First Impressions from the iPollo V1 Mini Ethash/ETChash ASIC Miner
Mining
cryptomining-blog.com
2 h
Studying time: ~8 m
We acquired a maintain of a pleasant little golden iPollo V1 Mini Ethash/ETChash ASIC miner and determined to mess around with it to see why so many individuals like these small home-oriented high-hashrate and low-power ASIC miners with help for the Ethash and ETChash algorithms. You would possibly be capable of rating deal on used iPollo V1 Mini now that these gadgets will not be that worthwhile like they had been throughout the time when you would mine Ethereum (ETH) with them and so they can nonetheless turn out to be useful within the subsequent bull run or in the meantime for those who mine some Ethash or ETChash cash in the meantime. The nicest factor is that they’re very compact, not that noisy on the whole and really energy environment friendly in comparison with what a GPU mining rig would use to provide the similar hashpower. And so they do include WiFi adapter built-in, so when you set them up they’re straightforward to maneuver round the home or residence as you’ll solely must plug them in an influence socket to ensure that them to start out hashing, no want to make use of community cables, though you possibly can nonetheless if you wish to.
Now, allow us to begin with somewhat clarification as iPollo does provide two units of V1 ASIC miners, one is described as ETC Miners and have the phrase Basic of their product names. These are iPollo V1 Mini Basic (130 MH/s at 104W) and iPollo V1 Mini Basic Plus (280 MH/s at 270W) with each gadgets having a design reminiscence of three.75 GB out of which the out there reminiscence to be used is 3.6 GB. Because of this these gadgets can mine Ethash or ETChash cash which have as much as a 3.6 GB DAG dimension. There’s additionally the iPollo V1 Basic (1550 MH/s at 1240W) with the identical reminiscence limitation out there, however that one is huge and noisy and never very appropriate for house mining anyway.
The opposite ETH Miner class is comparable by way of hashrate and energy utilization or extra environment friendly, however these gadgets do include extra reminiscence out there. The design reminiscence is 6.0 GB of which the out there reminiscence for DAGs is 5.8 GB, that means that you could mine even Ethereum (ETH) forks equivalent to ETHF or ETHW which have DAG dimension of over 5GB already. Ethereum in fact is now not out there for mining because it has switched from PoW to PoS. However for those who get the iPollo V1 Mini (300 MH/s at 240W), the mannequin we’re and testing right here, or the extra environment friendly iPollo V1 Mini SE Plus (400 MH/s at 232W) or the smaller iPollo V1 Mini SE (200 MH/s at 116W) try to be safer on the long run on what you’ll be capable of mine many extra Ethash or Etchash cash passing the 4GB DAG dimension within the close to future. There’s additionally the iPollo V1 (3600 MH/s at 3100W), however identical to the same Basic counterpart this one is huge, noisy and fairly costly for the common house miners anyway.
As you most likely already guessed, after checking that the machine works high-quality, we opened it up. The iPollo V1 Mini ASIC miner is kind of compact and comes with an exterior 12V energy provide with a most score of 360W (2 traces rated at 180W every) with two 6-pin PCI-E energy connectors popping out of this passive Huntkey PSU. You might want to plug within the two 12V energy traces into the miner that has an influence utilization of 240W and that needs to be high-quality for the wires and the miner. The 6-pin PCI-E energy connectors are usually rated at 75W, however good high quality ones are capable of deal with 100W or extra often. There could possibly be issues nonetheless for those who attempt to use a 6-pin PCI-E energy connector for a 150W or extra because it often begins to overheat and burns up resulting from being considerably overloaded.
The facility provide is kind of good, though it will get scorching when mining it is rather environment friendly and gives secure energy to the miner. The facility utilization now we have measured with the inventory energy provide is round 50W for the miner whereas on the brink of mine and round 244W on the wall when mining begins. Connecting a 1000W Platinum rated Corsair energy provide resulted in 249W of energy utilization whereas mining (4-5W extra because of the further 5V line energy consumption the Corsair has).
