Hi ! Again! 

I have to spend now more time on my study , so no time more for the g-blades...
Too much time I spent on it , with no benefit .
There are now Prototypes of 1024 MHS Miners in Q4 planed , and i think even if we push a Gblade to 10 MHS , it´s pointless. I have spend over 1800 USD on my both Gblades and countless hours in repairing and tweaking and for now I have only maybe 200 USD back if I´m lucky, and they allready reach the point to consume more than  they produce, with 0.365 USD / kWH in Germany, its allready painfull to mine. The only hope that I have is to hold some Coins like Doge and Litecoin in the hope , that they rise up at the end of year, but when the "monsters" are introduced in this game soon, like the 500 MHS and 1 GHS Miner, I don´t know if someone bother for something less than 100 MHS. And the most coins will die if they are only mined and imediatly sell. Only sell orders and no buy orders let the prices drop and drop until the coin is valueless. Like the Dogecoin , there are now some plans to realize merged mining with Litecoin , to save Dogecoin and stop it from slowly dying.
 
It was a pleasure for me to "talk" with you guys and I´m pretty sure that is the best thing to build a own miner , its a interesting plan to realize.
But for the moment i´m really disappointed of the situation and it´s hard for me to realize that i play a game with my own hard earned money , a game with no chance to win.
It´s time to face the truth. I have tried to get some investment back, in offering a repair of gblades or overclocking , but the blades are allready forgotten , so no chance to get something back.   

Again i asked myself why we have to re-invent this f-----g Blades? For the introduce Price of 3000 $ , they have to offer more! Ok , not for Overclocking , but even if you have some high temps outside , you would get some problems or burned parts under normal conditions. This is more like : "Ok , let us glue some parts together , an look what happens." This mining devices normaly have to checked more than any other casual electronics, because they are designed to run 24/24. And what is about any responsability from manufactor? Nothing! I don´t want to say that Grideed has bad hardware , other firms are surely not really better.But don´t bother , we are all the part of this community , and if YOU are able to sell some parts without any responsabilty and warranty and at high priceses , why not? As long as the "customers" are willing to spend high pre-order prices and they accept , that there is no guarantee, again : Why not? This is what we read everytime : No refunds, restricted warranty , all sales are final.-........
And I contribute to this system too. I received my "overclocked" Blade just 4 weeks ago ( delayed over 5 Weeks), and pay for them 899$ , because i thought : Oh what a beautifull pice of ingeneer!
And now for the same piece of ingeneer you get only 300$ , if you´re lucky, and for mining we have discuss this enough. So Who is the bad guy in this race?Aren´t we , the customers, who encourage those firms , to do things like that? Ok maybe they selling a few hardware to those "big fishes" or "minig farms people" , but they are rare , the "big" part , are every one of us.Only if we supply them, they can continue like this.... And just if they mine by themselves, but they only mine "Srypt" like anyone of us and what happens if their mined coins don´t sell anlyonger?
Sorry, about this , but i only want to encourage you people to fight for your right, because YOU count.... only if those small people with this small antminer U1 or U2  or S1 or GBLADES , goes offline, how do you think this counts? Just an example,In the sum it´s a real big part. But this is the trick of the big players, let them thought they are small...and they are really small!So don´t belive what they say, that you reach you ROI in a copuple of weeks, if one of them offer you a real big deal , catch this, otherwise don´t bother with.
I still belive in cryptocurrencies , because  there is a way out of the controlling of banc systems,but only if we realize decentralized mining we have the benefits, otherwhise is like any other system , thay allready exist. 

I know, to much philosophy for a thread like this, i´m sorry , i hope you guys don´t mind

 

Hi ,
Just some suggestions :

I´ve found this thermal fuses on voelkner , just if you want to be really sure and don´t have this on/off effect , they can handle 10 A and react at 93 C° so for one PCB it´s enough , but in worst case they must be replaced. The advantage is , that they cut the complete power off and it remains off. So you can use them direct to power.
----> http://www.voelkner.de/products/3382/Temperatursicherung-93-C.html
I don´t found something similar on mouser , maybe someone else?

Other Idea that i have was to use a circuit breaker like this ----> http://de.mouser.com/ProductDetail/TE-Connectivity-PB/W28-XT1A-7/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvNllHT6Fj2fjyJLrUxEIJB5lXHI1hSl5Q%3d (There are no pics , but look into datasheet and you know how they look.)

