GAW Miners (Scrypt/SHA256 miners and Hashlet cloud) independent feedback thread

[suchmoon]

Such melts happen more often than you'd think, especially with mass produced power adapters. Just google it and you'll get pictures like this one.

As opposed to what, hand-carved mahogany adapters? Being mass-produced has nothing to do with it, being cheap-ass junk is what's causing it. Using google to justify the fire hazard you're selling is just pathetic.

Less pathetic than you showing a picture of a single melted PSU to justify your biased opinion. There were thousands of sales and not a single fire.

I'm sorry Mr. Unbiased Panda. Does your "if it's not burning your hand it's ok" wire testing method apply to power supplies too? Perhaps slightly modified, e.g. "if it hasn't burned down your house it's safe"? You can't go around claiming shit like that and expect to be taken seriously.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=631616.msg7039779#msg7039779

If you can hold it for 3 s before burning i'm guessing the temperature is below 100*C so it won't melt or catch fire as long as this temp doesn't jump up.

[EvilPanda]

Changing the subject eh?
I see you couldn't find anything to add so you started going through my posts, nice you either are really angry or you paid good

Oh and how many posts did you pad for your signature campaign today by posting in your own topic of accusations?

[suchmoon]

Changing the subject eh?
I see you couldn't find anything to add so you started going through my posts, nice you either are really angry or you paid good

Oh and how many posts did you pad for your signature campaign today by posting in your own topic of accusations?

I think this is actually very much on the subject of you having no clue about electricity. Keep digging yourself in, great PR for GAW.

[EvilPanda]

Changing the subject eh?
I see you couldn't find anything to add so you started going through my posts, nice you either are really angry or you paid good

Oh and how many posts did you pad for your signature campaign today by posting in your own topic of accusations?

I think this is actually very much on the subject of you having no clue about electricity. Keep digging yourself in, great PR for GAW.

You spent so much time going through my post to actually show you don't know what you're talking about, but i'll try to educate you (although it's talking to a wall). Temperature of 80*C feels hot for a human hand but won't melt an electric wire.

Also it doesn't amaze me at all that a paid troll like you cares for GAW's PR thanks for admitting it.

So how much did you earn by posting here today? Must be at least $5 

[GAW Miners]

Another unhappy Falcon owner here. Rather than writing out a block of text I'll hit the important points quickly, both good and bad.

• Exceeds the original 27Mh rating, seems to average around 28Mh.
• Case looks nice.
• Packaging has inadequate shipping protection. Parts of the case were bent on mine and the screws that hold the boards on were loose. One of the fan cables was disconnected.
• Draws ~1115W consistently on a Raidmax 1000W 80 Plus Gold PSU. Coin diff has no impact on power use for me.
• Power connectors are not wired correctly and will short if you use the extra PCIe pins.
• Case fans blow air out the back (negative pressure) rather than sucking it in. This is opposite of the PSU and may cause cooling issues for the PSU.
• I won't list all the issues with the ZenController since they've been discussed elsewhere. Needless to say it feels like a prototype, not even alpha stage.
• Case is a few mm taller than 4U. This may make it unsuitable for rack mounting but I can't be sure as I haven't tested it yet.

To top it off sometime yesterday afternoon it stopped mining entirely. Sometimes it comes up as sick, sometimes it thinks it's hashing but doesn't output any results. Unfortunately I had to host it somewhere else due to power use and don't have physical access to it yet to diagnose. Hopefully I can get my hands on it today or tomorrow.

Hi Dan,  we see this is the 2nd or 3rd post you made about your hardware. I would be happy to issue you an RMA for a full refund. Can you send me a PM with your order number to start the process?

[supah_hasha]

Changing the subject eh?
I see you couldn't find anything to add so you started going through my posts, nice you either are really angry or you paid good

Oh and how many posts did you pad for your signature campaign today by posting in your own topic of accusations?

I think this is actually very much on the subject of you having no clue about electricity. Keep digging yourself in, great PR for GAW.

You spent so much time going through my post to actually show you don't know what you're talking about, but i'll try to educate you (although it's talking to a wall). Temperature of 80*C feels hot for a human hand but won't melt an electric wire.

