GekkoScience has a new pod miner, just in time for Christmas

[kano]

Well, as long as you have the log going somewhere, it will say why it stepped the freq down each time.

Also, if anyone does change the step settings on the BM1397 miners, I'd suggest not to.

[100knot2dae]

Got my unit this week, really a great piece of hardware! So far I am happy with it, have it running for now at 2.1Th/s with 550MHz for about 24 hours, with the flat side of the voltage knob pointing to between 9 and 10 (clock).

Speaking of the voltage knob, is there a standardized stock voltage position that applies to all units? Reason I am asking is because mine was shipped with the knob at 11, while I saw a picture of another user with the stock position at about 9 to 10: https://imgur.com/a/F1V84qf
Which is what I have set mine to as well now, saving me about 5 Watts while still running with the same hashrate.

[sidehack]

They're factory calibrated to 4.6V which isn't always the same position on the knob due to part tolerances in the volt-setting circuit. If it'll run at speed from a lower voltage, there's no reason not to.

[RKG456]

This evening I rearranged everything and now have all my Gekkos mining off of a single Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) host.  Looks stable so far but has only been back up for a few hours.   I let it run for a week and a half with no issues when it was spread across two hosts.  The day before yesterday my peak hash rate spiked up to 8.025TH/s for a minute or so.  Getting many spikes over 7.5TH/s

Code:

cgminer version 4.12.1 - Started: [2023-01-19 17:07:59.335]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):6.593T (1m):6.293T (5m):6.322T (15m):6.277T (avg):6.097Th/s
 A:15138816  R:0  HW:15828  WU:85182.8/m
 Connected to bitcoin.viabtc.io diff 8.19K with stratum as user N0F34R.NPandT
 Block: 533c0002...  Diff:37.6T  Started: [19:50:37.341]  Best share: 99.7M
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [U]SB management [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 0: GSF 10070032: BM1397:06+ 600.00MHz T:600 P:600 (3:2)     | 96.8% WU: 97% | 2.541T / 2.350Th/s WU:32840.4/m
 1: GSF 10070012: BM1397:06+ 600.00MHz T:600 P:600 (3:2)     | 96.8% WU: 98% | 2.616T / 2.381Th/s WU:33272.4/m
 2: GSH 10041663: BM1387:02+ 375.00MHz T:375 P:375 (100:50)  |  100% WU: 98% | 89.85G / 83.92Gh/s WU: 1172.4/m
 3: GSH 10038894: BM1387:02+ 375.00MHz T:375 P:375 (100:50)  | 98.5% WU:^98% | 85.93G / 83.84Gh/s WU: 1171.4/m
 4: GSF 10052154: BM1397:01+ 450.00MHz T:450 P:450 (28:14)   |  100% WU:100% | 309.1G / 274.5Gh/s WU: 3834.7/m
 5: GSF 10053864: BM1397:01+ 450.00MHz T:450 P:450 (28:14)   |  100% WU:100% | 393.6G / 297.0Gh/s WU: 4148.7/m
 6: GSF 10050104: BM1397:01+ 450.00MHz T:450 P:450 (28:14)   |  100% WU:100% | 293.9G / 297.1Gh/s WU: 4150.1/m
 7: GSF 10054544: BM1397:01+ 450.00MHz T:450 P:450 (28:14)   |  100% WU:100% | 344.7G / 300.3Gh/s WU: 4195.1/m
 8: GSF 10053931: BM1397:01+ 450.00MHz T:450 P:450 (28:14)   |  100% WU:100% | 254.7G / 274.7Gh/s WU: 3837.1/m

[sidehack]

2.3+T  on the pods, nice.

[MoparMiningLLC]

if anyone is selling one for btc please let me know!

[100knot2dae]

They're factory calibrated to 4.6V which isn't always the same position on the knob due to part tolerances in the volt-setting circuit. If it'll run at speed from a lower voltage, there's no reason not to.

Looks like my unit is approaching an efficiency sweet spot for this frequency (550 MHz). Since the voltage decrease (12 hours ago), it's not only using 5W less but also the avg hashrate has slightly increased (+10 Gh/s  ), while the WU/m has climbed up by 110 and the HW error ratio being stable.

Very cool, it's a really impressive device what you have crafted here @sidehack!

When turning the voltage knob, is it safe to do so when the unit is powered, or even while cgminer is running? Does it matter, if so what's the recommended way?

[kano]

https://kano.is/gekko.php#vol

[n0nce]

Got my unit this week, really a great piece of hardware! So far I am happy with it, have it running for now at 2.1Th/s with 550MHz for about 24 hours, with the flat side of the voltage knob pointing to between 9 and 10 (clock).

Interesting; mine dropped a bit down to 2.1Th/s over the last 6 days. I am still on 675MHz. It started at almost 2.5Th/s. Did anyone else experience such a little bit of drop-off after the first few hours of operation?
My only theory right now is that they get slower as the heat up and the heatsink becomes fully soaked. Not sure about that, though.

[itskeule]

Interesting; mine dropped a bit down to 2.1Th/s over the last 6 days. I am still on 675MHz. It started at almost 2.5Th/s. Did anyone else experience such a little bit of drop-off after the first few hours of operation?
My only theory right now is that they get slower as the heat up and the heatsink becomes fully soaked. Not sure about that, though.

