ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[mrpark]

my 2 batch2 units have been up an mining b/t 390-420gh/s for a little over a week - no issues.

today - they both stopped (about 2 hours ago)  - both 'miner status' pages show 'no data yet' -  

pool info is correctly set -  

I've soft rebooted.
I've powered off and re-powered.
I've even updated the firmware on one of the two

all to no avail.

looking at the logs - nothing jumps out -

any troubleshooting advice?

Please Help!!

do you have your backup DNS info?
I use :
4.2.2.2
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

Funny thing I have set up, I have the same pool set in all 3 fail overs, they actually fail over to the other pool and start mining. I think if you don't have all 3 filled in, you are making a mistake, even if its the same pool and username. My 2 cents.

P.S. don't use any crazy DNS, like Comcast, Open DNS or any of that other junk. Only use google or 4.2.2.2. SOme like open DNS will block traffic, and even certificates.

What is your DNS? What are you using? Please don't say 75.75.75.75 because others have had mining issues with that ( I think its Comcast)

[1714633481]

1714633481

[lubah]

my 2 batch2 units have been up an mining b/t 390-420gh/s for a little over a week - no issues.

today - they both stopped (about 2 hours ago)  - both 'miner status' pages show 'no data yet' -  

pool info is correctly set -  

I've soft rebooted.
I've powered off and re-powered.
I've even updated the firmware on one of the two

all to no avail.

looking at the logs - nothing jumps out -

any troubleshooting advice?

Please Help!!

This happened to me, my gateway was wrong. Check all your TCP/IP settings and reboot. Possible change your DNS to 8.8.8.8  Make sure to reboot after any changes. Maybe change the 2nd miner DNS to 4.2.2.2 . Do a hard reboot also.

Phewww!!!  it was DNS..   I had them pointing to my local internal DNS server VM  which was hung -- I added 8.8.8.8 and viola -- back in business.

thanks for helping through the panic!

[Biodom]

Question to someone adept in thermal paste application:

1. If you take the heat sink off and see that paste is applied OK by Bitmain, can you just slowly plop the heat sink back, or you HAVE to clean up and reapply new paste?
2. How much of AS5 to apply? I tried to do it on the first machine (too early to know the results) and you can actually spread it very thin with a rasor blade or exacto knife.
3. When it stabilizes after the application as far as thermal transmission is concerned? AS5 manual talks about something happening in ~25hr and something else in ~200hr.

[oskuro]

My batch 4 order still unshipped, lets hope tomorrow.... 

2014-07-24 17:49:37.0

[klondike_bar]

Question to someone adept in thermal paste application:

1. If you take the heat sink off and see that paste is applied OK by Bitmain, can you just slowly plop the heat sink back, or you HAVE to clean up and reapply new paste?
2. How much of AS5 to apply? I tried to do it on the first machine (too early to know the results) and you can actually spread it very thin with a rasor blade or exacto knife.
3. When it stabilizes after the application as far as thermal transmission is concerned? AS5 manual talks about something happening in ~25hr and something else in ~200hr.

1) yes and no. if you dont adjust and reapply some paste it would likely be worse than it started out. might still function fine but after all the work of remounting it you would have poorer contact than you started with
2) small amount. maybe the size of a plastic BB. dont put much effort spreading it since the pressure of the heatsink should do that for you
3) give it at least 12hrs to cure a little before running the antminer, it may take longer to reach 100% cured but will work anyways

[allcoinminer]

Question to someone adept in thermal paste application:

1. If you take the heat sink off and see that paste is applied OK by Bitmain, can you just slowly plop the heat sink back, or you HAVE to clean up and reapply new paste?
2. How much of AS5 to apply? I tried to do it on the first machine (too early to know the results) and you can actually spread it very thin with a rasor blade or exacto knife.
3. When it stabilizes after the application as far as thermal transmission is concerned? AS5 manual talks about something happening in ~25hr and something else in ~200hr.

Air bubble can enter in between. So never ever try that. Clean it and apply a "proper" thermal grease.
Just put a medium pea size on all the ASICs and place the heatsink, screw it up.
Spreading if not done properly will invite bubble in between the heatsink and thermal paste layer and hinter effective heat transmission.
Also, never use a thermal pad in S3 since the heatsink is a lengthy one touching ASICs here and there, possibility of a bad contact is higher.
Stabilisation depends on the quality, type and brand of the thermal grease.
Bitmaintech's engineer advised me to use "Dow Coining Thermal Paste Grease" or one which have conductivity above 3.