Also it doesn't amaze me at all that a paid troll like you cares for GAW's PR thanks for admitting it.

So how much did you earn by posting here today? Must be at least $5  

nice signature, no PR here

damn power supplies are melting and yet people still trying to make excuses, the power supply for fury is no good, cheap shit, manufacturer (zeus?!) needs to give something that doesn't get burning hot. and gaw is irresponsible for selling them with these, even take reviews off site that talk about power supply being bad.  shame on you.

[Hazir]

Changing the subject eh?
I see you couldn't find anything to add so you started going through my posts, nice you either are really angry or you paid good

Oh and how many posts did you pad for your signature campaign today by posting in your own topic of accusations?

I think this is actually very much on the subject of you having no clue about electricity. Keep digging yourself in, great PR for GAW.

You spent so much time going through my post to actually show you don't know what you're talking about, but i'll try to educate you (although it's talking to a wall). Temperature of 80*C feels hot for a human hand but won't melt an electric wire.

Also it doesn't amaze me at all that a paid troll like you cares for GAW's PR thanks for admitting it.

So how much did you earn by posting here today? Must be at least $5  

nice signature, no PR here

damn power supplies are melting and yet people still trying to make excuses, the power supply for fury is no good, cheap shit, manufacturer (zeus?!) needs to give something that doesn't get burning hot. and gaw is irresponsible for selling them with these, even take reviews off site that talk about power supply being bad.  shame on you.

you guys act like a children a bit. I get the impression that you have never used any electronic device before. From what I could see you are greatly surprised that something like power supply due to excessive usage can melt. What a shocking news. Of course it can melt and it will at some point but it does not matter really how good manufacturer is. I got in my life a couple of power suppliers and I melted cheap ones as well as very overpriced ones. And my longest working power supply was one of the cheapest. There is no rule there to be honest. If you burn something just be civil and call/ask GAW support and they will be fine with replacing that part. If you have a problem please do not fight this is no place for that.

[alienesb]

Changing the subject eh?
I see you couldn't find anything to add so you started going through my posts, nice you either are really angry or you paid good

Oh and how many posts did you pad for your signature campaign today by posting in your own topic of accusations?

I think this is actually very much on the subject of you having no clue about electricity. Keep digging yourself in, great PR for GAW.

You spent so much time going through my post to actually show you don't know what you're talking about, but i'll try to educate you (although it's talking to a wall). Temperature of 80*C feels hot for a human hand but won't melt an electric wire.

Also it doesn't amaze me at all that a paid troll like you cares for GAW's PR thanks for admitting it.

So how much did you earn by posting here today? Must be at least $5  

nice signature, no PR here

damn power supplies are melting and yet people still trying to make excuses, the power supply for fury is no good, cheap shit, manufacturer (zeus?!) needs to give something that doesn't get burning hot. and gaw is irresponsible for selling them with these, even take reviews off site that talk about power supply being bad.  shame on you.

You know, the way you use words and the choices you make sure seem like someone that used to post a lot around here...

[DriverDan]

Even if you pack it in a wooden box with foam inside and drop the whole package on the ground a few times, some stuff inside will disconnect and may get damaged.
There's no way of knowing what happened to your package during shipment. Personally, I never sign the receipt if the package is damaged.

The external cardboard box had no visible damage. The internal white box had a split along the bottom edge but no other visible damage.

This was already discussed and is true, although you don't need these additional connectors, and the supplier has issued a warning immediately after finding out.

I was the one who pointed it out to them and told them they should send out the email so I thought it was worth mentioning.

[DriverDan]

Hi Dan,  we see this is the 2nd or 3rd post you made about your hardware. I would be happy to issue you an RMA for a full refund. Can you send me a PM with your order number to start the process?

I may end up doing that.

I want it to be clear to everyone that I'm rooting for GAW. I want you guys to succeed and wanted this to be a great product. It's clear that some of the issues you've had are simply a result of growing very, very fast. I'm in the startup world so I completely understand that. I had issues with some previous orders and your customer support handled it very well.