They offer a overload protection of 7A , this is just right for one PCB , and they are very sensitive to ambient temperature , so if the airfow form fan works, they opperate normaly , but when the fan stops they overheat and break the circuit permanently , even there is no overload related to the current. The big advantage is that they are resetable , so they remain off even you push the button

But this might take some time to find the real life conditions and for testing to find the right one. But if it works , it´s sureley a real secure and comfortable sollution , whitout replace any parts or have this switch between on /off. There are also higher ones , with 15 A so its posible to realize one sollution for both PCB. I think this can work , but it´s hard to find the sweet point , so that they dont react under normal condition but quickly react under overtemp.
If you find the right one , its possible to drill a hole in the original cooler and bring them inside like a temp sensor.

This is what i mean : (ok nearly like this  )
http://i59.tinypic.com/hs759c.jpg

Maybe some suggestions from the experts here?

I don´t try with those circuit breakers so far, but i have a bimetal switch at home and at the right place it´s possible to bring them to react only if the fan is off. For those circuit breaker i think you have to operate them to the limits , maybe something near to overload point, so that they remain on if they are cooled from the fan, but without cooling and with the additional heat from the chips , they can switch off quickly.
If someone want to try this, the best thing is to choose one sensor for both PCB , so if there is an overheat both PCB´s goes offline, and to find the sweet point, choose a summer day with high temps, so that you can be sure that it´s not react under "normal" conditions, but also check under lower outside tems if it works properly, then get the fans off and check if they break the circuit. In the datasheet are the reaction times for different situation of overload, so you have to add the ambient temperature correction factor , to calculate wich one to choose.And you want to do real perfect , you can use a 3 Pin Screw terminal for soldering on PCB , one pin without connection to PCB  just directly to the circuit breaker , and the original + pin is conected to PCB and you wire this directly form Sensor.

This is the affect of the ambient temp to the reaction:
http://i57.tinypic.com/vn164l.jpg

What do you guys think?

Thanks for this important advice. How do you realize this ?
With 2 Fans its a little bit more secure than with just one , if one fails.But a thermal switch is much better.

This one is perfect , i don´t found this size on local shops but i made similar ones on my own
Good idea! Nice!

It´s interesting to do some tunning on this parts , but now they "eat" more money , some heatsinks here some resistors there .... but take this as learning lesson , i don´t know if the additional 1 - 2 MHS will cover the costs and the time spend ever. Not only "just for fun" i hope...

VEV227M035S0ANB01K load time 2000 h

http://www.voelkner.de/products/423295/Elektrolyt-Kondensator-SMD-220-F-35-V-20-x-H-10-mm-x-10.2-mm-VEV227M035S0ANB01K-1-St..html

http://i60.tinypic.com/zv1u2s.jpg

Or this one from Mouser PCR1V221MCL1GS loadtime 4000h it´s a little bit smaller but fits also.
http://de.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=PCR1V221MCL1GSvirtualkey64700000virtualkey647-PCR1V221MCL1GS

And there are 2 Big solder pads , so if there are a little diferences , no problem. Maybe consider to buy some desoldering wire , it makes things easier.

And here what the Datasheet says about the soldering:

Again I highly recommend to add a fan for the backside, even if you use a Nothbridge heatsink with active cooling. You have to realize a serious arifolw backwards , not only for the mosfets, the cap and the choke generates a lot of heat , too. And not to forget the power terminal , i still use the default ones , but i replace them two times so far, even if i have a backfan , the plastic isolation in the plug simply melt after a while. So its much,  much better to use screw terminals or to solder the powerstripes direcltly on pcb.
The guys from gridseed seems just to finsh the device , but only with time and money aspect , the quality was not so important for them it seems. We can see that they use absolutley the same power plug as they use for the 5 Chip smaller gridseed, but the power consumption is nearly 2.5 - 3 times greater , if you consider that they calculate the BTC SHA-256 part for the smaller one.And the 5 Chip has a much better cooling because the original fan airfow catch the power plug too.
I think i have to replace the terminals too.This power plugs are maybe good for a IP Cam or something with low power but not for this high temps.

This is what i did (i use Arctic Silent F9 with temp sensor in front and back , they don´t have the same airflow like the original one, but with 2 of them it works good and really silent):

http://i60.tinypic.com/o73o09.jpg
http://i58.tinypic.com/ixd191.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/2ilmzbk.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/2ug01nk.jpg

But what happens to the profitability , guys 

Anyone see a chance that we have better times in the future? I can´t belive that this can be true , if this continue in this way i don´t  see more than 25% return of my investment , and the rest 75% are gone.

I try to explain... if i´m wrong , someone can correct me please.

