GridSeed 5-chip USB miner voltage mod

[chanberg]

Just checked the rest of my seeds, and it seems only one out of the batch was having an issue with the burned mosfets...

But nonetheless, i ordered a pack of these guys:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/291128184875?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT


I'm guessing it can't hurt haha

[nst6563]

@chanberg - I like those heatsinks.  If I had some of those I would have used them.  I just used what I had on hand though and used a dremel to cut them to size, and a grinder to remove any uneven-ness.

Here's a couple pics. 

I have no idea where the heatsink on the left came from, but the long thin heatsink actually came from an old motherboard from it's mosfet cooling.  The other two were from old Pentium based northbridge systems (as you can see they've been cut down - they used to be a lot larger and square).

Here's a shot of one like the motherboard mosfet heatsink on the gridseed:

[highwalker]

Indeed chanbergs heatsinks are cool.

nst - you gotta love them Dremel - handy for tinkering! I will dig out my stash. I like what you have done to drop fan speed, very safe!

[nst6563]

Indeed chanbergs heatsinks are cool.

nst - you gotta love them Dremel - handy for tinkering! I will dig out my stash. I like what you have done to drop fan speed, very safe!

I actually went back after I took that picture and slid a little heatshrink over the resistor/wire to insulate it better.  I'd highly recommend doing this if you go that route as it will prevent any accidental shorts against the inside heatsink.  Also, just for reference the resistors I used were mostly 39 Ohms.  I may have had a couple 45Ohm in the mix, but it lowers the fan speed enough that it still blows a good amount of air but isn't as annoyingly loud as the straight 12v.

[highwalker]

I actually went back after I took that picture and slid a little heatshrink over the resistor/wire to insulate it better.  I'd highly recommend doing this if you go that route as it will prevent any accidental shorts against the inside heatsink.  Also, just for reference the resistors I used were mostly 39 Ohms.  I may have had a couple 45Ohm in the mix, but it lowers the fan speed enough that it still blows a good amount of air but isn't as annoyingly loud as the straight 12v.

Heatshrink is a good idea to insulate that hazard waiting to happen, I had thought of placing a heatshrink on the axial resistor (VMOD3) but decided against for now.

As for the fan ripping away, I have stowed them miners away in a ventilated cabinet which takes away some of the noise. Power wise there's not a lot saving from the slower fan, so since the noise factor is reduced, I don't mind them running full speed for now. I was planning to put a 39ohm too after seeing yours but a 1/2w with the heatshrink, but I guess I will let the fan blow full speed until I figure a heatsink for the MOSFET's. I dug out some TO-220 sleek heatsinks, will see if it will work, or will order some like chanbergs (saw some on Amazon sold by cosmos in a bag of 20s).

BTW, did you use adhesive thermal paste or thermal pad to stick the modded heatsinks over the MOSFETs?

[nst6563]

I actually went back after I took that picture and slid a little heatshrink over the resistor/wire to insulate it better.  I'd highly recommend doing this if you go that route as it will prevent any accidental shorts against the inside heatsink.  Also, just for reference the resistors I used were mostly 39 Ohms.  I may have had a couple 45Ohm in the mix, but it lowers the fan speed enough that it still blows a good amount of air but isn't as annoyingly loud as the straight 12v.

Heatshrink is a good idea to insulate that hazard waiting to happen, I had thought of placing a heatshrink on the axial resistor (VMOD3) but decided against for now.

As for the fan ripping away, I have stowed them miners away in a ventilated cabinet which takes away some of the noise. Power wise there's not a lot saving from the slower fan, so since the noise factor is reduced, I don't mind them running full speed for now. I was planning to put a 39ohm too after seeing yours but a 1/2w with the heatshrink, but I guess I will let the fan blow full speed until I figure a heatsink for the MOSFET's. I dug out some TO-220 sleek heatsinks, will see if it will work, or will order some like chanbergs (saw some on Amazon sold by cosmos in a bag of 20s).

