BITMAIN Antminer S3 support and OverClocking thread

[aarons6]

many people dont understand the power supply watt rating.  just because a power supply is 650 watts doesnt mean it can provide that much power on the 12v (which is what the miners use).  in order for you to know how much 12v power your power supply is capable of providing.  you can either look at it in terms of amps or watts as most power supplies show both.  if it only shows the amps available to the 12v rail you can calculate the watts it will provide by multiplying that number by 12v (amps x volts = watts).

take the Corsair 850RM for example - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011.  if you click on the link and click the specifications tab it tells you it has a max of 70A available for 12v.  70 x 12 = 840 watts total.  the rosewill 850 watt power supply cannot provide that much wattage for the 12v rail - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182072.  note that they show 64A max for 12v which only comes out to 768 watts total.

as some have suggested just because the power supply CAN handle 840 watts you wouldnt want to have it running at 100% load (kinda similar to always running your car at max RPM) as that will cause it to fail more quickly, especially if you are using a cheap-o brand PS.

so bottom line - do your homework before thinking an 850w PS can run 2 overclocked S3's because the power usage is supposed to only be 375w per miner.

yeah i think im going to need another power supply.
mines 70a so 840w

with 2 miners, one is a 225 and one is at 218 the psu is pretty much maxed out..

[techman05]

I rebooted and no change at all.  Do I need to upgrade the firmware?  It was working fine until I updated the firmware.  Then I didn't get any speeds over 100G on both of them.  I reset the miner back to factory and started over.  Now it's mining at 218 on the GUI, but 250 when I ssh into the miner. 

this is interesting

post your asic-freq file from \etc\config.  if you dont have one (since you said you renamed the file to .old) then that's your 1st problem.

I went into the miner config>advance settings tab, to make the change.  Putty not needed.

Has your speed come back up? I flashed mine to the newest v3 firmware with the advanced setting and I see the same thing. 100G at 235.7 frequency that was set on flash. Did you end up setting it to default and getting the speed back before the flash? I'd hope that they'd have something in there to say if your not getting "x" that the miner tone itself back.

I hope installing this firmware doesn't count as overclocking since that was not my intent.

Just FYI manually setting back to default seems to get the speeds back where they are supposed to be.

[aarons6]

I rebooted and no change at all.  Do I need to upgrade the firmware?  It was working fine until I updated the firmware.  Then I didn't get any speeds over 100G on both of them.  I reset the miner back to factory and started over.  Now it's mining at 218 on the GUI, but 250 when I ssh into the miner. 

this is interesting

post your asic-freq file from \etc\config.  if you dont have one (since you said you renamed the file to .old) then that's your 1st problem.

I went into the miner config>advance settings tab, to make the change.  Putty not needed.

Has your speed come back up? I flashed mine to the newest v3 firmware with the advanced setting and I see the same thing. 100G at 235.7 frequency that was set on flash. Did you end up setting it to default and getting the speed back before the flash? I'd hope that they'd have something in there to say if your not getting "x" that the miner tone itself back.

I hope installing this firmware doesn't count as overclocking since that was not my intent.

Just FYI manually setting back to default seems to get the speeds back where they are supposed to be.

all you have to do AFTER you flash the new FW is go into miner config, advanced pick a speed and hit save and apply.
it will come back up and be at full speed..

[rpandassociates]

Just got my S3 today its batch 7
I am running a corsair 1050x PSU
So I overclocked this for about 5 mins
I hit like 514 GH/s
The fans were running like 2080 rpm and the temperature started to climb to 44c
So I backed it off to stock settings

I live in florida And i keep the house at 78 degress F in my office its quite a bit warmer mostly due to the fact of this butterfly labs single 50 gh/s that runs at around 82 deg C  
Then my PC and these power supplies
I think i need a seperate AC for this room before I attempt anymore over clocking Just got it I think I will wait till its turned a profit before i chance something going horribly wrong.

I am drawing out some ideas for a heat removal system thinking i will take some dryer vent hoses and attach them to the back of the butterfly and antminer and port them out the window Wife is just going to love that haha.

I am going to buy a couple more of these units if i see any real ROI, imagine the heat

But for future knowledge
Does removing the case improve the cooling on these s3's?
Would it be a good idea to go ahead and replace the thermal paste with some high dollar stuff? anyone got any recommendations? What kind of paste is on the chips now?

