ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[fullzero]

Bitmain when do sales open for S3+ Batch 9?

[1715065569]

1715065569

[1715065569]

1715065569

[1715065569]

1715065569

[pekatete]

Bitmain when do sales open for S3+ Batch 9?

This is just a guess, but I think B9 will open for orders when all B8 orders up to the first shipment (closing) date of B8 (and possibly the S1 upgrade kit) have been shipped.

[soy]

Yet there would be signs the tape had been removed and replaced.  There was quite a bit of additional USPS Priority Mail tape but there was no signs of repackaging that jumped out at me.  What I find curious is the Bitmain box dimensions difference.  Was about to measure the boxes and looked at the second first, this time more closely, and the bottom had been opened and resealed.  

#1 room temp 79°, 442.64GH/s(avg) HW 151, 15hrs 49min
#2 room temp 83°, 428.83GH/s(avg) HW 39, 245 (it just made a liar of me), 15hrs 53 min.

not saying it happened, but you would be amazed how easily tape comes off on something that sits in a freezer, then reattaches when warmed.
but either way bitmain mines these before selling them.  I think they actually mine the whole stock load as they are building out the next batch. like build batch 7 mine them all and not sell them till batch 8 is ready, mine batch 8's till batch 9 is ready to replace them.

As in an earlier post, I thought the unit probably came up slow in testing and was sent to troubleshooting where new paste was applied and the screws tightened grossly tight on the bad hashing board thus bringing it up to "passing".  That would have been at the factory.  In industry we don't trash a new unit just because it isn't up to snuff.  As a matter of fact that troubleshooting of new failed units was one of my responsibilities at the last place I worked.  Of the two boards on that unit, the good hashing board had thermal paste that was less new, more dried, than on the questionable board.  That it may have been previously sold by the reseller and returned then shipped again is a possibility given what I see now as the condition of the plastic tape.  When my two S3+'s arrive I'll know if the box comes with clear tape or just stapled.  The USPO sometimes puts clear tape if a box isn't sealed with tape.  This has priority mail tape but the plastic tape under it had been opened and not by me.

A manufacturing facility needs to run new units as there's what's called an infant mortality rate.  Odd term to use in electronics but it's true.  Testing doesn't always run long enough to test but the failure rate drops sharply.

I just finished ripping #2 apart again and have just fired it up.  Both are now running in the cooler room side by side same height from the floor, same distance from the wall, both being hit by air from a 20" fan.  I've /etc/init.d/cgminer restart on both units.

The reason I ripped #2 down again is that the grossly overtightened screws had 2 that had tops partly stripped.  I had put those on the lower corners when putting the heatsink back on and couldn't tighten very well.  I later noticed that the controller board used the same screws.  I just swapped those two lower corner screws for two from the controller board.  At the same time I swapped the two fans taking care to make sure the air flow direction is correct.

#1 50min14sec, 443.59GH/s, Hw 6
#2 49min52sec 439.11GH/s, HW 0
------------
#1 2hr6min 445.00 GH/s (avg) HW 18
#2 2hr5min 439.97 GH/s (avg) HW 0

[IITravel01]

Ordered 8/18, shipped today UPS expected Monday delivery.

[bspurloc]

for upgrading to cgminer 4.6 is upgrading to the newest firmware a must??

I am seeing one hashing 8gh/s slower another the same and another 2gh/s slower.

I do 243.75 and all my miners sit at 495gh/s
now I am seeing 492 and 488. and yes the cpu load is much lower the os is responsive again!

You do NOT need to update the firmware before you run cgminer 4.6
How long have they been running for?  cgminer 4.6 seems to take a while to ramp-up to speed in my experience (may-be the maintainer can throw some more light on this), so if they have only been running for a few hours, let them be.

2 hours I had them going. one was sitting at 505 for an hour but fell back to 495 after the 2nd hour

I'd say let them be for at least 24hrs. Hash-rate variance would / can account for that, and it just may be that the block you (we) are currently hashing is harder (this is not factual by the way!). Hash rate variance smoothing is one of the benfits of 4.6, so it will ramp up over time, not the previous knee jerk type increases and decreases.
PS. have you looked at your pool-side hash-rates and are able to make comparisons with pre 4.6 hashrates?
EDIT: pool-side hash-rates AND earnings!

well after 7+ hours all are sitting below 490 so I reverted back to the old cgminer.
I'll try it again some other day... 7+ hours is long enough to get the average up. yeah yeah blocks etc 3 were found during.
if it aint even hitting 495 after 7+ hours there isnt much chance its going to hit 505. the odds are against it. now if they were still sitting at 495 that is a different thing.

