ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[visdude]

what is the recommended PSU for a S3 ?

can i buy 1 PSU 1000 watts and connect 2 S3 together?

It will be fine as long as you don't overclock.

Why not overclock?  Please explain.

[cloh76]

To clarify:

1) Download the updated firmware from: https://bitmaintech.com/support.htm?pid=007201407180243004432lBQW28O0633
2) SSH/Putty into S3
3) Paste the code in below.. Will replace Save&Apply with Save&Apply.

Code:

sed -i 's/Save\&Apply/Save\&Apply/g' /usr/lib/lua/luci/model/cbi/cgminer/cgminer.lua

4) Execute the following code

Code:

/etc/init.d/cgminer restart

Much Appreciated!!

[IonHammer]

what is the recommended PSU for a S3 ?

can i buy 1 PSU 1000 watts and connect 2 S3 together?

I just started S3 mining and went though similar PSU choice issues, in the end i went with 1:1      1 psu per 1 S3.

To give me some flexibility I went with a FSP Raider 750 Watt 80 plus Silver PSU, it has 4 6/8 pin pcie connectors so I can fill all the S3 power connectors,
apparently this allows you to overclock and keeps the unit slightly cooler per given freq.

Secondly, it has a common 12 V rail giving 60 amps which is more than enough for an S3 and allows the PSU to run at around 50% capacity which has an efficiency over 90%.

One thing I have noticed with some Gold modular psu's is they have multiple 12 V rails and may add up to 700-800 watts but only deliver 18 amps (per rail),
 if you power you S3 with one connector per side from a rail like this you are going to have trouble as an S3 needs 24-30 amps depending on who you read.

With lots of PSU's it does chew up more space and power points but you don't have a single point of failure and your not running your PSU at 90-100 % capacity.

Good luck with your PSU hunting.

[Rabinovitch]

what is the recommended PSU for a S3 ?

can i buy 1 PSU 1000 watts and connect 2 S3 together?

Sure. But it depends on what exactly will you buy.  

[Rabinovitch]

S3 firmware containing cgminer 4.6.1 has a issue with one of the config pages (preventing you from modifying the "Miner Configuration" page) in certain browsers (due to XML error)

Bitmain may simply fix this in the firmware so it may be worth the wait.

Donations: 19UCaVUvJ7kamCU2zdBioTgjFSUxmaqp3H

Bitmain can fix it (and apologize for any inconvenience), but it looks that they will not. For example, they definetly can provide us with new S2 firmware, but they have no intension to do that, as we can see...

To clarify:

1) Download the updated firmware from: https://bitmaintech.com/support.htm?pid=007201407180243004432lBQW28O0633
2) SSH/Putty into S3
...

Do you mean "Download and flash..."? 

[aclass]

perfect thank you.

  try using freq 212.5  see if you get the hw to drop.  you are correct those numbers suck.  I have had my hand s on 20 s-3's  I have had 3 dog's so to speak nothing made them better above 212.5,  but all 3 of them ran  decently with freq 212.50 or freq 206.25

Seems like the HW errors are directly related to the 'x' on one of the chips in Miner Status. Once the chip gets X-ed the HW errors stop increasing. This is at 212. I will also try a bit lower and a bit higher and wait for that chip to be thrown out of the pool.

[visdude]

what is the recommended PSU for a S3 ?

can i buy 1 PSU 1000 watts and connect 2 S3 together?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=671189.msg8227268#msg8227268
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=671189.msg8471571#msg8471571

[cloh76]

Is it me or does the USD shipping price continue to increase as the bitcoin price drops?  I figure the shipping price is now excluded from the entire cost and will continue to be so to adjust for the difference in cost of the equipment as the BTC price fluctuates.

[PatMan]

Just seen this on the S2 thread:

Copy of PM I I sent to Tim.Shao19 of Bitmaintech:

Hello again Tim,

I see you have released another firmware update for the S3, the second in 6 weeks, where as S2 owners are still waiting for the firmware update you promised them over 9 weeks ago - and are still at risk from the various security threats associated with the older firmware. Why is this?

Also, your latest firmware for the S3 actually breaks the S3 - why have you not withdrawn it to fix it?

IYFTech.

I've yet to see the supposed "great" communication the dogie messenger raves about.......