As a result of compact dimension of the miner the producer Nano Labs has determined that they may use two small 60mm dimension followers with high-rpm to supply the cooling for the miner. And whereas these followers do their job very nicely, at most RPM they’re fairly noisy (round 7000 rpm), although with the fan management and regular operation they go right down to a sub 5000 rpm and the noise is rather more acceptable. With the utmost velocity of the 2 cooling followers you’ll be getting round 64 dBA noise degree whereas with them operating usually with the miner working at round 50 levels Celsius and the followers at round 4800 rpm the noise degree measured is round 52 dBA and that’s rather more acceptable, although nonetheless not very silent. The 2 followers used are from a Chinese language producer referred to as Ebonda and are rated at 0.8A at 12V. We’re in fact going to attempt to optimize the cooling and see if this miner might be made extra silent, however that may comply with in one other put up.
The cooler of the miner is a big aluminium copper block that looks like a server sort heatsink, however doesn’t appear to be an ordinary sized one… the mounting gap distance, the protruding copper block and never centred placement of the screws make it appear to be a customized design. Would’ve been good for those who might simply mount tower-based CPU cooler to make cooling simpler and fewer noisy, however that may not be a straightforward activity – actually not as straightforward as juts changing the heatsink and followers. The miner itself consists of two boards with a pin header connection between them. The underside one is the management and energy board and the highest one is the hashing board with a single massive ASIC chip. BTW after disassembling the miner with changed thermal compound utilizing Arctic MX4 thermal grease we’ve seen about 1 diploma Celsius drop within the working temperature of the miner.
The Nano Labs V66H ASIC single chip is seemingly able to 300 MH/s Ethash/ETChash hashrate with an influence utilization of round 200-ish Watts of energy utilization, no actual specs of the chips. These are straightforward to scale with huge hashrate miners for those who simply enhance the chip depend. Although apparently effectivity could possibly be additional improved judging by the specs of the Mini SE and Mini SE Plus miners that present even higher energy effectivity. Nano Labs’s iPollo Ethash/ETChash ASIC chips may not be probably the most energy environment friendly within the bunch, however they do appear to carry out fairly competitively and the 6GB of reminiscence is a plus as nicely. To not point out that these miners do include help for dual-mining with ZIL, so somewhat further revenue added by that as nicely, a revenue that will permit the gadgets to efficiently compete with greater hashrate merchandise with decrease energy utilization equivalent to Jasminer X4.
The iPollo V1 Mini ASIC miner comes with a easy and simple to make use of web-based interface for monitoring and management of the machine, there’s additionally the iPolloTool software program for Home windows that enables for simpler organising and monitoring of a number of miners without delay. The common reported hashrate we’re seeing for the iPollo V1 Mini is round 300 MH/s with an working temperature at round 50 levels and followers at round 4800 rpm. At 244 Watts of energy used and with 52 dBA noise. So, the claimed specs are just about what it’s best to anticipate to get in actual utilization.
The miner helps each ETChash and Ethash mining and dual-mining with ZIL as nicely. There’s nonetheless a catch with the twin mining help, the most recent dual-mining firmware isn’t but out there on the official firmware improve bundle but, however you possibly can obtain firmware model 0.76.96 from RabidMining. There doesn’t appear to be help for Nicehash mining on the iPollo nonetheless, The 6GB reminiscence onboard permits for an honest future-proof functionality of the machine (watch out with the 4GB fashions!). It takes about 4 minutes for the miner to get able to mine ETC when you boot it up, so fairly fast on that entrance in comparison with Jasminer X4 the place you will have to attend about 20 minutes.
There’s a person fan management choice out there with each guide and computerized modes out there for the person to configure. And there’s additionally a Wi-fi community setup within the web-interface that it’s essential to use to attach your machine to a WiFi community. The primary time you run it must be related with a community cable as a way to setup the Wifi, after that it’s going to simply connect with the wi-fi community you set it up to make use of mechanically. There’s sadly no management for working frequency or voltage out there, so no person choices out there for making an attempt to optimize the machine for higher energy effectivity or quicker hashrate for instance. The out there logs within the internet interface will not be very usable as though there are three totally different logs out there so that you can monitor by means of the online interface neither one in every of them is the cgminer output for the precise mining course of (the machine makes use of a modified cgminer as mining software program).
So, all in all, the iPollo V1 Mini Ethash/ETChash ASIC miner is a pleasant compact house miner for anybody , it really works nicely, fairly versatile and performs as anticipated… there’s in fact extra performance to be deisred, so room for additional imporvement. If you’re seeking to get one in every of these search for some sub $1000 USD offers.