BTW, did you use adhesive thermal paste or thermal pad to stick the modded heatsinks over the MOSFETs?

I actually just used a very small dab of Arctive Ceramique and let it set.  Once it's been run through a cycle of hot/cold it seems to hold very good.  I have the same Ceramique that has been holding a heatsink on the cpu of a lan card for years, the lan card stands vertical and even without glue the Ceramique holds the heatsink on it.

[highwalker]

I actually went back after I took that picture and slid a little heatshrink over the resistor/wire to insulate it better.  I'd highly recommend doing this if you go that route as it will prevent any accidental shorts against the inside heatsink.  Also, just for reference the resistors I used were mostly 39 Ohms.  I may have had a couple 45Ohm in the mix, but it lowers the fan speed enough that it still blows a good amount of air but isn't as annoyingly loud as the straight 12v.

Heatshrink is a good idea to insulate that hazard waiting to happen, I had thought of placing a heatshrink on the axial resistor (VMOD3) but decided against for now.

As for the fan ripping away, I have stowed them miners away in a ventilated cabinet which takes away some of the noise. Power wise there's not a lot saving from the slower fan, so since the noise factor is reduced, I don't mind them running full speed for now. I was planning to put a 39ohm too after seeing yours but a 1/2w with the heatshrink, but I guess I will let the fan blow full speed until I figure a heatsink for the MOSFET's. I dug out some TO-220 sleek heatsinks, will see if it will work, or will order some like chanbergs (saw some on Amazon sold by cosmos in a bag of 20s).

BTW, did you use adhesive thermal paste or thermal pad to stick the modded heatsinks over the MOSFETs?

I actually just used a very small dab of Arctive Ceramique and let it set.  Once it's been run through a cycle of hot/cold it seems to hold very good.  I have the same Ceramique that has been holding a heatsink on the cpu of a lan card for years, the lan card stands vertical and even without glue the Ceramique holds the heatsink on it.

Arctic Ceramic twin tube adhesive was what I was eyeing too :-) Thanks for sharing the info!

[amix]

I actually went back after I took that picture and slid a little heatshrink over the resistor/wire to insulate it better.  I'd highly recommend doing this if you go that route as it will prevent any accidental shorts against the inside heatsink.  Also, just for reference the resistors I used were mostly 39 Ohms.  I may have had a couple 45Ohm in the mix, but it lowers the fan speed enough that it still blows a good amount of air but isn't as annoyingly loud as the straight 12v.

Heatshrink is a good idea to insulate that hazard waiting to happen, I had thought of placing a heatshrink on the axial resistor (VMOD3) but decided against for now.

As for the fan ripping away, I have stowed them miners away in a ventilated cabinet which takes away some of the noise. Power wise there's not a lot saving from the slower fan, so since the noise factor is reduced, I don't mind them running full speed for now. I was planning to put a 39ohm too after seeing yours but a 1/2w with the heatshrink, but I guess I will let the fan blow full speed until I figure a heatsink for the MOSFET's. I dug out some TO-220 sleek heatsinks, will see if it will work, or will order some like chanbergs (saw some on Amazon sold by cosmos in a bag of 20s).

BTW, did you use adhesive thermal paste or thermal pad to stick the modded heatsinks over the MOSFETs?

I actually just used a very small dab of Arctive Ceramique and let it set.  Once it's been run through a cycle of hot/cold it seems to hold very good.  I have the same Ceramique that has been holding a heatsink on the cpu of a lan card for years, the lan card stands vertical and even without glue the Ceramique holds the heatsink on it.

do a DIY semi thermal glue :
Mix thermal adhesive 2 part mix, and same amount of thermal paste mix well.

Sticks the parts together nicely dries quickly no need to wait for the hot cold cycle. heat sink will come away if needed with a small amount of force. its a semi adhesive

[gtraah]

Hi Guys,

Maybe this will help someone that had the same problem I had..

