Vote for Bitmain to enable Low Power Mode for T17, T17E, T17+, S17E, S17+, T19

[Biffa]

With the halving biting deep into miners income, some have been able to scrape by at current BTC price levels by running their miners in Low Power Mode (LPM), this is just running the miners at lower speeds/voltages rather than Asicboost (originally tagged as LPM on the S9's)

Unfortunately however, not all of the current *17 range of Bitmain miners support this mode.

My current understanding is this:

LPM Supported  

• S17 (Low, Normal)
• S17-Pro (Low, Normal, Turbo)

LPM NOT Supported  

• S17E
• S17+
• T17
• T17E
• T17+
• T19
• S19-Pro
• S19

Seeing as it is possible to underclock and undervolt by manually hacking the gui or with third party firmware I feel it's not unreasonable to ask Bitmain to enable LPM on the miners that don't current support it.

Having contacted them directly and not having much luck I thought it might help if I had an idea of the miner community's opinion on the matter.

Please vote here and we can bring this thread to their attention, who knows, it might work.  

I'll leave the thread unlocked, but moderated in case it wanders off topic, otherwise your thoughts would be appreciated.

Code:

Yes I'm aware there are other manufacturers, that may or may not have low power modes  :P
No I don't know if its physically impossible for the hardware to do this, but I doubt it.
As mentioned I'm aware of third party firmware that may enable this, but not everyone wants to pay a dev fee or risk using non-official firmware
2nd Jun 2020 - Added T19
27th Aug 2020 - Added S19-Pro and S19

[mikeywith]

The fact that Bitmain removed the underclock/overclock features on their latest S9s firmware tells me that they don't want miners to use those gears anymore but rather trying to force you to buy the new gears, with that being said I still voted yes knowing very well Bitmain doesn't give a damn about what people here think.

Meanwhile, I explained in this topic how to change the frequency and voltage on the S17pro, phill mentioned that the t17+ has the same hidden features although he did not update the status yet, but it looks like a few of the 17 series have these functions hidden, so if you don't want to use custom firmware, playing with those settings might be your best option.

[philipma1957]

  voted yes.

just been playing with braiins +  to make s9's into space heaters.

It is easy to do.  if bitmain offered decent software for s15 t15 t17 s17 it would help the network.

Frankly they don't give a fuck or it would be there already.

S9's set to low volts and low freq are quiet .

I would love to do this with s15 t15 s17 t17

I just discover that braiins lets you work around s9 dead heat sensor chips.

this would be a godsend for s17 and t17

[mikeywith]

I just discover that braiins lets you work around s9 dead heat sensor chips.

Any firmware can potentially bypass the temp sensor if the developer wants it to, it's a very simple and easy thing to do, however, that's way too dangerous to be done. if it's done for testing purposes only - then that's a good thing so that you can eliminate the possibility of having bad Asics, but you shouldn't do that to an unattended miner, you could set everything on fire.

[philipma1957]

If you know the sensor is burned out and the board works on a down clock you can run the board safely.

But if it is running  and the sensor dies while you are on full speed. yeah a  meltdown.

[Steamtyme]

I voted yes, unfortunately as has been stated they have long since stopped caring about any and all outside opinion. On the bright side if it ever seems likely to benefit them in any way financially they will release it instantly. There is a very real possibility that it exists and can be easily rolled out.
Another issue surrounding the 3rd party firmware is that it isn't allowed on Kano's pool. I can understand and respect the decision but it can put people in a tough spot at crunch time.
Either way good luck getting Bitmains attention.

[mikeywith]

If you know the sensor is burned out and the board works on a down clock you can run the board safely.

Not really, what if for whatever reason something blocks the fans like a piece of cloth/paper or whatever or a fan stops and its sensors don't respond, there are many reasons for a board to overheat even when underclocked, and without a temp sensor to shut down the miner the risk is too much to be taken given the tiny rewards, even if it was a miner that yields $100 a day, burning a whole house/farm for that is not the smartest thing to do.

[philipma1957]

braiins has fan options so if you set two fans must work.

two fans must work.

and the pcb sensors work on my dead chip boards.

so running dead heat sensor boards on braiins still has a pcb heat sensor

which can still shut board down.

i do agree running a board with:

no chip sensor
no fan sensor
no pcb board sensor is not safe.

but running my three boards

with no chip sensor
two pcb sensors
two fans sensors

should still work safely.

it is set to look for two fans.

it is set for temp at 90-92

which means it shuts down when pcb temp gets too high.

[mikeywith]

with no chip sensor
two pcb sensors
two fans sensors

Ok let's assume you were allowed to do that, and you have a miner with 3 boards, placed this way

Chain0||Chain1||Chain2

chain2 has a working PCB temp sensor, Chain1, and Chain0 don't if Chain0 gets too hot, will the temp sensor on Chain2 be able to sensor that soon even before the meltdown? given the fact the temps reported by each sensor on the same board differ by a good margin, the temps on each board can differ even more, unless I am missing something, I still don't think it's safe to run in this way! please elaborate.

To me, even fan sensors are not required and can be disabled like most custom firmware offer simply because you might be using immersion cooling and also due to the fact that even if the fan fails nothing bad will happen, the miner temp become too high and the sensor will force the miner to stop hashing.

The PCB sensor is a MUST imo, at least 1 PCB sensor on every chain is a MUST, some people will say even 1 is not enough and at least 2 are needed(one in the front and one at the back ) but I think 1 PCB temp on each board is good enough.

[philipma1957]

the boards have six sensors.

all of the 3 chip sensors are dead.

each and every board has a working pcb sensor.

I can set too hot at 92 c.  the gear should run safely.

although I don't know that it will and I am not certain what the gear does. if the pcb temps go beyond 92c

since the boards are shitty anyway I could try to find out.

Maybe I will test it out with direct supervision.

[Artemis3]

Remember what needed to happen for Bitmain to enable asicboost? Just wait until some third party firmware does it...
If it is about voting, i would vote for enabling ssh access back again. But something tells me, they don't care.

What happens when those third party firmwares allow people to adjust their power usage while theirs don't? Mass firmware migration.

The S17 family appears to have an excessive number of models some which appear to be just a mere firmware change.

[philipma1957]

All the s17 and t17 variations could allow for voltage change and freq change.

I have had very good luck fucking with the t17+. that overheats the middle board.

I can get the gear to attempt 17.3 volts. rather then 18.3 volts.

More often then not it sticks on 17.3 volts. giving me 3 working boards and much less power use.

I would argue that they could be sued over denying this option.  You need at least 100 miners with the gear in the state of California to do a lawsuit against them.

California succeeded in forcing them to load no pool. in the new miners all pools come empty.

This lawsuit I mention would have merit as it is intentionally wasting power.

I am under the belief that in California you need at least 100 victims to sue as a class action.
Since I only read about law and I am not a lawyer I could be wrong about how many victims you need.

I am not wrong that they did sue over pre filled pools on s9's and as a result bitmain no longer sends miners with edit : pre filled pools.