ANTMINER S2 Discussion and Support Thread

[btc_jumpnrl]

My S2 is working now!!

I noticed a chunk of glue(?) in the slot with the main card.  I removed it and reseated the card and now everything works!

http://imgur.com/a/D4xcV#1

I have some glue on mine too, but it didn't interfere, and there appears to be something under the glue as well. By the edge of the tab, it looks like its been partially cracked or added after the fact or something. The pictures didn't turn out great but you can at least see the glue on both sides. I'll take it out and snap another later tonight, but it works solidly so I'm going to ignore it for now.

---------

As for the fragile sticker, the only thing on the box besides the tracking/shipping label is a big blue sticker with a black D on it. Which I'm guessing is for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORM-D that? but it just a D and nothing else.

It's just a rework of the board.  If you look closely, a trace has been cut and a jumper installed.  The hot glue is there to help keep the wire down and try to keep other stuff from snagging on the jumper wire.

Ah. Thanks for the clarification.

[smooth]

BITMAIN: please put some Fragile stickers on the batch 2 orders before you ship them... they are obviously not as tough as the antminers.

Many thanks!

You're confused if you think shippers pay much attention to fragile stickers. You need to pack up the items so they don't get damaged from handling that doesn't damage the packaging.

[aztecminer]

Aaaaaaaaand here you go.


The Power supply keeps cutting out in 1 machine, I didn't have a spare PSU, so I removed 2 of the asic blades to bring down the power draw, we'll see if it stays alive tonight.

you can cool those chips several degrees if you add the small aluminum heatsinks to them. i added those aluminum heatsinks to my S1's and they are about 2 to 3 degrees cooler without any airflow. add airflow and they will cool even more. if were to use copper heatsinks would cool them down even more i think although i can't prove this because i have not tried copper heatsinks yet.

[btc_jumpnrl]

Before I head to the gym, here's the quick video of the initial boot with sound so you can hear the fans. http://youtu.be/sQYtbtsyKdU

[aztecminer]

I think overclocking is going to be extremely limited, with four TPS53355 per board, or one for 16 chips. On the S1, it's one for 8 chips.

Thats the detail I've been waiting for   *really hoping for a PCB photo still*

The S1 could consume around 45W per group of 8 chips overclocked (overclocking pushed the regulator right to its limits, but the real limiting factor was the voltage being set to 1.1V - some people have apparently pencil-modded the S1 to almost 215GH/~470W, or about 60w/8 chips)  
45W/1.1V=40.9A on a 30A-rated component. (bitfury h-boards faced very similar amperage limits when overvolted around 0.95V)


Its likely these chips run at around 0.8V and 1000W/640chips is about 25W per cluster of 16.  That leaves a LOT of headroom on the regulators, but some of this is lost to the difference in voltage (more amperage).  25W/0.8V= 31.25A stock.

 Presumably these should be able to overclock without any issues from the regulator. I imagine all other components are beefy enough also. I imagine you will hit hardware errors at 15-20% overclock as with the S1. These may even be capable of up to 1.5TH is voltage was increased to ~0.9V

0.75V unloaded, so a little higher than that on the current. Still some room and I'd expect people should be able to get 20-40% overclocks, but not the 100+% ones we might have been able to do with 8 chips per vrm.

I'm quite sure those puny heatsinks will not be enough when overclocked, 200Mhz+ will fry the chips unless some hefty cooling is applied!
If you want to overclock the BM chip, the S1 was made just for that!!

one way to add more cooling would be to replace the thermal paste with some geld extreme .. this will also reduce power consumption . copper heat sinks would probably work good as a replacement. i used copper heatsinks on the ram chips and replaced the thermal paste with geld extreme on the gpu's in my r9 290'x's ... any idea how big are the chips underneath those heatsinks ?? this trick would probably work on the S1's too .

[aztecminer]

Wish I had one to help, but with guys like atadro buying 6 there weren't many to go around.  Being first has its drawbacks, good luck guys, I hope you get it figured out.

You can say that again.  Both of my 2 units are totally fubar'd.  Unit 1 had the Raspberry Pi board popped out of the bus, and several cards were out of their slots, but even after re-seating it (and checking all connections), I can't get any connection to the unit.  The LCD display lights up but there is nothing displayed, and the green light on the LCD never comes on.  The ethernet port seems connected to the switch (switch shows active connection), but 192.168.1.99 cannot be accessed at all via SSH or http or even ping.  Dead for all intents and purposes as far as I can tell.

Unit 2 was a great example of total lack of QC (or else the unit was put in a washing machine and run through the "shake it up and spin" cycle).  Check out the pics below.  I haven't even tried to repair, as the bus connections are so bad (and many are loose) that it is impossible to seat all the boards and even if I could seat them, they would be under great strain.  I can't believe they shipped something like this and I can't believe that shipping damage would be to blame for this one.

UNIT 1 picture:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/by36y8x5kf1kisv/IMG_20140403_195015.jpg

UNIT 2 pictures:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cintq9xlzazjauy/IMG_20140403_200530.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qai8pvbt9g8674t/IMG_20140403_200536.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5s2c1bnes5w3u2c/IMG_20140403_200617.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tuk1u5gcr5co6ie/IMG_20140403_201159.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bheoedm33c0l98h/IMG_20140403_201227.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0okif3v7horbqy/IMG_20140403_201650.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e1skmn5p9k7rpjz/IMG_20140403_201704.jpg

It could be shipping damage, except that the boxes arrived in perfect condition, not a scratch or ding to indicate rough handling.

