ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[tzortz]

I am also on que.

[Omarko]

I think you're about to be scammed, dude.

well this is the weird bit, they are saying I can have the refund if I want but will obviously loose my pre-order. Not sure if I should just wait until 31st July and see if they come through or just ask for refund now. I got nothing to lose at the moment as I have time to escalate the dispute with Paypal and the seller has been responding to my messages so have been cooperative.

Refund.  Wait for Bitmaintech to sell Batch 4 and order at that time like everyone else.  Remove the middle man.  Get your order direct from the source, and lose any doubt you have about it being a scam.

yeah but what if they are an honest seller? All I am doing then is losing spot in the queue, waiting for refunds to be done and then trying to order another unit form someone else weeks later.

[Xian01]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.

... and cleaning it up (and re-applying paste?) resolved the issues ?

[tzortz]

I think that was not the issue.

[gingpark]

So ... has anyone who opted for a 7.7% BTC refund received it yet?

The miners shipped on time ... the refund (for me) awaits ... still shows 'init' on the bitmain site.

I opted for the refund and recently emailed bitmain they replied saying "We'll process all the applications after July 22, please wait for a while:)"

[bit_NINj4]

then whats the points of it?

Perhaps some of us have been mining since 1BTC was nearly worthless and we see an increase in stored value.
Some of us are not focused on the day to day, but rather we see a much larger picture.

[bobsav2121]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

[jonnybravo0311]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

His look far better than mine did... lol.  I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.

[daddyfatsax]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

Well it is hashing now perfectly after I cleaned off the paste and put new paste on. Cooling is not an issue.

[Biodom]

can somebody explain this to me:

My best miner was doing 465Gh on 237.5 pooling to Eligius, HW error at 0.6%, stable for two-three days (while OCed; practically no HW errors on stock speed)
I switched temporarily to btcguild where it produced 5 times more hardware errors while working almost at the same speed (different from what others observe)
I switched back to eligius and after that reboot, now there are only 0.25% HW errors overnight.
It looks almost like every reboot locks the miner into a certain configuration and some of these configurations perform better that others.
Is this even possible? I know for a fact that on S1 reboots did improve stuck "x"

[Biodom]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

His look far better than mine did... lol.  I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.

please tell the motherboard tinkering noob (myself)-where the paste is supposed to be and where it isn't?
I ordered some in case in my batch 2 I would need to clean it up and reapply, but have no clue where it supposed to go-under the chip, to the side of it or on top of it (judging by some posted pictures there are gobs on top)?

[halcy0n3]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

His look far better than mine did... lol.  I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.

please tell the motherboard tinkering noob (myself)-where the paste is supposed to be and where it isn't?
I ordered some in case in my batch 2 I would need to clean it up and reapply, but have no clue where it supposed to go-under the chip, to the side of it or on top of it (judging by some posted pictures there are gobs on top)?

It's thermal conducting paste. It's meant to move heat from chip to heat sink (big metal finned bit). The idea is not to have a gap between the chip and the heat sink. Or air pockets because air is an insulator. So just enough thermal paste to form a nice seal between the chip and heat sink. It's not electrically conductive. So it shouldn't matter if there's some overflow. But if he said cleaning it up made the difference. Who am I to argue?
What you don't want to do is remove it and replace it with nothing. (The paste that is) the chips will definitely run hotter than normal then

[philipma1957]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

His look far better than mine did... lol.  I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.

please tell the motherboard tinkering noob (myself)-where the paste is supposed to be and where it isn't?
I ordered some in case in my batch 2 I would need to clean it up and reapply, but have no clue where it supposed to go-under the chip, to the side of it or on top of it (judging by some posted pictures there are gobs on top)?

It's thermal conducting paste. It's meant to move heat from chip to heat sink (big metal finned bit). The idea is not to have a gap between the chip and the heat sink. Or air pockets because air is an insulator. So just enough thermal paste to form a nice seal between the chip and heat sink. It's not electrically conductive. So it shouldn't matter if there's some overflow. But if he said cleaning it up made the difference. Who am I to argue?

if his chips were not overheating.  the only way cleanup of excess paste helps is the paste has some electrical conductivity.

