Quote from: raskul on December 23, 2014, 07:32:09 AM

I have some serious reservations about how Bitmain have gone about creating their newest miner, the S5.

After seeing the magazine adverts and watching the speculation build, it would seem, to me at least, that they are designing a miner which has a good chance of failure due to the risky design.

Bitmain have done a private batch of S3++ using the chain design on an entirely new chip, in preparation to sell the S5 en-mass.
S3++ hasn't been released to the public, so we can only presume that there are a few large farms, with vested interest, mining large scale, across the world on a private batch of S3++ miners.

The string design is a very bad method to use, after so many experienced the troubles with the Prisma from AM... and... AM had to recall an entire batch.

Sure the S5 is BMT's most efficient miner to date but it's quite late to the party, the SP20 can reach this efficiency and below with proven dc2dc stable design and... without what seems to be, by Bitmain, a risky cost cutting exercise.

I can't help but think something is not quite right here... presuming that there were problems with the chips, or the boards on the S5's for them to appear this late after advertising... having an open-top design of the casing, surely won't allow enough airflow, either?

I can't get my head around what Bitmain are trying to accomplish here, so I'm putting it out there... it's a product which has high chance of failure and I can foresee many RMA'd units.

Undecided

Seems serious old boy....

Is there any evidence of localized heating or hot spots on the boards?
How about in the Bui, any sign of uneven cooling?
Are you running at 12v or 9?
What guage cables are you running from the PSU and is there any sign of excess heating?

One wouldn't want to invest in something which has design problems. Do you have much experience in asic or electronic design yourself?

I'll put my bulk order of 52 on hold till I hear back from you old chap.
Have a tidy profit from those nice chaps at GAW I'm looking to re invest and these look like just the ticket.

Toodle pip for now....