ROCKMINER ASIC miner official thread

[sushi]

Pic...

Gathered Up Some Videos and Photos of Rocket Box

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[rockxie]

#1: Reference to Raspberry Pi
This will depend on who you purchased the Rocket Box or R-Box from.  If you happened to purchased our products via bulk discount such as the resellers, they were given options to purchase the miner with or without Raspberry Pi.

When you purchase Rocket Miner products from our website at http://www.shop.rockminer.com  you will receive 1 Rasberry Pi per every 2 Rocket Box Miner purchased and 1 Rasberry Pi per every 10 R-Box you purchased.
If you purchased 1 Rocket Miner on one check out process, then placed another order for the 2nd Rocket Box for 1 item, you will not qualify for the free Raspberry pie. (2 Rocket Box or 10 R-Box have to be purchased at a time)
When you purchase Rocket Box from any retail outlet other than http://www.shop.rockminer.com , the product could be the same Rocket Miner or R-Box, however, the sales terms may not be the same as our online store.  (We noticed some resellers are selling Rocket Box on their webs, but Raspberry Pi and the Pi is an extra accessory to the miner for extra charge.  As a customer, please do diligence before you purchase our product outside our website at http://www.shop.rockminer.com )

This is wrong.

My agent was Alex Lam and he gave me NO options. He also did NOT told me that there will be NO Raspberry Pi for resellers.
So i told him and i am waiting for my Rasperry Pi´s or a refund for that.

I think there was misunderstanding,Alex not told resellers directly about RPI,  lots of resellers whom asked Alex directly knew that.
For this,we will compensate on reasonable rate only.
Customers bought from our store should all got RPI and SD card,if whom did not get it,pls email Alex.

[klondike_bar]

Update:

Thank you for addressing all of your concerns here.  & Thank you So Much for waiting, Let me answer these one by one!!

#1: Reference to Raspberry Pi

using SSH:

USERNAME: pi
PASSWORD: rockminer

/etc/cgminer.conf - contains very little hardware settings outside of icarus-options:115200:1:1 - is there another file that determines fan speed/PWM control and chip frequency?

#3:Cgminer/Drivers/USB/Hardware Design/Performance Improvement Suggestions
We do read each message and all suggestion from the members here.  We are reviewing each item carefully and we are constantly working on better cgminer and driver performance.  Hardware designs is another thing we are constantly working on, too.  It’s not just how pretty it will look, but cost performance, possible delays associated with the pretty case design, packaging restrictions, physical damage control factor and etc…  At the moment, we have the working miners that can hash at almost 500GH/S, so we decided to release them to the market so that customers can enjoy the hashing power now.  We are still making our miners better and better.  Please stay tuned and you’ll see more news coming from us.  When it is ready, we will announce more updated versions for you. 

more options should be made available if possible, particularly chip speed and fan speed. make a rackmount design in a sturdy frame and blades like the R3. no usb hubs and wires everywhere - just a proper serial or backplane connection build in.

#4: "sandwich" the PCB between two heatsinks
This is something we decided to do to enhance the chip cooling.  The colder the chips are, better hashing speed it would achieve.  Yes, if we use less materials, less cost, however, the cost performance to produce the miner is not the only thing we consider when we designed our product.  Our ultimate goal is to produce a high performance miner.  If you have some better realistic suggestions, please let us know!!  We are here to listen!!!

the heatsinks can be smaller. I think reducing the overall aluminum weight by 15% is a reasonable target and still allow good cooling. Thinner blades on the heatsinks (not thin enough to bend) would allow better cooling with less material.

more people love them than not.  We can’t keep everyone happy at the same time. 

#8: Duplicated Share Questions….
This does not mean, you are losing the hash rate.  All it does is create more work processing for the pool.  Duplicate is well simply a duplicate.  Cgminer doesn’t even bother  tracking them in detail.  The miner is transmitting the same work item, however, the valid work is the stat that affect hash rate.  Even though this does not affect the hash rate, we made the new control card to address this issue and other improvements were made to increase the hash rate.  When it is in production quality, we will let you know and it will start to ship out with the new miners.  (This is an improvements we are making and not the defects)

Im definitely losing hashrate to rejects - 12% or higher

[mc_lovin]

I say leave the LED!  It's fine!

I also like the fact that the massive heatsink is not one block.  It's four mini-blades that interlock.  Definitely cool!



This changes my previous criticism of the cube shape.  It makes more sense now.  I think the heatsink could be toned down a little, but it is a great product just on it's own there: a blade with a heatsink!

My question: that little USB controller module doohicky, can it be repalaced with an ethernet version?  Sort of like asicminer's original ethernet controller.

Also you should offer these RK-Blades individually just as they are.  In smaller packaging, you should do the math on how many packaged units you could put in a certain volume of a container.  The RK-Box is a big box, each one wrapped individually, where I think you can get a lot of these blades in there.  You only really save the room of the center piece if you didn't ship them built like that, so it's not a massive savings but a customer may want just this part here, plugs in via USB, it's a sellable product.  Just something to ponder, I think these are fantastic.  We will do some testing to see the passive temps!  

