Posts Tagged ‘iBeLink’

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…

We Can Now Confirm That the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC Miner is Real

9, Mar 2016

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As we have already shared with you recently there were news of a X11 ASIC miner, namely the iBeLink DM384M ASIC DASH Miner some days ago and we were among the first to pre-order a unit in order to confirm it is indeed real and to test it out. This week we have received our iBeLink DM384M miner and we can confirm it is real and it is also time to share some photos of our unit and first impressions form the hardware. We want to start with the fact that we are in no way associated with Dual Miner who were selling the device or the Tiannengbo Group who are making the hardware, we have purchased the device as a regular customer and have paid the normal price. The total price of the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC miner was the $2098 USD stated on Dual Miner’s website + extra $157 USD for the shipping and then 20% VAT when it arrived from China + some extra fee for the courier company to get it cleared from the customs. The total cost of the device delivered to our door was $2726 USD with everything included that we have paid to get it. We are very happy with the service provided by Dual Miner, though they may be a bit slow in email communication at times, they do their job well and deliver on their promises… it is a shame that they do not have a larger product catalog offering more mining hardware options. Moving to the device itself, it was very well packaged and the box was not as big as we have anticipated actually. What we got is the miner itself plus a power cable with a US power connector, even though the unit was shipped to Europe and there was no manual inside (download the manual online in PDF format).

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iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC miner we got is very much like on the first published photos, so the initial images were not from some prototype, but from the actual device that was shipped to customers. The build quality is quite good, the case is sturdy and everything is well fitted and bolted inside, so even after getting it shipped from China everything was fine and there were no fallen screws or disconnected cables during the transportation. It all feels like a solid product designed to last long and hopefully it will be able to even though this seems to be the first generation of X11 ASIC miners and we are probably going to soon see more efficient and even faster solutions becoming available. There are already some news for competition with higher hashrate and lower power consumption, however we can not confirm if there is actually other working X11 ASIC hardware or not yet. We can only confirm that the iBeLink DM384M X11 ASIC miner is real and works as we have actual hardware in our hands and are already using it for mining. We are going to share more details about it very soon, so stay tuned for additional feedback about the device as we continue to test it, details about power consumption, heat, overclocking, optimizations and so on are coming soon.

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iBeLink DM384M consists of four blades with 192 TNB0301 ASIC chips total and the device is supposed to be able to provide about 384 MHS hashrate at about 715 Watts power consumption at the wall. The four blades with chips are being controlled by a Raspberry Pi that also provides the user with an easy graphical interface to the cgminer software (the unit is being shipped with version 3.5.5) that is used for the mining process. The four blades are connected via USB ports to the RPi and the network interface of the RPi is used to be connected to your network in order to setup and control the miner. No need to have it connected to a standalone computer to control the mining process, everything is being done by the device thanks to the Raspberry Pi inside, all you have to do is connect the power and network cables and you are ready to configure it and start mining.

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The power supply built into the unit is an 850 Watts one, so with a power consumption of around 700 W it should be able to handle some more overclock if the miner is capable of such, we are going to be trying this out soon as well. The cooling of the ASIC chips is ensured by four Delta fans (server grade), so it is not very silent when in operation, even though the air exiting the case of the miner does not feel very hot. There seems to be no temperature sensor and fan control available, to reduce the noise if the operating temperatures are lower, so definitely the miner is not suitable to be used in a room where people are present more of the time as it is pretty noisy.

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Here is how a single blade looks like with the 48 TNB0301 ASIC chips on it. The cooling heatsink is not placed on top of the mining chips, but is instead on the back side and it uses the PCB to transfer the heat of the chips to the heatsink. This is the easier way to do the cooling when the chips are not getting way too hot as we’ve seen from other ASIC miners in the past.

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The last part of our initial impressions that did not leave us very happy is the fact that there was quite a bit of dust buildup inside the miner, way more than there should be from a normal testing of new hardware before shipping to customer for example, much like an exotic car shipping company would do. The outside of the miner makes an impressions that it is new (cleaned well), but on the inside – the fans and the heatsinks of the blades with chips have dust that is hard to cleanup with just compressed air without taking the device apart. The amount of dust we should normally be associated with at least of few weeks of usage in normal everyday environment (non server room) and we don’t think that these devices are tested in a very dusty room. So it seems that they have been “tested” for some more time before being shipped to customers…


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