Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

Optimizing the Cooling of Orange Pi 5 for Mining VerusCoin (VRSC)

22, Oct 2023

If you are considering using an Orange Pi 5 for Mining VerusCoin (VRSC) (Ad) one thing you should have for sure is an additional cooling solution like the GeeekPi Orange Pi 5/5B Cooling Fan with Heatsink, however although good and working well this solution is far from optimal and can benefit from some additional tweaking. The main thing that you can improve is the heat transfer efficiency since the default thermal transfer material that sits in between the CPU and the cooler is a pretty thick thermal pad. Thicker thermal pads are not that efficient, however with a big gap you cannot replace a pad with just thermal paste so you need another solution here…

What you need is a solid copper thermal pad to replace the pink thermal interface that the cooler kit comes with. There are a lot of different copper pads available both in terms of size and in terms of thickness. The ideal width and height would be 18 by 18 millimetres, though there are harder to find and you can go with 15 mm or 20 mm just fine as you can see on the photo above, we went for the bigger one as it covers a larger area. The more important thing here is the thickness and what worked out very well for us is a 1.2 mm thick copper pad (Ad), though you could probably use 1 mm or 1.5 mm as well and compensate with more or less thermal compound. Good thermal compound that we like to use is ARCTIC MX-4 Thermal Compound (8 g) (Ad), though you can use anything else that has good capabilities and you may have lying around already.

The average temperature with the active cooler installed with the default flexible thermal interface pad we have observed was around 65-67 degrees Celsius while mining VerusCoin (VRSC) or around 40 without 100% load. Without the active cooler installed the temperature quickly hits 85 degrees Celsius when the miner is started, so the cooler is doing quite a good job in reducing that operating temperature, however it is still higher than we would like to be for a device running 24/7 mining crypto currencies.

As for the hashrate, a little below 6.6 MH/s average hashrate with a power consumption of about 9 Watts measured at the wall. This is again the result with the active cooler installed with the default flexible thermal interface pad, but as we’ve mentioned things can be improved by replacing the flexible thermal interface pad with a solid copper pad and good thermal compound… the question is how much of an improvement will that bring.

In terms of operating temperature, quite a significant improvement when we add the 20×20 mm copper pad with thickness of 1.2 mm and MX4 thermal compound in between… there is more than 20 degrees Celsius drop in the operating temperature. The newly measured stable operating temperature of the CPU of the Orange Pi 5 with the copper pad is now around 43.5 degrees Celsius, just a little bit higher than the Pi 5 with no active cooling and no load. You can hardly get any lower than that probably with conventional air cooling and you probably would not want to do it anyway as that operating temperature is really what we are more than fine with while mining.

After replacing the flexible thermal pad with a copper pad, we are seeing a slight increase in the average hashrate produced of a little over 100 KH/s to about 6.7 MH/s which might not be that much but is still somewhat of an improvement. There is also a slight drop of the power usage, we’ve measured 8.8 Watts at the wall down from 9 Watts before, so 0.2 Watts decrease in power usage. Again, might not be much but is still something that if you put in a large-scale perspective might build up to more significant numbers over time. The main goal was to lower the operating temperature while mining, but it has led to some other slight improvements as well, so a good job doing this little bit of modification to improve things overall. So, if you have an Orange Pi 5 or a few and if you are using them for mining VRSC or for other things that actually do require more processing power you might consider doing this modification for the cooling as well.

– For a guide on setting up and using Orange Pi 5 for mining verusCoin (VRSC)…

Do Not Buy Samsung Galaxy A13 5G Smartphone for Crypto Mining

16, Oct 2023

If you are getting into crypto mining using a smartphone for coins such as VerusCoin (VRSC) you should be extra careful what “mining hardware” or a smartphone you are picking up to use. One would normally assume that nowadays even the cheap smartphones would do just fine for crypto mining provided that they do come with recent Android OS versions (mining on Apple iOS devices is pretty much a no go) and decent 64-bit hardware in terms of ARM-based processors with 4 or even 8 cores available. Even sub $100 USD phones nowadays normally do manage to give you at least that, but it is not always the case as you should get to understand now…

