GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion

[sobe-it]

Novak heated part of his house last winter with an AM Tube. I kept my entire apartment comfortably above freezing with a Dragon, S3-supplemented when necessary. Previous winter the house and shop were warmed substantially by AM Cubes and S1. Pretty handy.

yup, why run a space heater when you can run gear and make BTC aside from keeping warm.

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[AJRGale]

Novak heated part of his house last winter with an AM Tube. I kept my entire apartment comfortably above freezing with a Dragon, S3-supplemented when necessary. Previous winter the house and shop were warmed substantially by AM Cubes and S1. Pretty handy.

yup, why run a space heater when you can run gear and make BTC aside from keeping warm.

but sobe-it, where can you get a miner for $20 and spit out 700W of heat?!
wait.. ebay, time to get the ye'ol Block Eruptor Cube..

[QuintLeo]

Does anyone have a suggestion as to a link comparing electric heat to miners?

I have electric heat, and I would have to think that since 99.9% of the energy used in a miner is expressed as heat, they would be nearly as efficient as baseboard heaters. Minus the fan, commo, et cetera.

 Ballpark 99% of the electric used by a miner would end up as heat, with pretty good efficiency at spreading it due to the heatsink and fan(s). Light from the LEDs and whatever goes OUT of the miner as communications signal(s) would be about the only part that doesn't end up as heat.

Chili miners

 I thought chili were grown, not mined?

 9-)

[PlanetCrypto]

PlanetCrypto, thank you so very much for the detailed answer. It is as I suspected, and I appreciate your thoughts. Nice set up, if you come across any pictures, I'd love to see one installation. I'll check out the links later.

You're right, I would MUCH prefer a C1 instead of the S3+, but I don't think it makes any sense to chase down a cheap one now and throw MORE money into BTC mining. If one came my way, fine, but I don't want to chase for it.

That said, I'm enjoying this little project, and would consider buying whatever comes from the mind of sidehack and Novak to upgrade the S3+. Sidehack and I don't agree on economics and what constitutes profit, but I like how he works and want to support the effort.

Profit is a nebulous term. What I pay attention to is retained earnings.


North Lakes Auto





These and more images may be found @ http://ftp://fullgoosebozo.net/

[kae1078]

PlanetCrypto, thank you so very much for the detailed answer. It is as I suspected, and I appreciate your thoughts. Nice set up, if you come across any pictures, I'd love to see one installation. I'll check out the links later.

You're right, I would MUCH prefer a C1 instead of the S3+, but I don't think it makes any sense to chase down a cheap one now and throw MORE money into BTC mining. If one came my way, fine, but I don't want to chase for it.

That said, I'm enjoying this little project, and would consider buying whatever comes from the mind of sidehack and Novak to upgrade the S3+. Sidehack and I don't agree on economics and what constitutes profit, but I like how he works and want to support the effort.

Profit is a nebulous term. What I pay attention to is retained earnings.


North Lakes Auto





These and more images may be found @ http://ftp://fullgoosebozo.net/

Neat and nicely done setup 

[brush242]

PlanetCrypto, thank you so very much for the detailed answer. It is as I suspected, and I appreciate your thoughts. Nice set up, if you come across any pictures, I'd love to see one installation. I'll check out the links later.

You're right, I would MUCH prefer a C1 instead of the S3+, but I don't think it makes any sense to chase down a cheap one now and throw MORE money into BTC mining. If one came my way, fine, but I don't want to chase for it.

That said, I'm enjoying this little project, and would consider buying whatever comes from the mind of sidehack and Novak to upgrade the S3+. Sidehack and I don't agree on economics and what constitutes profit, but I like how he works and want to support the effort.

Profit is a nebulous term. What I pay attention to is retained earnings.

Not as I'm using the term.

The ductwork photo is just brilliant!

Still kind of makes me sweat to think of filling my apartment with that again. Heh.

Even if it was just one.

[VirosaGITS]

I'm impressed @ PlanetCrypto

That's a lot more elaborate than how i do it. (I Just spread silent miners in my place, specially S1 with wifi. I think i could do it with S3 too.)

But central ASIC heating is pretty neat, if i had a house in the first place, i think i'd try to use a thermometer valve to dump some of the heat strait outside when the farm would be generating too much heat.

