Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial

[quakefiend420]

Anyone have issues with hashing boards randomly disappearing and reappearing?  Tried replacing the USB hub and cables with no change.

[LARTAS]

Anyone have issues with hashing boards randomly disappearing and reappearing?  Tried replacing the USB hub and cables with no change.

Sometimes, changing pool automatically or pools which don't give enough work for miners.

[carman336]

@FuryFever

If you have a board not powering on please read back a page to my post about shorted boards. If it's not coming on your probably have a short that you will need to 'blow out' before you can start the rest of the board. It's strange though that you have 2 green lights on the power supply so that board may actually be cooked.

Arctic silver thermal compound sucks. The burn-in period is 200 hours so it's really not good for a 100% continuous utilization application. If you are going to use an ordinary non-conductive thermal compound I recommend Noctua nt-h1. Also use TONS of it when applying. You want to fill all the air pockets in the spacer ring and lastly wiggle the water block down to make sure you get any bubbles out. Each of those steps should yield about 10-15C decrease in temps which combined will leave you with a decent working miner.

If you have more questions let me know. I'll try to help.

Lastly antminer is the way to go. I got my terraminers running well and sold them to buy 2 antminer S4s.

[remnokc]

@ carman336-
       (as well as anyone else on this board w/ Liquid Pro Ultra expertise):
Can I 'carefully' try "pasting everything inside of the spacer ring" using the Liquid Pro Ultra? Or would this be dangerous b/c of the L.P.U's electrical conductivity?

[FuryFever]

What about this stuff?

http://www.amazon.com/Coollaboratory-Liquid-MetalPad-1x-CPU/dp/B001CXO4TC/

Has anyone tried using this instead of the Liquid Pro or Liquid Ultra?  It seems like it might be a bit easier to use than the Liquid Pro and be less susceptible to accidentally shorting out your board during the application process.  However, the one downside appears to be that the Liquid MetalPad has to "burn in" before it will be effective.  I think the CoinTerra chips will get hot enough to achieve this burn in temperature, but does that mean you have to operate the miner at reduced power stepping levels until this is burned in and then it will work fine and you can step it back up to 9?

Otherwise, I guess I am back to trying out the Liquid Pro on my chips to achieve maximum cooling efficiency.  Also, how far will one syringe last?  Can I do an entire CoinTerra machine with one syringe or will I need more than that?  2?  4?  (One per group of 4 individual chips?)

I also found this that seems good, although still not as good as the Liquid Pro:

http://www.amazon.com/Gelid-Solutions-GC-Extreme-Compound-TC-GC-03-A/dp/B002P5W4RU/

It at least has a higher Thermal Conductivity than the Arctic Silver 5 it seems.  (The Arctic Silver 5 is around 6.5 - 7.5 W/mK [depending on the site, it seems...  Also, according to a study by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they say that it is only 0.94 W/mK!] and the Gelid compound is 8.5 W/mK.)

[remnokc]

What about this stuff?

http://www.amazon.com/Coollaboratory-Liquid-MetalPad-1x-CPU/dp/B001CXO4TC/

Has anyone tried using this instead of the Liquid Pro or Liquid Ultra?  It seems like it might be a bit easier to use than the Liquid Pro and be less susceptible to accidentally shorting out your board during the application process.  However, the one downside appears to be that the Liquid MetalPad has to "burn in" before it will be effective.  I think the CoinTerra chips will get hot enough to achieve this burn in temperature, but does that mean you have to operate the miner at reduced power stepping levels until this is burned in and then it will work fine and you can step it back up to 9?

Otherwise, I guess I am back to trying out the Liquid Pro on my chips to achieve maximum cooling efficiency.  Also, how far will one syringe last?  Can I do an entire CoinTerra machine with one syringe or will I need more than that?  2?  4?  (One per group of 4 individual chips?)

I also found this that seems good, although still not as good as the Liquid Pro:

http://www.amazon.com/Gelid-Solutions-GC-Extreme-Compound-TC-GC-03-A/dp/B002P5W4RU/

It at least has a higher Thermal Conductivity than the Arctic Silver 5 it seems.  (The Arctic Silver 5 is around 6.5 - 7.5 W/mK [depending on the site, it seems...  Also, according to a study by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they say that it is only 0.94 W/mK!] and the Gelid compound is 8.5 W/mK.)

earlier in this thread some talked about using the pads and I believe the consensus was that it was not as effective as using the syringe.
As far as how many syringes per machine, I have not tried it out yet and am waiting for more input from this thread. Should I forge ahead I will also post my experiences here.

