Antminer S3 batch 6 overclocking

[cenicsoft]

Is upgrading to the latest CGminer for later batches of S3, including S3+ and upgraded S1's recommended?

Running the latest firmware, I upgraded all of the miners to CGMiner 4.6.1 and hashing restarts every few minutes. Overclocking is minimal - 237.5 to 243.75 with temps between 39 and 41 degrees.  The miner itself doesn't restart, only the hashing.

I had to revert back to the CGMiner included with the firmware and they hash continuously without trouble.

I have not experienced the restarts that have been reported in several threads after upgrading to the earlier version of cgminer 4.6.1
Could you try and get the exact version of cgminer that restarts? If you look at the OP, there are two versions of 4.6.1

CGMiner 4.6.1-141020 is what I used.

[luckypyrate]

Is upgrading to the latest CGminer for later batches of S3, including S3+ and upgraded S1's recommended?

Running the latest firmware, I upgraded all of the miners to CGMiner 4.6.1 and hashing restarts every few minutes. Overclocking is minimal - 237.5 to 243.75 with temps between 39 and 41 degrees.  The miner itself doesn't restart, only the hashing.

I had to revert back to the CGMiner included with the firmware and they hash continuously without trouble.

I have not experienced the restarts that have been reported in several threads after upgrading to the earlier version of cgminer 4.6.1
Could you try and get the exact version of cgminer that restarts? If you look at the OP, there are two versions of 4.6.1

I have not experienced this yet and I upgraded to http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s3/4.6.1-141020/cgminer

[pekatete]

Is upgrading to the latest CGminer for later batches of S3, including S3+ and upgraded S1's recommended?

Running the latest firmware, I upgraded all of the miners to CGMiner 4.6.1 and hashing restarts every few minutes. Overclocking is minimal - 237.5 to 243.75 with temps between 39 and 41 degrees.  The miner itself doesn't restart, only the hashing.

I had to revert back to the CGMiner included with the firmware and they hash continuously without trouble.

I have not experienced the restarts that have been reported in several threads after upgrading to the earlier version of cgminer 4.6.1
Could you try and get the exact version of cgminer that restarts? If you look at the OP, there are two versions of 4.6.1

CGMiner 4.6.1-141020 is what I used.

If you care to try (and it is worth your while), could you upgrade to 4.6.1-141009 (link in OP) which is what I used and do not get any unexpected restarts? Also, what batch of S3+'s is that?

[cenicsoft]

If you care to try (and it is worth your while), could you upgrade to 4.6.1-141009 (link in OP) which is what I used and do not get any unexpected restarts? Also, what batch of S3+'s is that?

That version is no longer available on the website.  S3+ Batch 8. I tried it on S3 Batch 5's as well. All of them exhibit the same issue.

Would using the latest (version 4.7) binary work on an S3 or does it need to be specifically compiled for the S3?

[pekatete]

If you care to try (and it is worth your while), could you upgrade to 4.6.1-141009 (link in OP) which is what I used and do not get any unexpected restarts? Also, what batch of S3+'s is that?

That version is no longer available on the website.  S3+ Batch 8. I tried it on S3 Batch 5's as well. All of them exhibit the same issue.

Would using the latest (version 4.7) binary work on an S3 or does it need to be specifically compiled for the S3?

I am not sure whether version 4.7 would work, but i see no reason why not if you can get it onto the S3. Basically, the one targeted for the S3 is simply stripped down to only include drivers for the S3, whereas the general release one contains drivers for multiple rigs (thus it should be bigger!).

I cannot seem to find the minor version of cgminer installed on my rigs (simply 4.6.1 via cgminer-api), but yes you are right, the older cgminer has now been pulled down (which was not the case a couple of hours ago!). I suggest the next logical thing to do is to ask on the cgminer thread.

[luckypyrate]

Either way, I don't want this cgminer version issue to take away from the immense help this post as been in ensuring my little mining Op is running as efficiently as possible.  So...thanks!!!

 

[luckypyrate]

Just got back from Best Buy and checked my miners again and it looks like we are doing much better.  Most are cruising above 500 GH/s and very low HW issues.  Also heat is hovering in the low to mid 40's c.  Thanks again Pekatete!

BTW my miners are batch 8 and 9 (two each) on the http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s3/4.6.1-141020/cgminer
 update.

[pekatete]

^^^ very well and you are welcome.
hopefully, you get to mine an entire block ... all on your own!

[luckypyrate]

^^^ very well and you are welcome.
hopefully, you get to mine an entire block ... all on your own!

Haha I gave up on that long ago.  Actually I did point my miners at bitsolo.net over the weekend while I was building my P2Pool server.  But now I have my own P2Pool server that I am running.  Mining a block is enticing...and I may devote my S1's to the task once I retire them, but I am trying to get a few more hashes out of them first...

[pekatete]

^^^ very well and you are welcome.
hopefully, you get to mine an entire block ... all on your own!