I don't know if you remember a few posts back I found 2 pods and the fans were not spinning. I did not even notice this for awhile ,  only green light is on.

 

I opened them both and they both had the exact same problem FB23/24 were burnt up and the pads were ruined and I believe it was a bad plug, i was one of those splitters so I ended up throwing it out after my testing. Anyhow so I ordered 10 FB's and tried to replace the FB's , it was VERY VERY hard as the boards were damaged as-well as the contacts anyway I managed to do it 1 Pod at a time and re-plugged it in AND POOOOF again FB23/24 blown 5 seconds later, So I tried the other pod same thing happened 5 seconds later , this is now 4 FB's blown. They were cheap so I didn't really care that much. Now I wanted to test some spare plugs that I had, So I tried again  x 2 pods and blew again! That's 8 out of 10 FB's now gone... Anyway I noticed the other pod that blew seemed to only blow 1 FB out of the 2 so I used 1 good one on that other pod to try yet ANOTHER plug but this time I used a good plug that was working with a working POD , NOPE Again blew it. SO I started asking questions to Gybh and Amix , great help! Both Guys!! They have had experience and they hinted that it may be a faulty mofset, But my mofset was working at the start and it did not look like it was blown it looked good, I started to think maybe the bad plug made it faulty by driving too much current through it not enough to blow it but enough to stuff it up on the inside.

 

Anyway So I started shopping for mofsets , I followed a link given to me which had the mofsets I needed on there and the great part about this company is you can order samples for ABSOLUTELY FREE But only 3 maximum and FREE delivery .  I ordered 3 mofsets as samples which is the maximum for samples, but I only needed 2 remember , well they came in 2 days from US to AUS.. AWESOME ha!!??  SO I had the mofsets in my hand and I Had 1 more NEW FB  and was able to find yet another good looking FB that was from the other blown pair of FBs it seems that since they are so close together one out of the 2 sometimes blow and blast the other one of its pads but its actually still good to use as I am about to find out....so it seems like I had 2 good remaining FB and the mofsets, this means I can atleast try to repair 1 of the 2 broken pods= perfect!!!! If this works all I will do then is buy another few FB and I am set!

 

So yesterday night I decided to play  and at-least try to repair 1 out of the 2 broken pods.

 

Anyway I was told by someone to take off the bottom heat sink as this takes the heat away from the hot air gun and it will be hard to remove the mofset if you don't , But the problem is I forgot about this and just got into it straight away , well it was a NIGHTMARE TO TAKE off old mofset, I basically took it off in broken chunks! I was picking at it and heating it at the same time breaking it bit by bit until it all came off LOL it just would not melt off properly!! Anyway I got it off eventually, rough as anything and soldered the new mofset in its place, was not easy either as I had to make sure one side of the was not shorting out on the mofsets legs, the other-side is easy as its  one contact pad, anyway I did it very roughly but made sure its all contacting and no shortage anywhere << this is the main point...Annnnnnd because  the 2 fb23/24 burnt up the board and the pads were practically non-existent.. I decided to do what Gybh did with his pod, solder FB23 on top off FB24 , well guess what? you are going to freak out looking at the pics hahah but I did it!!!!! And to my amazement it works just like the other working pods hahaha !! check out these rough ROUGH pics..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/38bw9pr18n8lv15/20140522_015626.jpg        <<<< AY atleast it works and mining away right now:P

 

 

AND..............

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqn3pixohfcmu88/20140522_015753.jpg

 

.... Now I only need 2 more FBs to do my last broken pod I already have my awesome Mofsets 2 x left and my FBs are on the way.

[gtraah]

Wow...no pinched fan cables or anything?  How long has that one been mining up until that happened?  What type of power supply were you using?  What's the ambient temp where it's mining?

