, <10W for Pi, and ~20W for fan. So should be just over 200W really
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gyverlb
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June 23, 2014, 05:46:01 PM |
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Do you have pictures of the defective area?
This is a view of the capacitors, you can't see them whole through the vents but you can see they are all opened instead of having a flat metal surface. The one on the top left shows the material best.  This is the material still clinging on the vents.  This is the projection of the material mostly on the edge of the controller board in front of the vents:  |
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james42
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June 23, 2014, 06:05:18 PM |
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You were lucky not to have a fire
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JoostB
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June 23, 2014, 06:12:44 PM |
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Chips should use 12W each at 1200Mhz, so 96W per blade theoretically. So assuming everything is efficient (which it isn't), 192W for both blades, <10W for Pi, and ~20W for fan. So should be just over 200W really
Maybe the chips take 12W each, but there is also a lot of power lost in the DC-DC converters that are powering the chips. And I replaced the fan with the Scyte Ultra Kaze which only takes 7W. The current PSU efficiency is maybe 75% or less. This week I will get the new PSU's which have 87% efficiency, they will consume about 50W less from the wall outlet. And also important, less heat. |
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