Quote from: Scorpyy on July 02, 2020, 05:03:19 PM

Ok so i decided to re-solder chips, however instead of going for every single chip i want to start with one that is already faulty. Does anyone know a way i can determine which one is it if there are no visible damages on the board? I want to gather all required information before i dissamble the miner.

@The_binary_Observer we need your expertise on this one.

Now, if you want to take this to the next level in order to be absolutely and completely sure about which component is causing the failure on your miner then you have to buy an special diagnostic device called universal test fixture that connects in series between the miner and a laptop or pc, from there you can start to determine what is exactly causing the hashing board not to start.

Depending of how many hashing boards you expect to repair and assuming that you are going to use the universal test fixture device along with a top quality soldering paste, soldering flux and hot air solder you may be spending around $400 dollars. However, I put you this way, there is a place in the U.S. that claims they repair S17 series hashing boards, they charge for EVERY hashboard repair service $350, plus shipping.

If you send at least 1 complete miner to Bitmain in Hong Kong you may be end paying $150 or $200 on shipping costs plus customs fees when they send back a new crappy miner which is not guaranteed to be 100% free of failure within the next 15 days of first start. However, if there is more than one complete miner to be shipped to Bitmain then do the math between buying the repair/diagnostic equipment and paying either 3rd party repair or shipping/customs costs to and from Hong Kong you may be ending paying more than $400 and if your miner or miners fail again you are ready to fix them right away on the spot.

Also, I have found that the S17 series are shipped from Bitmain overclocked and that is one of the reasons they fail so much. All S17 use the same hashing chips what makes them different is the clock speed and the number of chips on hashing boards.

I have been running some testings with this S17 and S9 and I have been able to reach consistent and almost zero HW errors overclocking to 100 Th on S17+ and 20 Th on S9. Don't ask how I do reached those numbers because there is time and money invested on those tests that I am not willing to share. All I can tell is that if the above instructions, specially resoldering the chips, are followed higher overclocking speeds can be safely achieved.

PS: Buy Kester soldering paste and soldering flux. Some people here maybe thinking... "this guy works for Kester and that is why is is recommending it" I don't work for that company but in my years of experience Kester products have proved to be highly reliable.