Sorry for the questions, but I've got 6 that have the 49.9k/50k mod.  3 have been running non-stop 24x7 for 2 months, the other 3 have been running non-stop for about 3 weeks now.  When I've modded them, I did add some small heatsinks to the mosfets because a little extra cooling never hurts when overclocking anything.

I suppose repeated high current spikes and overheat may help damage the mosfet, I think those little LFPAK rated for 76AMP might be possible but to allow continues drain @76AMP the pad need to be able to handle the heat dissipation of SMD mosfets. Which explain why they are overheated and blow. For same reason anything to cool this baby down will help bigtime!!

You're talkin about our little 5 chip seeds, right? How the F**k can they be blowing up FB's and FET's and Hash chips like that?
I'm just amazed at how many seeds are taking a dump for no good reason.


Perhaps it was a batch of bad FET's and or Hash chips or even FB's...It HAPPENS! And it is quite possible we are witnessing one of those coincidences right here on our forum.

Reasons for my amazement:
Scrypt should not cause an over-strain on any components! Period!
After all, they are made to run SHA-256 at 60+W, for Aunt Jamima's sake!
Scrypt at full blast won't even touch that figure if even by half! NEVER! Or something is very wrong with the components.

 Could be anything, Could  be a power surge from a faulty barrel tip as we know most of these are home made things Ive had a few faulty tips and I am almost positive thats the reason the 2 of mine blew and the only 2 as a matter of fact and I have quite a few. I am pretty sure the the faulty power cable stuffed up the mofset, reason I am pretty positive is that I was using a Multi-tip barrel connector and pods that blew were next to each other on the same splitter, now what are the chances out of all the pods for that to happen. Anyway atleast I know how to repair and repaired 1 and 1 is waiting for the FB to arrive to fix this. Mofset + 2x FB = fix

[nst6563]

Hi Guys,

Maybe this will help someone that had the same problem I had..

I don't know if you remember a few posts back I found 2 pods and the fans were not spinning. I did not even notice this for awhile ,  only green light is on.

 

I opened them both and they both had the exact same problem FB23/24 were burnt up and the pads were ruined and I believe it was a bad plug, i was one of those splitters so I ended up throwing it out after my testing. Anyhow so I ordered 10 FB's and tried to replace the FB's , it was VERY VERY hard as the boards were damaged as-well as the contacts anyway I managed to do it 1 Pod at a time and re-plugged it in AND POOOOF again FB23/24 blown 5 seconds later, So I tried the other pod same thing happened 5 seconds later , this is now 4 FB's blown. They were cheap so I didn't really care that much. Now I wanted to test some spare plugs that I had, So I tried again  x 2 pods and blew again! That's 8 out of 10 FB's now gone... Anyway I noticed the other pod that blew seemed to only blow 1 FB out of the 2 so I used 1 good one on that other pod to try yet ANOTHER plug but this time I used a good plug that was working with a working POD , NOPE Again blew it. SO I started asking questions to Gybh and Amix , great help! Both Guys!! They have had experience and they hinted that it may be a faulty mofset, But my mofset was working at the start and it did not look like it was blown it looked good, I started to think maybe the bad plug made it faulty by driving too much current through it not enough to blow it but enough to stuff it up on the inside.

 

Anyway So I started shopping for mofsets , I followed a link given to me which had the mofsets I needed on there and the great part about this company is you can order samples for ABSOLUTELY FREE But only 3 maximum and FREE delivery .  I ordered 3 mofsets as samples which is the maximum for samples, but I only needed 2 remember , well they came in 2 days from US to AUS.. AWESOME ha!!??  SO I had the mofsets in my hand and I Had 1 more NEW FB  and was able to find yet another good looking FB that was from the other blown pair of FBs it seems that since they are so close together one out of the 2 sometimes blow and blast the other one of its pads but its actually still good to use as I am about to find out....so it seems like I had 2 good remaining FB and the mofsets, this means I can atleast try to repair 1 of the 2 broken pods= perfect!!!! If this works all I will do then is buy another few FB and I am set!

