[ANN] Spondoolies-Tech - carrier grade, data center ready mining rigs

[bobsag3]

Just landed in DFW from my trip to Visit- I have been very very impressed by their team and direction, pics to come!

[sbfree]

Just landed in DFW from my trip to Visit- I have been very very impressed by their team and direction, pics to come!

cool

[Dabs]

Matt, I sent you a PM or email.

[loshia]

Just landed in DFW from my trip to Visit- I have been very very impressed by their team and direction, pics to come!

For me
http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/pages/team
is more than enough
+pics of their products + github
These guys are oppening new page in btc minig hardware...

[dplusf]

I'm in. Just ordered and payed.

Never felt a preorder so good. :-)

[raskul]

I'm in. Just ordered and payed.

Never felt a preorder so good. :-)

welcome to the party! 

[timmah]

I have been thinking about some of the issues that many people have brought up about their miners and I have a suggestion that may help in the issues of heat, noise and a relatively low cost and easy to implement solution to both the SP-10 and the SP-30 machines.  Before I get into that I just want to give IMHO over a couple things that have been brought up recently...

Yes, immersion cooling is a very good way of cooling but I doubt that Spondoolies will warranty any hardware unless the setup has been thoroughly tested and verified by their engineers and I would imagine that the setup would have to follow a very strict guideline of what kind of fluid, hardware, enclosure, condensation system, etc is used, very likely something that they would have buy to use themselves evaluate and test on their miners to ensure that they will continue to operate properly.  So for a "mid level" home/hobby miner who is looking to cool say 3-5 miners of the SP10s or even the SP30s there is going to be a higher added cost for the setup and most likely the user would have to consider how many miners would be necessary to justify the added expense as well as building the infrastructure to house them.  With the margins as tight as they are just the immersion cooling may out weigh the entire ROI of the machines.

There is also the issue where people may want to sell their old miners (once they determine that they are satisfied with the return and also need to install new miners to keep up with the difficulty).  Depending on the method of immersion cooling used it may be pretty labor intensive to reassemble the machine to factory spec in order to resell to the next owner as it is more likely that there are not going to me many people who will be willing to use immersion cooling for a used miner anyway.  I think that most people consider the resale of older hardware as part of their ROI in the big picture.

Now, many people say well just host it at a DC, then you will have no problems, etc... that may be great but there are a lot of people who may have power rates that they consider good enough to want to mine themselves at their home as well as the added cost of the hosting itself, if someone has already converted an area of their home to allow for the power and other necessary aspects to mine then just sending the machines over to a DC would have wasted all the money and time that was spent to upgrade the home.

At the same time, many people have also brought up the fact that even for a high density rack at the DC it would not be able to hold a full rack of SP10s and only hosting a few miners still may not make up for the cost of the DC rates and directly eats into the ROI so even more money would have to be spent to perhaps negotiate an even better rate at the DC and costing even more money which I think most people would not be able to afford.

So, with that said, if you take a look at the design of the miner there are heat sinks on the bottom of the mining board and the fans at the back to exhaust the heat from airflow through the front, well if you look closely at the pictures and even with the suggestions of the people at Spondoolies themselves they admit that the bottom gets very hot suggesting that perhaps putting them vertically would help to dissipate that heat more effectively.  Now I have not done any controlled air flow tests but I would bet that most of the air that is going through the case is cooling the top board as there is a larger gap and with the air flowing through the path of least resistance then it would be correct to assume that the top board has more air flow than the bottom right?

When I look at my machines it is apparent that the bottom board of heat sinks touches the bottom of the case or is close enough that pretty much most of the heat of the 2nd board is dissipated from the bottom of the case so what if some heat pipes are installed to connect the top and bottom heat sinks?  This way the heat can be moved from one heat sink to another, if the top board is cooler then it would be able to pull heat from the bottom or from the top.  This way it would allow even cooling of both boards with minimal addition to cost, allowing home users other options to remove heat from the miners perhaps with just some more fans blowing on the bottom of the case and would let both boards have relatively even temperatures.

I don't know the exact cost but I think 1-2cm heat pipes spaced maybe 5cm apart running down the heat sinks in a U shape with the "ends" at the back where the fans are should be adequate to even the cooling of both ASIC boards.  In fact there is enough extra space at the back of the case where some copper heat sink blocks could be attached to the heat pipes to increase the heat dissipation and ensure it is even across both boards.  This would also let the heat concentrate to the back end of the case where the fans could easily be moved back a few inches to allow for that extra copper to draw in the heat but would not be touching the boards so effectively allowing an even more concentrated area to cool the entire miner while taking the concentration of heat away from any active components and let people use other ways to cool the machines even more like perhaps installing water cooling blocks towards the back of the miner.

