ANTMINER U3 Discussion and Support Thread

[dogie]

Soooooo....  The power adapter brick that comes with it almost melted and caught my house of fire.  I started to smell something weird and I picked up the brick, turned it over and found this:
http://imageshack.com/a/img673/4097/zwk6hu.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img910/791/PL0Pm4.jpg

So what did I do?  I cut off the barrel plug, soldered it onto a molex, and plugged it back in...

What crap is BITMAIN releasing these days where stock settings may cause a house fire?! 

thats a bit worrying... exact same adapters i got. Very interested if you get any response from them..

I have some of those in the UK and they're cool to the touch fully loaded. Maybe they don't like 120V as much.

You're never going to be able to sue anything, that PSU is ages away from self igniting or igniting something else [as the materials are designed to be], and you'll be chasing some unknown entity in China. You have no damages and you'll be paying 25x anything you could ever get back in fees.

[Phosphorous]

The past week I have been asking for an RMA # to return my U3 from Bitmain and others. I keep getting responses on where to send the U3 but never an RMA #. Do I need an RMA # or not?

Yes and no is the answer. How are you in contact with Bitmain?

The have PM'd me on here in response to my PM where I explictly asked if I needed an RMA #, instead they just replied with an address for where to send it. I then called and left a message several days ago asking for an TMA # and no return phone call. I have been holding off for over a week now to send this back. If I don't need an RMA # they need to just say so so I can get this damn paper weight in the mail.

As long as you include your original Bitmain order ID then you should be good to go. I'm unsure if BitmainWarranty is handling returns from 3rd party sales at the moment. PM them again if you're third party, if not you can send with order ID.

I didn't buy though Bitmain. IIRC, ordering through Bitmain required you to get 50 of them or some huge quantity. Mine came from Minersource.net, and they ignored my initial requests for support and they censored (refused to post) my review of the product.

[irobb]

Still getting ZOMBIE after a few hours on both version of CG Miner...

What is your stable bat file look like (either version of cgminer) ?

[Phosphorous]

Talking to me?

cgminer.exe -o {pool} -u {user} -p 123 --rock-freq 290 --anu-freq 290
I am also running a Rockminer R-Box and 2 Ant U2's.

[irobb]

Oh sorry, I will clarify; Anyone with stable settings with AMu3 please chime in your settings and state if 4.6.1 or 4.9

[Visvas]

Do not believe you'll ever get these devices truly "stable", but it's been more stable with this setup than any more clocking.
4.9 : cgminer.exe -O username:pass -o stratum+tcp://pool:port --au3-freq 240 --au3-volt 785

But, you shouldnt really need the --au3 options to get good enough performance from the U3s. testing without any options right now, seems to average just slightly lower. But one of my units are constantly giving me 15-20 less GHs than the other

Not done a really good study of it, but it seems i get less zombie fallouts after i added some more mechanics for passive cooling of the units. My shift work effort logged seems to have stabilized on a higher level recently too, which would support that.
 

[Phosphorous]

Is anybody able to run their U3 without it going Zombie once or more times a day?

[irobb]

Do not believe you'll ever get these devices truly "stable", but it's been more stable with this setup than any more clocking.
4.9 : cgminer.exe -O username:pass -o stratum+tcp://pool:port --au3-freq 240 --au3-volt 785

But, you shouldnt really need the --au3 options to get good enough performance from the U3s. testing without any options right now, seems to average just slightly lower. But one of my units are constantly giving me 15-20 less GHs than the other

Not done a really good study of it, but it seems i get less zombie fallouts after i added some more mechanics for passive cooling of the units. My shift work effort logged seems to have stabilized on a higher level recently too, which would support that.
 

I will try it... Maybe I should disassemble then check thermal paste and connectivity too...

[ppumkin]

I have 2 of these. I actually had to return one to Amazon seller because I couldnt get more than 45ghs from it. Also dumped the original USB because not 1 of them worked on Linux for some reason. Chopped the PSU barrel pin and connected to dedicated 450W PSU both on separate channels. Running on Ubuntu

I use cgminer 4.9.0 compiled just for iccarus and I cant get these to run longer thatn 24 hours, ever. They go stable, stable, stable, ok I go to bed now. In the morning ZOMBIE.
I got to go unplug the USB, power down, kill cgminmer, plug in power, USB cables and start cgminer. Starts mining again. Then next morning the same problem.

Very rarely one or the other goes zombie. I keep mine cold room ambient 5 degrees with other NAS'es and stuff. So when they running for a few hours the heat sinks are hardly 40 degrees.

Do I need MORE cooling?

I think this is a USB controller / or firmware issue. Because if I power down without removing USB the red light still shines inside and power up and restart cgminer it does NOT find the device. So if the firmware still runs on USB power maybe its firmware crashing, I am not sure. But I was wondering why the bitmain official guide specifically says to plug POWER IN FIRST then USB. It shouldn't matter. (I actually got mine mining 7ghs just off USB power, lol - That was wierd? Plugged in power and jumped to 63ghs)

There must be a firmware issue on these devices I cant believe Bitmain did not pick up on this, they never tested a single unit longer than 24 hours?? Not sure about Windows but maybe its a Linux specific problem?

