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

[johnyj]

Just received my SP20 a couple of days after the review campaign, delivered from Israel directly to Sweden without any custom charge!

Packaging is compact and sturdy, very well protected





 

[johnyj]

Front end

[johnyj]

Back end

[John (John K.)]

* john cries from the amount of nice photos everyone else seems to be able to get*

PS: Oops, tell me if you want me to delete this post as I might be blocking your review chain.

[johnyj]

The whole unit weights exactly 5.0 kg, very easy to carry around

[johnyj]

* john cries from the amount of nice photos everyone else seems to be able to get*

PS: Oops, tell me if you want me to delete this post as I might be blocking your review chain.

The camera was used to capture pretty girls, now girls are gone and only miners left  

[johnyj]

The connectors, one serial for testing purpose I guess, USB, SD, LAN, all described in SP 20 quick start manual (It seems I could not find the user manual from Spondoolies website)

[johnyj]

I have only two spare 500W PSU left from old time BFL singles bundle (They were so generous at that time that they even delivered a PSU with their unit, I never used them )




I hook them up, started miner and went to the Settings page, lowered all the voltage to minimum (0.58) and filled in 200 in all 4 field: "Max PSU Power Unit 1 (70W - 288W) ", and restarted miner. It turns out the miner only runs at 370GH and by looking at ASIC stats page, two of the ASIC loops are not working:

[johnyj]

Naturally, I thought the PSU is not enough strong, so I took another 1300W PSU and tested, same fault

Then I saw on "Settings" page, I could select "Basic Voltage settings" and then pick the "slow fans, medium rate" option, restarted miner. Immediately it hashes at 1.4 GH!

So I think there is a bug in that advanced setting page, it does not recognize the PSU even I put 120 in all of the fields, and by using basic voltage settings, all those fields turned to 1100

Then I reduced all the voltage to 0.6 and the unit run at 940GH/S, ASIC stats looks like this

[johnyj]

And the amazing thing with SP20:

each of the two PSU draws only 220W on wall! With only 440W I can get 940GH, e.g. 0.47J/GH on Wall. A 20nm very efficient Knc Neptune running 3.3TH at 1900W on wall, that is barely 0.58J/GH. And SP20 at 1.4GH draws around 800W, on par with Neptune, it is definitely a nice choice given the current market price of $659 per unit, very well engineered product!

[notlist3d]

each of the two PSU draws only 220W on wall! With only 440W I can get 940GH

That is the lowest I have seen.  Wow that is a impressive under clock.

[philipma1957]

those are the lowest numbers yet.  damn they are good.

please show a screen shot of the settings page.

[johnyj]

those are the lowest numbers yet.  damn they are good.

please show a screen shot of the settings page.

Now after a restart it turns to 900GH, and ASIC stats shows lower frequency at 595Hz. Maybe due to rise in room temperature, anyway, settings are all set to 0.6

[johnyj]

And the only problem for home mining is its noise, just like a vacuum cleaner running, it is impossible to run at home. With even one door closed I can hear it clearly far away. So either you run it in a specialized garage/mining farm, or you have to take some modification for the cooling system. I will take it apart tomorrow to see what I can do with it

I suppose that the original fan deliver a huge amount of airflow like 200 CFM maximum, but when heavily under clocked, maybe a general low CFM/noise fan can deal with the heat

[John (John K.)]

And the only problem for home mining is its noise, just like a vacuum cleaning running, it is impossible to run at home. With even one door closed I can hear it clearly far away. So either you run it in a specialized garage/mining farm, or you have to take some modification for the cooling system. I will take it apart tomorrow to see what I can do with it

I suppose that the original fan deliver a huge amount of airflow like 200 CFM maximum, but when heavily under clocked, maybe a general low CFM/noise fan can deal with the heat

I'm personally thinking of buying a better fan and swapping it in, wonder if that'll make a huge difference?

[johnyj]

And the only problem for home mining is its noise, just like a vacuum cleaning running, it is impossible to run at home. With even one door closed I can hear it clearly far away. So either you run it in a specialized garage/mining farm, or you have to take some modification for the cooling system. I will take it apart tomorrow to see what I can do with it

I suppose that the original fan deliver a huge amount of airflow like 200 CFM maximum, but when heavily under clocked, maybe a general low CFM/noise fan can deal with the heat

I'm personally thinking of buying a better fan and swapping it in, wonder if that'll make a huge difference?

Currently I can put it close to window, where 5c cold air are sucked into the room, maybe even a GT1850 (which is almost silent) can deal with the heat. But who knows when summer comes

Just checked the fan, it is more than 2A, definitely over 200 CFM, this is standard for server application, but not suitable at home

[Guy Corem]

And the amazing thing with SP20:

each of the two PSU draws only 220W on wall! With only 440W I can get 940GH, e.g. 0.47J/GH on Wall. A 20nm very efficient Knc Neptune running 3.3TH at 1900W on wall, that is barely 0.58J/GH. And SP20 at 1.4GH draws around 800W, on par with Neptune, it is definitely a nice choice given the current market price of $659 per unit, very well engineered product!

Thank you for the review.

[johnyj]

Just upgraded the firmware to the latest version 2.5.33,  now I can drop the fan speed to 20 percent, still plenty of airflow (more than 100 CFM) but noise has come down quite a bit. I think if it is a pwm fan, even 10% could work, since now the back end temp is mere 46c degree, and I have seen some miners have a backend temp as high as 70c degree

[johnyj]

Thank you for the review.

Thank you too for letting us review such a great product!

Before I started to operate SP20, I thought this kind of products are just like many other miners on the market: You stack them up in a mining farm and pay lots of electricity and cooling cost, and sell the coins to cover these cost, and bring down the bitcoin exchange rate during the process. I even planned to give it to friends who are interested in bitcoin after this review

But after seeing the stunning efficiency of this miner, I'm very impressed. I had a feeling that the old good mining time is back: With this unit running at 500W, the electricity cost is neglectable, so anyone can just hold on to all the mined coins without selling a bit

Now I'm very interested to run it for an extensive period of time with a modified cooling solution

[Biffa]

And the only problem for home mining is its noise, just like a vacuum cleaning running, it is impossible to run at home. With even one door closed I can hear it clearly far away. So either you run it in a specialized garage/mining farm, or you have to take some modification for the cooling system. I will take it apart tomorrow to see what I can do with it

I suppose that the original fan deliver a huge amount of airflow like 200 CFM maximum, but when heavily under clocked, maybe a general low CFM/noise fan can deal with the heat

I'm personally thinking of buying a better fan and swapping it in, wonder if that'll make a huge difference?

Just heats up quicker.