This may cost a little more depending on how much more copper is added but would allow much more efficient cooling ability especially in environments that may not be able to keep a constant 20-25C temp at all times.  Even if just copper heat pipes are added with out extra copper blocks at the "condensing" end it would still work to keep both boards more evenly cool and give end user the ability to cool the bottom of the miner and have the heat from the top half move towards the bottom allowing both boards to be cooled instead of just basically the bottom at with this current design.  I'm pretty sure that it would not cost much to get some 1-2cm 18" U shaped heat pipes that would fit in the current spacing of the existing heat sinks that are already being used, this technique is used in almost all cooling applications so I'm sure it is a lot cheaper to install those into these miners.

One last note is that there would not be a need to actually change the design of the miner as that may complicate assembly or change the case layout, if heat pipes are made just to fit the right side between the heat sinks of each board then they could just be slid in between the existing spacing of the fins.  It may not give 100% optimal use of the heat piping but better than nothing...  Also since the SP30 design may not be finalized yet this is also an option to add to the design and would make an even better product very likely allowing people to get even more hash power from each machine.

Just a suggestion.  This may help to a point where the fans don't need to spin as fast and therefor help with noise as well.

[wanna4fun]

Hi timmah,

i've done some temp measure at the bottom, it reach the 65-75°C very easily with an ambiant temp @ 22-23°C.
Without any heat sink or expensive add on to the miner, just think about a wind corridor which will extract the hot air outside.
On one the side of the box (the "in" air) you'll want cold air to go inside your miners. You can mix the air from your room + the air from an AC to cool them down.
You'll also use check valve to be sure the air is properly sucked into the units. not easy to make but worth it. I believe it can cost you 500/600$ to achieve this (a lot less than immersion star treck things).
I tried to do this but had issue with the space in my apartment so I couldn't make the wind corridor and i had to change my mind.

If can enclose the miners well enough you'll be also able to kill the noise with acoustic foam. Btw, don't hope to do this into your living room, but an empty room (far from the center of the house) or a garage would be the perfect place (if secured enough...).

[theMiracle]

Has anyone considered using several external (possibly ducted) squirrel cage fans? As in removing the internal fans, and putting the whole rig on an external "respirator"  When it's time to sell, stick the original fans back in.

[xstr8guy]

Well the modder geeks are checking, lol. It reminds me of the good ol' KNC days when miners were so excited that they spent more time futzing around than mining with their gear.

But time is especially of the essence now. In most cases, you're better off just letting your miners hash than taking any downtime to mod. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm kind of sorry I missed this train because the SP10 (and potentially the SP30) looks fantastic. But I just can't fit anymore gear into my house. It's already too hot and noisy and that little deelybopper that spins around on my electric meter is a constant blur. I'm ready for the DEA to break down my door at anytime to search for a grow-house.

[tzortz]

Host to a DC , maybe then?

[xstr8guy]

Host to a DC , maybe then?

I love the idea but I have such an ungodly mix of gear that it would be impossible to find a hosting facility that would want my business. Bitfury rigs... you breath on them too hard and several boards go offline, lol. And not to mention my pile 'o crap, the FrankenJup. 

I envy those of you who have homogenous setups with stacks of miners from the same manufacturer!

[kendog77]

The low BTC exchange rate is killing me right now. I would like to buy some May SP10 units, but can't justify the price with BTC trading at $440.

I can't wait until Wall Street gets involved and we have some real exchanges instead of the amateur crap we have now where FUD out of China can send the price down 10%.

[xstr8guy]

The low BTC exchange rate is killing me right now. I would like to buy some May SP10 units, but can't justify the price with BTC trading at $440.

I can't wait until Wall Street gets involved and we have some real exchanges instead of the amateur crap we have now where FUD out of China can send the price down 10%.

This too^

Even if I wanted more miners and planned to host them in a DC, I just can't pull the trigger now because of the exchange rate. I had a bit of a revelation last night when looking at past purchases in my BTC wallet. Shocking what little I paid (in BTC) for most of my past orders.

[Searing]

The low BTC exchange rate is killing me right now. I would like to buy some May SP10 units, but can't justify the price with BTC trading at $440.

