ANTMINER U3 Discussion and Support Thread

[2n3906]

Well after all the info in this thread I am up and running. Thank you to all that contributed.

Setup:
Laptop running Fedora 20
1x U3
Power brick 19v @ 3.46A

Running around 60GH/s

[irobb]

When it zombies, let us know... lol 

[Phosphorous]

Yep, still looking for someone who has an unmodified miner that will go more than 24hrs without going ZOMBIE.

Dogie, you said there are 1000's of U3 owners out there with good units, where are they?

[dogie]

OK I opened mine up and cleaned all that paste out, I forgot the stuff between the heatsink and the PCB..... shouldnt matter that much on that side.

Arctic Silver (Silver Oxide thermal paste)

You should NOT use AS5 on a unit like this which has exposed pins and other electronics on the PCB. AS5 is conductive and may cause problems. Additionally, its thermal conductivity is only a 1/10th of what they claim it to be, is 4x less than other competitors and up to 5x more expensive. You can see the full independent paper here, results on page 8.

[irobb]

Funny... I used AS (white version) and it seemed to "fix" my zombie issue.

Perhaps it's more a matter of how well the compound is applied versus its conductivity.

[dogie]

Funny... I used AS (white version) and it seemed to "fix" my zombie issue.

Perhaps it's more a matter of how well the compound is applied versus its conductivity.

Do you mean arctic ceramique? That's specifically designed for open chip designs [ie GPUs, miners] as its nearly non conductive.

[irobb]

Yep - that's the stuff.

[alh]

From my "CPU Thermal Pasting" days, I thought the whole idea was to use the stuff VERY sparingly, even more so than the very small "new blobs" shown. In the CPU days it almost seemed like an art form to get the amount "just right", certainly nothing like what was done at the factory.

[ppumkin]

OK I opened mine up and cleaned all that paste out, I forgot the stuff between the heatsink and the PCB..... shouldnt matter that much on that side.

Arctic Silver (Silver Oxide thermal paste)

You should NOT use AS5 on a unit like this which has exposed pins and other electronics on the PCB. AS5 is conductive and may cause problems. Additionally, its thermal conductivity is only a 1/10th of what they claim it to be, is 4x less than other competitors and up to 5x more expensive. You can see the full independent paper here, results on page 8.

Good to know. I did check make sure it wasn't touching the pins.
Very interesting white paper.
So what do you recommend then to be used generally?

[dogie]

OK I opened mine up and cleaned all that paste out, I forgot the stuff between the heatsink and the PCB..... shouldnt matter that much on that side.

Arctic Silver (Silver Oxide thermal paste)

You should NOT use AS5 on a unit like this which has exposed pins and other electronics on the PCB. AS5 is conductive and may cause problems. Additionally, its thermal conductivity is only a 1/10th of what they claim it to be, is 4x less than other competitors and up to 5x more expensive. You can see the full independent paper here, results on page 8.

Good to know. I did check make sure it wasn't touching the pins.
Very interesting white paper.
So what do you recommend then to be used generally?

After reading the paper yesterday, now I'm not sure. I'll probably trackdown one of those unknown brands mentioned but for now I'm finishing my tube of ceramique.

[ppumkin]

From my "CPU Thermal Pasting" days, I thought the whole idea was to use the stuff VERY sparingly, even more so than the very small "new blobs" shown. In the CPU days it almost seemed like an art form to get the amount "just right", certainly nothing like what was done at the factory.

That is right. I used to work at IT shops for years and this was treated very critical! No noobs allowed.

But I have seen Noobs smear the entire tubes onto the processors and there was no issue with these PC's for years. Just viruses.
So I kind of got paralysed to this "extreme" application and jsut put a blob that wont go allover the place like on these Ants, I mean these Ants are mental, I dont think I ever seen anything like THIS before. Even the wors noob application didnt go allover the motherboard it was just like oozing out from under the heatsink.

Cleaning this stuff is the worst. If you look at my img where I cleaned it you can still see all the past inbetween the tiny 0.125 pitched pins. There is no way to get that out without intesive brushing wiht tooth brush, like the other poster did. I didnt go that far because it seems like that may have been a bit TOO much.

[irobb]

Well, luckily for me I ordered mine off Amazon.  They are taking care of it and accepting the return for full refund with free return shipping.  Good luck to you guys - I did learn a lot from this little miner...

[ppumkin]

Well, its still early days. Running since 21:52 08/01 ... nothing happened yet.

Usually the first one fell over after 12 hours. I am running 1 stock and one "fixer upper" - Both still going good.

I didn't change anything else so that we can keep this experiment clean.

The one I cleaned seemed to fall over more frequently... so something has definitely changed but 24 is the record to break, then 48, then at least a week!

[irobb]

I honestly think it's caused by the excessive compound.  We shall see. The one I cleaned is still running, no zombies.

[ppumkin]

Thats awesome man! If mine does the same thing then we can almost for sure say it is the excess chinese spunk applied to the units.

RMA Reason: To much spunk causing micro short. Please wipe thoroughly before finishing up.

[irobb]

hahahahahaha

[ppumkin]

I honestly think it's caused by the excessive compound.  We shall see. The one I cleaned is still running, no zombies.

You might have seriosly cracked this case wide open mate. Its nearly 24 hours and by now I have to be resetting something... still going well

250MHz @ 800mV = ~62.5Gh/s - Stable!

[irobb]

Congrats to us for verifying!

I wish one of my chips wasn't bad or I would just keep the damn thing.  Curious to see how well you can keep a stable OC... or are you content with the 62?

[ppumkin]

I am happy with 62

I read that going more than that starts to dramaticlly increase the wattage at the wall. currently it works out  slightly less than 1watt per 1gh/s (about 0.95watt @ 800mV). i have a watt-o-meter and my PC and the 2 U3 are draining 162watts 24/7 from which 40watts is the PC then 60watts x 2 from the other PSU

I had a duff one form the same guy I bought these two. I was lucky to find them cheap on amazon because I know if something went bad returns would be a simple.. and my hunch was correct. The second one was running 45ghs and there was nothing I could do to increase it. Returned and the 3rd one runs like the 1st. No problem at all.

24hour mark now broken and niether the fixer upper nor the stock one ZOMBIED... Interesting.

[BITMAIN_Janet]

Cgminer Update:
cgminer-run-windows-20141110.zip

For the RMA request, please send email to info@bitmaintech.com.