[FuryFever]

Hmmm...  So, basically:

"It's Liquid Pro...  Or NOTHIN'!"

http://www.amazon.com/Coollaboratory-Liquid-Thermal-Interface-Material/dp/B001PE5XAC/

Of course, like others on here have already expressed, I am a bit wary of it just because it is liquid metal and it is conductive, so it has the potential to short out your entire board if you get a tiny drop in the wrong spot.  So, I'm assuming if you use the Liquid Pro, it ONLY goes directly on the top of the chip and you don't "fill in" the areas around it like it was suggested that you should do with the paste.  Of course, what if you used a mixture of the two (or is that just overkill)?  You could use the Liquid Pro stuff directly on the chip itself, then fill in around the chip with something like the Gelid paste for maximum heat transfer to the cooling block.  Sure, it will cost more $$$ in thermal compound (probably close to $50-$60 when it is all said and done), but if it works and gets your machines hashing at peak performance and you don't have to keep screwing around with them or restarting them constantly, I'd say it is definitely worth it. 

Even my "good TerraMiner" now is having heat issues and it has been throttling back CTA1 on me, so now my hashing power is only around 1,500-1,545 GH/s on that machine.  I have tried restarting it a half dozen times over the past 2 days to see if I could get it to restore its former 1,620+ GH/s hash rate with no success as of yet.  I have even unplugged it and shut it down for a couple of hours, then plugged it back in and restarted it to see if it would work better once it had cooled down a bit and I was still only getting 1,300-1,400 GH/s for the first few hours, then it VERY slowly creeped back up to 1,545 GH/s overnight.  CTA0 is fine, I'm getting the full 812 GH/s out of that board, but for some reason CTA1 won't go over 733 GH/s no matter what it seems.  The worst part is, the temperatures for that board aren't even all that bad that the machine should be throttling it back that badly.  My average temperatures for the cores on CTA1 are 94-96 degrees Celsius, with highs in the 102-110 degree range.  Not exactly COOL, but not all that out of the ordinary either.  The odd part though is the huge temperature difference between CTA0 and CTA1.  The cores on CTA0 are only running at 63-69 degrees Celsius with highs in the 75-82 degrees.  The weirdest part though is that the hash rate reported by my mining pool for the "good TerraMiner" is 1.62 TH/s, even though the TerraMiner itself is reporting that it is only mining at 1.54 TH/s.  That seems odd to me.  Which should I be more inclined to believe - the miner itself or the mining pool statistics?

[Cefalu]

I have been running 2 TerraMiner IV's for a year now, Feb batch which showed up March 13th.
One of them always ran great until about last month, pretty sure its a pump, some smacking brought it back to life but it looks to have gotten worse.
The other one had 2 great boards for the first month, then one of them always gave problems.
Tonight that problematic one has croaked, only half the larsen scanner lights up, but its probly a pump issue as well.
Had to disconnect the bad board in order to get the good one up an running, also had to leave both supplies plugged in.
Out of my 8 cooling blocks I have replaced 2 of the shitloads of factory-applied thermal paste with a small amount of decent stuff.
They ran pretty much the same as before for me, possibly a little cooler.
Tomorrow I'll try carman336's theory of abundance and pump cleanout to see if I can get the dead one up again.

The only difference I may have from most here is that I run them both from a 240VAC Tripplite PDU and have had pretty great luck with flawless power so far.
I still get anywhere from around 0.02 - 0.05 BTC/24hours from them and, between power and internets, they cost about USD $320/month to run.
I look at it as a dollar-cost-averaging investment over time plus doing my part toward helping the network.

Great work carman336, hope those S4's are working out.

[Cefalu]

So my board closest to the power supplies was keeping my miner dead.

I unplugged the USB to it and the beaglebone and other board came up fine.
The bad board was lighting up the larsen LED's from 37-40, then it hit 41 and
they all went out. repeat.
Never did 42-44 light up.

So disconnected the front pump, reattached the USB and rebooted - everything
came up but the front set of chips.

I tore it down, opened the bad pump and it looked great inside, clear water with
a hint of anti-freeze, non-swollen silicon and no debris. I put it back together,
tapped it all around with a metal tool and have had no luck with it.
The other set of chips on the board and the other board are cranking along fine.

[carman336]

@Cefalu

There is a guy on ebay who has some spare parts for these at reasonable prices. His ebay user is express_computer. Last I heard he had a complete set of working radiators and pumps.

I would swap the pumps around on your units first to make sure the problem follows the pump otherwise you may have a board issue or controller problem. If it follows the pump though you can just swap the unit and you're back off to the races.