 

So yesterday night I decided to play  and at-least try to repair 1 out of the 2 broken pods.

 

Anyway I was told by someone to take off the bottom heat sink as this takes the heat away from the hot air gun and it will be hard to remove the mofset if you don't , But the problem is I forgot about this and just got into it straight away , well it was a NIGHTMARE TO TAKE off old mofset, I basically took it off in broken chunks! I was picking at it and heating it at the same time breaking it bit by bit until it all came off LOL it just would not melt off properly!! Anyway I got it off eventually, rough as anything and soldered the new mofset in its place, was not easy either as I had to make sure one side of the was not shorting out on the mofsets legs, the other-side is easy as its  one contact pad, anyway I did it very roughly but made sure its all contacting and no shortage anywhere << this is the main point...Annnnnnd because  the 2 fb23/24 burnt up the board and the pads were practically non-existent.. I decided to do what Gybh did with his pod, solder FB23 on top off FB24 , well guess what? you are going to freak out looking at the pics hahah but I did it!!!!! And to my amazement it works just like the other working pods hahaha !! check out these rough ROUGH pics..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/38bw9pr18n8lv15/20140522_015626.jpg        <<<< AY atleast it works and mining away right now:P

 

 

AND..............

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqn3pixohfcmu88/20140522_015753.jpg

.... Now I only need 2 more FBs to do my last broken pod I already have my awesome Mofsets 2 x left and my FBs are on the way.

Wow...that's some bad damage to those FBs.  That's awesome that the mosfet I linked you works though.  TI makes high quality stuff and I love their samples program.  I've used it for the past 20 years ever since I was in college.  Comes in handy a LOT!

Glad you got at least the 1 pod working.  All 5 chips hashing away?  After I repaired mine I have 1 out of 5 chips that seems to throw errors no matter what speed it's at. 

[geetash]

Can someone please tell me the value of this resistor please.

[happydaze]

Zero?



Measure it on another Gridseed if you have one.
Or, if anyone is working on a pod right now maybe they'll measure it and let you know for sure.

[gtraah]

Wow...that's some bad damage to those FBs.  That's awesome that the mosfet I linked you works though.  TI makes high quality stuff and I love their samples program.  I've used it for the past 20 years ever since I was in college.  Comes in handy a LOT!

Glad you got at least the 1 pod working.  All 5 chips hashing away?  After I repaired mine I have 1 out of 5 chips that seems to throw errors no matter what speed it's at. 

Definitely great stuff, Yes Everything works PERFECTLY at 1200Mhz It works just like the other pods... I will repair the other POD also I am just waiting on the FB to arrive

[geetash]

Zero?



Measure it on another Gridseed if you have one.
Or, if anyone is working on a pod right now maybe they'll measure it and let you know for sure.

ill measure it from another one. totally forgot that.
thanks 

[happydaze]

If it is zero value, like what is shown in on the .brd file, what is the function / purpose of a zero ohm value resistor? Just curious.  Is it like a short?

[ZiG]

If it is zero value, like what is shown in on the .brd file, what is the function / purpose of a zero ohm value resistor? Just curious.  Is it like a short?

Yep...simple copper trace in between the pads...short ... = 0 Ohm...

Chinese engineering ...

[geetash]

If it is zero value, like what is shown in on the .brd file, what is the function / purpose of a zero ohm value resistor? Just curious.  Is it like a short?

measured it and its actually zero 

[byt411]

Can I just do the VMOD3 here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=575315.0#post_step4
And just used the modified cgminer?