[Benny1985]

Hey guys, if you're in the US (or want them worldwide), we just did a fabrication run of PCI-E for both 6/8 pin connectors to 2.5mm DC barrel plugs for Rockminer systems. Same factory that did a huge run of Gridseed power cables for us, so they are really good quality.

I'll start a new thread, but given the pictures I am seeing in this thread, it looks like a few people could use these:

(PCI-E 8 Pin to 4x 2.5mm DC Barrel Plug)
http://buyahash.com/shop/pci-e-8-pin-4-rockminer-power-plug-2-5mm-dc-barrel-plug/


(PCI-E 6 Pin to 3x 2.5mm DC Barrel Plug)
http://buyahash.com/shop/pci-e-6-pin-to-3-rockminer-power-plug-2-5mm-dc-barrel-plug/

[bobsag3]

We received a demo R3 unit today, with our first shipment to arrive tomorrow.

[mc_lovin]

So if you wanted to cool the individual blades, a 0.25A 120mm or better will do.  A single 0.53A 120mm fan would be icy-cool, where a nice 0.2A 120mm will do a good job as well.  Tried with 2x 80mm fans from old power supplies (0.16A and 0.2A) and they were not quite fast enough to cool it, but two 0.3 or 0.4A 80mm might have worked.  

A single 0.07A 120mm wouldn't do it, but a single 0.16A 120mm was actually not too bad.  I wish we had a bit more variety here, but it is clear they will go with a single 120mm as long as it spins decently.

We also tried a couple expirements:

Replacing the single 120mm 1.3A (stock, loud) fan with two 120mm 0.53A (quiet, still 110cfm though) fans on either side.  You only get one plate to mount a fan on but if you had two, and set them up in a push-pull layout to pull the air through... Not quite enough cooling power, stock the system gets 51 or 52 degrees and it gets over 55-56 with the 2x fan push-pull.  Also tried vertically aligning it so the air pushes upwards and sucking from the bottom and it got about the same result.  

Also tried flipping the stock fan around, to push through the heatsink instead of pull through, and the results were pretty much the same if you didn't do that.  Maybe 1 degree hotter.

We received a demo R3 unit today, with our first shipment to arrive tomorrow.

Would love to see a picture of the demo!  

[rockxie]

Update:

The handbook of R3-BOX, normal solution of lower hasharate and other things can be found here:

http://forum.rockminer.com/discussion/24/update-handbook-of-r3-box-q-a

[rockxie]

So if you wanted to cool the individual blades, a 0.25A 120mm or better will do.  A single 0.53A 120mm fan would be icy-cool, where a nice 0.2A 120mm will do a good job as well.  Tried with 2x 80mm fans from old power supplies (0.16A and 0.2A) and they were not quite fast enough to cool it, but two 0.3 or 0.4A 80mm might have worked.  

A single 0.07A 120mm wouldn't do it, but a single 0.16A 120mm was actually not too bad.  I wish we had a bit more variety here, but it is clear they will go with a single 120mm as long as it spins decently.

We also tried a couple expirements:

Replacing the single 120mm 1.3A (stock, loud) fan with two 120mm 0.53A (quiet, still 110cfm though) fans on either side.  You only get one plate to mount a fan on but if you had two, and set them up in a push-pull layout to pull the air through... Not quite enough cooling power, stock the system gets 51 or 52 degrees and it gets over 55-56 with the 2x fan push-pull.  Also tried vertically aligning it so the air pushes upwards and sucking from the bottom and it got about the same result.  

Also tried flipping the stock fan around, to push through the heatsink instead of pull through, and the results were pretty much the same if you didn't do that.  Maybe 1 degree hotter.

We received a demo R3 unit today, with our first shipment to arrive tomorrow.

Would love to see a picture of the demo!  

Thank you very much for helping us improving our products.
For making mining stable on higher hashrate , people can trying BIGER fans to blow in farms, or try to set RK-BOX vertically with some space on the bottom.
One more thing, people can use one RPI run ONE RK/R3-BOX, hashrate will go up,and its worthy for RPI cost.
Some people who have cooling solutions also prefer to order PCB boards.

[TrekRider]

One of the blades on my RK-box will not hash.

The blue light will come on occasionally but not consistently on this particular blade.  I have tried swapping the USB board with no luck.

Any suggestions?

[bobsag3]

One of the blades on my RK-box will not hash.

The blue light will come on occasionally but not consistently on this particular blade.  I have tried swapping the USB board with no luck.

Any suggestions?

Un-plug and re plug in the blade's USB connection while the unit is running.

[TrekRider]

One of the blades on my RK-box will not hash.

The blue light will come on occasionally but not consistently on this particular blade.  I have tried swapping the USB board with no luck.