[irobb]

No, same happens to me on Win7x64 - Go to sleep thinking finally... then zombie. 

[Phosphorous]

Dogie, clearly there are several U3 users here who cannot get their U3s to operate reliably.

Please talk to Bitmain and find out what they will do to make us whole on these. It was around 3 weeks if not longer before CK released the first half-way usable version of CGminer. In total I have had mine almost 2 months and have not been able to get much use out of mine.

None of us probably purchased our units from Bitmain directly as you had to order a pallet of them and no one uses that many USB miners so we all have resellers to deal with.

This is a serious issue for a seriously defective product, and we want answers and resolution (and ideally, a refund).

[irobb]

I took it all apart, cleaned the CRAPJOB of thermal paste they did, reapplied NICELY, fixed a LOOSE capacitor via re-solder, and assembled again.

Hashing at 65 AVG right now.  Let's see if THAT fixes this POS.

[dogie]

Dogie, clearly there are several U3 users here who cannot get their U3s to operate reliably.

Please talk to Bitmain and find out what they will do to make us whole on these. It was around 3 weeks if not longer before CK released the first half-way usable version of CGminer. In total I have had mine almost 2 months and have not been able to get much use out of mine.

None of us probably purchased our units from Bitmain directly as you had to order a pallet of them and no one uses that many USB miners so we all have resellers to deal with.

This is a serious issue for a seriously defective product, and we want answers and resolution (and ideally, a refund).

I believe it was already offered that any non functioning U3s could be sent in for replacement or refund, but you'll have to confirm with BitmainWarranty (and arrange with them either way).

[Phosphorous]

Dogie, clearly there are several U3 users here who cannot get their U3s to operate reliably.

Please talk to Bitmain and find out what they will do to make us whole on these. It was around 3 weeks if not longer before CK released the first half-way usable version of CGminer. In total I have had mine almost 2 months and have not been able to get much use out of mine.

None of us probably purchased our units from Bitmain directly as you had to order a pallet of them and no one uses that many USB miners so we all have resellers to deal with.

This is a serious issue for a seriously defective product, and we want answers and resolution (and ideally, a refund).

I believe it was already offered that any non functioning U3s could be sent in for replacement or refund, but you'll have to confirm with BitmainWarranty (and arrange with them either way).

As I stated before, we can't get refunds (from Bitmain) unless we bought a pallet of them unless Bitmain can get their resellers to issue the refunds. My reseller (MinerSource) will NOT issue a refund.

I have been trying to RMA my U3 for 2 weeks now but I cannot get an RMA number or I can't get someone to say to send it in without an RMA#. At first I was PM'd by user BitmainWarranty on Dec 26 who saw these forum posts and told me:
a) if I bought it with a credit card I can do a chargeback with the vendor  (!)
or
b) if it is defective I can send it in for repair. They provided the Colorado address but no RMA #.

BUT IF ALL U3'S ARE DEFECTIVE HOW CAN IT BE REPAIRED?

I replied back and asked if I needed an RMA # and no response. I am not going to ship my U3 off without an RMA # unless I am told explicitly to do so, and even then I want to know that my unit is defective and that there are units that actually work that it can actually be repaired or replaced.

Then I was PM'd by BITMAIN_YHQIN who knew nothing of the PMs from BitmainWarranty, and rather than provide an RMA # they wanted to know where I bought it and the order ID and (ugh) a description of the problem (really?). I replied to this on Monday morning and have not heard back.

[irobb]

hack it all up and do what i did... so far it's stable Want to see pictures?

[richardamullens]

hack it all up and do what i did... so far it's stable Want to see pictures?

Yes of course - pictures of the device disassembled that is.

[irobb]

Look at the crap job of their thermal paste application versus mine.  All nearby SMD's soaked in it.
https://i.imgur.com/tf9uhbg.jpg

Cleaned and reapplied:
https://i.imgur.com/KLOJKRc.jpg

Cleaned and reapplied:
https://i.imgur.com/cgYDGRh.jpg

Loose capacitor came off.  I soldered back on:
https://i.imgur.com/g5JSVWI.jpg

Put all back together minus the case:
https://i.imgur.com/eTGaeOj.jpg

So far it's stable...  Will tell you tomorrow if it still is.
https://i.imgur.com/SE4d8iA.jpg

[richardamullens]

Thanks.

That mess of conductive paste is horrendous.

Well done for fixing it - I would not have liked to remove that crud myself.

[irobb]

NO ZOMBIE... 12 hours working... so far.

[Visvas]

Just tested for 24 hours approx with default settings  (225mhz, 750v) and extra passiv cooling. One of the units still goes zombie at times and needs to be re-plugged.
One of the units only gives me around 38-45 Ghs now, the other around 50-55.