ANTMINER S4 Discussion and Support Thread

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Did you see the video I posted?

http://youtu.be/uiZPOZcI20o

This wasn't a burnt smell only. visible smoke billowing and this was after it had calmed down a bit.

Not to lessen the severity of this issue but that is normal for power electronics. The volume released can be rather impressive. Once released the Majik Smoke (and smell) from popped caps and/or burnt circuit boards lingers for quite a while. The smell in the rack case will last days... Point is any actual fire is wholly contained within the psu case and miner case. Once the power is cut from circuits burning open/circuit breakers opening any actual fire ceases leaving only lingering memories.

[klondike_bar]

Honestly, miner manufacturers should just have us buy our own PSU's and avoid all the issues of fires, cables, CE markings, customs issues, not to mention the extra weight to ship it out.  If they want to recommend a PSU and provide a spot in the case for it, so it can be racked properly (For those units designed for racks) great.  But stop with the wholesale PSU market, somebody is going to die before too long and that's the last thing we need in the Bitcoin negative news of the week.  Just one man's opinion.

Integrated PSU can be a very good option if it is a decent psu and particularly if the miner and psu work well together.

Look at the spondoolies gear for an example - the miner website can tell you the voltage, wattage draw, and many other helpful details about how the psu is operating, and the slim psu being built in makes the spondoolies hardware the absolute best for plug-and-play.

Messing with external psus and wiring can get crazy. A clean solution is the key.

Lets be honest, of everything they do well, PSUs are not one of them. They're so loud that they exclude themselves from any inhabited buildings, where as if they went to a larger formfactor and could use ATX PSUs there wouldn't be that problem.

I agree - the Sp10 was horrifyingly loud even at 40% fan speeds. however, if you are able to operate without noise limits they are the best machines for build quality, reliability, and setup.

[dogie]

I agree - the Sp10 was horrifyingly loud even at 40% fan speeds. however, if you are able to operate without noise limits they are the best machines for build quality, reliability, and setup.

The part I most disagreed with was it didn't have to be that way, at 40% fans most of the noise was made by the PSU and not the actual miner. Same with the SP30, its exceptionally loud because of the PSUs primarily, which is as a result of them aggressively minimising their products.

[klondike_bar]

I agree - the Sp10 was horrifyingly loud even at 40% fan speeds. however, if you are able to operate without noise limits they are the best machines for build quality, reliability, and setup.

The part I most disagreed with was it didn't have to be that way, at 40% fans most of the noise was made by the PSU and not the actual miner. Same with the SP30, its exceptionally loud because of the PSUs primarily, which is as a result of them aggressively minimising their products.

i think its more an issue of the PSU - because it requires 40mm fans for its form factor. In the SP30 it would be nice if they used a single PSu with 80mm fan instead of a pair with small fans. would make a huge difference.

IMO thats why the S2 is great, those 140mm fans push lots of air even at slow speed and low noise

[Rabinovitch]

It is obvious that the miner should be shipped to buyers without PSU. But it wasn't so obvious for Bitmain when they were developing S4... Why?..

[-ck]

Here's another binary for S4 owners
http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer

This one works a heck of a lot better on pools that wouldn't work previously, and slightly better on the rest.

[suchmoon]

Here's another binary for S4 owners
http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer

This one works a heck of a lot better on pools that wouldn't work previously, and slightly better on the rest.

Great effort. I sent you a small donation and I don't even own an S4 

On the other hand I think 95% of my rigs run cgminer or clones, so there's that. Much appreciated.

[ScryptAsic]

It is obvious that the miner should be shipped to buyers without PSU. But it wasn't so obvious for Bitmain when they were developing S4... Why?..

Why? Isn't it better to include PSU? Its more neat

[-ck]

Since I'm not packaging firmware as such, I've submitted just the necessary changes so that bitmain can include them if they wish (which I hope they do). To be merged back into mainline cgminer would require far more effort than I'm currently willing to put in, and new firmware will benefit the most s4 users fastest.

[Prelude]

Thank you so much for the time you've invested to make the S4 more funtional, ckolivas. I'm going to send you a donation tomorrow morning.