That said, there are serious issues with this line of miners (power use being the primary one) that could have been handled better. Zeus had to know about the much higher power use before they shipped. Shipping them first and then telling us "oh by the way, these draw far more power than we said and you'll need a much bigger PSU" is not the right way to handle it. I'm sure much of the blame lies with Zeus but since GAW is selling them as their own product the responsibility falls on your shoulders. Had you told us about it and given us the option to cancel before the product shipped I probably would have done that and just ordered an A2 mini. Instead of being frustrated and posting negative info I would have sung my praises about how it was handled.

[jekv2]

Does GAWminers members get better treatment vs regular customers?

[suchmoon]

Does GAWminers members get better treatment vs regular customers?

If you mean Founders Club they're supposed to get free hosting, free shipping over $50, and longer warranties. There is also price protection/buyback, which I don't think has worked yet. There is currently nothing in the Club section of the store (i.e. no discounts). There was a 24-hour advance preorder for members for Zeus hardware but the same price was then available for everyone.

http://www.gawminers.com/blog/gaw-founders-club/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=570861.0

[Borsht]

I haven't had a Gridseed USB Mini come in the little white box since mid April.

[Halofire]

Another unhappy Falcon owner here. Rather than writing out a block of text I'll hit the important points quickly, both good and bad.

• Exceeds the original 27Mh rating, seems to average around 28Mh.
• Case looks nice.
• Packaging has inadequate shipping protection. Parts of the case were bent on mine and the screws that hold the boards on were loose. One of the fan cables was disconnected.
• Draws ~1115W consistently on a Raidmax 1000W 80 Plus Gold PSU. Coin diff has no impact on power use for me.
• Power connectors are not wired correctly and will short if you use the extra PCIe pins.
• Case fans blow air out the back (negative pressure) rather than sucking it in. This is opposite of the PSU and may cause cooling issues for the PSU.
• I won't list all the issues with the ZenController since they've been discussed elsewhere. Needless to say it feels like a prototype, not even alpha stage.
• Case is a few mm taller than 4U. This may make it unsuitable for rack mounting but I can't be sure as I haven't tested it yet.

To top it off sometime yesterday afternoon it stopped mining entirely. Sometimes it comes up as sick, sometimes it thinks it's hashing but doesn't output any results. Unfortunately I had to host it somewhere else due to power use and don't have physical access to it yet to diagnose. Hopefully I can get my hands on it today or tomorrow.

I'm kinda happy with my falcon, at least I'm on par to getting ROI as I originally scheduled @80-120 days, but only due to btc price coming up.

getting sick means its getting too hot. my falcon case is slightly warm, psu cables are warmer. chips are hot, but is to be expected. Who's got an IR temperature gun?

''exceeds the original 27Mh rating, seems to average around 28Mh.'' yes it does. WU is 28k also. I tried zeus's cgminer also. Actually is slightly more erratic. Underclocking seems to save power. I use 290 for ltcclk when i'm not monitoring falcon like when I'm sleeping.

"Case fans blow air out the back (negative pressure) rather than sucking it in. This is opposite of the PSU and may cause cooling issues for the PSU." You have to put the psu air intake at the 3"x 4" hole which A: there's not enough room to fit my psu like that and B: would cause psu to suffocate since hole is not same size as my fan intake on my psu and C:if installing the psu as was intended, the way case is designed, its blows hot air from the psu out the center hole to the two holes with the heatsinks so the heatsinks will not get fresh cool air, thus running hotter. If you have your psu in the case... get it out. don't put it on top of the miner either. entire miner needs to breathe.

"Draws ~1115W consistently on a Raidmax 1000W 80 Plus Gold PSU. Coin diff has no impact on power use for me." yep. only underclocking reduces power. keep forgetting to take power use readings when falcon is idle and not mining. really curious.

''Power connectors are not wired correctly and will short if you use the extra PCIe pins'' If I remember correctly, the 2 wires are only reversed so... I wonder what would happen if we reversed the two wires. If they aren't reversed and only one wire is incorrect, can't we just cut it and tape it like what ppl did for 5-chip Gseed fans? I'm not 100% sure on this, so I recommend only GAW try ANY of this. But using the extra 2 wires would bring down power use somewhat, due to higher efficiency because of heat loss. Usage difference might be negligable, but would divide 225 incoming dc watts per 8-pin pcie cable set by 1 or 2 more, all depending if the wires are supposed to neutral or hot.