[Darthswan]

Is it me or does the USD shipping price continue to increase as the bitcoin price drops?  I figure the shipping price is now excluded from the entire cost and will continue to be so to adjust for the difference in cost of the equipment as the BTC price fluctuates.

i purchased 2 back in August.  If purchased two more, I would pay more today, than back in office.  Can't justify two with current shipping cost.  I was ready to pull the plug and order two more, but that shipping stopped me.

[cloh76]

Is it me or does the USD shipping price continue to increase as the bitcoin price drops?  I figure the shipping price is now excluded from the entire cost and will continue to be so to adjust for the difference in cost of the equipment as the BTC price fluctuates.

i purchased 2 back in August.  If purchased two more, I would pay more today, than back in office.  Can't justify two with current shipping cost.  I was ready to pull the plug and order two more, but that shipping stopped me.

I purchased 3 more just last week and the price increased since then.

[philipma1957]

perfect thank you.

  try using freq 212.5  see if you get the hw to drop.  you are correct those numbers suck.  I have had my hand s on 20 s-3's  I have had 3 dog's so to speak nothing made them better above 212.5,  but all 3 of them ran  decently with freq 212.50 or freq 206.25

Seems like the HW errors are directly related to the 'x' on one of the chips in Miner Status. Once the chip gets X-ed the HW errors stop increasing. This is at 212. I will also try a bit lower and a bit higher and wait for that chip to be thrown out of the pool.

x chip is dead and can be for different reasons.  

clock too high

psu too weak

if results improve with 212 clock run the 212 clock.

i forgot the exact name of the psu that you use.  it was a gold 1000 watter but they differ in rail structure.     if you have multi rails it can be a problem.

[aclass]

perfect thank you.

  try using freq 212.5  see if you get the hw to drop.  you are correct those numbers suck.  I have had my hand s on 20 s-3's  I have had 3 dog's so to speak nothing made them better above 212.5,  but all 3 of them ran  decently with freq 212.50 or freq 206.25

Seems like the HW errors are directly related to the 'x' on one of the chips in Miner Status. Once the chip gets X-ed the HW errors stop increasing. This is at 212. I will also try a bit lower and a bit higher and wait for that chip to be thrown out of the pool.

x chip is dead and can be for different reasons.  

clock too high

psu too weak

if results improve with 212 clock run the 212 clock.

i forgot the exact name of the psu that you use.  it was a gold 1000 watter but they differ in rail structure.     if you have multi rails it can be a problem.

I am still testing it as the chip sometimes takes too much time to die. Is there a way to disable it completely? It dies after some time at any clock so it's definitely not a good chip.
I was using a PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W and just changed it with Corsair RM850. No difference at all. Both are single rail PSUs.
Anyways.. Seems like I got one of the not so good units.

[OVRGRO]

To clarify:

1) Download the updated firmware from: https://bitmaintech.com/support.htm?pid=007201407180243004432lBQW28O0633
2) SSH/Putty into S3
3) Paste the code in below.. Will replace Save&Apply with Save&Apply.

Code:

sed -i 's/Save\&Apply/Save\&Apply/g' /usr/lib/lua/luci/model/cbi/cgminer/cgminer.lua

4) Execute the following code

Code:

/etc/init.d/cgminer restart

I had glossed over this thread over the last week and didn't really read much about this part. i saw the bootstrap appearance change fix and was out. this was so simple and i've only been mining and using the ubuntu os for around 2 weeks max.  thank you very much.

[IYFTech]

There's quite a lot wrong with this firmware update for me I'm afraid, apart from it being broken in the first place of course. Having to fix it before you can use your S3 again after flashing is pretty stupid on it's own, but the appearance of two invisible fan readings with no explanation & the voltage adjustment setting, again with no explanation, make it verging on the ridiculous.

I've been running it on two of my S3's for 24 hours now just to experiment & see if there is any improvement over my other Ants running the older firmware with ck's excellent S3 binary added, and from what I can see - it's worse. The load on the Ants has gone up from ~1.8 to over 2.4, the reject rate has gone up from ~2.5% to over 3.5%, the stale rate has gone from less than 1% to over 2% and the cpu usage has increased from ~75% to 95-100% - the only thing that hasn't changed is the HW error rate & the hash rate.

