Antminer S19 Vertical or Horizontal?

[mountrover]

In the manual, which is almost in English, it seems to indicate that a miner should run horizontally.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vZEImxa5C3QniifQ91mO8vctwO6284kP/view?usp=sharing

What is the consensus?

[mikeywith]

It makes no difference for the previous models, which means, it's probably the same for the 19 series, with that in mind, some folks mentioned they had less failure rate when they placed their miners horizontally with the chips facing up, but the S19 doesn't seem to have a lousy thermal/solder paste and thus you should look for the origination that works best with your setup.

[mountrover]

Thanks, mikeywith... In my mind, that sounds like 1 vote for horizontal.  I have 5 failed chips... it's just making me think.

[mikeywith]

Thanks, mikeywith... In my mind, that sounds like 1 vote for horizontal.  I have 5 failed chips... it's just making me think.

I honestly doubt the effect of the miner's orientation on chips. (I of course know that gravity exists) and that at least in theory with chips facing up it's less likely for them to fall, but that is based on the assumption that the weight of the chip+heatsink is what causes them to fall, and I tend to believe that isn't the case and that it's all due to the low-quality solder bitmain uses on those models.

In other words, if the solder is bad and you get like solder balls underneath the chip or the solder between the heatsink and chip goes bad, the miner will stop mining, it does not matter if the chip falls down or not, and most large mining farms I saw go with the vertical orientation as it's a lot easier to manage.

[mountrover]

Thank you, that makes sense, I have recently doubled the size of my mining farm, ie now I have two, so am interested to see the longevity of S19s having got rid of faulty S17 just in time, and about to give up on a very trusty late model S9.

[mikeywith]

By and large, the most important thing is do not put it sideways otherwise it may resulted into internal strains.  The case deformation by even a fraction of a millimeter can lead to the localized temperature increase and cause some chips on board to fail.  And yeah, Antminer S19 is designed to be run horizontally rather the vertically,  horizontally but not on the sides.

Where does it say it has too be placed horizontally ? And how does "horizontally but not on the sides" mean? also the point regarding temps is not clear, the amount of heat generated by the miner as well as the amount of air the fans can move is the same regardless how you position the miner, now whether one side runs hotter than the rest because of being at the top doesn't change a thing because there will always be chips near the top because the hash boards barely fit.

[mikeywith]

Well, based on this image the miner is placed vertically,  not horizontally, which is how most people set up, however, this does not take away from the fact that it could be placed horizontally, i honestly think what that person told you makes no sense.

[danieleither]

Thank you, that makes sense, I have recently doubled the size of my mining farm, ie now I have two, so am interested to see the longevity of S19s having got rid of faulty S17 just in time, and about to give up on a very trusty late model S9.

From my experience the 19 series are just as bad as 17 series. I have 36 x S19 95t purchased from two different batches (21 + 15) around 2 months apart. So far, 2 x PSU have died and 4 hashboards totally dead, with a 5th that's intermittent. All failed inside the 12 month warranty period (around 9 - 10 months in), however Bitmain refused to take back only the faulty hashboards, so with shipping costs (for sending the whole miners) and downtime I figured I'm better off to just leave the miners running on 2 hashboards. The same applied for the PSU's - I just bought some directly from Bitmain for around 130 USD each if I remember correctly (which is a fraction of the cost to ship a complete miner).

As for 17-series, there is definitely something in placing them horizontal to wake hashboards up. I have no idea why it works, but it does.

[ruber1]

I have a small horizontal set up in a positive pressure cabinet for multiple units. Worked great for my original S9/L3 Setup of about 12 units.
I originally went this design for space. I had hoped they would also run cooler than horizontal but saw very little cooling improvement.

As I rotated units to S17 Pro's,I (and Whatsminers) I found Horizontal NOT to be a good idea for the S17's.
Despite their bad design an inevitable failure, I believe Horizontal led to premature failure as a number of heatsinks either eventually fell off or sometimes just slide down out of place leading to overheat and shutdown. A few times I was able to re-heat the sink into place and get running again, but eventually it would fail again. Of my mix of units, my 3 S17 Pros (with 9 boards), have had 8 of 9 boards fail. Some have since been repaired, and 2 deemed unrepairable. I suspect if I had kept Horizontal, some of the failure may have been at least delayed.

Now I am working on transition to S19's. With the improved heatsink I hope the vertical orientation will work better. I only have one S19 95Ths (non pro) right now. They seem to run quite cool compared to previous units. They appear to report outlet temp vs chip temp. but I can feel the cooler exhaust of the unit compared to S17 or M20/M30 Whatsminers.

I am continuing with the horizontal set up, especially now that the S19 (as the Whatsminers) have single, large, secured with screw, heatsinks.