I can't wait until Wall Street gets involved and we have some real exchanges instead of the amateur crap we have now where FUD out of China can send the price down 10%.

ditto using the www.thegenesisblock.com calculator (yeah i know not the best choice but bear with me) it has a monthly diff increase of 47% which i find low imho..using that with 0 cost for the unit and 0 elec i got like maybe 7.8btc for life of unit...now the group buy with my knc 10% off prev purchase refund puts a sp30 at 4495.00....at the current price just looked of 438.80 on bitstamep (4/27/14 sunday cst 6:52pm usa) ....well for just buying BTC i could get 10 btc with less hassle and no elec etc

so yeah nice little units but that is the 'group buy price" so unless they lower price and/or something else increase hash....it just plain don't make any sense right now

(of course this would make more sense if i bought 10 coin now rather then sitting on my hands...seems i can pull the trigger on equip easy enough straight coin and i pucker
up in places go figure)

anyway the dilemma it seems for getting GH miner equipment (that and the fact of the large gh farms/equip still flushing on line)..ie pucker city around here

anyway fence sitting i be doing right now on GH equip and bitcoin equip in general

Searing

[kendog77]

Hey Spondoolies, how about a 10% off coupon for purchases made using Bitcoin that can be stacked upon the existing 10% off coupon for purchasers of previous hardware from other manufacturers for us fence sitters that are watching the price of BTC fall?

BTC rising to over $500 would also solve the problem nicely...  

[JWU42]

Or just buy some coins?  They are on sale now and use them to fund your purchase.

[xstr8guy]

The low BTC exchange rate is killing me right now. I would like to buy some May SP10 units, but can't justify the price with BTC trading at $440.

I can't wait until Wall Street gets involved and we have some real exchanges instead of the amateur crap we have now where FUD out of China can send the price down 10%.

ditto using the www.thegenesisblock.com calculator (yeah i know not the best choice but bear with me) it has a monthly diff increase of 47% which i find low imho..using that with 0 cost for the unit and 0 elec i got like maybe 7.8btc for life of unit...now the group buy with my knc 10% off prev purchase refund puts a sp30 at 4495.00....at the current price just looked of 438.80 on bitstamep (4/27/14 sunday cst 6:52pm usa) ....well for just buying BTC i could get 10 btc with less hassle and no elec etc

so yeah nice little units but that is the 'group buy price" so unless they lower price and/or something else increase hash....it just plain don't make any sense right now

(of course this would make more sense if i bought 10 coin now rather then sitting on my hands...seems i can pull the trigger on equip easy enough straight coin and i pucker
up in places go figure)

anyway the dilemma it seems for getting GH miner equipment (that and the fact of the large gh farms/equip still flushing on line)..ie pucker city around here

anyway fence sitting i be doing right now on GH equip and bitcoin equip in general

Searing

Please consider changing GHs to to "THs mining equipment" and "PHs farms". You're starting to show your age. GHs mining equipment is so 2013, lol.

[Searing]

The low BTC exchange rate is killing me right now. I would like to buy some May SP10 units, but can't justify the price with BTC trading at $440.

I can't wait until Wall Street gets involved and we have some real exchanges instead of the amateur crap we have now where FUD out of China can send the price down 10%.

ditto using the www.thegenesisblock.com calculator (yeah i know not the best choice but bear with me) it has a monthly diff increase of 47% which i find low imho..using that with 0 cost for the unit and 0 elec i got like maybe 7.8btc for life of unit...now the group buy with my knc 10% off prev purchase refund puts a sp30 at 4495.00....at the current price just looked of 438.80 on bitstamep (4/27/14 sunday cst 6:52pm usa) ....well for just buying BTC i could get 10 btc with less hassle and no elec etc

so yeah nice little units but that is the 'group buy price" so unless they lower price and/or something else increase hash....it just plain don't make any sense right now

(of course this would make more sense if i bought 10 coin now rather then sitting on my hands...seems i can pull the trigger on equip easy enough straight coin and i pucker
up in places go figure)

anyway the dilemma it seems for getting GH miner equipment (that and the fact of the large gh farms/equip still flushing on line)..ie pucker city around here

anyway fence sitting i be doing right now on GH equip and bitcoin equip in general

Searing

Please consider changing GHs to to "THs mining equipment" and "PHs farms". You're starting to show your age. GHs mining equipment is so 2013, lol.

sorry started with 140k apple ii floppies hard to keep up..but anyway...screwed up as i may be my thought process on all this is evident

Searing

[raskul]

sorry started with 140k apple ii floppies hard to keep up..but anyway...screwed up as i may be my thought process on all this is evident

Searing

man! you were a late-comer... I got 6  Spectrum 48k (i think they were called something different in USA - Sinclair?) one christmas (5 of which were returned faulty) - favourite game? Manic Miner.