[pekatete]

well after 7+ hours all are sitting below 490 so I reverted back to the old cgminer.
I'll try it again some other day... 7+ hours is long enough to get the average up. yeah yeah blocks etc 3 were found during.
if it aint even hitting 495 after 7+ hours there isnt much chance its going to hit 505. the odds are against it. now if they were still sitting at 495 that is a different thing.

Hey they are your miners and yes you are right, if after 7hrs they just seem to be dropping off, then it maybe that they will not pick up.
Just a by-the-way - I've been mining on slush and one of my S3's, after upgrading to 4.6 fell below what I achieved before on ghash with the stock cgminer, but only 2-5 GH/s. I let it run for the last couple of days, but in the last hour or so, my shares on all my rigs stopped registering on slush so I switched over to a P2Pool node, and guess what? The very same S3 that was under-performing is now over-performing by over 20GH/s.
Moral of the tale, so many permutations to be able to give a precise reason, but like I said, do not feel bound by anyone's advice, least of all mine, at the end of the day, you put the bucks down to get those rigs and pay bucks to run those rigs!

[faetos]

I've been running 4.6 cgminer on 2 batch 2s and the load is half of what it was previously and the speed has remained the same. I tried OC'ing them further, but they're stuck with the DC/DC lameness that crippled these before. One is at 218.75 - 441GH/s and the other is at 237.5 - 480GH/s.

Very happy with the binaries and sending tippage CK's way. I really would love to see if 4.6 would run on an S1. I've been mucking with source and maybe if I get some more time I'll get it to compile correctly.

[sueche]

Hey does anybody know if the latest firmware for S3+ fits for old batches ?

[Pt0x]

I've been running 4.6 cgminer on 2 batch 2s and the load is half of what it was previously and the speed has remained the same. I tried OC'ing them further, but they're stuck with the DC/DC lameness that crippled these before. One is at 218.75 - 441GH/s and the other is at 237.5 - 480GH/s.

Very happy with the binaries and sending tippage CK's way. I really would love to see if 4.6 would run on an S1. I've been mucking with source and maybe if I get some more time I'll get it to compile correctly.

If you want a quick upgrade, @Kano version is not 4.6 but 4.3.2 for the S1, I been using for quite some time now and it works fine.

https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries/tree/master/AntS1

[xstr8guy]

I feel faint burning smell near s3 fan.
is it normal?

Sometimes it can be on newer items but Bitmain doesnt exactly sell new items so you could have a fan going bad.

I don't know where this belief comes from. I've never received anything from Bitmain that looked like it had ever sat running for any length of time, barely a spec of dust on my seven different units. I'm not even convinced that they were tested before shipping. And all had that burning electronics smell when first fired up which I'm assuming is from thermal paste heating up and manufacturing chemicals and oils burning off.

[jimmyoh]

Hey does anybody know if the latest firmware for S3+ fits for old batches ?

Yes it should. I got it running on my batch 1 miner.

[navigator]

I feel faint burning smell near s3 fan.
is it normal?

Sometimes it can be on newer items but Bitmain doesnt exactly sell new items so you could have a fan going bad.

I don't know where this belief comes from. I've never received anything from Bitmain that looked like it had ever sat running for any length of time, barely a spec of dust on my seven different units. I'm not even convinced that they were tested before shipping. And all had that burning electronics smell when first fired up which I'm assuming is from thermal paste heating up and manufacturing chemicals and oils burning off.

I've had a few S1's come with dust on them and I think they mined with them for sometime before shipping. Some of my S1's came with new smell. And since then, my s2 and all s3's had the new smell.

[soy]

I feel faint burning smell near s3 fan.
is it normal?

Sometimes it can be on newer items but Bitmain doesnt exactly sell new items so you could have a fan going bad.

I don't know where this belief comes from. I've never received anything from Bitmain that looked like it had ever sat running for any length of time, barely a spec of dust on my seven different units. I'm not even convinced that they were tested before shipping. And all had that burning electronics smell when first fired up which I'm assuming is from thermal paste heating up and manufacturing chemicals and oils burning off.

I agree.  More likely guys with miner farms, get a dog of a unit, resell it quick, spread rumors under a different name that it was run at the factory for a long time.  

Still, they would have to be factory tested and a question might be how long they test the units for.

The one I got from Florida compared to the first one I got from the mid-west - both advertised new on Amazon.  The first was fine, the one from Florida not so much and that repackaged in a larger box.  Both S3's.  Perhaps he had a box from an S2 or earlier that was in best condition.  I'll have a better idea when my S3+'s arrive.   There are many creeps out there in the bitcoin world.