Everything what means higher hashrate is like in overclocking any CPU. This means the frequency gives you the maximum number of calculations the chip can do per second.
You can surley try to set higher frequencies whithout any modifications like with the 5 Chip GSD they come with stock freq of 600 Mhz but you can set easily up to 850 Mhz.
Higher frequency means more calculations per second and more Hashrate. The problem is that with higher frequencies the chip becomes unstable and this result in
HW´s or miscalculations. It´s like someone try to do too many things at the same time , and at one point he can´t handle so many opperations and stuck.
So the goal is to get the chips stable at higher frequencies  an they need more Voltage to do this . And of course more voltage and frequency  generates more heat. The second problem.
The default Voltage of the GSD Chips is at 1,2 V With the 33K ohm resistor. If you replace this with a 39 K ohm resistor for example the Voltage rise to 1,4 V , so they
handle more stable frequency but also more heat. This you can easily measure at the big yellow caps.

The bridge voltmod=1 does the same thing but in other way it affects the 2-bit VID convertor to select another output line, this means it selects another resistance. There are 4 Resistors to set 36k, 30k, 33k, and 27k. With the clasic vmode you choose the 36k resistor istead the 33 k , like an overclock jumper without the need to solder any parts.If you do the vmode and choose the 36k , but you replace the 33k resistor , i think the replace of the 33k is useless and do nothing . The convertor coose only one output.
And of course you need the modifed cgminer and set the voltage=1 parameter. So think this is more like an alternative to solder a resistor.

Maybe J4bberw0ck can tell us more if i forgot something.I only apply the bridge mod to my first gsd 5 chip miner. There are for sure more jumpers and you can influence the output voltage in more ways but for me i think is better to stay with one mod at same time its possible to have unespected effects or that both methods add the voltage change and you have to much output.

For me this happens, at the same freq setting you have permanently change the chip voltage if you apply the resistor mod. Higher Voltage means more heat.


I don´t no any combination of both methods , but both results  in increase the chipvoltage to rise higher frequencies at very low Hardware errors. So if you have more Vcore and can set higher Frequency at very low HW this results in higher hash Rate. And have in mind that only the accepted shares counts for the effective hash rate.
There are for sure more "little" things to adjust this and get the best compromise between frequency and HW´s.
I don´t know if there are more benefits if you combine both methods for me more simple to replace just one resistor or to solder just one bridge.

The effective Hashrate for sure i think, if you have less Hw at the same Frequency , maybe the mining software say the same Hash rate for the same Freq but you get more accepted shares, if there was some HW´s in default mode.

Maybe the difference is not so big but if you set 925 Mhz @ 37.5 K the chips works with higher voltage than when you set 925 Mhz @ 36k. So the power consumption rise with the higher voltage and this produce more heat at the same freq.
So if you don´t want to overclock so much , its better to stay with 36K if this runs stable. Just an example : I have 2 blades , one with 36 K Mod ,one with 39 K mode, the one with 39 K Mode is a little bit faulty so i run them "only"  at 900 Mhz. The 36k one runs better so i set 950 Mhz , but even if the 39K one has a lower Freq it produce more or min. the same heat like the 36k one. That´s because this runs with higher voltage.

I hope this helps you a little bit , and maybe someone can complete or correct me if i´m wrong.Especially for the bridge mods you can read here more : ----> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=519112.0

Thanks for  your appreciation!
At the moment i try to do a study as an ingeneer in electronic communication. But i´m not so far and too lazy to learn.
I´m proud of me that i can participate in a forum in english that is not my native language. So sorry about any misspelling.
I only try to give something back to the forum , because i get some informations ,too.

And that´s the reason why only they can call themselves Mr. BIG.
No warranty, no money loss.
But what about the promise of fully decentralized crypto currencies?
Only if you have the real big money to buy at first the big Hash machines, you can get some profit.
So don´t care about warranties , try to do the best you can to maximize the income , so maybe don´t loose to much money.

The answer is simple : They don´t care about this! Any modifications , even if this include just a higher resistance for the original 33 kOhm Resistor exclude any warranty.
I don´t know what kind of warranty some firms like Zoomhash offer , who sell modifed Blades , but if there is any , it is restricted...
There are surely some Sellers that offer some better conditions but have in mind that the manufactor exclude any warranty only if you replace or remove the original fan, this was the same for the smaller usb gridseeds who don´t really need a fan in scrypt mode.