I'd like to try ck's new version tomorrow, but I have no idea how to go about updating cgminer. Can anyone shed some light, or point me towards a guide?

[-ck]

Thank you so much for the time you've invested to make the S4 more funtional, ckolivas. I'm going to send you a donation tomorrow morning.

I'd like to try ck's new version tomorrow, but I have no idea how to go about updating cgminer. Can anyone shed some light, or point me towards a guide?

Assuming your S4's IP address was say 192.168.1.99:

Code:

ssh -l root 192.168.1.99 (or equivalent with putty)
wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer
mv /usr/bin/cgminer /usr/bin/cgminer.bak
chmod +x cgminer
mv cgminer /usr/bin/cgminer
/etc/init.d/cgminer.sh restart

I think that might not keep across a power cycle though.

[Rabinovitch]

Why? Isn't it better to include PSU? Its more neat

1) You can quickly replace the PSU at your local shop if something go wrong with it, without necessity to send it back to China and so on;
2) Shipping cost usually depends directly on the weight of the package, and good qualitative PSU weighs several kg (2.3 for Corsair AX1200i).

Very likely that these are two main reasons. 

[allcoinminer]

Why? Isn't it better to include PSU? Its more neat

1) You can quickly replace the PSU at your local shop if something go wrong with it, without necessity to send it back to China and so on;
2) Shipping cost usually depends directly on the weight of the package, and good qualitative PSU weighs several kg (2.3 for Corsair AX1200i).

Very likely that these are two main reasons.  

It was better for them to omit sending power supply than asking the buyer to buy their own power cable.
Less wait, so lower shipping charge.
Lower hardware price and shipping cost, so lower customs duty.

[allcoinminer]

Here's another binary for S4 owners
http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer

This one works a heck of a lot better on pools that wouldn't work previously, and slightly better on the rest.

Great effort. I sent you a small donation and I don't even own an S4  

On the other hand I think 95% of my rigs run cgminer or clones, so there's that. Much appreciated.

ckolivas, you are too big ckolivas.
600 BTC in hand in a single address, your mined them too early or doing some business.
Or, everything is donation for your great works.

Much appreciating your continued effort in improving the cgminer especially for this time for S4.
Do you have some comments on how mining will turn now? A lot of home miners stopped mining due to -ve ROI.

[dogie]

Why? Isn't it better to include PSU? Its more neat

1) You can quickly replace the PSU at your local shop if something go wrong with it, without necessity to send it back to China and so on;
2) Shipping cost usually depends directly on the weight of the package, and good qualitative PSU weighs several kg (2.3 for Corsair AX1200i).

Very likely that these are two main reasons. 

1) No you can't, unless you want to spend $350 on a PSU. You also can't because of the formfactor.
2) It depends on weight and volumetric weight. Most of these units's boxes are sized so their volumetric weight matches the shipping weight. There isn't that much flexibility to suddenly make the boxes smaller.

[allcoinminer]

Why? Isn't it better to include PSU? Its more neat

1) You can quickly replace the PSU at your local shop if something go wrong with it, without necessity to send it back to China and so on;
2) Shipping cost usually depends directly on the weight of the package, and good qualitative PSU weighs several kg (2.3 for Corsair AX1200i).

Very likely that these are two main reasons.  

1) No you can't, unless you want to spend $350 on a PSU. You also can't because of the formfactor.
2) It depends on weight and volumetric weight. Most of these units's boxes are sized so their volumetric weight matches the shipping weight. There isn't that much flexibility to suddenly make the boxes smaller.

Server Power supplies are so cheap so, why should we go to $350 premium ones.
My assumption is that, S1, S3 are for DIY people and S2, S4 are for non-DIYs, so, PSU without an S2 and S4 even if prices are higher.

[-ck]

Do you have some comments on how mining will turn now? A lot of home miners stopped mining due to -ve ROI.

Interesting question. All the more interesting because no one has actually asked me before on the forums, even though I've discussed it at length on IRC and am very happy at any time for people to know what I think.