Haha I gave up on that long ago.  Actually I did point my miners at bitsolo.net over the weekend while I was building my P2Pool server.  But now I have my own P2Pool server that I am running.  Mining a block is enticing...and I may devote my S1's to the task once I retire them, but I am trying to get a few more hashes out of them first...

I'd not give up on it if I were you, it is just a matter of luck! And seeing you are running your own P2Pool node (and I am assuming on a Linux box), it will be trivial for you to setup a ckpool with a ckproxy (to point your S1's to) and run your solo efforts from there too whenever you choose (rather than some-one else's pool). Just a thought ....

[luckypyrate]

^^^ very well and you are welcome.
hopefully, you get to mine an entire block ... all on your own!

Haha I gave up on that long ago.  Actually I did point my miners at bitsolo.net over the weekend while I was building my P2Pool server.  But now I have my own P2Pool server that I am running.  Mining a block is enticing...and I may devote my S1's to the task once I retire them, but I am trying to get a few more hashes out of them first...

I'd not give up on it if I were you, it is just a matter of luck! And seeing you are running your own P2Pool node (and I am assuming on a Linux box), it will be trivial for you to setup a ckpool with a ckproxy (to point your S1's to) and run your solo efforts from there too whenever you choose (rather than some-one else's pool). Just a thought ....

Oh, hello devil on my shoulder.  I was wondering where you have been hiding lately...

[moss]

Even with the new cgminer file, my units are doing a little worse than with the previous one. I am guessing I am losing around 10-14 GH/s per device, which is not bad but when you have 11 of them it makes a slight difference.

Do you have the latest firmware on them? i had exactly the same experience with my batch 6 units and reverted to the stock cgminer, however (again as is documented in this thread), when I updated to the latest firmware, which I had to do when upgrading my S1's, I get the same result as the stock, or slightly better, but with the security flaws plugged.

Yeah I have the latest firmware, it is dated 8/26/2014. My issue is probably the 5 batch 1 miners I have, even though some of my batch 5 units are a little slow as well.

Yep, the earlier batches do not seem to be up to it. I suspect it is due to their poor temp handling and suggested to someone to re-do their heat paste; Though he had some good results using a conductive compound, he re-applied using a non conductive paste and has not reported their results. With several units .... that would be a day's work! Worth it? Not sure.

Hi m8, not sure if it's me you're thinking of above, but I did have my best results with Arctic Silver conductive paste and my latest application of Zalman paste was a lot of effort for not much reward.  I've just bought some Innovation Cooling IC Diamond 7-Carat thermal compound, so will give that a whirl when I have a chance.  Still deliberating about doing the big central heatsinks - presumably this involves removing the blades?  Is that a straightforward process?  I get funny results with my asics at different frequencies: one 'x' always shows up at 225, but not at higher frequencies and similarly with some of the others, so although I always get an 'x' at higher frequencies somewhere, it's often in different places.  Also, my hashrate is rubbish at higher freqs anyway now, it only goes quicker at 231 and that doesn't seem to last long.  I tend to keep it at the default 118 now and main task is to stop my hashrate dwindling away, which gradually seems to happen on my problem s3.
BTW, I've upgraded to ck's latest cgminer (4.6.1-141020) and seems ok so far - no restarts, etc.  I also removed --queue 4096 and added --lowmem in the cgminer startup script, as recommended by ck.
 

[pekatete]

Even with the new cgminer file, my units are doing a little worse than with the previous one. I am guessing I am losing around 10-14 GH/s per device, which is not bad but when you have 11 of them it makes a slight difference.

Do you have the latest firmware on them? i had exactly the same experience with my batch 6 units and reverted to the stock cgminer, however (again as is documented in this thread), when I updated to the latest firmware, which I had to do when upgrading my S1's, I get the same result as the stock, or slightly better, but with the security flaws plugged.

Yeah I have the latest firmware, it is dated 8/26/2014. My issue is probably the 5 batch 1 miners I have, even though some of my batch 5 units are a little slow as well.

Yep, the earlier batches do not seem to be up to it. I suspect it is due to their poor temp handling and suggested to someone to re-do their heat paste; Though he had some good results using a conductive compound, he re-applied using a non conductive paste and has not reported their results. With several units .... that would be a day's work! Worth it? Not sure.

Hi m8, not sure if it's me you're thinking of above, but I did have my best results with Arctic Silver conductive paste and my latest application of Zalman paste was a lot of effort for not much reward.  I've just bought some Innovation Cooling IC Diamond 7-Carat thermal compound, so will give that a whirl when I have a chance.  Still deliberating about doing the big central heatsinks - presumably this involves removing the blades?  Is that a straightforward process?  I get funny results with my asics at different frequencies: one 'x' always shows up at 225, but not at higher frequencies and similarly with some of the others, so although I always get an 'x' at higher frequencies somewhere, it's often in different places.  Also, my hashrate is rubbish at higher freqs anyway now, it only goes quicker at 231 and that doesn't seem to last long.  I tend to keep it at the default 118 now and main task is to stop my hashrate dwindling away, which gradually seems to happen on my problem s3.
BTW, I've upgraded to ck's latest cgminer (4.6.1-141020) and seems ok so far - no restarts, etc.  I also removed --queue 4096 and added --lowmem in the cgminer startup script, as recommended by ck.
 