[TR8888]

Of my 4 Batch 3's, 2 will run at 250mhz (504 ghs) , The other 2 will run stable at 237.5 (483 ghs)

Overall I'm very happy

[allcoinminer]

Of my 4 Batch 3's, 2 will run at 250mhz (504 ghs) , The other 2 will run stable at 237.5 (483 ghs)

Overall I'm very happy

Have you done the firmware update?
Whether you re-applied thermal paste?
How long it passed with the said hash rate?

[Lowell904]

I put a ticket with bitmaintech support and I wish to share it with you all.
My S3 was hashing low at 400 - 420. Long term average was 421.
Bitmaintech engineer told me to remove the heat sink, clean it with a cloth and apply thermal new paste.
They recommended to buy "Dow Coining thermal paste grease" for this purpose.
Which can be sourced from ebay or amazon.
If its not available at your location buy any good thermal grease which has conductivity above 3.
Also I asked then about warranty issues if that type of a hack ws done, and they assured me that no warranty will be void for doing it.

What is the temperature of your miner?
Also do you have the links to the thermal paste ?

Yes "warranty' have not much value in the mining hardware.
41 - 42 was my temperature peaks at stock clocks.
I don't have any link to the thermal grease for now.
I'm searching for it to buy the same brand or the alternative one having >3 conductivity.
But most of the products I'm seeing is of conductivity 1.
I will post here the link if I find it or some else who has experience in doing this will support here.

Have you tried just using 2 cables? I don't see the need for 4 when the S1 only had 2 and people were over-clocking them on top of it.

More to come about only using 2 cables...

[TR8888]

Of my 4 Batch 3's, 2 will run at 250mhz (504 ghs) , The other 2 will run stable at 237.5 (483 ghs)

Overall I'm very happy

Have you done the firmware update? No
Whether you re-applied thermal paste? No
How long it passed with the said hash rate? 7 hours

[aztecminer]

Question to someone adept in thermal paste application:

1. If you take the heat sink off and see that paste is applied OK by Bitmain, can you just slowly plop the heat sink back, or you HAVE to clean up and reapply new paste?
2. How much of AS5 to apply? I tried to do it on the first machine (too early to know the results) and you can actually spread it very thin with a rasor blade or exacto knife.
3. When it stabilizes after the application as far as thermal transmission is concerned? AS5 manual talks about something happening in ~25hr and something else in ~200hr.

1) yes and no. if you dont adjust and reapply some paste it would likely be worse than it started out. might still function fine but after all the work of remounting it you would have poorer contact than you started with
2) small amount. maybe the size of a plastic BB. dont put much effort spreading it since the pressure of the heatsink should do that for you
3) give it at least 12hrs to cure a little before running the antminer, it may take longer to reach 100% cured but will work anyways

no need to wait to try to cure the thermal paste since thermal paste does not dry or seal . you can powerup as soon as it is applied.

[visdude]

I put a ticket with bitmaintech support and I wish to share it with you all.
My S3 was hashing low at 400 - 420. Long term average was 421.
Bitmaintech engineer told me to remove the heat sink, clean it with a cloth and apply thermal new paste.
They recommended to buy "Dow Coining thermal paste grease" for this purpose.
Which can be sourced from ebay or amazon.
If its not available at your location buy any good thermal grease which has conductivity above 3.
Also I asked then about warranty issues if that type of a hack ws done, and they assured me that no warranty will be void for doing it.

What is the temperature of your miner?
Also do you have the links to the thermal paste ?

Yes "warranty' have not much value in the mining hardware.
41 - 42 was my temperature peaks at stock clocks.
I don't have any link to the thermal grease for now.
I'm searching for it to buy the same brand or the alternative one having >3 conductivity.
But most of the products I'm seeing is of conductivity 1.
I will post here the link if I find it or some else who has experience in doing this will support here.

If I have to resort to reseating the S3's heat sink, I'd probably use Arctic Silver 5 since I already have a couple of tubes of it to avoid additional expense.  I figured that if it's good enough for a CPU, it should be good enough for the BM1382.  Hopefully, it would work out.

[contactlight]

Is anyone mining on P2Pool with their Antminer? I was getting great results but now I can barely make earn any shares. Is the firmware still incompatible?

[Lowell904]

So I got brave today. I have 2 S3s on 2 corsair 500W PSUs. I also have a S1 on a 600W modular corsair.

I clocked both S3s to 250mhz and left for 5 hours. Keep in mind I was only using 1 cable per blade or 2 cables per S3.

I got interesting results. One of them liked it and hashed around 500GH/s. The other dropped to around 360GH/s.

So I decided to keep the good one at 250mhz and brought the other one back to stock 218.75mhz.