You can also use regular water cooling equipment. I believe I read the dimensions of the water block screws match that of an Intel LGA1156. Most store bought water cooling setups will have a bracket to match that. You will probably need to come up with your own replacement screws though as the length required may be different. I recommend spring loaded screws. That way you get nice even pressure and that takes most of the guess work out of it. Also if you have custom loop water cooling equipment laying around those water blocks generally fit without much fuss. I started setting mine up that way before I sold but it was going to be so expensive I gave it up.

Incidentally the machines I sold are running great for the guy. He's happy and I'm happy they're gone. I get a little OCD when I can't make things work right so they had to go.

[klondike_bar]

Im likely grabbing one of these locally, but might not be able to run it until BTC goes >$300USD.

can they be underclocked for better efficiency and lower noise? I havent been able to find much information about this, but it sounds like there is some sort of power stepping option that might help bring the unit close to 1TH/1kW?

[FuryFever]

Im likely grabbing one of these locally, but might not be able to run it until BTC goes >$300USD.

can they be underclocked for better efficiency and lower noise? I havent been able to find much information about this, but it sounds like there is some sort of power stepping option that might help bring the unit close to 1TH/1kW?

I'll have to see what my electric bill will be this month...  Not really looking forward to it running two of these CoinTerra machines, lol...  But the one miner that is being a huge pain and that I had one of the boards die in it I am currently running at Power Stepping 7 and, due in part to using crappy Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound on the chips, it is only running at around 230-270 GH/s on one board.  No clue what the power consumption at the wall is though.  Is there any way to measure it, really?  If it is still using anywhere close to 1,000 Watts though, then I'll be pissed that I'm only getting that little out of it for how many Watts of power it is consuming!  lol...  I can't run it over power stepping level 7 though or else it keeps stopping mining after a few hours due to overheating.  (It also ironically enough mines at a much lower GH/s rate than if I try to use a higher power stepping level, like 8 or 9.)

My other miner WAS running at a full 1.6 TH/s on power stepping 9 at I'm sure 2,200 Watts of power.  However, it has lately been only mustering around 1,250-1,300 GH/s at power stepping 9, but I have no clue if it is using less power when doing so or if it is still drinking down all 2,200 watts and only giving me about 75-80% of the rated output from the ASIC chips in it due to heat issues.  I tried throttling it back to power stepping level 8 to see if the chips would run cooler and MAYBE I would get better performance out of it, but decreasing it only one power stepping level dropped my mining power to around 950-1,100 GH/s, which seemed too low for my liking, so I cranked it back up to 9.  If I fix the overheating issues with both of my miners and get them running right, I wish I could crank the power stepping level up to 10 and try to get more out of this machine since CoinTerra originally boasted that it was supposed to produce 2 TH/s, not 1.6 TH/s.  If I can get the chips running a lot cooler though, is it possible to max out the machine any more or is it already as maxed out as it is going to get from the factory?

Also, klondike_bar, I have the original manual for these things as a PDF document before CoinTerra went bankrupt and their website went bye-bye.  I could E-mail it it you if you'd like.  Not sure how much help it will be, but it does have the specifications of it and it explains the settings in the Web UI and how to set it up.

(BTW - I'm also still waiting for my Liquid Pro to show up...  Probably Monday.  I was hoping UPS would have delivered it on Saturday, but unfortunately no such luck!  So much for 2 day shipping, Amazon!)

[Unacceptable]

Im likely grabbing one of these locally, but might not be able to run it until BTC goes >$300USD.

can they be underclocked for better efficiency and lower noise? I havent been able to find much information about this, but it sounds like there is some sort of power stepping option that might help bring the unit close to 1TH/1kW?

I'll have to see what my electric bill will be this month...  Not really looking forward to it running two of these CoinTerra machines, lol...  But the one miner that is being a huge pain and that I had one of the boards die in it I am currently running at Power Stepping 7 and, due in part to using crappy Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound on the chips, it is only running at around 230-270 GH/s on one board.  No clue what the power consumption at the wall is though.  Is there any way to measure it, really?  If it is still using anywhere close to 1,000 Watts though, then I'll be pissed that I'm only getting that little out of it for how many Watts of power it is consuming!  lol...  I can't run it over power stepping level 7 though or else it keeps stopping mining after a few hours due to overheating.  (It also ironically enough mines at a much lower GH/s rate than if I try to use a higher power stepping level, like 8 or 9.)

