New cpuminer for Gridseed ASICs with Text User Interface Available

28 Apr
2014

cpuminer-gridseed-new-tui

Sandor111 has released an updated version of his cpuminer fork adding a TUI (Text User Interface) containing the most important information that you would need to know for your Gridseed ASIC miners in an easy to read format (source here). Another new useful feature in the latest release is the autodetection of the number of chips, so no need to set it manually via the command line anymore. We have a windows binary available for you, and we do recommend to give it a try if you were sticking to cgminer because of the TUI available there, especially now that cpuminer also has one. If you want you can still download the previous cpuminer for Gridseed with no TUI, we’ll have it available for people that prefer to use that, and below you can download the new TUI version for windows.

– You can download the sandor111 fork of cpuminer for the 5-chip GC3355 ASICs for Windows OS here…

Monero (XMR) CryptoNight-based alternative cryptocoin

26 Apr
2014

monero-logo

Monero (XMR) is a brand new uprising cryptocurrency which originates from Bitmonero. Being the fork of Bytecoin, Monero is an anonymous and decentralized cryptocurrency with CryptoNight (64-bit CPU-only) PoW hash algorithm and based on CryptoNote protocol. Monero cryptocurrency bears all hallmarks from its parent cryptocurrency: privacy, security, untraceability, block analysis resistance and others. All product features are covered in more detail on this website.

Website:
– https://getmonero.org/

Block Explorer:
– http://chainradar.com/xmr/blocks

Coin Specifications

  • CryptoNight Algorithm
  • Max supply: Infinite
  • Block reward: Smoothly varying
  • Block time: 60 seconds
  • Difficulty: Retargets at every block

Wallet:
– Windows
– Mac OX
– Linux

Source Code:
– at GitHub

Ports:
– RPC Port: 18081
– P2P Port: 18080

Mining Pools:
– MinerGate
– http://cryptonotepool.org.uk/
– http://monero.miner.center/
– http://minexmr.com/
– http://monero.crypto-pool.fr/
– https://monerohash.com/
– http://mro.poolto.be/
– http://monero.xminingpool.com/
– http://dwarfpool.com/xmr
– http://xmr.prohash.net/
– http://monero.net/

Coin Exchanges:
– Binance
– Bittrex
– HitBTC
– Citex
– Gateio
– Crex
– Graviex
– Txbit

Thermal Images of the Voltage Modified Gridseed G-Blade Scrypt ASIC

25 Apr
2014

gridseed-g-blade-thermal-image-chips-on-pcb

On the thermal image above you can see how things look on one of the PCBs of the new Gridseed G-Blade Scrypt ASIC in terms of temperature, the GC3355 chips of the device run pretty cool at about 40-50 degrees Celsius. These are the thermal images of the voltmodded Gridseed G-Blade ASIC that we have posted about. Do note that the thermal images are of the modified device with the additional cooling heat sinks attached to it, so the temperature of the voltage regulators is lower and the overall PCB temperature as well. You can use these if you plan on doing a voltage modification to your miners in order to see what are the possibly weaker spots – the components that get hot, in order to improve their cooling and to make sure that you will not overheat and burn your ASIC miner. We do recommend extreme caution when voltmodding the G-Blades as they are already pushed pretty close to their maximum by Gridseed and you do not have a lot of headroom for further gaining some extra performance. The power part of the Blade Miners is clearly not designed to handle much increase in the voltage, even though the GC3355 chips are just asking for more as we’ve seen with the smaller 5-chip ASIC devices from Gridseed.

gridseed-g-blade-thermal-image-1

Take a look at how hot the PCB gets (around 50 degrees Celsius) near the power connector and that is with about 85W of power consumption per PCB, a clear sign that the connector used is not the perfect choice for powering the G-Blades and while with the stock setup it might be Ok, you should be careful when you voltmod. Do note that we already have a large motherboard chipset heat sink attached to that side of the PCB and it does lower the overall temperature as well. It is placed on the back side of the PCB where the voltage regulators are and it helps to reduce their temperature, because the airflow from the cooling fan does pass through it as well and helps to keep it quite cool.

gridseed-g-blade-thermal-image-2

Looking at the side of the PCB where the voltage regulators are placed, thanks to the heat sink we have placed directly on the three VRMs their temperature is quite Ok, but there are other components that might have some issues with heat. These are the choke on the left of the voltage regulators on the photo and the 16V capacitor below the regulators as they both get to about 70 degrees Celsius in terms of temperature. And while they still do seem to work fine in the long run this may cause some issues, so you might consider replacing the capacitor with a more serious one.

Again we are going to advise you to be very careful should you consider doing a voltage modification to the new Gridseed G-Blade miners as it can be dangerous and you can easily damage your expensive miner. The modification here is not as easy as just replacing one resistor as you need to do cooling improvements as well and you are not able to push things too much to be on the safe side, so the hashrate increase is also not that big as compared to what you are getting without the modification. So you might really want to reconsider if it is worth doing the modification at all, we are probably not going to be modding another G-Blade for a while until we see how the voltage mod will handle on the longer run in its current state.

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