Quote from: tbolt on March 26, 2015, 10:55:07 PM

My Notes from the teardown of my C1 Miner

1. Be aware that the cooling blocks (that nearly all screws in the C1 attach to)
are made of extremely soft aluminum. Very easy to strip.

2. Use only a LIGHT 2-finger torque on all of the screws.

3. The 4 Spring loaded screws that attach the Air cooled side heatsinks (fins)
were by far the hardest to get right. Extreme care should be taken with these screws
Very light touch using a good screwdriver. The heads on these screws are also easy
to strip out. LIGHT touch.

Do not over tighten these 4 screws, I believe these 4 screws are capable of bottoming out
in their screw threads in the cooling block

4. When reassembling, compare the Air cooled fins position (or orientation)
to one of the other hashing boards. You can use vias or one of the components on the board
to eyeball the position of the heatsink. These Air cooled heatsinks float on the top
of the ASIC chips, hence the Springs to keep the force.

5. Once installed, you can compare the Spring action (tension) between two or more
of the hashing boards. You can rock the board up a bit (1mm) if you reach your fingertips
underneath the top of the heatsink. This is only to compare the tension between
two different heatsinks. You don't have to do this.

6. Also, do not tighten with any force the Cooling block coolant connections as
they will sheer off completely if too much force is used (soft aluminum).

7. The Cooling blocks are available from the SysCooling web site.

http://shop.syscooling.com/goods.php?id=47

8. Reapply thermal paste on the ASIC chips

And on removing the board from the cooling block or inside heatsink on any S3 or C1, it looks like peeling it off would lead to damage. These board were not made to flex. I suggest one of the break off razor knives with a new long blade. After screws are removed, slide in at a lower corner and work across.

I have an slow s3 from Pines Computer in Florida bought on Amazon. I suspect careless peeling may be the reason the boards are slower and inefficient. If the underside ASIC heatsink plate soldering to the ground plane underneath has been damaged then it will be hotter. A board flex could do that. It will be the first Bitmain miner I will eventually retire and then I'll put it in an oven with the ASICs exposed to reflow the solder then test.