ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[MoreBloodWine]

Since mine has the same probs as yours, what solution did Bitmain offer to you to rectify the faulty control board.

Nothing yet , waiting to hear back

Makes ya wonder why they constantly ship f'n lemons, also makes me wonder what I'll end up with out of the 4 units I ordered.

[bluebottle73]

Since mine has the same probs as yours, what solution did Bitmain offer to you to rectify the faulty control board.

Nothing yet , waiting to hear back

Makes ya wonder why they constantly ship f'n lemons, also makes me wonder what I'll end up with out of the 4 units I ordered.

I'm in the same boat.  I ordered 3 units of batch 2 and the first one out of the box had a faulty controller.  I got the other 2 running, and they're hashing away at normal rate with no modifications.

I contacted their tech support about the faulty unit, did some troubleshooting that they advised (swapping it with a board from one of the working units, using different PSU, etc), and isolated it to the controller board on that unit.  This took only a few days of troubleshooting. 

Now I'm at over a week, and I finally get an email from their support with a shipping label.  I asked for clarification, and they expect me to ship the faulty board to them before they will ship me a replacement.  A process they say will take another week.  So I'll be over 2 weeks with a dead unit, and the next difficulty looming - basically at least .166 BTC lost because of their faulty hardware and slow response.

I asked about compensation, and they said they do not offer compensation.  Given that these units are priced so as to be barely profitable, I am now in a situation where I will most certainly lose money on the deal, while Bitmain has potentially made millions off of their customers.  I find it staggering to think they can't offer simple customer service solutions that are commonplace in other industries - especially with mission critical or time sensitive applications (which bitcoin miners undoubtedly are).  I mean, at least cross ship the replacement board or offer that as an option.  But they drag their feet, and insist on a time consuming return process basically ensuring I'm out any profit that unit could have delivered had I got it mining the moment I received it.

I have another 2 units on B5 and I've requested they cancel my order if they can't make this right. That might seem like an overreaction, but I have a simple approach to those I do business with - and if they don't treat me like I would treat a customer in the same situation then it's no deal.

Hopefully we can all make some noise here and get Bitmain to change their tune.

[taipo]

I found that down clocking to 212.5 stabilised the hashrate at about 410-420 GH with a hard restart every couple of days.

[taipo]

Now I'm at over a week, and I finally get an email from their support with a shipping label.  I asked for clarification, and they expect me to ship the faulty board to them before they will ship me a replacement.  A process they say will take another week.  So I'll be over 2 weeks with a dead unit, and the next difficulty looming - basically at least .166 BTC lost because of their faulty hardware and slow response.

I wonder why, its not as if someone can run off with another controller and build an Ant from it........it should just be heres another one and toss that piece of shit in the bin....they must know that about 1 in 10 of these things are faulty.

[MoreBloodWine]

Also, for those with faulty control boards. What about keeping the units powered as they are now but wiring the unit with a bad control board in to another S3's good control board or am I missing something else here ?

Or just wire them in to an rPi with MinePeon or something.

[tarmi]

what about old S1 controllers?

There was a bounty thread somewhere around here for making old S1 working with rPi. My S1 is still profitable, and I would like to maybe upgrade them soon with S3 blades.

Bitmain mentioned that they will sell upgrade kits. 

[MoreBloodWine]

what about old S1 controllers?

You gotta have em, for people like me who are new to owning Bitmain, outside of the USB devices, we don't have that option. Still wont know what I'll have to worry about til I get my damn units ;-/

[allcoinminer]

what about old S1 controllers?

There was a bounty thread somewhere around here for making old S1 working with rPi. My S1 is still profitable, and I would like to maybe upgrade them soon with S3 blades.

Bitmain mentioned that they will sell upgrade kits.  