As far as smartphones that will be used for mining you don’t really need expensive hardware and even a locked phone will do as you will not need to use it for phone calls and the Samsung Galaxy A03s locked phones can usually be relatively easily found in the $50-$60 USD range. Although often there are offers for these Tracfone Samsung Galaxy A03s, 32GB, Black – Prepaid Smartphone (Locked) for $29.99 USD (Ad) and it doesn’t get cheaper than that for a mining smartphone. With such good deals for lower-end models one would assume that a slightly more expensive device such as the Total by Verizon Samsung Galaxy A13 5G, 64GB, Black – Prepaid Smartphone (Locked) for $80 USD (Ad) would still work just fine for mining and will be able to offer better performance thanks to the improved hardware it comes equipped with. Well, you would think so, but the harsh reality would be much different and in fact you should avoid buying the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G if you are planning to use the device for crypto mining and you will know exactly why in a moment.

The Samsung Galaxy A13 5G smartphone has been released at the end of 2011, while the Galaxy A03s was released earlier the same year. Both devices feature 8-core 64-bit ARM processors, though they are slightly different models. While the mor affordable A03s is equipped with a Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 (12nm) chipset utilizing 4x 2.35 GHz Cortex-A53 and 4x 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU cores, the more powerful A13 5G relies on a Mediatek MT6833 Dimensity 700 (7 nm) chipset using 2x 2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 and 6x 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 CPU cores. The Galaxy A13 5G has the faster and more power efficient hardware inside, but that goes only as far as the hardware is concerned. The problem with this particular device is that it does not use the right kernel and operating system version and that is what essentially makes it unsuitable for crypto mining and in general making it unusable with some applications that you might normally use on other smartphones that require an operating system running in 64-bit mode.

The issue with the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G is that when queried with lscpu it reports that the Architecture is armv8l and while the CPU hardware itself is a 64-bit ARMv8 and supports 64-bit operating system, what you are getting on this device is a kernel that is built to run on an ARMv8 chip in its 32-bit mode. That essentially means that while you do have 64-bit hardware, you are not able to use it with 64-bit applications (like crypto miners) as they will either not run at all (they are compiled to run on 64-bit hardware) or they may run with significantly reduced performance in 32-bit mode if they are built like that. In either case – the A13 5G is not good for crypto mining… and it is not because of the hardware of the device, but it is because of the decision from Samsung to use 32-bit software on the device for some reason, while the lower-end and less expensive Galaxy A03s for example is utilizing the proper 64-bit software.

Here is what will happen if you try to install the VerusMiner.apk on the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G smartphone, you will get an error message saying that “App not installed as app isn’t compatible with your phone”. The reason for that is that the VerusMiner application for Android does require you to have a 64-bit OS to install and run and on the A13 5G you do not meet this requirement and there is nothing you can do to update your Samsung phone from 32-bit Android to 64-bit Android even though the hardware inside does support 64-bit software.

Pretty much the same thing is expected going the longer way. Installing UserLand, Debian and trying to get the optimized ARM version of ccminer from Oink70 to run will result in the compiled miner not able to start at all as it also does require 64-bit software along with the 64-bit hardware you have and you do not have a 64-bit kernel/OS available on the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G.

Trying some other miners, you actually might get lucky if they are compatible with 32-bit Android, but even if you do manage to run the mining software in this mode on the Galaxy A13 5G the hashrate you will be getting on it is at least a few times lower than what the same hardware should be capable of providing in a 64-bit OS environment. This essentially makes the Galaxy A13 5G as a very inefficient miner power wise and again makes it pointless to try and use the device for crypto mining. So, again, do not buy Samsung Galaxy A13 5G smartphones for crypto mining purposes as they will only waste your time, go for an alternative like the A03s or another model that is verified to supports aarch64 or arm64 architecture for both hardware and software!

