[YouTube video] How to improve cooling on Antminer S1

[palawan]

Much thanks to Bobs Yerunkle, dogie, and goxed who showed that it's possible, as I would have been too scared to mess with such an expensive device   

[Antminer S1 semi-teardown] How to improve cooling on an overclocked Antminer S1

If you have some time while waiting for Superbowl, lol

  -jeremy

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[dogie]

This is my preferred method of cooling for S1s. Parallel flow cooling only works well if its totally enclosed (nope) and the fan is high pressure (yup). Remove any one of those two and its mediocre.

[palawan]

This is my preferred method of cooling for S1s. Parallel flow cooling only works well if its totally enclosed (nope) and the fan is high pressure (yup). Remove any one of those two and its mediocre.

Thank you, dogie!  You're the one that showed us first how to do a teardown on the Antminer S1 which gave me confidence that it's not going to break anything.  The Ant's cost more than my beat-up car. 

[Prelude]

Those fans don't look like they have very much static pressure, pretty sure you could do a lot better.

I'm going to make some stainless steel panels to close mine off this week.

[jermwerty]

Wow.  Much easier idea:

Plug the fan into a molex adapter off the power supply.  Problem solved.

[palawan]

This modification works very well for us.  I'm sitting next to both Ants.  Quiet.  I don't have to use the big Walmart fan anymore, so Kill-a-Watt is reporting 880W vs 957W (when the big fan was on).

The real test will be in a few days if we get the same temp as yesterday afternoon.  I had to drop the Ant that was not modified yet to 350MHz as it was hitting 53c when overclocked (to 375MHz or 400MHz).

[palawan]

looks easy enough, but adding 8 more fans to each 1000w psu might be a bit much. (total 6 fans per rig...)
i'll keep looking in to see if its gonna help enough to warrant the downtime & cost of said fans.

Yea, I don't know how it would work running 8 fans on a PSU that is already shared by 2 Ants.  I should say that on my first Ant, I switched/reconfigured it to have the heat sinks face out and didn't put the fans on top of the heat sinks until more than a week later, and it was running much cooler as long as I have the big fan blowing in front of it.

As far as time:

To reconfigure the Ant to have heat sinks facing out:  15-30 minutes (possibly 10min or less, but have to be careful)

To put the fans:  20min to 45 min  (some people that are more experienced can probably do it in 10min or less.  you can practice the zip ties and such before doing this)


The zip ties are inter-connected to make it longer.  The 2 fans are connected to each other by zip ties in the middle top and middle bottom.  The fans hang to the sides of the case of the Ants, which surprisingly has holes for them.

[mutex]

I've tried this cooling configuration on my Antminer yesterday.

At first I was getting 49/50C with stock fan off, and 44/45C with stock fan @ 2300 RPM.

Then I tried to move additional fans about an inch away from heat sinks, and it improved the numbers considerably: 44/45C w/o stock fan, and 41/41C @ 2000 stock fan RPM.

I'm thinking of replacing the stock fan with a quieter and slower one, as in this inverted configuration it basically only cools down those big rectangular resistors (marked R47). And maybe add some kind of cover to direct the airflow from the replacing fan along the board.

EDIT: All figures are for 400MHz.

[klondike_bar]

this might work well for a single antminer if you want to squeeze the last few GH out of it (mine all run >375Mhz stock configuration) - anyone thought of a practical way to do this with 4+ antminers?

these things would be great for immersion cooling

[dogie]

this might work well for a single antminer if you want to squeeze the last few GH out of it (mine all run >375Mhz stock configuration) - anyone thought of a practical way to do this with 4+ antminers?

these things would be great for immersion cooling

Space or stack, not many options.

[topminingcontracts]

Nice job +1

[palawan]

Nice job +1

Thank you for the compliment!

[clyevo]

i tried it. nice temp, but there is nothing blowing over the vrm, is it safe?