My other miner WAS running at a full 1.6 TH/s on power stepping 9 at I'm sure 2,200 Watts of power.  However, it has lately been only mustering around 1,250-1,300 GH/s at power stepping 9, but I have no clue if it is using less power when doing so or if it is still drinking down all 2,200 watts and only giving me about 75-80% of the rated output from the ASIC chips in it due to heat issues.  I tried throttling it back to power stepping level 8 to see if the chips would run cooler and MAYBE I would get better performance out of it, but decreasing it only one power stepping level dropped my mining power to around 950-1,100 GH/s, which seemed too low for my liking, so I cranked it back up to 9.  If I fix the overheating issues with both of my miners and get them running right, I wish I could crank the power stepping level up to 10 and try to get more out of this machine since CoinTerra originally boasted that it was supposed to produce 2 TH/s, not 1.6 TH/s.  If I can get the chips running a lot cooler though, is it possible to max out the machine any more or is it already as maxed out as it is going to get from the factory?

Also, klondike_bar, I have the original manual for these things as a PDF document before CoinTerra went bankrupt and their website went bye-bye.  I could E-mail it it you if you'd like.  Not sure how much help it will be, but it does have the specifications of it and it explains the settings in the Web UI and how to set it up.

(BTW - I'm also still waiting for my Liquid Pro to show up...  Probably Monday.  I was hoping UPS would have delivered it on Saturday, but unfortunately no such luck!  So much for 2 day shipping, Amazon!)

Get one of these 

http://www.homedepot.com/p/P3-International-Kill-A-Watt-EZ-Meter-P4460/202196388

Harbor Freight has them for about $15 

[Cefalu]

@Cefalu

There is a guy on ebay who has some spare parts for these at reasonable prices. His ebay user is express_computer. Last I heard he had a complete set of working radiators and pumps.

I would swap the pumps around on your units first to make sure the problem follows the pump otherwise you may have a board issue or controller problem. If it follows the pump though you can just swap the unit and you're back off to the races.

You can also use regular water cooling equipment. I believe I read the dimensions of the water block screws match that of an Intel LGA1156. Most store bought water cooling setups will have a bracket to match that. You will probably need to come up with your own replacement screws though as the length required may be different. I recommend spring loaded screws. That way you get nice even pressure and that takes most of the guess work out of it. Also if you have custom loop water cooling equipment laying around those water blocks generally fit without much fuss. I started setting mine up that way before I sold but it was going to be so expensive I gave it up.

Incidentally the machines I sold are running great for the guy. He's happy and I'm happy they're gone. I get a little OCD when I can't make things work right so they had to go.

Thanks carman336 -
I bid on Ebay for a partially working system, 50%.
I'm going to swap the cooling for the bad board.
If that doesn't work I'll pull the bad board and replace with the working one from the ebay machine.
I keep them at an industrial site so I must make a trip to mess w/ them.

FuryFever - I measured mine when I was running them at home @ 240vAV.
I bailed on that as soon as I set up the industrual site, so LOUD and paying for 240vAC at residential rates is still tough.
with an inductive ammeter - seems like it was around 1850 Watts @ 1.622TH/s.
I probly wrote it down and will look through my notes.
If you are running at 120vAC you can use a Kill-a-Watt but for higher voltages you will have to use an ammeter on one
lead or get a power strip with monitoring built in. Like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/APC-AP7841-METERED-RACK-PDU-24-OUTLET-20-C13-4-C19-Power-distribution-strip-/380867202390?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item58ad744d56

[FuryFever]

Get one of these  

http://www.homedepot.com/p/P3-International-Kill-A-Watt-EZ-Meter-P4460/202196388

Harbor Freight has them for about $15  

Yeah, but those things are pretty expensive just to monitor your electricity usage.  Plus, they take up a whole outlet, so that's not good.  I'd have to use like a 3 foot extension cord on each outlet on my receptacle box to plug one of these into and then plug my miner into the meter.  They DO have a 10 outlet power strip that will monitor your power usage of everything plugged into it cumulatively, but that's like $80 and I'm not sure if it is rated at enough amperage draw to even plug ONE TerraMiner into it and leave the other 8 plugs unused.  That seems like kind of a waste...  If they had like a 2 or 4 outlet mini-strip that would monitor whatever was plugged into it, that might be a viable option though.

Maybe Newegg or Amazon has something like this cheaper.  (Or, like you said, Harbor Freight - although I wouldn't really trust anything from Harbor Freight for heavy-duty use like this...  Just plugging one TerraMiner into it might make it melt down! lol...)

[FuryFever]

YAAAY!!!  I finally got my Liquid Pro today!