It is nice to see people who *actually* make the ROI math. And have a *real* hobby out of it.

[sobe-it]

Novak heated part of his house last winter with an AM Tube. I kept my entire apartment comfortably above freezing with a Dragon, S3-supplemented when necessary. Previous winter the house and shop were warmed substantially by AM Cubes and S1. Pretty handy.

yup, why run a space heater when you can run gear and make BTC aside from keeping warm.

but sobe-it, where can you get a miner for $20 and spit out 700W of heat?!
wait.. ebay, time to get the ye'ol Block Eruptor Cube..

don't need to try to find a miner for $20 when you already have them.

[AJRGale]

Novak heated part of his house last winter with an AM Tube. I kept my entire apartment comfortably above freezing with a Dragon, S3-supplemented when necessary. Previous winter the house and shop were warmed substantially by AM Cubes and S1. Pretty handy.

yup, why run a space heater when you can run gear and make BTC aside from keeping warm.

but sobe-it, where can you get a miner for $20 and spit out 700W of heat?!
wait.. ebay, time to get the ye'ol Block Eruptor Cube..

don't need to try to find a miner for $20 when you already have them.

well my foot heater doesn’t do mining.. it just burns resistors, 2 New-R-Box's did the job on keeping the room 3 degrees warmer but they lasted long.
all i have left running now is a single U3.

[VirosaGITS]

Novak heated part of his house last winter with an AM Tube. I kept my entire apartment comfortably above freezing with a Dragon, S3-supplemented when necessary. Previous winter the house and shop were warmed substantially by AM Cubes and S1. Pretty handy.

yup, why run a space heater when you can run gear and make BTC aside from keeping warm.

but sobe-it, where can you get a miner for $20 and spit out 700W of heat?!
wait.. ebay, time to get the ye'ol Block Eruptor Cube..

don't need to try to find a miner for $20 when you already have them.

well my foot heater doesn’t do mining.. it just burns resistors, 2 New-R-Box's did the job on keeping the room 3 degrees warmer but they lasted long.
all i have left running now is a single U3.

Antminers S1 are considered obsolete for many. That or S3's would probably do the job fairly well. Specially with the incoming hardware dump with the S7 more or less in sight.

[sidehack]

Novak and I ironed out basic details for the control parts of a board today, and I got an initial buck design complete for a 4-chip pod miner. Parts should be inbound (hopefully here Monday) to get started prototyping the power and getting all the diggitals lined out. We've got enough BM1384 to build a few test boards to prove the design, which hopefully will be adapted directly for BM1385 and potentially mass-produced. It'd probably be just a bare board with riser feet, upon which you mount a standard CPU cooler and plug it in to power (6-24V) and USB. Looks like nominal chip dissipation of 40W with probably overclockability past 50W if you can keep the chips cool.

Hopefully there's no trouble getting temp sensors, fan speed and software voltage control integrated.

The digital controls integration is the last real hurdle in a full miner design. If we can get it working properly, the template from the pod miner would shift directly over to TypeZero boards, obviously with different power systems and a bunch more chips. I've got a bit of PSU board manufactoring to do in the next few days, but for the next month basically I'll be using all my time that isn't Compac manufacture and shipping for miner design. I may need to help Novak out on some projects after that (it's a fair trade, since he's doing all the driver code for my project right now) but for now miners are priority.

[bmoscato]

I like the idea of being able to use a regular CPU cooler like the BitCrane boards.  This sounds cool.

[sidehack]

We figured that was better than trying to shoehorn a new design into an existing pod with a specific heatsink shape. Rather than persisting in using the same proprietary chunk of metal, wouldn't it be better to make something that fits an existing fairly generic standard? The end result won't be as polished as a Gridseed or U3, but I'm not sure I'm really concerned about that.

[notlist3d]

I like the idea of being able to use a regular CPU cooler like the BitCrane boards.  This sounds cool.

I think it would take a change of chips to make a CPU cooler worth buying for it.   I do like the idea of them building boards though.

I would love to see a board.  It could be as simple (I say simple but I'm sure it's tons of hours) as the original asic miner blades.   I would love some GekkoScience blades.

[sidehack]

Oh, I don't intend on selling any BM1384-based boards. Once Compacs are done, I have about 200 chips a lot of which will probably have been put to use testing various things. That's enough to make a few working prototypes of a few board designs but certainly not enough to manufacture anything. If I sell a new board it'll have a new chip, either BM1385 or a chip from someone else on it.

