[Review] Spondoolies SP20 review - A Green miner with a Loud fan

[johnyj]

Sexy!

The chipped corners reminds me of amd xp, durons... nice times!

It would be nice to have a miner with lga775(or newer) socket mounting holes! then i can be motivated to repair my cascade system for -80c cooling

Does broken corner affect performance? My broken chip runs at 500 Hz comparing with other chips running at 650Hz

[1714517539]

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[mavericklm]

if it can not go up to speed as the rest, then i guess 99% is because of the chipped corners

[Guy Corem]

When I install those guides, I found out that one of the heatsink does not have those two drops of glue on its side, thus it can be easily tilt or shake by hands. I removed it, cleaned thermal grease, it turns out all of the chip's corner are broken. Without those 2 drops of glue, I can imagine it get knocked by each vibration during transportation



This is a weakness of the cooling system. Like Spondoolies-Tech pointed out, The RockerBox ASICs with the FCBGA package aren't suitable for mechanical stress, since its die directly exposed, and it is small: only 10x11.5mm in size.

The problem is, the heat sink is just too big for the small contact surface of the die, and it has only 2 point of tension. To make things worse, its tension is flexible because of the spring in each screw, this means it will just tilt to any direction and break the corner of the die with the least amount of incaution during install/transportation. So that's why they end up using some glue to permanently fix the heatsink on the board

And, to my surprise, the copper plate is just attached together with the aluminum heatsink with thermal compound without any screw.
They can slide against each other. This means most of the heat will be transferred to the heatsink by this layer of thermal compound, which has magnitudes lower thermal conductivity than either aluminum or copper. When installed, the pressure between them is decided by the spring of those 2 screws, and it is very weak (otherwise it will break the die)

The pictures you've posted shows a residue of the glue. Maybe not enough was applied to the specific ASIC.

[Guy Corem]

Sexy!

The chipped corners reminds me of amd xp, durons... nice times!

It would be nice to have a miner with lga775(or newer) socket mounting holes! then i can be motivated to repair my cascade system for -80c cooling

Does broken corner affect performance? My broken chip runs at 500 Hz comparing with other chips running at 650Hz

Very unlikely.

[johnyj]

The pictures you've posted shows a residue of the glue. Maybe not enough was applied to the specific ASIC.

Only residue, no sign of glue like other chips, no sign of glue on heatsink either  

What kind of glue you are using? I have to get those glue if I'm going to recondition the heatsink, now I'm putting 2 heat pads on each corner to stabilize it

[Guy Corem]

...
What kind of glue you are using?
...

3M's DP460

Edit: The glue has no purpose other then holding the heatsink during shipment.

[raskul]

...
What kind of glue you are using?
...

3M's DP460

Edit: The glue has no purpose other then holding the heatsink during shipment.

like what KfC didn't do, you mean?

 

[Biffa]

The pictures you've posted shows a residue of the glue. Maybe not enough was applied to the specific ASIC.

Only residue, no sign of glue like other chips, no sign of glue on heatsink either  

What kind of glue you are using? I have to get those glue if I'm going to recondition the heatsink, now I'm putting 2 heat pads on each corner to stabilize it

Mine had none on any on the first SP20 I recieved, I commented on the instability earlier in the thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=896161.msg9865070#msg9865070

[spiccioli]

Made an aluminum block to narrow down the lower channel
Unfortunately the result is worse, temps rose by a couple of degree under same ambient temp, maybe some turbulence made fan spin slower

Nice work johnyj,

but instead of putting that aluminum block inside the case, what about simply putting a stripe of tape on the holes on the intake side of the case to block air from entering that space?

I'm away from my unit or I'd made this test right now

spiccioli

[mavericklm]

careful with that aluminium foil! short-circuit...

[johnyj]

Made an aluminum block to narrow down the lower channel
Unfortunately the result is worse, temps rose by a couple of degree under same ambient temp, maybe some turbulence made fan spin slower

Nice work johnyj,

but instead of putting that aluminum block inside the case, what about simply putting a stripe of tape on the holes on the intake side of the case to block air from entering that space?

I'm away from my unit or I'd made this test right now

spiccioli

I think some air is needed to cool the VRMs on the back of the center ASIC board

[AJRGale]

1st off: Why all these reviews spamming the hardware section?!

edit: OK, i see why now, Spondoolies-Tech doing Spondoolie things... making some smile, and some so bitter they never got one (people even calling it a scam, wow!)

2nd, nice review! now i want one.. time to sell my POS car

3rd:

Sexy!

The chipped corners reminds me of amd xp, durons... nice times!

