Technobit HEX4M - 400GH BlackArrow based miner reviewed

[2GOOD]

We've seen a lot of boards from Technobit and they all look pretty much the same - 8/16 chips on small board with an industrial heatsink. Now it's time to present you something slighly diffrent in a disgin point of view - The new Technobit board with 4 chips Minion chips from BlackArrow - HEX4M



This miner is huge compared to older products, the board itself is 250x250mm and the aluminium heatsink on the bottom is slightly larger 250x300mm
It's great to see that Technobit decided to use standard CPU coolers for this device, but will get to that later.


As usual the product was well packed, but I highly recommend to order the CPU coolers from your local retailer. First you will get lower shipping fees and it's more secure for the board to travel without the heatsinks attached, despite it's well mounted on aluminium plate.

Specification and Performance:



As mentioned above the board is equipped with 4 x 28nm Minion ASIC chips, BlackArrow insist that it's speed is 120GH with efficiency of 0.75 watts per Ghash on the other side Technobit advertise the miner as 400GH/s i.e. 100GH per chip. lets see the real world results:



Indeed with a clock settings 1016 Mhz and voltage of 0.805V the board speed is 400GH, however I was unable to achieve the stated speeds from BlackArrow's specifications: 1200Mhz @ 0.82V - 120GH.
Here is the performance chart of the board at various configurations:



The power supply used for the test is FSP Aurum S 600W, it is rated GOLD which means 90% efficiency, that's what the second power column is representing Wall power consumption minus 10%, the efficiency of the board is calculated with these numbers. The board is power by 2 x PCIe power connector, there is a space for a third connector but apparently Technobit decided that it's not needed. IMO 210 watts per PCIe connector is a lot (70W per wire) and maybe later revisions the board will be shipped with 3 connectors. As seen form the chart the efficiency for the whole miner is around 1W/GH, if we take into account 10-15% loss in DC/DC conversion the eff of the chip itself is 0.85 W/Ghash/second. I recommend running the board at 1016/805 which may differ from the default settings from technobit. Undervolt tests here

Cooling:



The top of the ASICs are cooled by AC Freezer 7 PRO Rev.2, but you can use any Intel s1150 compatible, since the coolers are not included by default - you have to order them separately from Technobit or for example they are on sale at **newegg - 25$

The whole board is placed on a big aluminium heatsink which has two functions:
1. To cool down the bottom of the board - chips and regulators
2. To prevent the board from bending

There is an extra Sunon 120mm fan to cool the base.

Keep in mind that I have a pre-production unit, the final revision will have special holdings for the bottom fan and the 4 "legs" will be at the corners of the board with the option for stacking. Also the boards will be shipped with custom made (lower) stands to attach the CPU cooler.

I'm happy to say that this unit is relatively quiet and totally useful in home environments.

Pricing:
At the time of writing you can buy HEX4M from Technobit for 379,00€ without the top coolers. As always investment in bitcoin equipment is risky but let's see where this price sits in comparison with other products from Technobit and various bitcoin mining manufactures:



As you can see from the chart, HEX4M is reasonably priced but once again the BITMAIN offers better price per GH for its Antminers, especially if you live in a country where Customs are not a problem for the rest of us importing an Chinese miner can be a hassle. The other problem for Antminer S3 is that it's currently sold out. Other interesting product to compete with the HEX4M is the new board from Technobit based on AsciMiner BE200 chips, I hope to get mine soon and review it.