[AJRGale]

Novak and I ironed out basic details for the control parts of a board today, and I got an initial buck design complete for a 4-chip pod miner. Parts should be inbound (hopefully here Monday) to get started prototyping the power and getting all the diggitals lined out. We've got enough BM1384 to build a few test boards to prove the design, which hopefully will be adapted directly for BM1385 and potentially mass-produced. It'd probably be just a bare board with riser feet, upon which you mount a standard CPU cooler and plug it in to power (6-24V) and USB. Looks like nominal chip dissipation of 40W with probably overclockability past 50W if you can keep the chips cool.

Hopefully there's no trouble getting temp sensors, fan speed and software voltage control integrated.

The digital controls integration is the last real hurdle in a full miner design. If we can get it working properly, the template from the pod miner would shift directly over to TypeZero boards, obviously with different power systems and a bunch more chips. I've got a bit of PSU board manufactoring to do in the next few days, but for the next month basically I'll be using all my time that isn't Compac manufacture and shipping for miner design. I may need to help Novak out on some projects after that (it's a fair trade, since he's doing all the driver code for my project right now) but for now miners are priority.

These BM138* can still move the thermal load though the PCB yes? or are they top sink dependant? also thinking you might need to get a 50mm/0.19" copper shim off the chipset for these sinks to clap onto properly, since they are designed to clamp down onto a socketed CPU.

ooor you could design it to be a socketed ASIC carrier board for quick swap of the 84/85s, just have some resistor network to change data control/ power output! Yeah, need the bm1385s to work that out..

50W load with a 75w i3 cooler (seensed one of them there sinks on a 90w i7)? Easy! $40 150W "Cooler Master TX3" on that thing, no problem.
or any AMD sink..

my main concern is the stock cpu heatsink not holding down onto the chips properly.
I'll have to find a dead board and a heatsink to match and see how much movement there is between the sink and pcb.

Also, with the fan, make sure there is a backup mode to just go full power to a fan when it cant see a RPM output.

but yes, bare bottom BM1385 pods sound nice, we'll all be waiting for your p0rn

[bmoscato]

My thought with the CPU cooler footprint is that we could use a liquid cooler to displace heat more efficiently.

[sidehack]

If you want to build a waterblock setup for a $40 miner, sure. I'll be playing with some CPU coolers to see what the various clearance requirements are. Screwed down would be better than the crappy little snap-ons (I've never liked those). I'm still at the very beginning of the electricals and haven't really thought about starting on mechanicals so I'm not at all sure what's possible yet. I just know what I want to do.

And I don't really want to build a socketed chipboard.

[Chris_Sabian]

Novak heated part of his house last winter with an AM Tube. I kept my entire apartment comfortably above freezing with a Dragon, S3-supplemented when necessary. Previous winter the house and shop were warmed substantially by AM Cubes and S1. Pretty handy.

yup, why run a space heater when you can run gear and make BTC aside from keeping warm.

but sobe-it, where can you get a miner for $20 and spit out 700W of heat?!
wait.. ebay, time to get the ye'ol Block Eruptor Cube..

don't need to try to find a miner for $20 when you already have them.

well my foot heater doesn’t do mining.. it just burns resistors, 2 New-R-Box's did the job on keeping the room 3 degrees warmer but they lasted long.
all i have left running now is a single U3.

Antminers S1 are considered obsolete for many. That or S3's would probably do the job fairly well. Specially with the incoming hardware dump with the S7 more or less in sight.

I used several S3 to help heat my house in the winter last year.  It help a huge amount because they were using almost 1500 watts of power.  I also had a AM Prisma but it caught fire. *sigh*  Heat = good, fire = bad.

[PlanetCrypto]

If you want to build a waterblock setup for a $40 miner, sure. I'll be playing with some CPU coolers to see what the various clearance requirements are. Screwed down would be better than the crappy little snap-ons (I've never liked those). I'm still at the very beginning of the electricals and haven't really thought about starting on mechanicals so I'm not at all sure what's possible yet. I just know what I want to do.

And I don't really want to build a socketed chipboard.

Or one could build an appropriately dimensioned tank and dunk a buttload of'em in Novec 7100.