Yes moss, that was a reference to you, and thanks for updating us. Bummer about having to run at stock freqs ...
Removing board from the heatsink does not involve much more than removing the top heatsink, just another set of screws then you slide it off (you do not have to unscrew the heatsinks from the braces).
I have not tried adding the --lowmem switch yet as I do not readily know the process, but will dig around tonite (or tomorow) and try it.
Thanks again for keeping us up to date.

[cenicsoft]

If you care to try (and it is worth your while), could you upgrade to 4.6.1-141009 (link in OP) which is what I used and do not get any unexpected restarts? Also, what batch of S3+'s is that?

That version is no longer available on the website.  S3+ Batch 8. I tried it on S3 Batch 5's as well. All of them exhibit the same issue.

Would using the latest (version 4.7) binary work on an S3 or does it need to be specifically compiled for the S3?

I am not sure whether version 4.7 would work, but i see no reason why not if you can get it onto the S3. Basically, the one targeted for the S3 is simply stripped down to only include drivers for the S3, whereas the general release one contains drivers for multiple rigs (thus it should be bigger!).

I cannot seem to find the minor version of cgminer installed on my rigs (simply 4.6.1 via cgminer-api), but yes you are right, the older cgminer has now been pulled down (which was not the case a couple of hours ago!). I suggest the next logical thing to do is to ask on the cgminer thread.

Looks like Bitmain released new firmware with version 4.6.1. I upgraded a couple of miners to that to see if I get better results. I did notice they changed the display on the mining status page slightly in the new version.

[pekatete]

Looks like Bitmain released new firmware with version 4.6.1. I upgraded a couple of miners to that to see if I get better results. I did notice they changed the display on the mining status page slightly in the new version.

You are right! They have had the new firmware up for a while going by the date, i.e 13th October 2014
I'll update one of my S3's and see how well it does ... thanks for the headsup!

[cenicsoft]

Looks like Bitmain released new firmware with version 4.6.1. I upgraded a couple of miners to that to see if I get better results. I did notice they changed the display on the mining status page slightly in the new version.

You are right! They have had the new firmware up for a while going by the date, i.e 13th October 2014
I'll update one of my S3's and see how well it does ... thanks for the headsup!

The date on the firmware is from last week, but they've only had it up for day or two. I did notice a major problem. The miner configuration page has some HTML errors preventing you from being able to make any changes to that page, including frequency.

I'll report it to Bitmain.

[pekatete]

Looks like Bitmain released new firmware with version 4.6.1. I upgraded a couple of miners to that to see if I get better results. I did notice they changed the display on the mining status page slightly in the new version.

You are right! They have had the new firmware up for a while going by the date, i.e 13th October 2014
I'll update one of my S3's and see how well it does ... thanks for the headsup!

The date on the firmware is from last week, but they've only had it up for day or two. I did notice a major problem. The miner configuration page has some HTML errors preventing you from being able to make any changes to that page, including frequency.

I'll report it to Bitmain.

That is the under-statement of the year thus far!
The firmware update is completely un-usable! The configuration page is where you point to your mining pool from, and if the page can not load, you can not change / add any pools and the rig defaults to mining on the shipped pools (bitmain's pools?). Honestly Bitmain, your reputation is going down the drain here!

[pekatete]

OK, there is a fix for the error thrown by the new firmware update.
Do this ONLY after you have updated to the firmware of 13th Oct 2014
1. SSH into you S3 and login
2. Enter this: sed -i 's/Save\&Apply/Save\&Apply/g' /usr/lib/lua/luci/model/cbi/cgminer/cgminer.lua
Press enter and all should be OK. You can now enter the miner configuration page.

EDIT: Updated OP with instructions.

[cenicsoft]

OK, there is a fix for the error thrown by the new firmware update.
Do this ONLY after you have updated to the firmware of 13th Oct 2014
1. SSH into you S3 and login
2. Enter this: sed -i 's/Save\&Apply/Save\&Apply/g' /usr/lib/lua/luci/model/cbi/cgminer/cgminer.lua
Press enter and all should be OK. You can now enter the miner configuration page.

EDIT: Updated OP with instructions.

Bitmain released a new firmware fixing the issue.

[badz]

Have anyone damaged a unit by OCing to like 250?

Or is it "safe" to just max them out? (if you don't get high numbers of HW-error)...

It there anything ells that I should look out for while OC to know if i run them to hard?

Best regards, and happy Halloween!

/Badz