Host device and Software:
As all other products from Technobit this is no exception, you need a host device to control the board that can be:
1. Take one TP-Link TL-MR3020 Router and flash it with the firmware from Technobit's website. Here is a great tutorial by Zich. You can also order it directly from them at slightly higher price, but pre-flashed and ready to rock. If you plan to use the router you will also need USB hub.
2. Windows based PC with patched version of cgminer that supports the HEX boards, more info how to run it here: CGMINER Windows build for TECHNOBIT's Boards (coming  soon)
3. On a Linux based PC it will best to just compile cgminer with the latest patch from Technobit or download my build for Ubuntu x64 (coming  soon)
4. You can also use Raspberry Pi as a host device - but it's not recommended - more info

Here is how to apply patch 0.3.6 and compile cgminer on linux host:

Code:

git clone https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer.git
cd cgminer
wget http://bitcoinbg.eu/tools/technobit/rev_45dbbb4cac091e41b0123fd211b6293436921681.patch
git checkout 45dbbb4cac091e41b0123fd211b6293436921681
patch < rev_45dbbb4cac091e41b0123fd211b6293436921681.patch
./autogen.sh --enable-hexminerm
make

Start cgminer with the following line:

Code:

sudo ./cgminer -c ./cgminer.conf --hexminerm-options 4:1016 --hexminerm-voltage 805 --hexminerm-chip-mask 15 --hexminerm-hw-err-res 10 --hexminerm-nonce-timeout-secs 3 --hexminerm-pic-roll 90

where cgminer.conf is in the same folder and with your regular settings.



Pros:

• Reasonably priced
• Good Efficiency
• Availability
• Software voltage control
• Quiet

Cons:

• No thermal sensor
• ...

Conclusion:
The efficiency of the board is good, but I was wondering if 1W/GH is good or bad at today's standards. The miner is very stable and pleased with the final product. In the end the Bulgaria based company once again did a great job with this challenge and AFAIK Technobit is the only one to offer assembly service for Minion ASICs.

Full gallery can be found here: http://imgbox.com/g/3gEyEjC5Ck

best
2GOOD

P.S.
===
I personally expected more LEDs on this board

[bbxx]

nice miner but expensive (if you add coolers it is much more expensive)

you forgot to place btcgarden miner who is now leader about $/GH

stock
520$/630GH/660W
oc
520$/700GH/780W

[2GOOD]

nice miner but expensive (if you add coolers it is much more expensive)

you forgot to place btcgarden miner who is now leader about $/GH

stock
520$/630GH/660W
oc
520$/700GH/780W

Thanks for the info, I'll update the chart later.

Very exciting, i have one being produced by Technobit and can't wait for it to get here. I was wondering how this will stand and i appreciate the info (knowing now that it has legs and will be stackable). I can't wait to see if others are able to get a higher hashrate with theirs.

IMO it's just not worth it to clock above 400GH.

[loshia]

Excellent review as always

But please do not recommend to use Pi at all. The main issue with Pi is that Ethernet is hooked up to USB internal switch. In other words Ethernet is sharing same interrupt with USB by hardware design. Which is a big disaster for heavy USB I/O.

[loshia]

Excellent review as always

But please do not recommend to use Pi at all. The main issue with Pi is that Ethernet is hooked up to USB internal switch. In other words Ethernet is sharing same interrupt with USB by hardware design. Which is a big disaster for heavy USB I/O.

How bad would this be? Are we talking a dead pi in months or something else?

We are talking about underperforming USB miners in general - no matter if they are technobit miners or other brand. The condition is Pi USB to be used as communication point. However some other manufactures use SPI for communication. In Pi SPI case i do not know if it works or not.

The minor issue is that after a couple power offs / ons Pi etas SD card. You need to reinstall whole thing
It is personal opinion of course
Big folks are using beaglebone....

[Qeu]

Thanks for the review.
Do you have any idea how hot the unit gets, are the bottom/top heatsinks feeling hot or just a bit warm?
I hope I can use the pushpin heatsink/fan combo's that I bought already, looks like the top ones are bolted through the bottom sink?
Would it be possible to just drill oversized holes where the pushpins should go, in the lower sink, so the top one could use the pushpins they come with?

[2GOOD]

Thanks for the review.
Do you have any idea how hot the unit gets, are the bottom/top heatsinks feeling hot or just a bit warm?
I hope I can use the pushpin heatsink/fan combo's that I bought already, looks like the top ones are bolted through the bottom sink?
Would it be possible to just drill oversized holes where the pushpins should go, in the lower sink, so the top one could use the pushpins they come with?