[reactor]

Odd. My miner that arrived came orderly fashion kinda. It did not come with a seedbox box. Just styrofoam in a cardboard box.

I then found out they are suppose to come like this in these secure white little boxes.

https://i.imgur.com/865bSUs.jpg.

I haven't had a Gridseed USB Mini come in the little white box since mid April.

Because GAW is reselling you used/returned/open-box/pre-mined miners.

There is technically no proof of this, but it is weird they aren't in the normal boxes, that is how they arrive new.  However I am curious if the blades on the site are new (meaning they renewed a relationship with Gridseed) or the used ones from hosted, in which they should be marked used. 

GAW, if you're checking this, did you guys make up with Gridseed?   Very curious because we're hearing very little about the supposed Gridseed/Inno partnership. 

[Ktulu1]

I haven't had a Gridseed USB Mini come in the little white box since mid April.

I've seen the same thing. From what I understand, that is how they are coming from the manufacture. Retailers cannot sell used stuff as new, but I don't really care as long as the thing works. I don't need my Gridseeds to be shinny and new. If they do their job, I'm equal opportunity.

[ernie-]

I haven't had a Gridseed USB Mini come in the little white box since mid April.

Gridseed also ship boxes of 10 units, not just single boxes, (there use to be photos on the GAW site of the 10pack) so if the unit was from a box of 10 you wouldn't get the small box.

[reactor]

Also, since people are borderline begging for the update on the community forum I'll add it here so Bitcointalkers can see - news on the firmware update?  

I see Eric saying people need to email him at ZenMiner for an update for Fury issues, why isn't it posted on the site?  Stickied on the community section?  As-is I don't feel comfortable running the Fury with the included power supply without sitting there watching it, but I'd like to see this update pushed out to the community rather than folks who happen upon it in a GAW Community thread on your website.

Please, do the community some service and fix this stuff.  It's about to hit shipping for week 3 and people still can't get this stuff working out of the box.  In all honesty this hardware as well as the Zen service were not ready for public consumption and needed a much more thorough QA round on all sides.

[suchmoon]

Also, since people are borderline begging for the update on the community forum I'll add it here so Bitcointalkers can see - news on the firmware update?  

I see Eric saying people need to email him at ZenMiner for an update for Fury issues, why isn't it posted on the site?  Stickied on the community section?  As-is I don't feel comfortable running the Fury with the included power supply without sitting there watching it, but I'd like to see this update pushed out to the community rather than folks who happen upon it in a GAW Community thread on your website.

Please, do the community some service and fix this stuff.  It's about to hit shipping for week 3 and people still can't get this stuff working out of the box.  In all honesty this hardware as well as the Zen service were not ready for public consumption and needed a much more thorough QA round on all sides.

There was an e-mail sent out to GAW customers, and I could swear it was also posted on the gawmunity site, but I can't find it there. Anyway, see below, it mentions firmware issues with GAW's typical "blame someone else" attitude.

Thank you all for hanging in there during this bumpy launch for week 2. A mixture of events have occurred in the past few days concerning power, firmware, and general bugs which I want to cover in this notification.



First of all, we would like to thank you for your business. We couldn't have made it this far without you and we are humbled by your support and belief in us as a market leader. We now have a couple of thousand hosted customers which is quite a bit more than are original limit of 100 at launch just a couple of months ago. A large percentage of these customers have multiple rigs (some close to 40 different rigs). With this type of scale comes bugs and UI issues. This also forces us to implement better alerts and notifications for rogue nodes. In the past couple of weeks we have hired new Full Stack Developers along with other technical CSR's to assist with growth. We are not stopping there though. In the beginning we had a rough idea of how fast things would grow and boy were we on the low end of that forecast. We have since then planned for an even larger scale and deployment by adding resources (as mentioned above) and giving more effort to making our internal systems run more efficiently.



The issues week 2 hosted customers have experiencing in the past few days are related to possibly 3 items with the first being the most probable.