 Could be it does just a little.  we would need a very good ohms meter and someone willing to open his s-3 clean off the oem paste and see just how conductive it is on an electrical level.

[halcy0n3]

if his chips were not overheating.  the only way cleanup of excess paste helps is the paste has some electrical conductivity.

 Could be it does just a little.  we would need a very good ohms meter and someone willing to open his s-3 clean off the oem paste and see just how conductive it is on an electrical level.

Could be. I have an absolute dog of a s3 that's has all but One chip on a board disabled. I'll crack it open and try replacing the thermal paste. 

Let you guys know

[Duce]

I have a unit performing @424GH with the stock clock, then I have another that runs at 462GH with a clock of 237.5. I took apart the first unit to clean and inspect. It was a mess. I installed 17.0 W/mK thermal pads and heat sinks. No change in performance other than a slight decrease in temperature. I think I will under clock this one now. Pictures can be found here. http://s1284.photobucket.com/user/rponce454/library/?view=recent&page=1

[Biodom]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

His look far better than mine did... lol.  I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.

correct me if i am wrong, but if others suggest that paste is there to provide a thermal connection between a chip and a heat sink, then with heat sink sitting on the top of the chips in s3, I don't see how it could be done by anything other than having paste on the top of the chips (but not necessarily on connectors, I get that).

[Azmodeus]

How do I make S3's auto-reconnect?? They will hash away for hours then I'll come to my Ant room to check on them periodically and they will be beeping and not hashing like the internet has blinked out and they didn't reconnect. I keep having to power them off for a few seconds, unplug ethernet, plug back in and reconnect ethernet then they start hashing away again until the net blinks out again later. Very annoying.

[sjc1490]

Any word on B4 sales?

Id be will to bet they won't start until the 1st of next month at the earliest.

why?  I would think they made solid money with the first four batches. So why not sell more?

I have a question about this just building on the previous post about my S3 pre-order from http://www.bitmainantminer.com/

I opened a Paypal dispute querying how legit this company is as its all bit suss (e.g. no order email confirmation, another domain registered under same address selling mining hardware, no experiences posted on forums about this place) although intensive google search reveals no complaints or signs of scam. These might be brand new and just collecting cash and then disappear but who knows.

Now I contacted them and asked them, how come they are saying they are selling batch 4 which they will ship out 30th July since you guys here on forums are saying that there is no pre-orders opened at all on batch 4 yet. I received this reply:

"We're selling batch 4. Batch 1 was shipped July 10, Batch 2 on July 20, Batch 3 is currently shipping. We're not sure why Bitmain has not released batch 4 on their website yet but we've been told it ships on/before July 30 and we've taken hundreds of orders for Batch 4. You can contact them to verify this if you'd like."

so I sent an email to Bitmaintech directly asking them about this seller, hopefully they will reply soon.

Any thoughts on whether any of this is the truth ? Are there other official mining hardware sellers here on forums that can confirm if Bitmain batch 4 pre-orders are open to them? Thanks in advance.

112bit.com is the largest authorized reseller for bitmaintech I know of and they aren't selling batch 4. If anyone had the pull to I would think they would.

[bobsav2121]

All my S1's and S3's reconnect automatically, they always ping and look for connection by themselves.
You have something wrong, bad internet maybe ?

[halcy0n3]

Found out why one of my units was not hashing and having X's on the chips. Paste was everywhere on the inside. Even the screws holding the heat sink on had thermal paste on them.
images removed

Messy paste wont effect anything but poor cooling, unless your units are overheating, that's not the problem

His look far better than mine did... lol.  I had paste on the chips, on the pcb, on the connectors... everywhere.

correct me if i am wrong, but if others suggest that paste is there to provide a thermal connection between a chip and a heat sink, then with heat sink sitting on the top of the chips in s3, I don't see how it could be done by anything other than having paste on the top of the chips (but not necessarily on connectors, I get that).

not sure what you are asking there...

are there other ways to have a thermal connection between chip and heat sink? sure, you can buy thermal pads. search ebay. youll see in the specs that they are massively electrically resistant. need 1000's of volts to make them conduct. Same goes for thermal paste. Its very unlikely that swimming in thermal paste (even on connectors) would cause any problem at all...