Here are some examples how the temperature influence the drain current in Ampere. (In this example for the Dual Cool NEX Mosfet from Texas Instruments)

At 50 C° ---> 100 A
At 75 C° ---> 100 A
At 100 C° ---> 95 A
At 125 C° ---> 80 A
At 137.5 C° ---> 40 A
At 150 C° ----> 0 A !!!

This one has a max operation temp of 150 C° the IRF ones has 175 C° , but they react similar.
And this is the reason why the temps of the mosfets affects the HW´s.
As you can see the critical case temperature is at something near 90 C° , then the drain current begins to decrease.
I hope this helps you a little bit to plan your modifications.

They surely mean the temperature inside the Chip at maximum, so if you measure the temp on the heatsink , it´s better to remain much lower than 100 C° or 212 F or 373 Kelvin.
One secure Outside Temp for long run is surley something about 70 degrees Celsius.But this can be realize only with a large Heatsink on the PCB and active cooling. Maybe is better to keep in mind , that one faulty "part" may cause more damage to other parts ,  for example on my PCB the AME8805 was faulty and gives me 5 V on the output , instead 3,3V ,in worse case the Stm Chip may die due the Overvoltage. So I recomend to be very carefull if you go to the limits. But when i count how much time and money for parts i invest in this Blades, i´m not sure if there will be ever a R.eturn O.f I.nvestment point ever. Maybe if we can sell this huge calculation power for other application , or as a heater for the winter. The only winners in this game are in my opinion only the producers, they can mine at first with this things at a time when this is rentable, and then they sell those things at very high pre order prices. If i spend this time as a taxi driver , i surely earn much more money..... And who cares about, that now I can repair some G-Blades , no one wants to have them , at the current prices.So much money and time lost....
Sorry about this , it´s out of topic and i know that this is the mining game , but it´s really annoying.

And for those who are interresed in, my blade still works  

After some unexplicable USB errors , like cgminer has unexpected ended , now both blades works for 2 days. No problems no errors, so the soldering interventions seems to be succsessfull.The replaced Mosfet seems to work, the replaced AME8805 seems to work, and the STM32 ,too. They accumulate a lot of heat , but as i told , i apply a backwards fan, so i hope this is enough. In Germany are now 19 C° Outside and inside are 28 C° , even all my windows are open.And I only run the 2 Blades and an Antminer S1.

Styson , are there some news about your fight against the stm32 ? And where did you get the firmware?

If you Mean the 3 Mosfets on power Side,  the original ones from IRF (IOR), mostly all mosfets produced by IRF in SMD have the max operating Temperature up to 175 C°.
And for Soldering max 300 C° at 1.6mm from case for a maximum of 10 seconds. The better sollution is to replace the original mosfets with Dual Cool ones. Like the ones in my list or in the list from "J4bberwock".His list is really the best , if you want to go to the limits. This ones have 2 heat pads over/under , so the heat is better get outside the case. And adding a Fan for the powerside counts a lot.
But its highly recomended to replace the 16V Cap with a more serious one , if you don´t have.

Thank you for your suggestions and offer , I replace this with O-Ohm i try to see if it works for longer time ,i use a good PC - Powersource , so maybe there are no negative effects , i hope so.

Hi,

I have some news, too.
My ordered parts arrived now and i replaced them so far.

This is what i replaced :

• For the AME8805 : This one ---> AP1115BY33L-13 Link : http://de.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=AP1115BY33L-13virtualkey62110000virtualkey621-AP1115BY33L-13
• For the Upper Mosfet ( IOR 5302 C349P LL2C) : This ----> CSD16321Q5C (DualCool N-CH) Link: http://de.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=CSD16321Q5Cvirtualkey59500000virtualkey595-CSD16321Q5C
  
• For the AFB26 Ferrite Bead :  ----> Zero - Ohm Resistor High power Size 0805 CRCW08050000Z0EAHP Link: http://de.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=CRCW08050000Z0EAHPvirtualkey61300000virtualkey71-CRCW08050000Z0EAH
  
• For the Capacitor 220uf 16V (this wasn´t damaged , but just to be secure i replaced them too) : -----> SMD Cap 220uf  35 V (This one is higher, but fits perfect) Link : http://de.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=PCR1V221MCL1GSvirtualkey64700000virtualkey647-PCR1V221MCL1GS
  

And don´t be afraid to order from Mouser , if you are not in the USA . I was also a little bit afraid , after i had some bad experiece with my orders from USA to Germany,
but in this case it was really a dream! Just 2 days to arrive , no extra costs for customs or other fees. Even if i order directly in Germany this would not be faster, and in other shops it is really difficult to find the parts.