I checked the watts at the wall on the OC unit and it pulls 453 watts while stock they pull 378 watts.

I'm at 250mzh with only 2 cables, which should be fine since the S1 pulls 410 watts stock with 2 cables and I had it pulling as much as 520 watts OCed and over-volted.

I thought it would be a good idea to put the OCed S3 on the 600 watt PSU, but when I did the cables got very warm, while when the unit was on the 500 watt PSU the cables were barely warm. All of the PSUs are bronze but, the CX has better cables then the CM I guess. I'm putting it back on the 500 watt. Hopefully 90% of the power rating will be okay.

I still have some other frequencies I can try with the other unit. I'll report back if I get anything above 440GH/s.

[visdude]

Quick question relating to PSU...

Will I be able to get all 4 plugged in to OC the S3 using this? (I am nooby at this stuff, thx for help)


Corsair CX Series 600 Watt ATX/EPS Modular 80 PLUS Bronze ATX12V/EPS12V 552 Power Supply CX600M

Any help would be great. I ordered those. Just want to make sure it will work with OverClocking while I have a chance to change order.

The CX600M only has two PCIe power connectors.

[Biodom]

Question to someone adept in thermal paste application:

1. If you take the heat sink off and see that paste is applied OK by Bitmain, can you just slowly plop the heat sink back, or you HAVE to clean up and reapply new paste?
2. How much of AS5 to apply? I tried to do it on the first machine (too early to know the results) and you can actually spread it very thin with a rasor blade or exacto knife.
3. When it stabilizes after the application as far as thermal transmission is concerned? AS5 manual talks about something happening in ~25hr and something else in ~200hr.

1) yes and no. if you dont adjust and reapply some paste it would likely be worse than it started out. might still function fine but after all the work of remounting it you would have poorer contact than you started with
2) small amount. maybe the size of a plastic BB. dont put much effort spreading it since the pressure of the heatsink should do that for you
3) give it at least 12hrs to cure a little before running the antminer, it may take longer to reach 100% cured but will work anyways

no need to wait to try to cure the thermal paste since thermal paste does not dry or seal . you can powerup as soon as it is applied.

Thanks to everyone who responded. BTW, Arctic Silver 5 has thermal conductivity of ~8.5W/m-K

@aztecminer
Yes, Arctic Silver 5 manual says that you can start using immediately, but it will decrease the temperatures slowly (break-in over 200hr)
I am running 2.5 hours so far after AS5 application and temperature dropped from the initial 43 to 40-41C already.
I will wait to report the speed comparison until 12-14 h mark if not later.

@allcoinminer
Got it re plopping the heat sink back without cleaning and reapplication. However, I did spread it evenly over the surface, but took care not to have any on pins/connectors (because it is slightly capacitive according to manual).
I will post pictures later to explain why I decided to spread it (hint-what you described did not work for Bitmain).

@klondike_bar
thanks for the info regarding possible air bubble if no re-application of paste.
decided not to let it cure-too impatient, but started with lower mhz.

If you don't have AS5, and can't wait for amazon, grab it (3.5g) at Microcenter-they usually have loads. I ordered some online, but could not wait  

[gingpark]

Received B3 hashing away normally, but never received B2   , emailed bitmain but only thing so far is saying their complaining to UPS ... but still nothing, losing so much  


WHY ME!
 
EDIT: - Tracking - I guess ... but as knowing UPS before someone can redirect the destination it has to attempt delivery to the first address or the sender has to make the change. So at that point assuming unless Bitmain does it, nothing would happen plus thinking it is still would be a miracle for it to even go outside of China at this point ~_~. But I guess from now on I will just post it as a image.

[dulac97]

Received B3 hashing away normally, but never received B2    , emailed bitmain but only thing so far is saying their complaining to UPS ... but still nothing, losing so much 

- Tracking # : 1ZR78990D957302078

WHY ME!
 

That is the worst UPS tracking history I have ever seen.  So sorry!

[sjc1490]

Received B3 hashing away normally, but never received B2    , emailed bitmain but only thing so far is saying their complaining to UPS ... but still nothing, losing so much 

- Tracking # : 1ZR78990D957302078

WHY ME!
 

I would caution you about posting your tracking number as earlier it was discussed that in the past shipments had been redirected for delivery.

[xjack]

Received B3 hashing away normally, but never received B2    , emailed bitmain but only thing so far is saying their complaining to UPS ... but still nothing, losing so much 

- Tracking # : snip

WHY ME!
 

I would caution you about posting your tracking number as earlier it was discussed that in the past shipments had been redirected for delivery.

Says the guy who quoted the original post verbatim.