The bounty is offered by me and some one else also promised to add additional to my bounty.
The bounty is still active and anyone can participate to win.
The link to that thread is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=671128.0
The aim is to run multiple(>2) blades with a single control board.
You can do it on S1 or S3. Hope soon participant will join as more S1s are available at cheap price now.
On a side note: how we track our old threads open by ourselves? In other forums there is a page were we can see threads started by ourselves.
But I think I miss it in bitcointalk.

[heslo]

Just got my two S3's today! Setting up one however and ran into a problem, one chain is hashing away fine with oooooooo oooooooo but the other comes back with -------- -------- -------- -------o

What the hell does this mean?!? It worked ok on first run, restarted the machine and it's been doing it since. Any ideas?

[allcoinminer]

Just got my two S3's today! Setting up one however and ran into a problem, one chain is hashing away fine with oooooooo oooooooo but the other comes back with -------- -------- -------- -------o

What the hell does this mean?!? It worked ok on first run, restarted the machine and it's been doing it since. Any ideas?

Have you tried swapping PCI power connectors? Hope you have done it.
Then if not working, Open your faulty antminer S3 and swap the cables from blades to control panel.
You can also swap the control board of another working S3 for testing as a second option.
If now the other blades are working its a control panel or cable problem.

Now, open the front side (ASIC Chip side)heatsink and check for thermal paste lease or absence.
If its so, just buy some good thermal grease and apply, the blade will be ok.
Else its a clear case of RMA. Contact bitmaintech as soon as possible via email.
I assumed you are using a proper power supply.

[heslo]

Thanks, I've tried the PCI-E connectors and still the same problem. I've now set up the other miner and I can't get either one to mine. Under "Miner Status" it just shows all empty readings and says "This section contains no values yet" From what I've read it's a DNS issue, are you able to instruct me how to rectify this and where to place the DNS values? I'm a bit of a noob at this and would appreciate the help

[aurel57]

Since mine has the same probs as yours, what solution did Bitmain offer to you to rectify the faulty control board.

Nothing yet , waiting to hear back

Makes ya wonder why they constantly ship f'n lemons, also makes me wonder what I'll end up with out of the 4 units I ordered.

my miner drops down to 410-415GH. I would rather keep it running and pay a deposit so he would ship a new controller out and refund me after he receives the bad one than shut the miner down for a week or two.

[allcoinminer]

Thanks, I've tried the PCI-E connectors and still the same problem. I've now set up the other miner and I can't get either one to mine. Under "Miner Status" it just shows all empty readings and says "This section contains no values yet" From what I've read it's a DNS issue, are you able to instruct me how to rectify this and where to place the DNS values? I'm a bit of a noob at this and would appreciate the help

Try the other steps given in my above post for the faulty miner.
For the other one go to, Network>Diagnostic Page and click on the ping button and check whether it successfully ping.
Else change DNS to 4.2.2.2 and add one more as 8.8.8.8 on the WAN page.
Then again do the ping test on your diagnostic page if again fails,
change your default gate way to the default gate way of your modem/pc.
Again try ping now it may already started working.

[allcoinminer]

my mine drops down to 410-415GH. I would rather keep it running and pay a deposit so he would ship a new controller out and refund me after he receives the bad one than shut the miner down for a week or two.

It may not be a controller issues as from your description.
Are you seeing any "x" or "-" in you asic status page?
Give me your Ant S3-es fans speed, temperatures of miner and ambient temperature?.
Most probably its, the heat dissipation issue and the chip are throttling to lower clocks automatically as in GPUs.
As already advised by bitmaintech support engineers, unscrew the chip side heatsink and check the condition of thermal grease.
Remove it with a cloth and apply new thermal paste grease and it will be mining back at 441.
Use a good thermal grease which provide conductivity above 3.

[heslo]

Thanks, I've tried the PCI-E connectors and still the same problem. I've now set up the other miner and I can't get either one to mine. Under "Miner Status" it just shows all empty readings and says "This section contains no values yet" From what I've read it's a DNS issue, are you able to instruct me how to rectify this and where to place the DNS values? I'm a bit of a noob at this and would appreciate the help

Try the other steps given in my above post for the faulty miner.
For the other one go to, Network>Diagnostic Page and click on the ping button and check whether it successfully ping.
Else change DNS to 4.2.2.2 and add one more as 8.8.8.8 on the WAN page.
Then again do the ping test on your diagnostic page if again fails,
change your default gate way to the default gate way of your modem/pc.
Again try ping now it may already started working.