Some conclusions (for beginners)  :

• The upper Mosfet (this was absolutly the reason why the power source shut down - Thanks to Styson and Barssguy) was really hard to desolder with hot air , i have to remove the Cooler from the PCB and it takes a lot of time. Surprisely it was also hard to solder the new
  one , it fits perfect to the older size , but i was afraid to do this with hot air , not to damaged it , and i have to use a lot of flux but it was really difficult to apply it. i made it finally , not perfect but it works so far. Mybe to use soldering Paste which has a lower melt point isn´t a bad idea
• Be very carfull not to scratch the PCB , when working with sharp tools, especially when the protecting surface is hot.
• The Ame8805 was easy to solder , but everytime you have to clean with isoprpyl before apply and fix it with tweezers. You also have to be very carefully with the heat not to apply to long , some seconds more than expected over 300 C and you destroy it. And have in mind that this parts are very moisture-sensitive. in the bag is an indicator , if this is not blue you have to bake them. And also not apply to much solder !
• For the AFB26 ( maybe this just a liitle bit melted part cause the fault to the AME8805 - thanks to J4bberwock) just remove the older one carfully not to damage the tracks under , in my case the tracks was not damaged from melting. And a 0- OHM Resistor ( i take the one with high power) works definitley. For a long time period i don´t know but i think it looks good at the moment.
  For those ones who has more real FB on the Board , replace them with 0 Ohm.It´s more secure , than to have the posibility to damage the PCB.My PCB was originaly send form Hong Kong and I have only 0- OHm Resistors in the Place for the FB´s directly form the Factory , just the AFB26 was a real FB.
  
• The Capacitor was harder to desolder than i thought , with hot air , may the plastic part begin to melt , and again be carefull not to pull them to much.
  I don´t know if the one i choose ( 220uf 35 V ) is really the best choice , may some one has a better alternative?.
• And don´t forget , it´s highly recomended to have some basic things like desoldering wire/stripe , a hot air station, and a Flux Pencil. Also try to remove the old solder that remain on the pads and apply new one which is recomended for SMD.It´s better than to damage more. This was my mistake too , so i thought : "Let´s start to solder SMD without any tools , just a soldering Iron." ---> Bad idea. After some impressions i highly recomend , if you are not a proffesional , to think twice , the things are not so easy than they appeard and just one wrong move and your investment is gone... the current prices for Scryptmining are sad enough , so don´t make them sadder.If you have a little bit experience in this things , so my recomend is not to hesitate and prepare everything calm, just a few days without mining are not so expensive like a valueless device. Also don´t forget to apply coolers on any important part, like Mosfets , Choke R , and backside of the PCB , I also apply a small cooler on the Capacitor which was original the 16V one and only to be absolutley sure one small cooler on the AME8805 from USB side.But the most important thing :  USE A FAN to cool the powersource part backwards! Just to show how important this is : my powerplugs ,i don´t apply screw terminal ones , are purley melted and destroyed under "normal" overclocked conditions with 39Kohm and 938 Mhz!!!!, just even if i used good copper stripes 2.5mm, so to replace this with screw terminals are much more better.Keep in mind that only with the front Fan , the airflow decrease significantly backwards , and it has allready accumulate all the heat from the cooler part , so you try to "cool" with "hot" air. This was not a big invention from Gridseed, under summer temperature , you may have heat problems und normal conditions , without any overclock. They try to compensate this with the more powerfull Fan in the front, but this is a loud and inefficient sollution. I use now 2 Arctic Fans with Temp Sensor, one in the front and the other one i mount backwards with screws on the original cooler, so the hot air from the front fan AND the power -part , is blowing away to the side.And if you apply the fan on the side , the Blades are able to place one above the other.

So i hope this time it works better and longer , after replacing the AME and the AFB26 the USB Communication works again.
If it works i hope that the price drop don´t continue like this , that i don´t have to use my 2 G Blades only for heating my home in the winter.

And thanks to all the guys ,who spend they time to made this thread.

Has anyone an idea how to opperate with cgminer 3.72 and win xp and not tho have to unplug the Blades form USB and Power when I change them Pool or freq?
I try the newest BFG Miner it has not this fault , but it don´t works so fine like CGMiner, after some times the stratum is interrupted.  



 

I asked myself how they separate the usbinput and the 12v input why this works yesterday only when i plug the 12V too? Maybe the AFB26 is like a separator? And what happens when i change this to a 0 Ohm resistor? Has anyone replace this with 0 Ohm? Normaly the communication part has to work when only the usb is plugged in. But when only the 12V is plugged in the STM must be unpowerd.