Any suggestions?

Un-plug and re plug in the blade's USB connection while the unit is running.

Seems like it was a wonky power cable, but I appreciate the quick response.

Just an FYI - if you're not using a server PSU you're going to need to make sure your PSU has 4 x 8 pin outputs OR some adapters to 6 pin.  You need 4 x 6 pin and you will not be able to use a single cable that has 2 x 6 pin outputs as they will not reach.

My 2 units are running at 477 gh/s and 496 gh/s.

[klondike_bar]

One more thing, people can use one RPI run ONE RK/R3-BOX, hashrate will go up,and its worthy for RPI cost.

hold on - am i getting 12% rejects because one RPi cannot adequately operate 2 rk-boxes?

[TrekRider]

One more thing, people can use one RPI run ONE RK/R3-BOX, hashrate will go up,and its worthy for RPI cost.

hold on - am i getting 12% rejects because one RPi cannot adequately operate 2 rk-boxes?

That is NOT the case.  I have 1 RPi per box and still get over 10% rejects...

Also, these things are FREAKING LOUD!

[Phosphorous]

Got my RK-Box today. First impressions: It is heavy and it is loud. The setup is clumsy with the wires, impossible to do neatly without special cabling.

I was running a single R-Box with BFGMiner 4.3.0 and when I plugged inthe RK-Box it added them right in and started churning. Kind of disappointing, each blade only does about 80Gh with the following command line:

bfgminer.exe -S rockminer:all --set rockminer:clock=290 -o <pool> -u <user> -p <pw>

Should I do anything different for the RK-Box?

I'm going to try CGMiner now...

[Phosphorous]

Results better with CGMiner:

cgminer version 4.3.3 - Started: [2014-07-08 20:18:49]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5s):420.6G (1m):431.9G (5m):281.0G (15m):127.3G (avg):436.0Gh/s
A:48639  R:0  HW:183  WU:6129.6/m  Freq:290MHz
Connected to stratum.bitsolo.net diff 4.1K with stratum as user 18ujkgMxgHfcu
Block: 37caa434...  Diff:16.8G  Started: [20:18:49]  Best share: 5.12M
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[]SB management []ool management []ettings []isplay options []uit
0: RMU 0       :                   | 108.3G / 107.6Gh/s WU:1522.9/m| T:44C
1: RMU 1       :                   | 99.98G / 107.3Gh/s WU:1513.6/m| T:44C
2: RMU 2       :                   | 112.6G / 107.7Gh/s WU:1505.1/m| T:42C
3: RMU 3       :                   | 80.42G / 78.76Gh/s WU:1100.3/m| T:42C
4: RMU 4       :                   | 38.30G / 35.51Gh/s WU: 496.3/m| T:40C  (R-Box)

Looks like RMU3 is a bum-blade, really disappointing.

This is running with the only command line option --rmu-freq 290. When I set it to 300, CGMiner says the frequency is 270.

With Antec Bronze power supply, this is pulling 445W at the wall.

[philipma1957]

what power supply?

how did you feed power to the gear?


maybe the 1 blade is under powered?

[Phosphorous]

what power supply?

how did you feed power to the gear?


maybe the 1 blade is under powered?

I don't think so. It's an 850W supply, previously used to power 2 Overclocked Ant S1s. After running longer the one blade has improved a bit:

0: RMU 0       :                   | 90.71G / 104.6Gh/s WU:1483.1/m| T:46C
1: RMU 1       :                   | 108.2G / 105.9Gh/s WU:1493.7/m| T:45C
2: RMU 2       :                   | 98.12G / 105.8Gh/s WU:1477.9/m| T:44C
3: RMU 3       :                   | 106.1G / 94.61Gh/s WU:1334.0/m| T:46C
4: RMU 4       :                   | 39.10G / 35.22Gh/s WU: 492.1/m| T:42C

[la7eralus]

While I was able to find a cgminer binary compatible with MinePeon for the Raspberry Pi with the R-Box, using this same binary throttles down each of the RK-BOX's blades to the speed of an individual R-BOX.  Does anyone have a working cgminer binary compiled and working/tested with minepeon?  This would be amazing!

Also, is there any word on compatibility of the RK-BOX with P2Pool?  Pointing the miner at a node chains errors of multiple duplicate share submissions until the miner/Pi crashes and restarts, to trigger the same event shortly thereafter.  This is is able to be reproduced with both the R-BOX and RK-BOX on both the official Raspberry Pi image, modified cgminer binary, and cgminer for windows.  

Also, out of curiosity, has anyone dabbled with overclocking the RK-BOX?  Is it even possible?  What are the gains in GH/s compared to the increases in wattage?

Thanks in advance, and while hopefully someone can shed some light on the p2pool issue the more pressing one is the functional cgminer binary for MinePeon.

[Anddos]

How much does the rocket miner rocket box cost in USD, i did not understand 990 mBTC on the website