Hi, everyone!
Today we are going to talk about custom firmwares for ASICs,
discuss its advantages over the original firmware,
and show you how to reflash your ASICs step by step and overlock them up to 20Th/s.
First, I want to note that chips in ASICs have different characteristics and parameters.
It depends on the chips quality, which is defined by conductivity between chips elements.
Some chips have small leak flows which can be the reason of their defects, and leads to their overflow heating.
Therefore, some chips are good, which can be loaded up to 100 percent over standards,
while others are not able to operate at high capacities.
The quality of chips can not be foreseen in advance, it comes down to luck.
And now let's talk about the original firmware and its functionality.
Now you see the original firmware web-interface
Miners interface is standard and practically does not change from version to version.
Let’s start from the "Miner Configuration" tab, there are some hidden settings that can be opened,
if you add Configuration 1 or Configuration 2 in the address bar.
After that, the Search option appears.
In case of the original firmware, you can choose the maximum frequency of only 650 mHz.
In case of a custom firmware this parameter can be increased over 1000 mHz,
which significantly increases ASIC performance.
To use immersion cooling for ASICs, you will need to set a snag on fans.
But since this firmware blocks the mining process if fans don’t work,
it makes overlocking devices impossible
A few words about the original firmware.
First, I should say that the original firmware is initially designed with limits on clock frequency and voltage
to guarantee stable operation of equipment and prevent overheating of devises.
Although, in fact, ASICs can operate much more efficiently,
work at higher temperatures without overlocking with higher hashrate on lower power modes.
But you can't reach such results with the original firmware.
That’s why most miners reflash their ASICs to some custom firmware.
Now I will show you how to reflash your firmware to BiXBiT firmware step by step.
The link to the BiXBiT firmware you can find in the description under this video.
Here we’ve got a “System” tab, than go to the “Update” tab where we can choose a file.
Cancel the “Keep settings” checkmark.
After you do that, all the settings and data in your firmware will be reset.
You can’t keep this checkmark,
because the new firmware will not work correctly with the old configuration file.
So, click “Flash new firmware”, choose the “BiXBiT firmware S9” file, then click “Flash image”, ok
Also, I want to note, that if you want to get maximum hashrate,
a good power supplier is the first think you should provide your ASIC.
The fact is, that without a good power supply,
mining will not be profitable no matter what type of devices you’ve got,
voltage slumps will negate all the efforts.
To get 20Th/s, you need a power supplier of at least 2kW.
After immersing your devices into liquid, check once again that there is no voltage slumps.
Not least you should care of is a cooling system.
If your ASICs will lack cooling, it leads to failure.
Coming back to our firmware.
The installation took about 5 minutes.
The system is restarting right now, the firmware is unpacking and being uploaded into the work memory.
The file system is overriding.
After the reflashing has finished,
the system will refresh the page, open a new web interface.
If this does not happen, you can refresh the page via Shift + f5 on windows or command+R5 on iOS
That’s it, the process is completed, the page has not refreshed automatically, therefore, we do it by ourselves.
Initially, a firmware was designed to automate the process of selecting frequencies.
Also, there are predefined modes.
A warning appeared in the “Miner configuration” tab says
that the old version of the configuration will be deleted.
Next, go to the “Profile” tab.
If the profile is initially turned off, in this case we can vary any modes.
In this tab, we activate the ASICBoost mode here.
ASICBoost mode provides savings of 15% on electricity.
Also we must indicate the temperature of the emergency shutdown of the miner.
Usually we set 80 degrees according to PCB.
I want to note that the temperature of a printed circuit board will be slightly lower than the temperature of a chip,
which can reach over 100 degrees.
There is also a “Restart if hashrate lower” option.
This setting allows you to restart ASIC when its performance drops.
Note that the setting is specified in Gh/s
“Fan check”.
Here we put OFF in case you use immersion cooling.
Now we see a warning message which says that if you turn off these options in case of air cooling,
it can lead to ASIC failure. In this case if fans don’t work, chips will simply overheat.
“Preset” tab
You can set different speeds here up to 18 Th/s.
If we set disable, then we can vary speeds by ourselves.
Save.
Go to the “Chain frequency settings” tab.
Here we can see the current frequency of chips and their quality (by color).
“Chain frequency settings” tab
Here you can set values ​​for all chips ...
I usually set up to 975 megahertz
Voltage of 9.5 V.
Here I wish to emphasize, that such settings can be achieved only if chips work perfectly.
You can set even 1000 megahertz, but you need to understand that it will drive the settings from 1000 and below.
And by the way, you can also specify the lower frequencies
(We will get to this later).
Be sure to check whether ASICBoost is enabled.
Go ahead, here we set global settings for all the boards,
but you can also select them manually for each chain.
Here we can see the current frequency of chips, efficiency, quality of chips,
... autotune mode.
Here is the setting of the minimum frequencies.
I set 825 mHz
It does not make sense to set them lower.
“Downscale RED” - reduce for red chips by 1 step...
enable.
Orange chips the same.
Timer every 2 hours.
The worst efficiency keep 75-70%
Check every 2 min.
Frequency reset ...
save.
Here we now can see a log where we will see the whole optimization process.
Then all these values that I set enable will be switched to disable after the autotuning is completed.
While the process resumes,
I will tell you more about the chips status.
Here we can see the data for each chip.
There is a chip number, its quality is shown 109 108% ...
...109%... 108% ...
now it does not make sense to look at the quality at the time of overclocking,
as now only the testing mode is in progress,
when the ASIC is in operation, then we will see a more real picture,
and the optimization process itself takes about an hour.
But even now it can be observed that the chips have different colors:
red, orange and green.
Here we have red chips -1, orange -1, green +1,
but after the optimization has passed, you can manually add frequencies to green ones and remove them from red and orange,
thereby optimizing the performance of devices ...
You also can see S and X marks.
Which means “Slow” (s) and “Low quality chip” (x).
But now it’s too early to tell, since the testing process is not yet complete.
BiXBiT firmware has a monitoring mode, compatibility with HaveOS,
It is integrated with external monitoring systems.
This is done for convenience, although AntMiner has its own monitoring software,
which will work with the our firmware too.
There is also a new “Config Multiplier” option that allows you to duplicate the “config” to all devices in your network.
Here you can add a range of IP addresses, user name and select the “config”.
It can be taken from the “Configuration” tab.
Here you can set all the settings and simply duplicate them to all devices.
This is quite convenient for the basic parameters,
but it is better to perform more detailed settings manually.
Nothing new here...
host name, settings protocol...
then you can specify any custom settings
“Diagnostics” tab
here you can ping the pool, make a traceroute or configure NSlookup, check its time
traceroute will show the routes path
and the second is ip addresses conversion to domain names, which means the DNS server check.
it’s 18 th/s already...
….but the process is not over yet
15 hours later, on the "miner configuration tab" we can see now
the hasrate
It is over 20.3 Th/s
Boards temperature is 54 degrees
chips temperature is 69 degrees
Here we can see changed pool and user settings
On "Chip frequency settings" tab we can see chips status
As you see, all chips are green
thare are only a few orange
but it's normal
Generally, everything is perfect
ASIC operates at high modes without faults
But still you must understand that such parameters can be achieved only with immersion cooling system.
Well, that's all we wanted to say today.
If you still have questions, write all of them in comments
Also, you can share with us your experience with other firmwares
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we promise to make more interesting videos in the future
Bye