And lastly What is the best pool to mine in? I know that one will have a different anwser from each person I like the interface of https://www.minep.it but they dont seem to be a very popular pool. I am new to this mining stuff so any and all input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[aarons6]

Just got my S3 today its batch 7
I am running a corsair 1050x PSU
So I overclocked this for about 5 mins
I hit like 514 GH/s
The fans were running like 2080 rpm and the temperature started to climb to 44c
So I backed it off to stock settings

I live in florida And i keep the house at 78 degress F in my office its quite a bit warmer mostly due to the fact of this butterfly labs single 50 gh/s that runs at around 82 deg C  
Then my PC and these power supplies
I think i need a seperate AC for this room before I attempt anymore over clocking Just got it I think I will wait till its turned a profit before i chance something going horribly wrong.

I am drawing out some ideas for a heat removal system thinking i will take some dryer vent hoses and attach them to the back of the butterfly and antminer and port them out the window Wife is just going to love that haha.

I am going to buy a couple more of these units if i see any real ROI, imagine the heat

But for future knowledge
Does removing the case improve the cooling on these s3's?
Would it be a good idea to go ahead and replace the thermal paste with some high dollar stuff? anyone got any recommendations? What kind of paste is on the chips now?

And lastly What is the best pool to mine in? I know that one will have a different anwser from each person I like the interface of https://www.minep.it but they dont seem to be a very popular pool. I am new to this mining stuff so any and all input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

i did mine, my hwe was in the 1000s on one machine

there was a few chips that didnt have much paste on it..
i used thermaltake tg-3

its what the store by me had in stock..

they dont really run any cooler but i get less hw errors..

i guess if you have problems it wouldnt hurt, but if not i wouldnt worry about it.


about the pool, ghash.io is the largest one i think.

but id try more then one out and find the one that works best for you.

[christhegoth]

Multipool Mining:

I got this from Bitmain.


--Balance: In balanced mode, the amount of diff1 solutions per pool is monitored as a rolling average per 10 minutes and if pools start getting more, it biases away from them to distribute work evenly. The share count is reset to the rolling average every 10 minutes to not send all work to one pool after it has been disabled/out for an extended period.

--Load Balance: Change multipool strategy from failover to even load balance.

--Failover only: Don't leak work to backup pools when primary pool is lagging.


When I use Load Balance I have 3 pool slots used.  2 are the same pool, and one is for a different pool.

I get about 80-gig on the single-slot pool, and the rest ( 360 gig ) on the double-slot pool.

I have it set to:

Load Balance, with...

Slot 1 - EclipseMC
Slot 2 - Eligius
Slot 3 - EclipseMC

Eclipse gets the 360 gig.


It does not like pools that update their hashrates quickly.  So you have to ignore the 5s and 15min figure.  It's the 1 hour figure you have to look at.

And it hates GHash when mining 2 pools ( or more ) at once.  It really messes up the stats.   Loads of low difficulty stuff, and it tricks GHash into thinking it's mining at 1TH or more.  A real mess.


Apart from that it's fine.



Clock-wise I use 2 cheap-ass supplies in a case mod ( because of the 12v rail issues ).  Each supply can put 26A minimum down the 12v.  I use 440w at the wall ( as they are cheap, so easy to replace if they blow; and there are 2 of them ) to get 440 GH/s.

If I dial back the clock to 200m I get 1.05 GH/w at an average of 400 GH/s.

If I dial the clock back to 175m I get 1.17 GH/w at an average of 340 GH/s.


Which is the same as if I dial down my Bitmine.ch Coincraft Desk.  Certainly interesting stuff, and it means that as difficulty rises you can adjust the power factor and squeeze a few more months out of your miners before you need to upgrade.

Power to hash ratio is adjustable, and that is certainly good news in this climate ( what the hell happened to BTC price of late?  Is this the Silk Road sale knock-on effect happening? )

[nocroom]

getting errors, hashing stops thread here if anyone can help

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=750439.0

[bobsav2121]

"If I dial back the clock to 200m I get 1.05 GH/w at an average of 400 GH/s.

If I dial the clock back to 175m I get 1.17 GH/w at an average of 340 GH/s.

That doesn't make any sense !

Stock clock will give you 440 GH/s at 350 W which is  0.79 W per Gh/s.

That's what I get on my S3's from Batch 1

Bob

[christhegoth]

"If I dial back the clock to 200m I get 1.05 GH/w at an average of 400 GH/s.

If I dial the clock back to 175m I get 1.17 GH/w at an average of 340 GH/s.

That doesn't make any sense !

Stock clock will give you 440 GH/s at 350 W which is  0.79 W per Gh/s.

That's what I get on my S3's from Batch 1

Bob

Most likely I'm not using anywhere near as nice a power supply as you.