I had the same experience. With stock voltage, I tried various freq. settings from 500 MHz up to 725 MHz. At the beginning of the run, cgminer reports up to ~2.5 TH, then, after 30min or 1 hour it slowly drops the hash rate.
Currently, at 725 MHz (which seems the maximum, increasing it, the HW errors raising as well to an unacceptable ratio), the miner is dropping down to ~2.190 TH.

Also tried to increase the voltage knob from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock in small steps, to no avail. So I turned it back to the factory setting.
The next step will be to measure temps and increase airflow if necessary.

[100knot2dae]

My only theory right now is that they get slower as the heat up and the heatsink becomes fully soaked. Not sure about that, though.

I had the same thought when I saw the hashrate increase after the slight undervolt at 550MHz. The avg hashrate is at 2.12Th/s by now, I think I will just leave it running like this for a few days to see if it goes up even further yet.

[gergar]

Hello all, i want to share my experience and some advise on cooling as i found out points to improve:

I got 4units few weeks ago, all 4 came with bolts off in the case, initially i wasnt clear where they came from i thought they were “spare bolts” 😂, but as i set them and ran for couple of hours at stock frequency 400 i saw the hashrate going down to 1.4T and they went down to zombie no chip… that made me think about temperature issues…

I open each of them, net it is not easy to open but that can be an improvement in future … i found out:
1 both heatsinks were moving missing the bolts i had at the boxes.
2 the fans are pushing the air to the inside vs pulling it out
3 there is no thermal compound on the backplate heatsinks

what i did:
1 put thermal path covering the backplate heatsink (20w/k), used same compound for the top at the BM chips.
2 when bolting it i made a cross then center then cross then center until the bolts were full secured, 6 bolt array needs a sequence to avoid the issue of having some loosen bolts due to the center bolts will cause the outer ones to lose pressure as the heatsink gets tightened.
3 inverted the fan to pull the air, why, the current setu makes hot air stays inside the case (measured with a temp camera)

Results:
550 stable - 2.2T each (48hrs no TH drops) very cold running- i kept them back there for longevity 85w per R909.
600 stable - 2.4T each (48hrs no TH drops) temperature got slightly high, but still looks fine.
650 stable - 2.6T in some / 2.5 in others (48hrs sone git back to 600Mhz) i guess silicon lottery and or needs better heatsink like cpu server with very small fins but many to increase thermal transfer and better fans <getting some 6k high cfm>

As i saw risk of damaging the asics i stop there (i had compact F damaged due to temps, 6 and replaced the asics with new AI but after monitoring i found that thermal will kill the chips so fyi)

I will do the same 750 test and report back just with one and try to measure temps with my temp camera.

hope this helps to improve the thermal protection so far with stock heatsinks these toys performs amazing just make the backplate to really work adding thermal compound on it and you will really use the backplate to remove heat.

[kano]

Sounds like you need to track down whoever you got them from and get them to explain why they were disassembled.

They are tested mining, properly assembled, before even being sent to the distributors.

[sidehack]

We've recently gotten a few reports of screws rattling loose during shipping and anything that's gone out since then has blue threadlocker on the screws. There's already a version change in planning to improve heatsink screws and ease of getting the case on and off.

It's not advisable to use thermal compound on the top chips or we would have done so. The IC package is plated and electrically connected to local ground, which means that unless there's electrical insulation between the package and heatsink, you can cause shorts and break stuff. We use a 0.5mm 20W/k silicone pad to avoid shorts.

I'll do some testing with adding TIM to the underside heatsink and see how that changes heat management.

[gergar]

Thank you yes i meant thermal pads (20w/k) both sides sorry 😞 . I used .5mm too and 1mm bottom to have symmetrical balance between heatsinks too.

yes maybe springs or locktite on them it was strange but the product is quite great maybe testing only with the outer 4 bolts…

[Sledge0001]

Alright finally just got around to this and ordered 2 of em from BitcoinMerch! 

Looking forward to tinkering with these next week!

[kano]

Added info from API-README about how to setup a web page to view your gekkos
https://kano.is/gekko.php#mph
Has a Gekko specific page and a GekkoChips page that shows the chips

Edit: Update, I added an extra command to the above steps that I left out before,
since you need to get the latest miner.php with the Gekko updates.

[100knot2dae]

Hello all, i want to share my experience and some advise on cooling as i found out points to improve:
...
3 inverted the fan to pull the air, why, the current setu makes hot air stays inside the case (measured with a temp camera)
...

Hello, what was the temperature difference you have measured with your temp camera when the (stock?) fan was blowing out? Would be interesting to know.

[n0nce]

My only theory right now is that they get slower as the heat up and the heatsink becomes fully soaked. Not sure about that, though.

I had the same thought when I saw the hashrate increase after the slight undervolt at 550MHz. The avg hashrate is at 2.12Th/s by now, I think I will just leave it running like this for a few days to see if it goes up even further yet.

That's impressively high for just 550MHz. After a few hours of running 700MHz, mine seems to have settled on around 2.3Th/s, after starting at ~2.5Th/s... Still not sure if this is temp related.

[sidehack]

It's 96% of expected speed, so not that impressive. Yours is running a little over 80% expected. I bet you could see the same 2.3TH effective from about 600.