Posts Tagged ‘DM384M’

Thermal Images of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC Miner

16, Mar 2016

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Time for a bit more in-depth look at the operating temperatures of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC with the help of a thermal imaging camera. We are starting with the front and rear of the case that the mining ASIC uses, the front has four powerful Delta Electronics server fans that such cold air through the whole case where the mining blades are and the hot air exits directly through the back of the case. There are no other fans at the back, just open space for the hot air to exit the case of the device effectively cooling. The only other fan is the one of the server grade power supply that is mounted inside the case, another server grade Delta Electronics fan that is also powerful and noisy when in operation. The fans do not have power control, so they operate at maximum RPM all of the time making the device quite noisy, but also effectively cooled even in no so cool environment.

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The four blades with ASIC chips are located on the side of the cooling fans and on the other side of the case is the power supply with the Raspberry Pi controller mounted over it. The side with the RPi and the power supply is pretty cold compared to the side where the four blade with 48 chips each are located. As one might expect the hottest part inside the miner are the ASIC chips, the rest remains pretty cold thanks to the high airflow provided by the cooling fans. Even the heatsink that are on the back of the PCB with the chips remain pretty cool thanks to the high airflow passing through them.

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And now let us take a look at the chips themselves as the hottest element of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC miners. Under the stock operating conditions they do remain with a surface temperature range of about 60-68 degrees Celsius as the temperature varies slightly depending on their position on the blade. As we’ve said already the cooling heatsink is not placed on top of the chips themselves, but instead is on the back of the PCB. This is the easier way to make things work, but not the most efficient for cooling as the chips use the PCB as a large heatspreader that then passes the heat to the large heatsink. This results in higher operating temperatures of the ASIC chips as there is no direct contact, but the temperatures are still Ok for normal operation. You should however be careful should you decide to overclock in order to get some extra hashrate as this will increase the operating temperatures of the chips. It seems that iBeLink has already chosen the optimal operating frequency for the device that results in very little HW errors while providing optimum performance. Further increasing the PLL frequency over the stock 110 MHz even with just a few Megahertz may result in increased percentage of HW errors.

Power Usage and Noise of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC Miner

11, Mar 2016

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Looking at the official specifications of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC miner state that the device should be capable of 384 MHS X11 hashrate (plus/minus 10 percent) with a power consumption of 715W measured at the wall with 25 degrees Celsius ambient temperature. This should be the numbers for the default configuration, however we did some measurements ourselves in order to get more accurate results in order to be able to do better calculations about the cost of operating the device. We have already measured on NiceHash an average hashrate that is slightly above the official number of 384 MHS, so this is good, but what about the actual power usage and more importantly noise level. In our first impressions from the device we already mentioned that it is pretty noisy and not suitable for use in room where people will be present, but let us see what is the exact noise level as well.

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The power supply built into the miner is an 850 Watts server grade one that is compatible with 100-240V range (for worldwide use). The exact model is ASPOWER U2A-A20850-D and according to the official specifications is it rated as 80 Plus Silver, so a high efficiency solution. At stock settings (110 MHz PLL) the power usage we have measured on the wall with 230V EU power input was 686 Watts as you can see on the photo, the power usage in Watts might be slightly higher in US and other 110-120V countries due to slightly lower power efficiency. Increasing the operating frequency with +1 MHz steps is resulting in the power usage going up with about 5-6W on each step, so the 850W capacity of the PSU should be able to take up some nice extra overclock if the chips are capable of working well when overclocked and cooled well. We are going to be doing more extensive testing about the overclocking potential with results on the power usage and performance changes, working temperatures and cooling very soon.

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Now for the noise level, as already mentioned it is pretty high… just like from a rackmountable server for example. With a measurement showing about 72.6 dBA average it is perfect to be installed in a data center or a dedicated mining room, but it is not suitable for home miners as the noise level is too much for people to be in the same room for more than a few minutes… and even in the next room it might be quite noisy. The reason for the high level of noise is that the unit uses server grade fans by Delta Electronics and they are set to run at maximum RPM all the time (no temperature control). The same goes for the fan used in the power supply, a powerful Delta Electronics fan running at maximum RPM all the time, even though the PSU is highly efficient and there is not so much heat generated. The good thing about this default fans setup is that even at not that good conditions such as high ambient temperature the miner should be able to operate without any issues at optimum level. The not so good part is that small miners might have issues with the high level of noise and would probably want to do something to make it less noisy without compromising performance – this is possible with some modifications and we are already working on a solution to optimize the cooling, so more on that will be coming soon as well.

The Software of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC Miner

10, Mar 2016

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The controller for the iBeLink DM384M DASH (X11) ASIC Miner is running on the Raspberry Pi inside the device and is apparently based on the MineNinja Open Source/Free Platform for Bitcoin Mining on the Ti BeagleBone Black that is modified for the specific hardware. You get a basic web-based interface for configuration and monitoring of the mining hardware, once you plug in the device in your network and turn it on it will get a dynamic IP if you have DHCP running, but you should be able to access it via the default “iBeLink” hostname if you do not know the IP. The backend used for the actual mining process is apparently a fork of cgminer 3.5.5 that the device is being shipped with, but there is a new version available that you can update to directly from the web interface. The latest cgminer 3.5.6 version adds support for the NiceHash extranonce, so that if you are selling your X11 hashrate there you should be getting very little rejected shares thus maximizing performance.

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The management from the web-based interface is pretty basic and very easy to use, you can add/remove pools and set email notifications for low hashrate or too many rejects. Unfortunately there is no temperature monitoring available on a hardware level and thus no notification for potential cooling issues or an option to shutdown the hardware in case of failure of the cooling or from overheating. Temperature monitoring can also be helpful if/when you are overclocking or underclocking the device in order to optimize it for maximum performance or efficiency for example. So there is more to be desired for any future products, but for first generation it is actually pretty good for a starting point to build on. Another thing that needs extra work is the status of the device as the currently reported local rates do not seem very accurate especially in terms of hashrate or at least the numbers are confusing, so you need to look at the poolside reports for details.

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The most interesting part of the software is the blade configuration page and more specifically the PLL frequency that can be used to overclock or underclock the miner as we have already seen some time ago when the online manual for the device was published. The default setting for PLL is 110 MHz and the software says the maximum setting is 115 MHz, but the good news is that it accepts 116 or 117 as well, so higher frequencies should be possible and we have seen an increase of power usage as we increase the operating frequency. This however needs more testing and we would advice to be careful with overclocking in order to avoid possible overheating of the chips or overloading of the power supply and thus maybe even damaging your mining hardware.

And now for some potential issues that we are seeing for the moment. There is no source code available for the cgminer fork used by the device, there is even no binary release or full RPi image release available yet. So integration into other mining software or further optimizing or maybe adding other features is problematic as they need to be released by the makers of the device only. It seems that there are no plans for making the source code available, though we should soon have a backup image of the complete Raspberry Pi software in order to be able to restore it if something fails. With that said there is no official website or contact details available for support form the hardware manufacturer, so the only way to communicate with them is the dedicated iBeLink DM384M ASIC Dash Miner Support Thread on the DashTalk forum and this is not the best way to do more serious business and provide support for your customers. So thee is more to be desired for sure, but things are moving in the right direction, it will probably just take some more time… and if iBeLink does not do it right an upcoming competitor might quickly overtake the new X11 ASIC market, that is if they manage to do things better and we are yet to see something like that happening.

– To Download a full Raspberry Pi image with the latest software for the iBeLink DM384M ASIC Dash Miner…


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