If the S3+'s come in the size box I got from the mid-west, I'll feel more sure giving a bad report to Amazon when they ask my opinion.

[faetos]

I've been running 4.6 cgminer on 2 batch 2s and the load is half of what it was previously and the speed has remained the same. I tried OC'ing them further, but they're stuck with the DC/DC lameness that crippled these before. One is at 218.75 - 441GH/s and the other is at 237.5 - 480GH/s.

Very happy with the binaries and sending tippage CK's way. I really would love to see if 4.6 would run on an S1. I've been mucking with source and maybe if I get some more time I'll get it to compile correctly.

If you want a quick upgrade, @Kano version is not 4.6 but 4.3.2 for the S1, I been using for quite some time now and it works fine.

https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries/tree/master/AntS1

Cool, I'll load that one on and see if it drops the load on those as well. Thank you!

[Pt0x]

I've been running 4.6 cgminer on 2 batch 2s and the load is half of what it was previously and the speed has remained the same. I tried OC'ing them further, but they're stuck with the DC/DC lameness that crippled these before. One is at 218.75 - 441GH/s and the other is at 237.5 - 480GH/s.

Very happy with the binaries and sending tippage CK's way. I really would love to see if 4.6 would run on an S1. I've been mucking with source and maybe if I get some more time I'll get it to compile correctly.

If you want a quick upgrade, @Kano version is not 4.6 but 4.3.2 for the S1, I been using for quite some time now and it works fine.

https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries/tree/master/AntS1

Cool, I'll load that one on and see if it drops the load on those as well. Thank you!

It does drop the load too!, you'r welcome.

[00pmac00]

Would anyone be able to explain something for me.

I upgraded to 4.6 today I believe, I am unsure how to check it worked, as in the units GUI it still shows 3.12 or something.
I also installed the M's Ant Monitor.
After both tasks were done, the R-Box on my laptop (where I installed everything from and to), and my Ant S3 both were hashing, but not for me. They showed 0 Gh on Slush for past 5 + hours, then I re-entered my pool settings and applied and they started hashing for me again. My Norton sees the M's Ant Miner as a virus.
But after all that, my speeds are OK average as usual, but last few blocks since they have been running again, my earnings per block have dropped substantially from about 0.002 to about 0.0015 that's a 25% drop off in earnings per block.
Any Idea what has caused this?
Can someone give me specifics on how to revert to undo the changes? I am very unskilled at changes and needed to find the right post to understand or at least copy how to upgrade. So I would need some pretty specific info to revert back as well.

Thanks for your time in advance. This dropoff is a game killer for me to have that much less earnings.

[kkurtmann]

Would anyone be able to explain something for me.

I upgraded to 4.6 today I believe, I am unsure how to check it worked, as in the units GUI it still shows 3.12 or something.
I also installed the M's Ant Monitor.
After doing both the R-Box on my laptop that I installed M's Ant Monitor, and my Ant S3 both were hashing, but not for me. They showed 0 Gh on Slush for past 5 + hours, then I re-entered my pool settings and applied and they started hashing for me again. My Norton sees the M's Ant Miner as a virus.
But after all that, my speeds are OK average as usual, but last few blocks since they have been running again, my earnings per block have dropped substantially from about 0.002 to about 0.0015 that's a 25% drop off in earnings per block.
Any Idea what has caused this?
Can someone give me specifics on how to revert to undo the changes? I am very unskilled at changes and needed to find the right post to understand or at least copy how to upgrade. So I would need some pretty specific info to revert back as well.

Thanks for your time in advance. This dropoff is a game killer for me to have that much less earnings.

 maybe your pools' hashrate increased, thereby dropping your expected share proportionately .
I heard recently Slush pool hashrate jumped from 6 PH/s to 9 PH/s, maybe this is your answer.

[-ck]

They showed 0 Gh on Slush for past 5 + hours, then I re-entered my pool settings and applied and they started hashing for me again. My Norton sees the M's Ant Miner as a virus.
But after all that, my speeds are OK average as usual, but last few blocks since they have been running again, my earnings per block have dropped substantially from about 0.002 to about 0.0015 that's a 25% drop off in earnings per block.

Bear in mind that if you stop mining for a period on slush, you are punished due to the unique payment scheme in place there.

[kkurtmann]

yes. that too. although I wouldn't call it a punishment. I've been mining there for over three years and have overall better than 100% CDF payout to date.

[pekatete]

I heard recently Slush pool hashrate jumped from 6 PH/s to 9 PH/s, maybe this is your answer.

Too damn right! And they had a period about 7 hours back (just before that massive jump) when my rigs were not registering any shares. I had them pointing at slush and treble-checked that they were hashing, but nothing showed up on the pool!