Building Your Own ASIC Miner? Yes You Can!

[jzk120]

If you thought i was making this post because i wanted to mass produce cloned hash boards and sell them for a profit because i claim to be able to produce them for cheap, then no, thats far from what i meant. I am aware thats not going to be at all profitable and moreover theres always a legal caveat to the story (which is why the companies tend to "modify" their clones instead of making a copy). I was more of planning to get back the ROI from the boards themselves by using them, if they worked of course.

It would have to be at least some light modifications made to the PCB because I don't think companies can get away with making a token change to some circuit. Which makes me wonder if the cloned PCBs you get from this will be as efficient as the original, since chances are the design houses will not make a perfect clone of the PCB. Maybe they'll do stuff like making some path longer (I think I'm a developer, not an electrician or circuit designer) that makes some part of operation less efficient, to avoid infringing on some random company's IP.

Apparently the company that made the cloned S9 hash boards almost doubled the hashrate on them. However that means there would either have to be more chips on board or they essentially overclocked a board, which would mean that modifications would need to be made to the firmware and to the microcontroller on the hash board. The companies which produce cloned FPGA board clones (like arduino clones) usually tend to use a slightly different version of the ram chips or some other chip on board which then they can sell for a profit.

Having a trace somewhere that is slightly longer wouldnt effect things too much as far as i know. Damaged traces or vias could cause problems but in most cases, any problems to those mean that theres not gonna be a continuity through the board at all to begin with.
Now of course there are different guages of traces that can be used on PCBs and the thicker the guage the more the resistance but then the difference would be so small if any that it would be unnoticeable.

Making a one to one copy of the hash board like i suggested/plan on doing shouldnt have any considerable difference in the hashrate or efficiency, provided that the PCB used matches the appropriate ratings for the amount of heat and current that is going to be passed through it because, in the end, its the control board thats in charge of making sure that the chips are running at their required potential and giving out the required hashrate.

[mellosoft]

Can Anyone help my find the BM1398 BM1398BB datasheet please, I have an Idea!

[NotFuzzyWarm]

^^ Does not exist outside of Bitmain. The s9 chip data sheets are the last that BM released to the public.

[HagssFIN]

@mellosoft
Maybe find the maintenance manual and reverse-engineer it with the manual and inspecting an actual miner?
Zeusbtc.com might have the manual. It's worth a while to ask them and check through their website.

EDIT: I found this guide --> https://zeusbtc.com/manuals/Antminer-S19-Pro-Hash-Board-Repair-Guide.asp

[swagleon]

I would like to build my own Bitcoin Mining system with AMD .   : )

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I would like to build my own Bitcoin Mining system with AMD .   : )

Um you'd better read the pinned post at the top here, mainly point-3.

[Peullat]

For short it's no, here's why

Application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, are circuits that are tailored to a certain application. The logic gates are connected in such a way that they can process data in a specific fashion, as the name implies. What's the best way to get them? You can't, as far as I know, because the makers haven't placed it up for sale on ebay or Amazon. Instead, they were utilised in tandem to build circuits and offer them as minors in pre-configured configurations. Is it possible for you to construct one on your own? Yes, but not in a straightforward manner! To begin, you must understand how to programme FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). It's a semiconductor made up of Arrays of Programmable logic Gates, as the name implies.

You can programme the gates to do a certain computation if you like. (An aha256 hashcode is calculated in bitcoin). The result will be a chip that is extremely efficient in terms of power usage and cost. Then you should place an order for your chip with a business for production, for which you will have to pay a large sum of money. So, to make your order cost-effective, you need order thousands of them! So, unless you want to invest a large sum of money and start your own pool/miner firm, creating your DIY ASIC miner right now is pointless in terms of cost-benefit analysis!

https://pureweb3.blogspot.com/2022/04/can-i-build-my-own-mining-asic-from.html

[nullama]

Well, of course you can if you can get all the parts, design a board yourself, and build it.

For example that's basically what the Compac F from GekkoScience is. It's a custom board that uses one BM1397 chip, which is the one used in the S17 miner.

Here's the main component: https://asicminerparts.com/products/bm1397ag-asic-chip-s17-t17

But of course, most people won't have the skills, time, or desire to do all that work, so they just buy the miner pre-built by someone else.

[BitHeroTalks]

Yeah i do not think you are crazy to come up with this idea.

Even i was thinking the samething back in last year NOV 2021.

It is possible to clone a PSB and the we can start with the S19 Pro. I was in china more than 7 years i can speak the language and move on the project .

i would like to work with someone would like to gang up with me.

and even i can manage to get some second hand control boards for cloning . and the second hand chips for the first prototype virsion .

if anyone interested to work together . i would love to work on this project.

i think we need a good electronics guy with Circuit drawing skills .
my whats App (0086 185 2251 0643  )

Hi there!
Recently i bought two S19 Pros and ended up blowing the PSU on one of them which lead me to open it up and replace some mosfets to fix it.
While i was at it i decided to give the rest of the miner a clean so i dove in and began doing that. While in the process of cleaning i took a note of the components inside on the main hash boards and the control board.

I have a friend in china who used to be a business partner of my cousin and she now works for a ASIC miner distributor company via alibaba. I got in touch with her to talk about the making of these machines to get some more insight.
Now in the two hour long conversation i learned quite a bit about it and i will be sharing a few of the things i learned.

The reason its almost impossible to buy miners straight from bitmain or other mining companies is because they look for high profits rather than customer satisfaction, there are underground bids which take place between large distributors and the highest bidding company gets the cake. This happens weeks before the miners are released on their website for purchase.

Cutting to the chase. The distributor company that my friend works in used to be a PCB manufacturing company. They buy BM1398BB hashing chips straight from bitmain and manufacture their own hashing pcb's by cloning one of the original ones and end up oil cooling them. Now to me, all of it makes sense since all an ASIC miner has is a control board, a power supply and a few hashing boards. None of the components are tied to one another when it comes to the hardware.

Now while its possible to clone the control board and the information on it is as follows, it looks like its quite a tedious task considering that the actual board is quite cheap to buy straight from bitmain.
CPU :  XC7Z007S-1CLG225C
DRAM : M15T2G16128A (2L)
NAND Flash Memory : MT29F2G08ABAEAWP 2GB
Network Chip : PPT PM44-11BP
The linux based firmware that is stored on the flash memory is later witten to the DRAM at runtime and is available to download on bitmain's website and can be flashed using the sd card slot on the control board.

Anyhoo, oil cooling being a whole different story, I was told that each hashing chip costs about $2 and some select few companies can hook you up with the original ones. Which leaves me with needing a control board which costs around $200 and wiring which costs around $50 including the power cords which are not included with the power supply or miner purchase. A generic 12v 20a power supply that s19 pro needs costs a mere $60 where i live. The power supply costs around $240 to $300.

Now of course i did not include the small components like heat sinks, housing, tax and shipping costs and such.
But in hindsight if i were to build the whole thing on my own, it would cost a considerably less amount of money considering that these machines are going for around $10,000 if not more, per unit, at the time of writing this post.

I've been interested in this since i learned about it a few months back, but i lack the ability to clone boards and funds to get access to a board.
My point of writing this post is to learn more about things that i might have missed or gotten wrong and/or to maybe try out this project with someone who thinks they can help or have experience in pcb cloning/manufacturing without a schematic and finds this interesting.