I guess I will find out soon enough whether bitmaintech stands behind its products or not.  

ouch ... maybe bitmain should ship these without the cards installed. if you can't install your own pci cards then ya shouldnt be mining anyways .

or put something in there to hold the cards in place that can be removed before powering on .

[innoman]

cgminer still appears to be trying to communicate with 192.168.1.1 though, and I can't seem to find where to set that from the command line.

Edit this file:

Code:

/etc/init.d/cgminer.sh

It's near the top, just enter your routers IP.  You'll need to start it after and it resets after a reboot.  You may need to stop it first, also.

Stop:

Code:

/etc/init.d/cgminer.sh stop 

Start:

Code:

/etc/init.d/cgminer.sh start

[aztecminer]

Hopefully you guys get some coupons for your troubles 

i need a coupons just for reading this thread! lol.

[trab]

Has anyone tried the new firmware, yet?  Any idea what it's supposed to fix?

https://github.com/AntMiner/AntGen1/tree/master/firmware_S2

Just upgraded to the new firmware. Don't see any differences, still a very high discard rate...

[nikolaz]

Has anyone tried the new firmware, yet?  Any idea what it's supposed to fix?

https://github.com/AntMiner/AntGen1/tree/master/firmware_S2

Just upgraded to the new firmware. Don't see any differences, still a very high discard rate...

That's about 6% discard rate.... It looks like you are the only one reporting this issue... check if everything is connected properly... What is your reported hash rate at your pool?

[robbcarpdm]

Well I am trying an email to Bitmain after all.

As the reject and discards.....I cant figure out what else I can try.

I figure they have cost me 4 BTC as a running total.....and their coupons are .02 what a joke.

Will let you guys know what I get back from them on what is the resolution....

Damn I wish I went with 7 S1s in stead.....well the poop is on me.....for taking a chance on a preorder.

By the way I reduced my discard to 1/3 from 1/2 by going to slush but its way too early to say that variance is not to explain that

[robbcarpdm]

Has anyone tried the new firmware, yet?  Any idea what it's supposed to fix?

https://github.com/AntMiner/AntGen1/tree/master/firmware_S2

Just upgraded to the new firmware. Don't see any differences, still a very high discard rate...

That's about 6% discard rate.... It looks like you are the only one reporting this issue... check if everything is connected properly... What is your reported hash rate at your pool?

Well for me I determine that the discard was a problem by looking at the hashrate from the pools themselves......

S2 is running 45C not bad really.......

[mdude77]

Watching.

M

[s1lverbox]

Well I am trying an email to Bitmain after all.

As the reject and discards.....I cant figure out what else I can try.

I figure they have cost me 4 BTC as a running total.....and their coupons are .02 what a joke.

Will let you guys know what I get back from them on what is the resolution....

Damn I wish I went with 7 S1s in stead.....well the poop is on me.....for taking a chance on a preorder.

By the way I reduced my discard to 1/3 from 1/2 by going to slush but its way too early to say that variance is not to explain that

As everything which is new- first are always guinea pigs for factory.
All the problems will be solved in batch 2 and 3

I did choose s1 instead s2 as they are still overpriced.
Thats why i got more than 1Th for less btc than s2

Sorry

[seriouscoin]

Before I head to the gym, here's the quick video of the initial boot with sound so you can hear the fans. http://youtu.be/sQYtbtsyKdU

I hope you dont sleep with that thing on

[robbcarpdm]

Well I am trying an email to Bitmain after all.

As the reject and discards.....I cant figure out what else I can try.

I figure they have cost me 4 BTC as a running total.....and their coupons are .02 what a joke.

Will let you guys know what I get back from them on what is the resolution....

Damn I wish I went with 7 S1s in stead.....well the poop is on me.....for taking a chance on a preorder.

By the way I reduced my discard to 1/3 from 1/2 by going to slush but its way too early to say that variance is not to explain that

As everything which is new- first are always guinea pigs for factory.
All the problems will be solved in batch 2 and 3

I did choose s1 instead s2 as they are still overpriced.
Thats why i got more than 1Th for less btc than s2

Sorry

You were smarter than I ....you could have had 1.4 TH now for same price and underclock them later for 1 TH so that makes the S2 40% overpriced.....I expected something like OC ability for the price from Bitmain and they have / had a good rep for a chinese firm.....  why else would they hold out for top dollar?  They were firm according to Jaun.

Well with perfectly prices comes perfect expectations.....guess Bitmain about to find out what it is to be an Avalon Clone producer....as many will not be as patient as some of us who have had growing pains already..... no doubt they are going to have to figure out a solution and it isnt going to be a coupon.......at this point that is NOT going to make it right with me.

[jelin1984]

Is so noisy the s2?

[dogie]

Sorry guys, confirmed I was one unit off getting in B1. I'll have my unit in about 8 days then will be able to help. Looking at the current media though, I should be able to get these units silent

[nikolaz]

Sorry guys, confirmed I was one unit off getting in B1. I'll have my unit in about 8 days then will be able to help. Looking at the current media though, I should be able to get these units silent

Dogie to the rescue...

[innoman]

The update appears to fix the issue with changing the ping IP every reboot.  I had to manually power cycle after the update, just rebooting didn't work.  

My other issue with it mining and then beeping, requiring me to stop and start cgminer, is still present.  It actually mined through the night and today up until I updated it.  Immediately after the reboot, it started back.

I am also seeing a very high discard rate, even with the new firmware.  As for noise, I've been considering installing some Silenx fans to see if they make a difference!