1. Power issues

2. Firmware/Mining software issues

3. UI bugs and cloud service issues



1. The power issues for 75% of the week 2 hosted units have been resolved. We have learned that whenever the units are tested in our lab, they are usually connected to pools that we use which are only higher difficulty and have more consistency as far as uptime and actual jobs. Some of the pools that are being used by customers have very low difficulty (like 16 - 128) which causes the units to draw more power. The draw is not entirely related to the difficulty but it plays a big factor. So an extra power draw of 1-2 more amps is significant when working with thousands of these units. Obviously we have planned for variance but we are right on the limit when factoring these numbers. We had a similar issue with the gridseeds although on a much smaller scale at the time.



New hardware = new issues but at least we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. To resolve this issue on the remaining 25% of units, we are having the power company upgrade transformers to larger a much larger kw as well as bringing in new power legs to spread the load in multiple data centers.



2. Recently, we received new firmware/cgminer from Zeusminers for the Generation A Chips. After applying the firmware we realized that there we no improvements and in fact it made things worse as far as power consumption and fluctuating hash rate. We are in the process of reverting to the older firmware and have been for the past day. When we tested the firmware on our lab units, it seemed stable and more efficient. We are, again hiring more resources to work on Xminer and the controllers themselves for better performance and reliability.


3. Some issues in the UI we are aware of can be anywhere from your units not displaying properly, to the actual hash rate not being displayed properly. 50% of these issues are related to just reporting issues from the mining software to the UI and the other 50% are related to the actual miners either not responding or frozen. This is a serious issue because the only thing worse than not being able to manage your miner, is not being able to see that it even exists. We have immediate plans to work out this specific issue and confident that we can have this resolved in a timely manner.



Since we started this business as BTC and Scrypt miners just like yourself, we know what is most important to you and are working hard to achieve customer satisfaction at it's fullest. The speedy delivery of products is actually one of the main key components here and we realize that. This is why we try to do things like launch 1 day early or provide compensation for downtime. We know the score and understand the importance of uptime (especially in the beginning).



All of this said, this is why we want to offer a 150% compensation for possible downtime during the last few days from the beginning of week 2 launch. When we have mitigated the issues at hand, we will send another message with a link to a compensation form for the Generation A Week 2 Hosted customers asking for specific information.



I believe in providing an unmatched customer experience along with continued innovation in every area of our business. This is the foundation our company was built on and this is how it will continue.



Thank you very much for your support.



-- Joe Mordica CTO

[reactor]

I got the email from Joe and don't quite care for any more excuses.  GAW and Zeus had the hardware in-hand before shipping and yet there has been nothing but delays as Eric over at Zen is practically building ZenMiner from scratch while people are trying to use it while we keep hearing "there will be an update".  I'm sorry, BFL strung people along with "there will be an update" because they were afraid of giving the community bad news, KNC said "sit tight" while they built uberhall and somehow couldn't find the parts for upgrades, "wait and be patient" doesn't cut it anymore.  

I saw on the community forum where Josh boasts they have multiple data centers - anyone who has ever been in or around a 'data center' knows they are equipped for running massive server farms and the like, test labs, R&D labs, all of which have wildly varying power, network, cooling, and space requirements.  I'd like to see realistic timeline from these folks instead of more excuses.

Are they working with the developers of BFGMiner?  CGMiner?  CPUMiner?  Is anyone besides GAW working on this - if so, who?  I don't put faith in jmordica - sorry, but back in March he starts posting out of nowhere with very beginner questions in regards to getting GridSeed stuff working and now we're relying on him for writing code for this stuff?

Honestly, GAW, do yourselves a favor, let everyone know who is working on what and provide a realistic timeline.  This is just frustrating because even people on your community forum don't seem to be getting anywhere with this.

P.S.- I'm basically quiet on here because my real beef right now is with Zeus, the people behind these crap chips.  They are ultimately responsible for the produced hardware and its failings, but since GAW is acting as a reseller and working on their own cloud hosting as well as mining software I'm holding them responsible for their customers.  Offering a refund is one thing, fixing stuff for their entire customer-base is another story entirely.  Edit: That is how GAW can become heroes and turn this story around since Zeus seems to be throwing their hands in the air and giving up.