Posts Tagged ‘custom firmware

If you are a miner using Bitmain’s Antminer L3+ Scrypt ASICs for mining Litecoin (LTC) or another Scrypt-based altcoin you might be interested in checking out the Blissz modified firmware for the L3+. A while ago we have covered the Antminer D3 Blissz Modified Firmware For Improved Performance and the good news is that the L3+ modified firmware offers pretty much the same improvement and features as for the X11 ASIC. Optimized power usage and performance, extra features and various improvements are available, though in order to take full advantage of the modified firmware you will need to know what you are doing. Also note that this modified firmware does come with a 1.5% developer fee built-in, though the improvements it might being are definitely worth the dev fee and if you do not like what you get you can always get back to the stock Bitmain firmware.

For more details and to download and try the Antminer L3+ Blissz modified firmware…

It is not a secret that the default firmware and even settings for many of the ASIC miners that come out from the manufacturers are hardly with the best/optimal settings and often they are also limited in what you can tweak yourself. So some more advanced users take the matter in their hands in order to further optimize for performance and or stability and reliability and even add extra features that help owners of the devices to get better profit or higher profit for example. One such case is the Antminer D3 Blissz Modified Firmware for the X11 ASICs being produces by Bitmain that you might want to give a try if you have even at least one of these ASIC miners.

The custom firmware promises up to 20% lower power usage and some extra features such as ASIC voltage settings per chain as well as the ability to overclock or underclock per chain as well as more control on fan operational speeds. There are some usability improvements in the interface to make it easier and clear to use as well as some slight performance improvements as well to make it more stable and reliable in terms of operation including cgminer binary optimizations.

Do note that this is an experimental custom firmware and using it might void your warranty. Also note that it comes with built-in 1.5% developer fee built-in, so do have that in mind, although the improvements if working as promised are well worth the dev fee. The good thing is that even if you don’t like something or it does not work as expected flashing back the original firmware is as easy as installing the custom one, so you can quickly give it a go and if you don’t like the results to get back to the original.

For more details and to download and try the Antminer D3 Blissz modified firmware…

energy-saver-1

The Energy Saver feature of Gentarkin’s custom KNC Titan firmware was something that we wanted to try out in the 1.0.2 version and we tried to do it, but there was a bug that was causing the process to continue for days without finishing. With the release of the new 1.0.4 version of the custom firmware the issue in the Energy Saver feature has been resolved and we were finally able to finish a complete run on a single Titan Cube in less than 24 hours. On the image above you can see the stock settings of a fully functioning Titan Cube with all cores at 325 MHz with -0.0366V set for each core. The total power usage with these “default” settings is about 347 W and with the PSU power efficiency taken into account it makes it at about 384 Watts with a highly efficient PSU at 92% efficiency, with a less efficient PSU at lets say 85% the power usage will be higher at the wall and the final savings should be more.

energy-saver-2

The idea of the Energy Saver feature is to find the optimal lowest operating voltage of each core automatically and test to ensure the miner can run stable at these settings. As a result you get lower power consumption (lower energy bill) and less heat generated by the components, so in theory you should be able to extend the life of your mining hardware as well. All is done automatically and in the end you just need to confirm the settings that are being suggested. Our results for the fully functioning cube set at 325 MHz after the Energy Saver feature was over was an optimized voltage for all four cores at -0.0732V with a slight reduction of operating temperatures of the DCDC power modules. The more important thing is the reduction of the power usage, the actual consumed power by the device went down from about 347W to about 317W or about 30 Watts down, and a total of about 32 Watts lower power consumption at the wall. It may not seem that much, but this is close to about 10% and if you get 30 Watts lower power usage per cube and have a lot of cubes the number and power savings can get quite big. One more reason for users of KNC Titan Scrypt ASIC miners to get Gentarkin’s Custom Titan Firmware.

Visit the official website for GenTarkin’s Custom KNC Titan Firmware for more info…


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