Additional Improvement for a Silent Modified Jasminer X4 1U ASIC Miner

Mining

Evidently we form of missed one thing vital within the silent modification of the Jasminer X4 1U miners described right here and that’s to consider the one different factor that generates warmth contained in the miner. That’s the controller chip on the miner’s management board that usually doesn’t include a cooling heatsink on high of it. The Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC (XA7Z020) used is just not a standard FPGA like we form of assumed with out correctly checking the specs of the chip. It’s in reality a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Software Processor Unit (APU), and as you realize having a processor, even a decrease energy ARM one can get issues scorching when working and beneath load 24/7…

So, what apparently occurred through the evening, with nobody current across the miner is the management board of the Jasminer X4 1U that we had been utilizing for testing simply dying on us for no obvious purpose. The one factor that involves thoughts is the chip overheating for some purpose and dying on us, though the traditional working temperature doesn’t appear to counsel any overheating points. Usually, when the miner is in its authentic bundle contained in the 1U field with all of the high-rpm server followers the within ambient temperature might be decrease and thus no further cooling has been offered for the controller board’s processor, however whenever you open it up and modify it to make use of silent followers issues would possibly change into completely different. Fortunately we’ve had a spare controller board already ordered simply in case one thing like that occurred, so we changed it instantly and the miner continued to perform like earlier than.

We’ve measure the working temperature of the Zynq APU on the brand new controller board and it’s nowhere close to harmful ranges for such chips, at round 52 levels Celsius (125.6 F) it ought to be just about secure even with out additional cooling, proper. Effectively, it is likely to be now, but when what for some purpose this temp rises for some time, in all probability that’s what occurred for some purpose with the APU getting larger load for an extended time frame leading to overheating (thouhg it may be some completely unreleated purpose as effectively, can’t ensure). Simply to be on the secure facet, it’s a good suggestion so as to add a small reminiscence chip cooler on high of the Zynq APU with the intention to maintain the working temperature decrease always. Particularly in the event you plan on utilizing a silent modified miner and the the usual configuration the place the problem could possibly be much less susceptible to seem.

Additionally, recommendation is likely to be to order a spare controller board simply in case, particularly if you’re working greater than only a single Jasminer X4 1U ASIC miner. That is to keep away from doable downtime in case one thing occurs with the controller board in your miner. Do be aware you could join a number of hashing boards with Jasminer X4 ASICs to a single management board (our each had 3 connectors for hash board), although we’ve seen board with extra connectors as effectively. We’ve tried and the management board detects and features with a hashing board related to the entire three out there ports. So, as a brief resolution you would possibly use a single management board to drive a number of hashboards of a number of miners in case you could have greater than juts one and also you get a lifeless controller board.