[bobsav2121]

"If I dial back the clock to 200m I get 1.05 GH/w at an average of 400 GH/s.

If I dial the clock back to 175m I get 1.17 GH/w at an average of 340 GH/s.

That doesn't make any sense !

Stock clock will give you 440 GH/s at 350 W which is  0.79 W per Gh/s.

That's what I get on my S3's from Batch 1

Bob

Most likely I'm not using anywhere near as nice a power supply as you.

It's a fifty buck supply from Gekko Science, you should look into it. 

[pekatete]

It's a fifty buck supply from Gekko Science, you should look into it. 

Guys, wake up to server PSU's! they go for a pittance and are more robust than an equivalently rated (wattage wise) boxed PSU. Fifty bucks may sound like a steal until you find out an equivalent 2nd hand server PSU is 15 bucks give or take.
A server PSU's that would adequately power an overclocked S3 (and then some), can take the shape of:

http://store.vibrant.com/Dell-HY104.html?utm_source=amazon&utm_medium=ads&utm_campaign=Dell-HY104

also at fleabay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-Power-Supply-HY104-0HY104-Z670P-00-7001080-Y100-PSU-/360931800592?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item5409363610

[Phosphorous]

Yes, but how efficient are they?

[chadwickx16]

Yes, but how efficient are they?

Generally server psu's are gold or higher.
I'm currently using the one that gigampz sells.

[Phosphorous]

Yes, but how efficient are they?

Generally server psu's are gold or higher.
I'm currently using the one that gigampz sells.

Right, but I never see any efficiency claims or stats...

[pekatete]

Yes, but how efficient are they?

I would not be overly concerned about the the efficiency because server PSU's are built to power-up equipement for long periods and therefore they are going to always be more robust than an equivalent power rated desktop PSU. On the other hand, I would also not be surprised that they are Gold rated (or higher) as chadwickx16 suggests.

What would be ideal is that before you buy one, make sure it has the 12V rails adequate to power up whatever rig you need it for at your wall voltage and also ensure you find as much information about the PSU e.g turning it on, turning down the cooling fan ... etc (not hard to do via search engine). In most cases, you'll need to make the leads that power up your rig (or buy them from other miners) too.

Generally it is a LOT cheaper to get and deploy a server PSU than it is to get a boxed desktop PSU, and also a lot easier to get a server PSU working than it looks / seems.

[christhegoth]

It's a fifty buck supply from Gekko Science, you should look into it. 

Guys, wake up to server PSU's! they go for a pittance and are more robust than an equivalently rated (wattage wise) boxed PSU. Fifty bucks may sound like a steal until you find out an equivalent 2nd hand server PSU is 15 bucks give or take.
A server PSU's that would adequately power an overclocked S3 (and then some), can take the shape of:

http://store.vibrant.com/Dell-HY104.html?utm_source=amazon&utm_medium=ads&utm_campaign=Dell-HY104

also at fleabay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-Power-Supply-HY104-0HY104-Z670P-00-7001080-Y100-PSU-/360931800592?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item5409363610

Both of those do not have enough juice to run an s3. The s3 needs just over 30A on the 12v to do 370w at the wall, and I'd rather the supply do 40A so I have room to move.

What server PSU's do you use to power one s3? And what does it drain at the wall?

[pekatete]

Guys, wake up to server PSU's! they go for a pittance and are more robust than an equivalently rated (wattage wise) boxed PSU. Fifty bucks may sound like a steal until you find out an equivalent 2nd hand server PSU is 15 bucks give or take.
A server PSU's that would adequately power an overclocked S3 (and then some), can take the shape of:

http://store.vibrant.com/Dell-HY104.html?utm_source=amazon&utm_medium=ads&utm_campaign=Dell-HY104

also at fleabay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-Power-Supply-HY104-0HY104-Z670P-00-7001080-Y100-PSU-/360931800592?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item5409363610

Both of those do not have enough juice to run an s3. The s3 needs just over 30A on the 12v to do 370w at the wall, and I'd rather the supply do 40A so I have room to move.

What server PSU's do you use to power one s3? And what does it drain at the wall?

Are you speaking from a position of knowledge or are you speculating?
The linked PSU has 3 12V rails with more than enough amperage in the rails combined to power 2 S3's running slightly underclocked, and DEFINITELY to power a single S3 overclocked to the max.