It could ping no problem... I added in the DNS under the Network > Interfaces page > WAN > Advanced settings page where it says "Use custom DNS servers"

It now shows DNS 1: 4.2.2.2 and DNS 2: 8.8.8.8 under the Status > Overview pages but still nothing on the Miner Status page. It's very weird, I've compared all the settings just as the one with the broken chain and it just doesn't want to start. That being said the one with the broken chain doesn't have the DNS settings on it, I just had to leave it for a while and it started. This one.... nothing. I'm at a loss

[taipo]

my mine drops down to 410-415GH. I would rather keep it running and pay a deposit so he would ship a new controller out and refund me after he receives the bad one than shut the miner down for a week or two.

I have sent the same request away as well. Ive asked for a cost of a replacement controller.

[aurel57]

my mine drops down to 410-415GH. I would rather keep it running and pay a deposit so he would ship a new controller out and refund me after he receives the bad one than shut the miner down for a week or two.

It may not be a controller issues as from your description.
Are you seeing any "x" or "-" in you asic status page?
Give me your Ant S3-es fans speed, temperatures of miner and ambient temperature?.
Most probably its, the heat dissipation issue and the chip are throttling to lower clocks automatically as in GPUs.
As already advised by bitmaintech support engineers, unscrew the chip side heatsink and check the condition of thermal grease.
Remove it with a cloth and apply new thermal paste grease and it will be mining back at 441.
Use a good thermal grease which provide conductivity above 3.

sorry but I can not access my interface for this miner. It's still mining and Bitmain PM that he has turned my problem over to his engineer which I am waiting to hear from. I have not tried to reboot or use the reset button yet as I am afraid the miner may not start back up. But once I get thru that problem I will give what you suggested a try. But the last time I was able to get on the miners interface ( a couple days ago) I was seeing no x's and it all looked fine. Just starting out normal speed and slowing dropping down. Thanks

[CroverNo01]

I know this will have been asked before but for some reason I'm not getting any results back.

What is the UK VAT on Average for the 2X S3 ?

Thanks

[elemental]

I know this will have been asked before but for some reason I'm not getting any results back.

What is the UK VAT on Average for the 2X S3 ?

Thanks

Around GBP 110-120 IIRC (edit: including the GBP 11 brokerage fee for UPS, others may vary).

[allcoinminer]

Thanks, I've tried the PCI-E connectors and still the same problem. I've now set up the other miner and I can't get either one to mine. Under "Miner Status" it just shows all empty readings and says "This section contains no values yet" From what I've read it's a DNS issue, are you able to instruct me how to rectify this and where to place the DNS values? I'm a bit of a noob at this and would appreciate the help

Try the other steps given in my above post for the faulty miner.
For the other one go to, Network>Diagnostic Page and click on the ping button and check whether it successfully ping.
Else change DNS to 4.2.2.2 and add one more as 8.8.8.8 on the WAN page.
Then again do the ping test on your diagnostic page if again fails,
change your default gate way to the default gate way of your modem/pc.
Again try ping now it may already started working.

It could ping no problem... I added in the DNS under the Network > Interfaces page > WAN > Advanced settings page where it says "Use custom DNS servers"

It now shows DNS 1: 4.2.2.2 and DNS 2: 8.8.8.8 under the Status > Overview pages but still nothing on the Miner Status page. It's very weird, I've compared all the settings just as the one with the broken chain and it just doesn't want to start. That being said the one with the broken chain doesn't have the DNS settings on it, I just had to leave it for a while and it started. This one.... nothing. I'm at a loss

DNS is set on control board not on blades.