[dyland]

no matter what I do, I seem to get this error message when I overclock to 1150 on hashra:

no alignment between hashra and pool (clevermining). tried now with cgminer and hashra

May 25 02:44:42 bfgminer[11132]: Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

May 25 02:44:42 bfgminer[11132]: Pool 0 is hiding block contents from us

May 25 02:44:43 bfgminer[11132]: API running in IP access mode on port 4001

May 25 02:45:04 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 2.07 avg: 5.30 u: 0.00 Mh/s | A:0 R:0+0(none) HW:0/none

May 25 02:45:24 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 3.87 avg: 5.99 u: 0.00 Mh/s | A:0 R:0+0(none) HW:0/none

May 25 02:45:26 bfgminer[11132]: Stratum from pool 0 requested work update

May 25 02:45:26 bfgminer[11132]: JSON-RPC non method decode failed: (null)

May 25 02:45:26 bfgminer[11132]: Unknown stratum msg: {"id":null,"result":[],"error":true}

May 25 02:45:31 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 00422d40 GSD13  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:45:36 bfgminer[11132]: Network difficulty changed to 524 ( 3.76Gh/s)

May 25 02:45:36 bfgminer[11132]: New block: ...bb265303 #234674 diff 524 ( 3.76Gh/s)

May 25 02:45:36 bfgminer[11132]: Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

May 25 02:45:37 bfgminer[11132]: Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

May 25 02:45:37 bfgminer[11132]: Rejected 00666aa3 GSD17  Diff 0/0 (job not found)

May 25 02:45:37 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 000e4120 GSD17  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:45:39 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 0013536c GSD 9  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:45:43 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 004c74ae GSD 6  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:45:44 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 4.79 avg: 6.07 u: 2.20 Mh/s | A:4 R:1+0( 20%) HW:0/none

May 25 02:45:52 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 001c5041 GSD 4  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:45:53 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 002537ba GSD12  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:04 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 004e20d6 GSD11  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:04 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 5.30 avg: 6.08 u: 2.89 Mh/s | A:7 R:1+0( 12%) HW:0/none

May 25 02:46:17 bfgminer[11132]: Network difficulty changed to 656 ( 4.70Gh/s)

May 25 02:46:17 bfgminer[11132]: New block: ...6ac233b8 #234675 diff 656 ( 4.70Gh/s)

May 25 02:46:17 bfgminer[11132]: Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

May 25 02:46:17 bfgminer[11132]: JSON-RPC non method decode failed: (null)

May 25 02:46:17 bfgminer[11132]: Unknown stratum msg: {"id":null,"result":[],"error":true}

May 25 02:46:19 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 00170b6e GSD17  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:23 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 0016b230 GSD11  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:25 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 5.65 avg: 6.10 u: 3.31 Mh/s | A:9 R:1+0(9.1%) HW:0/none

May 25 02:46:25 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 0032674b GSD 1  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:32 bfgminer[11132]: Network difficulty changed to 10 (72.28Mh/s)

May 25 02:46:32 bfgminer[11132]: New block: ...c446346d #208591 diff 10 (72.28Mh/s)

May 25 02:46:32 bfgminer[11132]: Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

May 25 02:46:41 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 003fadd6 GSD 4  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:45 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 6.10 avg: 6.22 u: 3.59 Mh/s | A:11 R:1+0(7.1%) HW:0/none

May 25 02:46:47 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 0029e797 GSD15  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:46:56 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 0054ead5 GSD10  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:47:03 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 0020badc GSD11  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:47:04 bfgminer[11132]: Accepted 001d49d7 GSD 5  Diff 0/0

May 25 02:47:05 bfgminer[11132]: 20s: 5.95 avg: 6.15 u: 4.50 Mh/s | A:15 R:1+0(5.0%) HW:0/none

May 25 02:47:09 bfgminer[11132]: Network difficulty changed to 678 ( 4.86Gh/s)

May 25 02:47:09 bfgminer[11132]: New block: ...34cd79c6 #234676 diff 678 ( 4.86Gh/s)

May 25 02:47:09 bfgminer[11132]: Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

May 25 02:47:09 bfgminer[11132]: JSON-RPC non method decode failed: (null)

May 25 02:47:09 bfgminer[11132]: Unknown stratum msg: {"id":null,"result":[],"error":true}




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