Ffrom the specs: Output Max. Load 12V 54.4A

[christhegoth]

Guys, wake up to server PSU's! they go for a pittance and are more robust than an equivalently rated (wattage wise) boxed PSU. Fifty bucks may sound like a steal until you find out an equivalent 2nd hand server PSU is 15 bucks give or take.
A server PSU's that would adequately power an overclocked S3 (and then some), can take the shape of:

http://store.vibrant.com/Dell-HY104.html?utm_source=amazon&utm_medium=ads&utm_campaign=Dell-HY104

also at fleabay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-Power-Supply-HY104-0HY104-Z670P-00-7001080-Y100-PSU-/360931800592?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item5409363610

Both of those do not have enough juice to run an s3. The s3 needs just over 30A on the 12v to do 370w at the wall, and I'd rather the supply do 40A so I have room to move.

What server PSU's do you use to power one s3? And what does it drain at the wall?

Are you speaking from a position of knowledge or are you speculating?
The linked PSU has 3 12V rails with more than enough amperage in the rails combined to power 2 S3's running slightly underclocked, and DEFINITELY to power a single S3 overclocked to the max.

Ffrom the specs: Output Max. Load 12V 54.4A

Nope, I'm the victim of a bad website it would appear.

So the Poweredge 1950 HY104 can pump out that much juice? Blimey.

Where do you get the specs from?

[pekatete]

Guys, wake up to server PSU's! they go for a pittance and are more robust than an equivalently rated (wattage wise) boxed PSU. Fifty bucks may sound like a steal until you find out an equivalent 2nd hand server PSU is 15 bucks give or take.
A server PSU's that would adequately power an overclocked S3 (and then some), can take the shape of:

http://store.vibrant.com/Dell-HY104.html?utm_source=amazon&utm_medium=ads&utm_campaign=Dell-HY104

also at fleabay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-Power-Supply-HY104-0HY104-Z670P-00-7001080-Y100-PSU-/360931800592?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item5409363610

Both of those do not have enough juice to run an s3. The s3 needs just over 30A on the 12v to do 370w at the wall, and I'd rather the supply do 40A so I have room to move.

What server PSU's do you use to power one s3? And what does it drain at the wall?

Are you speaking from a position of knowledge or are you speculating?
The linked PSU has 3 12V rails with more than enough amperage in the rails combined to power 2 S3's running slightly underclocked, and DEFINITELY to power a single S3 overclocked to the max.

Ffrom the specs: Output Max. Load 12V 54.4A

Nope, I'm the victim of a bad website it would appear.

So the Poweredge 1950 HY104 can pump out that much juice? Blimey.

Where do you get the specs from?

Come off it! Where did YOU get yours from? In any case, simple maths will tell you 670 watts from 12V needs 55.83 A
I run my S3's off 550 watt Dell server PSU's overclocked to 262.5M, so I know for sure I can run an S3 on 670 watt PSU and not even need to have the PSU cooling fan running at the max.
Honestly, do some research .... thats what google is there for!

[christhegoth]

Guys, wake up to server PSU's! they go for a pittance and are more robust than an equivalently rated (wattage wise) boxed PSU. Fifty bucks may sound like a steal until you find out an equivalent 2nd hand server PSU is 15 bucks give or take.
A server PSU's that would adequately power an overclocked S3 (and then some), can take the shape of:

http://store.vibrant.com/Dell-HY104.html?utm_source=amazon&utm_medium=ads&utm_campaign=Dell-HY104

also at fleabay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-Power-Supply-HY104-0HY104-Z670P-00-7001080-Y100-PSU-/360931800592?pt=UK_Computing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item5409363610

Both of those do not have enough juice to run an s3. The s3 needs just over 30A on the 12v to do 370w at the wall, and I'd rather the supply do 40A so I have room to move.

What server PSU's do you use to power one s3? And what does it drain at the wall?

Are you speaking from a position of knowledge or are you speculating?
The linked PSU has 3 12V rails with more than enough amperage in the rails combined to power 2 S3's running slightly underclocked, and DEFINITELY to power a single S3 overclocked to the max.

Ffrom the specs: Output Max. Load 12V 54.4A

Nope, I'm the victim of a bad website it would appear.

So the Poweredge 1950 HY104 can pump out that much juice? Blimey.

Where do you get the specs from?

Come off it! Where did YOU get yours from? In any case, simple maths will tell you 670 watts from 12V needs 55.83 A
I run my S3's off 550 watt Dell server PSU's overclocked to 262.5M, so I know for sure I can run an S3 on 670 watt PSU and not even need to have the PSU cooling fan running at the max.
Honestly, do some research .... thats what google is there for!

Erm, I was googling and not getting very far. I think we're on crossed wires here. I'm not disagreeing with you; I'm learning from you.

Thank you for the info