It would be nice to have a miner with lga775(or newer) socket mounting holes! then i can be motivated to repair my cascade system for -80c cooling

Does broken corner affect performance? My broken chip runs at 500 Hz comparing with other chips running at 650Hz

Very unlikely.

the worst it would do is destroy a few calculation units, what it would most likely do is make the chip miscalculate a nonce, and give you ether hardware errors or just plain rejections. it wouldn’t slow it down in any way, just error out like mad.

thinking back to my AthlonsXP days too, i had one with a large chip that took out half of the L2 cache, it would run without an issue, but once i pushed it with data processing (moving files or calculation prime) it just die. i used it for net surfing, but i avoided large pages, it tend to kill it too.

i could go on about these cpus, like the old pencil trick, how i let out its magical blue smoke, etc, but that's for the offtopic sections.

[johnyj]

The efficiency curve:


The lowest setting 0.58V is very unstable, usually half of the loops are disabled. At 0.59V I can achieve 809 GH with barely 376W at wall (0.465W/GH), and at 0.61V, I get 1TH with 500W, also feels great. The efficiency drops almost linearly across the voltage range, I did not test above 0.68V, which consumes around 950W

[Guy Corem]

The efficiency curve:


The lowest setting 0.58V is very unstable, usually half of the loops are disabled. At 0.59V I can achieve 809 GH with barely 376W at wall (0.465W/GH), and at 0.61V, I get 1TH with 500W, also feels great. The efficiency drops almost linearly across the voltage range, I did not test above 0.68V, which consumes around 950W

Nice. What's the PSU efficiency you're using at 500W-1KW levels ?

[johnyj]

Nice. What's the PSU efficiency you're using at 500W-1KW levels ?

2X EVGA 500B http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=100-B1-0500-KR

[Newar]

What are the dimensions of the red outline area?

[Guy Corem]

What are the dimensions of the red outline area?

10cm X 9.8 cm

[Biffa]

What are the dimensions of the red outline area?

You could get a 90cm fan there.

But I tried push/pull with 120CFM fans and the performance, albeit quieter was worse than the stock fan.

Depends what you want really, if you want high performance, you can't beat the stock fan but if you are willing to make do with 1.3-1.4TH then you can use a quieter fan.

I'd like to see a more 3/4pin stock fan header on the control board rather than the nano molex for us "home users" to experiment with.

[Newar]

What are the dimensions of the red outline area?

[IMGhttp://i61.tinypic.com/2qxm4co.jpg[/img]

You could get a 90cm fan there.

But I tried push/pull with 120CFM fans and the performance, albeit quieter was worse than the stock fan.

Depends what you want really, if you want high performance, you can't beat the stock fan but if you are willing to make do with 1.3-1.4TH then you can use a quieter fan.

I'd like to see a more 3/4pin stock fan header on the control board rather than the nano molex for us "home users" to experiment with.

That's what I thought at first (100mm). Now I'm thinking another 120mm fan mounted on 40mm or so spacers to allow for the connectors / cables. Might be the holes on the left just fit. On the right drill two holes. Then tape a shroud over everything. Maybe cut out some of that grille too (except the area that supports the PCB).

Maybe have the push fan a tad higher at say 150 CFM?

Noise is no issue. I have read a comment that the stock fan is not enough in hotter environments. Don't remember which review - there's so many...

[johnyj]

What are the dimensions of the red outline area?

[IMGhttp://i61.tinypic.com/2qxm4co.jpg[/img]

You could get a 90cm fan there.

But I tried push/pull with 120CFM fans and the performance, albeit quieter was worse than the stock fan.

Depends what you want really, if you want high performance, you can't beat the stock fan but if you are willing to make do with 1.3-1.4TH then you can use a quieter fan.

I'd like to see a more 3/4pin stock fan header on the control board rather than the nano molex for us "home users" to experiment with.

That's what I thought at first (100mm). Now I'm thinking another 120mm fan mounted on 40mm or so spacers to allow for the connectors / cables. Might be the holes on the left just fit. On the right drill two holes. Then tape a shroud over everything. Maybe cut out some of that grille too (except the area that supports the PCB).

Maybe have the push fan a tad higher at say 150 CFM?

Noise is no issue. I have read a comment that the stock fan is not enough in hotter environments. Don't remember which review - there's so many...

The cooling is sufficient for the first two ASICs, but it gets worse and worse for each ASICs further back, so adding a fan from top of the box can help a lot, unfortunately that means you have to cut a hole on the top. The best solution would be getting individual intake channel for each ASIC, but almost impossible to do due to the compact design of the box