Mining died for the community/home miner a long time ago. It's just that the community miners haven't realised or accepted it yet. Community mining is only 15% of the hashrate now and shrinking. They're always hopeful and expectant but there really is no reason for them to be that way. Mining has gone to the data halls and the massive farms, mostly run by the manufacturers themselves who have the ability to create hardware on the cheap and offer it to the select few entities who can help their mining operations or provide funding or cheap hosting, instead of the consumer buyer market which is annoying, small time, noisy and boring. The only reason they continue to sell to that regular consumer market is there are enough people who have unrealistic expectations of making a profit somehow because they simply cannot believe that the numbers are stacked against them, such that the hardware manufacturers can charge a ridiculous premium to sell to that market to make it worth their while.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been watching bitcoin at large, but it will continue to surprise bitcoin miners, past, present and future. The reason miners don't see it is they're so blinded by the concept of a "money making machine" or the "goose that laid the golden egg" that they just can't see it.

Here's a quote of mine. Note the date on it:

Long term, cgminer will be the lowest overhead c software to drive ASICs to do bitcoin mining, with lots of code in it that is no longer relevant to BTC mining. What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

To give you an idea of how long this has been known to the bitcoin community, even if miners refuse to see it, I think it's best to leave the final word to Satoshi himself, the inventor of bitcoin:

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate.

[ImogenV]

Thank you so much for the time you've invested to make the S4 more funtional, ckolivas. I'm going to send you a donation tomorrow morning.

I'd like to try ck's new version tomorrow, but I have no idea how to go about updating cgminer. Can anyone shed some light, or point me towards a guide?

Assuming your S4's IP address was say 192.168.1.99:

Code:

ssh -l root 192.168.1.99 (or equivalent with putty)
wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer
mv /usr/bin/cgminer /usr/bin/cgminer.bak
chmod +x cgminer
mv cgminer /usr/bin/cgminer
/etc/init.d/cgminer.sh restart

I think that might not keep across a power cycle though.

I did this, turned the power off, turned it back on, and I have noticed that the web gui has become quite slow?
previously when navigating through it, it was quite fast on loading pages, etc

Also, after ssh the above, after reboot, in terminal it shows;

PARAMS = --bitmain-dev /dev/bitmain-asic --bitmain-options 115200:32:8:7:200:0782:0725 --bitmain-checkn2diff --bitmain-hwerror --queue 8192

Is that anything important?

Thank you for your help ck.

[moss]

Do you have some comments on how mining will turn now? A lot of home miners stopped mining due to -ve ROI.

Interesting question. All the more interesting because no one has actually asked me before on the forums, even though I've discussed it at length on IRC and am very happy at any time for people to know what I think.

Mining died for the community/home miner a long time ago. It's just that the community miners haven't realised or accepted it yet. Community mining is only 15% of the hashrate now and shrinking. They're always hopeful and expectant but there really is no reason for them to be that way. Mining has gone to the data halls and the massive farms, mostly run by the manufacturers themselves who have the ability to create hardware on the cheap and offer it to the select few entities who can help their mining operations or provide funding or cheap hosting, instead of the consumer buyer market which is annoying, small time, noisy and boring. The only reason they continue to sell to that regular consumer market is there are enough people who have unrealistic expectations of making a profit somehow because they simply cannot believe that the numbers are stacked against them, such that the hardware manufacturers can charge a ridiculous premium to sell to that market to make it worth their while.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been watching bitcoin at large, but it will continue to surprise bitcoin miners, past, present and future. The reason miners don't see it is they're so blinded by the concept of a "money making machine" or the "goose that laid the golden egg" that they just can't see it.

How low would the price of bitcoin need to fall for mining to be unsustainable for the big mining companies?  If the resulting dramatic reduction in network hash caused a corresponding reduction in difficulty, would mining then become sustainable again for the home miner?

[-ck]

Also, after ssh the above, after reboot, in terminal it shows;

PARAMS = --bitmain-dev /dev/bitmain-asic --bitmain-options 115200:32:8:7:200:0782:0725 --bitmain-checkn2diff --bitmain-hwerror --queue 8192

Is that anything important?

They're the default options. I'd suggest editing /etc/init.d/cgminer.sh and remove the "--queue 8192" and add "--lowmem" instead and then restart.