The MASQ Web3 Privacy Browser is Now Out in Public Beta for Everyone to Try

11, Oct 2023

The MASQ web3 browser has been released on a Public Testnet and is now available for everyone to download and try, so we just did that. We have introduced the MASQ project to you last year, but it has taken quite some time for it to move from private to public beta, though that has finally happened. The main purpose of the MASQ browser is to safeguard your privacy while you are online, giving you features like no history and adblocking built-in, encrypted 3-hop routing in across other countries to provide censorship-resistance, the ability to interact with web3 services using official Metamask and Frame browser extensions, an in-built web3 dApp store and the ability to earn passive crypto by sharing your bandwidth with other users across the MASQ Network. Do note that since this is a beta version on a testnet, you are utilizing tMASQ and tMATIC tokens and not the actual tokens that will be used just for testing…

Now, our initial experience after downloading the MASQ Beta was a bit mixed as Windows Defender immediately gave a warning that we are trying to run an unrecognized app and prevented us from doing so. So, going to More Info and Run anyway has easily solved that on the annoying blue window we got as a warning… it is for your safety and privacy not to install privacy browsers… right… just kidding. The more serious issue came right after we finished the installation and started the MASQ browser for the first time – a “Daemon is not running” error that kind of puzzled us. After heading out to the Troubleshooting part of the Official Documentation of the MASQ Network to look for answers there were some ideas to try such as firewall or antivirus or reinstalling the app, though none of these did work out. Going for the MASQ Node executable and trying to run it manually immediately revealed what the issue was, a missing library that is a part of the latest Visual Studio Redistributable. So, downloading and installing the 64-bit version of the Latest Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable did immediately resolve the Daemon is not running error message and we were able to continue with the setup procedure.

As already mentioned, the Public Beta version of the MASQ browser is running on the Polygon Testnet and does not utilize the actual MASQ tokens that are already in circulation and can be purchased of an exchange, these tokens are just for testing the browsers functionality for now. The next step is to setup a new wallet if you do not already have one or import an existing wallet. Generating a new wallet will give you 12-word recovery phrase that you need to write down and confirm in the next step by properly ordering the words. After your new wallet is generated you will get some test tokens (tMASQ and tMATIC) available in it, so that you can test the functionality of the browser using them. Then there is a quick internet speed test performed in order to confirm that you meet the requirements to be used as a node to serve data to other users passing through you.

Now, the functionality to “Serve Data” using the MASQ browser is what allows you to earn MASQ tokens in return for helping other users be anonymous. This is you becoming a node in the mesh network of users that passes the encrypted user data around, so that the important privacy functionality can be achieved and you are incentivised to do it by getting MASQ tokens in return (test tokens in the Beta). You can decide not to Serve Data and you should still be able to use the MASQ browser, though you will not be earning the tokens this way and you can apparently decide to change your opinion later on and switch on/off. What caught our eye here in that setup page was that “By choosing to serve you accept legal responsibility of doing so”! This is important to note as serving other users data, even though encrypted and not in your control, you should still be somewhat legally responsible for that should someone utilize MASQ for illegal purposes.

A quick test of opening google.com and apparently going out through a user in Netherlands we get Google NL greeting us in Dutch. Speed wise it works quite well going through 3 hops apparently based on our first impressions. Unfortunately for the moment you are unable to choose an “exit” country to get your traffic through and that is a bit of a bummer as sometimes you need to use exact country for a website or service that has limited functionality for certain regions. That functionality should be becoming available though, remember that MASQ is still in beta. You can choose from direct to up to 3 Node hops varying your speed and privacy levels, though apparently up to 5 Node Hops would be available in the near future for additional privacy.

Here is how the Web3 Store with the Dapps looks like, some you probably are familiar with, others you might need to look up. They are categorized and you might want to look around, not that much are available for the moment, but the number should increase in the future. In general things are looking good and work quite well in the current MASQ Public Beta in our own opinion, though there are still some hiccups and things that might be polished a bit. Still, you can already get a good glimpse into how the final version will work and it does look promising as yet another privacy layer that will be available to you keeping you safer online with the added benefit of getting rewarded MASQ crypto tokens for sharing your bandwidth with other users of the network.

You can also already purchase MASQ tokens (non testnet ones) ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum through Uniswap, SushiSwap, Quickswap and they are also listed on the Probit Global exchange, however our advice is to avoid that exchange as it has a really slow support should you encounter an issue there. Resolving a simple problem that could’ve been done for a couple of days with time difference and delay and work hours etc has taken something like 3 months for Probit and it was really awful experience, so do avoid that exchange at all costs!

– To Download the MASQ Web3 Privacy Browser Public Beta and give it a try…


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