I'm not sure if Bitmain are using the same binary that ck done for the S3, but if they are, I can only imagine that all the extra needless additions to the (broken) firmware are overloading the already overloaded/underpowered controller which is causing the higher rejects/stales/cpu rate. One thing is certain though, Bitmain have once again not bothered testing their firmware whatsoever, making the same mistake as they did with the S4 - simply because if they had of tested it properly they would have noticed that it was not only broken in the first place, but also that the performance was worse than the older version.

I just thank the cyber gods that I didn't rush straight in & flash all my S3's in one go with this junk firmware, as I now have only two S3's to revert back to the older firmware with ck's binary - instead of 20 

Whoever "created" this firmware should be sacked.

[pekatete]

^^^ +1 to that to an extent.
The rejects have definitely shot up, and though I am not certain as to the reason for this (it may be due to improved efficiency!), there seems to be no stales at all (not that I'd want them)!
I wonder, has anybody noticed an increase in power consumption with the latest firmware? I may be a bit tired, but it seems to me to be the case.
On a positive note, the UI now displays the HW error % which at a least makes sense of the numbers at a glance, also, I have managed to overclock one of my upgraded S1 to S3 to a freq of 268 without getting any chips x'ed out and the HW rate still very low. Saying that, we need to make more sense of the voltage setting .... I am not sure it simply is a leftover from the S4 settings as has been suggested.

[aarons6]

perfect thank you.

  try using freq 212.5  see if you get the hw to drop.  you are correct those numbers suck.  I have had my hand s on 20 s-3's  I have had 3 dog's so to speak nothing made them better above 212.5,  but all 3 of them ran  decently with freq 212.50 or freq 206.25

Seems like the HW errors are directly related to the 'x' on one of the chips in Miner Status. Once the chip gets X-ed the HW errors stop increasing. This is at 212. I will also try a bit lower and a bit higher and wait for that chip to be thrown out of the pool.

i had a problem similar with one of my S3s when i first got it..
i removed the heatsink to repaste it and a chip had NO paste on it.

i put some new paste on the chips and put it back together and its working fine now.. might give it a try.

[PatMan]

There's quite a lot wrong with this firmware update for me I'm afraid, apart from it being broken in the first place of course. Having to fix it before you can use your S3 again after flashing is pretty stupid on it's own, but the appearance of two invisible fan readings with no explanation & the voltage adjustment setting, again with no explanation, make it verging on the ridiculous.

I've been running it on two of my S3's for 24 hours now just to experiment & see if there is any improvement over my other Ants running the older firmware with ck's excellent S3 binary added, and from what I can see - it's worse. The load on the Ants has gone up from ~1.8 to over 2.4, the reject rate has gone up from ~2.5% to over 3.5%, the stale rate has gone from less than 1% to over 2% and the cpu usage has increased from ~75% to 95-100% - the only thing that hasn't changed is the HW error rate & the hash rate.

I'm not sure if Bitmain are using the same binary that ck done for the S3, but if they are, I can only imagine that all the extra needless additions to the (broken) firmware are overloading the already overloaded/underpowered controller which is causing the higher rejects/stales/cpu rate. One thing is certain though, Bitmain have once again not bothered testing their firmware whatsoever, making the same mistake as they did with the S4 - simply because if they had of tested it properly they would have noticed that it was not only broken in the first place, but also that the performance was worse than the older version.

I just thank the cyber gods that I didn't rush straight in & flash all my S3's in one go with this junk firmware, as I now have only two S3's to revert back to the older firmware with ck's binary - instead of 20 

Whoever "created" this firmware should be sacked.

Absolutely. The fact that they leave the broken firmware up for people to download is disgusting. I too have reverted back to the older firmware with ck's binary - it just works better. I was always under the impression that firmware updates were supposed to improve performance, not break it & degrade it......

[aarons6]

i put the new firmware on my S3s and while the HW errors have went down i also noticed a slight drop in hash and an increase in stale shares.. one s3 is getting about 2 an hour vs the other one 2 in a whole day.

altho i havent noticed an increase in invalid shares from the pool.. so maybe the stale shares before wasnt being calculated? maybe the new cgminer has the dont submit stales tag set..

anyway, would it be beneficial to put the newer cgminer on top of the new firmware? has anyone tried this?

[PatMan]

I tried it - made little to no difference. The new firmware is too bloated for the S3 as well as poorly done, it can't keep up, it can barely keep up with the older firmware....