Avalon ASIC user discussion

This is a thread for all Avalon ASIC owners to chat and share info. Just wanted to link to my review here: http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-asic-miner-review.html Seems like the restart problems I had are much better now (fingers crossed) since I changed the setup a bit by laying the unit down and fixing some airflow in my workspace.

users thread! ha! rub it in will you?  waiting on my unit...

Paging Jgarzik.  Party of one.  Jgarzik, party of 1!  Your seat at the ASIC table is ready.  JGarzik, party of 1! I think this is one dinner you'll be happy to eat alone.

ITYM party of 2   Bitcoin Foundation has theirs too. With so many in transit, it won't be along though, I'm guessing. And in the meantime, folks who have purchased Avalons can ask questions here.

Nevertheless, the unit has seen several cgminer restarts, and a few full machine restarts.  Machine restarts seem to happen every 4-6 hours.  Even ignoring more obvious means of restart detection (login and look at uptime, or ping-monitoring etc), a restart is a clearly audible event:  At startup, the fans race at full speed for a few seconds, before "calming down" to a more moderate pace. jgarzik , I am running my lancelot cluster on similar tp-link platform with 64M of ram. I am noticing the restart of my system because cgminer 2.10.4 slowly and steadily eats all of the available RAM about 45M. Can you just run now and then free and post the results. Probably some tweaks/patches are needed to cgminer.

Request not understood. I can watch the process size over time, if that's what you're asking.

Exactly.. pls do excuse my English sucks:) root@cgminer:~# free              total         used         free       shared      buffers Mem:         61752        28748        33004            0         2928 -/+ buffers:              25820        35932 Swap:            0            0            0 root@cgminer:~# top Mem: 28772K used, 32980K free, 0K shrd, 2928K buff, 8432K cached CPU:  23% usr   0% sys   0% nic  76% idle   0% io   0% irq   0% sirq Load average: 0.39 0.22 0.11 2/79 14414   PID  PPID USER     STAT   VSZ %VSZ %CPU COMMAND 14414 14397 root     R     1536   2%  15% top  6062  6056 root     R    69864 113%   8% /usr/bin/cgminer And when cgminer eats all memory folowing happens Feb  1 14:36:53 cgminer kern.warn kernel: [281314.280000] miner 11 invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x201da, order=0, oom_score_adj=0

I ordered several units ( on my birthday ), patiently waiting their arrival. Did you ever try it in p2pool or with a high diff share?

Yes, see the review linked in OP. Yes, "vardiff" works on BTC Guild with this miner.

Any idea what temps the modules and heatsinks are hitting? Curious if those heatsinks were overkill or necessary.

Power numbers snapshot:      620 Watts, 5.6 Amps thanks to Kill-A-Watt.

That is not 400W :\ I think I might be reconsidering my purchases from batch 2 now. Thanks for taking the time to write the review and take the readings Jeff

Thanks Jeff. That makes a big difference to the earnings potential in the long run - but probably not for the next batch, unless BFL manage to deliver. Even at the US$0.25/kWh, $20 USD/btc and difficulty = 6 million (after 300 Avalon units have been added) you'll still clear US$108 per day. If BFL ships another 40Ghps and diificulty = 12 million, you'll still clear US$52 per day. You should still be able to make an ROI if the exchange rates hold. I'll try to post something quick about the limits of profitability later.

200+W per unit? Holy balls. That's a hell of a lot more than 400W.

Ouch. I sure hope they deliver to Australia quickly... because I have a feeling I won't be running my Avalon for long. I'll probably find a use for the case and sell off the modules to someone who has cheap elec :/

Looking at the images from the Bitcoin Federation unit, it looks like they're using the 1000W Platinum unit. Compare the sides on the 850W PSU http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1358/pg2/enermax-revolution87-850w-power-supply-review-external.html vs the sides on the 1000W http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=270 Looks like they might need it to run 4 modules.

My questions are mainly of shipping: - Did you have to sign for the shipment (was it registrered/insured)? - Did the machine clear off to customs, or was it taxed?

And do you remember how much shipping was when you ordered it last year?

60,- USD if I recall correct.

Jeff's machine got special shipping because it was intended to arrive on a specific day.  Avalon said towards the end of January that shipping the units was going to cost more than they thought so it may well be more than they charged for batch 1. This may be another reason why they're so keen on resellers entering the game.