Now I'll have to find the time to re-do the entire cooling system in my TerraMiners sometime this week.  It may not be until the weekend though, depending on how busy I am with work.  I'll try to update (with photos, if possible...) once I find the time to crack open one of the cases...  Fingers and toes crossed that this actually helps me get improved performance out of these things!

[Cefalu]

So I checked out the ebay unit I got - one board was completely dead, no lights whatsoever. The PS showed the orange right-side light. Voltage 0 across the leads from it. The other one was working.
I pulled the cooling and put it on my 50% dead board, no go, still dead.
So I guess some of my chips are fried? I need to re-read what carman says above.

Anyway, I replaced my board with the good ebay board and the cooling system which came with it, all is well.

One odd thing - when I initially tried the ebay machine and noted the dead board,
I measure voltage across the dead unit and the working unit - as mentioned, the
dead was 0 but the working one was at 18+vDC ?!

I should have measured again after I got it all back together, but it took a long
time and I forgot. Will check it next time.

Also, I took your advice carman, I slathered the things in thermal paste, I forget what,
some decent stuff. They are running well, quite cool.

[carman336]

So I checked out the ebay unit I got - one board was completely dead, no lights whatsoever. The PS showed the orange right-side light. Voltage 0 across the leads from it. The other one was working.
I pulled the cooling and put it on my 50% dead board, no go, still dead.
So I guess some of my chips are fried? I need to re-read what carman says above.

Anyway, I replaced my board with the good ebay board and the cooling system which came with it, all is well.

One odd thing - when I initially tried the ebay machine and noted the dead board,
I measure voltage across the dead unit and the working unit - as mentioned, the
dead was 0 but the working one was at 18+vDC ?!

I should have measured again after I got it all back together, but it took a long
time and I forgot. Will check it next time.

Also, I took your advice carman, I slathered the things in thermal paste, I forget what,
some decent stuff. They are running well, quite cool.

Glad the new thermal compound worked out for you. As for your totally dead board, power it up on a car battery using my instructions a couple pages back. One big spark, one pop and a few seconds later and you will see the board light up save for one dead core. If you want you can then replace the bad mosfet otherwise just run it on 7 cores. You won't get the orange light anymore after you short it. Just make sure you get the polarity correct.

[Unacceptable]

Get one of these  

http://www.homedepot.com/p/P3-International-Kill-A-Watt-EZ-Meter-P4460/202196388

Harbor Freight has them for about $15  

Yeah, but those things are pretty expensive just to monitor your electricity usage.  Plus, they take up a whole outlet, so that's not good.  I'd have to use like a 3 foot extension cord on each outlet on my receptacle box to plug one of these into and then plug my miner into the meter.  They DO have a 10 outlet power strip that will monitor your power usage of everything plugged into it cumulatively, but that's like $80 and I'm not sure if it is rated at enough amperage draw to even plug ONE TerraMiner into it and leave the other 8 plugs unused.  That seems like kind of a waste...  If they had like a 2 or 4 outlet mini-strip that would monitor whatever was plugged into it, that might be a viable option though.

Maybe Newegg or Amazon has something like this cheaper.  (Or, like you said, Harbor Freight - although I wouldn't really trust anything from Harbor Freight for heavy-duty use like this...  Just plugging one TerraMiner into it might make it melt down! lol...)

Well,killawatt meters aren't meant to use full time,IMO     I plug em in just for awhile to insure voltage & amps are what I think they should be 

I bought mine from HB & it's exactly like any others,just as good,but a few bucks cheaper 

[Cefalu]

So I checked out the ebay unit I got - one board was completely dead, no lights whatsoever. The PS showed the orange right-side light. Voltage 0 across the leads from it. The other one was working.
I pulled the cooling and put it on my 50% dead board, no go, still dead.
So I guess some of my chips are fried? I need to re-read what carman says above.

Anyway, I replaced my board with the good ebay board and the cooling system which came with it, all is well.

One odd thing - when I initially tried the ebay machine and noted the dead board,
I measure voltage across the dead unit and the working unit - as mentioned, the
dead was 0 but the working one was at 18+vDC ?!

I should have measured again after I got it all back together, but it took a long
time and I forgot. Will check it next time.

Also, I took your advice carman, I slathered the things in thermal paste, I forget what,
some decent stuff. They are running well, quite cool.

Glad the new thermal compound worked out for you. As for your totally dead board, power it up on a car battery using my instructions a couple pages back. One big spark, one pop and a few seconds later and you will see the board light up save for one dead core. If you want you can then replace the bad mosfet otherwise just run it on 7 cores. You won't get the orange light anymore after you short it. Just make sure you get the polarity correct.

ya, I'm looking forward to trying this