Actually the top coolers are just warm, but thats normal since they are doing a great job, AC Freezer Pro is a decent cooler. On the other hand the bottom heatsink is rather hot, I just did some temperature readings at room temp 28C - top cooler around 36, bottom 39C but IMO it can handle much more so the bottom fan can be replaced with something at 1500 rpm.

About the pushpin heatsink I don't think this would work, the chip is slightly lower than the standard Intel CPU in the socket and I heard from Marto that they will ship the boards with special reisers/brackets. As you can see on my photos the metal holder is bend to eliminate that gap. So your pushpull cooler won't touch the chip's surface unless you take out some of the plastic so it can go further down and actually hook to the aluminium instead of the board if you understand what I mean. Anyway you have to try it out maybe a dremel can help.

[Qeu]

Ah thanks, well I really hope an easy fix will be available, sucks if I might have thrown away a load of money on heatsinks as I was told a standard 1150 fitting would be okay.

[jimmothy]

Nice review.

Have you tested it undervolted to 0.6V?

Wondering if it can go anywhere near 0.5w/gh at the wall like BA claims.

[2GOOD]

Nice review.

Have you tested it undervolted to 0.6V?

Wondering if it can go anywhere near 0.5w/gh at the wall like BA claims.

Thank You

I tried 700Mhz at 0.70v it was hashing with ~260GH and some HW errors, but can't recall the consumption, if you give some settings I'll be glad to test the undervolt capabilities.

[nightyj]

Great review   , bottom heatsink is a  nice surprise  

[jimmothy]

Nice review.

Have you tested it undervolted to 0.6V?

Wondering if it can go anywhere near 0.5w/gh at the wall like BA claims.

Thank You

I tried 700Mhz at 0.70v it was hashing with ~260GH and some HW errors, but can't recall the consumption, if you give some settings I'll be glad to test the undervolt capabilities.

Not sure what the clock freq should be at 0.6v. Maybe try ~500MHz?

[loshia]

Excellent review as always

But please do not recommend to use Pi at all. The main issue with Pi is that Ethernet is hooked up to USB internal switch. In other words Ethernet is sharing same interrupt with USB by hardware design. Which is a big disaster for heavy USB I/O.

How bad would this be? Are we talking a dead pi in months or something else?

We are talking about underperforming USB miners in general - no matter if they are technobit miners or other brand. The condition is Pi USB to be used as communication point. However some other manufactures use SPI for communication. In Pi SPI case i do not know if it works or not.

The minor issue is that after a couple power offs / ons Pi etas SD card. You need to reinstall whole thing
It is personal opinion of course
Big folks are using beaglebone....

So beaglebone doesn't have this issue? I know it has mining OS for it and this should be compatible, i may need to pick one up. I am not a fan of networking and miners to be honest (although i may need to convert).

Pick up tplink for Technobit products

[marto74]

Great review as always

[btmtb]

Thanks for the interesting review 2Good. Your original review of the Hex16A2 was one of the things that convinced me to give it a try last year, and I'm glad to say that thanks to marto and bobsag's efforts to help out after the BlackCrap Arrow failure, I'm now eagerly awaiting delivery of my Hex4M boards. Nice to have a bit of background insight before they land.

[kea808]

Great review as always

Will the new boards have 2 or 3 power connectors?

[marto74]

Great review as always

Will the new boards have 2 or 3 power connectors?

2 is enough

[Qeu]

Would it be possible to run 25 hex4m boards from a single netbook/laptop/pc, of course with the necessary usb hubs?

[sorehammer]

Cheers for this chap now have a much clearer picture of what I'm getting soon.

[Taugeran]

....

Would you be able to take a detail macro shot  of the voltage regulators. I'm curious what Marto has used since it looks like some Infineon FETs. Just wanted to check it out

So pics if you can or chip package number if you can't?