Review of the Hotmine X6 miner and upgrade kit

Hey everyone, Finally got some time to put together a review of the Hotmine X6 upgrade kit for the Antminer S5, and it seems like it works for the S3 too. I already dropped a quick overview of what this kit and the miner looks like, so let’s dig deeper. So, the X6 miner is cranking out 6.1 Th using a 12V ATX PSU, specifically the Hipro HPH850W. That PSU was part of the setup I used for testing at the conference. The web interface is pretty much a copy of Antminer’s UI. Same default login credentials, similar settings for pools, and even the miner status page looks familiar. The firmware update process is identical too, not much new to report here. When I checked with my multimeter, I got 11.8 V at the PCIE power connectors while the miner was hashing away. The UI shows almost the same number, so the miner seems to measure the input voltage pretty accurately. This miner is really reliable at that voltage: The hashrate shown on the pool matches what I see in the UI: I've chatted with the developers about the ideal temperature range for Bitfury BF16BTC8162 chips. Basically, if you own a miner using these chips, try to keep the temps around 60 degrees. Once it goes higher, the performance starts dropping off, but the chip can still hash above 100-120 C. Check out the temperature readings in the web UI. Keep in mind the thermal grease used isn’t the best cheap but not very effective (classic move). My IR thermometer showed that the chips further from the fan are running hotter than those closer to it.

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Wow,Bitfury chips?? How'd they get so lucky to get chips?? And enough for a batch of miners??

Thanx to Nikon L21 camera.

The question: where can we order them? The 1000w PSU that I sell goes to 13V easilly, so that woud be great for the X6 (or 2x X5 upgrade kits)

Holy shit they came through !! Following this thread to keep up to date on sale date

were to purchase, i have 4 s5 to upgrade

Wow. You said it should work with an S3. I have a C1 that I would like to upgrade.

looking good. hoping to get a demo before new years. as promised

I thought that I have posted all necessary links here.   Here is the manufacturer: http://en.hotmine.io/x5-x6-upgrade-kit-new Feel free to ask all your questions there. Also there's their representative here at the forum.

At the moment, I could not get more than 8.3 Th with this unit since my PSUs are not able to provide more than 13.4 V. But here are the proofs from the developers that it can do 8.8 Th. The PSU that they were using was Meanwell RSP-1500-12. It looks that there is another unit at the lower shelf.

tired of pics and teasing give us fucking hardware already

Sent emails through the website portals + PM'd the forum rep... no response for over a month Maybe it's because I'm American and speak English... we don't like ourselves that much either you know...

Well I'm a Finnish fellow right here next to Russia and I too haven't got any answer for over a month.

Most likely because BTC is going up and they are mining themselves instead of selling the miners.

Good to know it's not just a Cold War thing...

That was worth a chuckle.

Too bad, I'd dig the 500watt form factor. I think sidehack has wanted to do this for like, 2 years. These things never seem to come to pass.

Closer now than I ever have been, what with both sample chips and dev funding. I'll be in BF16 prototyping as soon as I get 2Pac proof sticks out in a couple days. But yeah, it's actually been over 2 years. Novak and I first contemplated the idea when ASICMiner posted BE300 test results in December of 2014.

Glad to hear you're still working on it, then Still been sitting on those S5 boards (one is yours) but i guess at this point they're fully obsolete. (Good space heater thought) I'll keep the husks at the very least.