How to Setup a Raspberry Pi 2 Bitcoin Mining Rig w/ Bitmain AntMiner U3 - Duration: 10:33. Antminer U3 Bitcoin Miner Unboxing - Duration: 2:14.

Bitmain released the Antminer U3 at the end of March 2015 equipped with the Bitcoin mining BM1382 chip. It is the first product to utilize a 28nm mining chip, the hash rate of a single unit can reach up to 15.75GH/s while consuming only 0.59w/GH.

Antmin U3 official specification: Hash Rate: 63 GH/s ±5% Power Efficiency: 1Watt/GH/s on wall at 0.83V Rated Voltage: 12V input， 6A. There is a adaptor without a power line. Chip number: 4 BM1382 (same chip in S3 S4 S3++) Noise: ~25DB at 25°C ambient temperature Certificate Compliance: FCC/CE Weight: 1.4KG USB connection (one USB cable for each U3) One 80mm fan Let’s see how it performs! Unboxing: The Antminer U3 ships in a solid, layered cardboard box as below: The Antminer U3 is packed with a white case with the Antminer logo and a QC seal. In the box you’ll find: The U3 miner USB cable Power supply One power cable They are protected by rigid black foam to ensure maximum protection of the miner during transportation. The length of power cable and USB cable is 145cm and 140cm respectively.

The U3 miner connects to a computer by USB, the same cable used with many printers, ensuring a stable and reliable connection. Customers are able to use any standard, “kettle lead” or standard PSU power cable used with most computers today, see the image: Antminer group came up with the distinctive look and feel for the U3 miner, which looks like a birdcage offering protection but at the same time adequate airflow. The U3 miner consists of five main parts, a base, hash board, heat sink, cooling fan and shield. The base is made of aluminium, the cage stainless steel. There are two kinds of screws.

The set screws and spring screw in the base with the QC label on it. U3 miner contains 20 parts, including an 80mm fan. 4 BM1382 chips on a single PCB.

Next picture shows dimensions of the U3 miner. How To Do LBRY Credits LBC Mining. Installation The installation is easy, you just use the black USB cable to connect the U3 miner to a free USB port on your computer or a powered HUB. After that, you connect the power. 3.0 Software settings Our test computer is running Windows 7 x64 After the power is turned on, you should open device manager to view the miner port number 。 You will find a new unknown device if you have never installed the drivers before. Go to the official website and download the mining software or you can download a RAR from my own Baidu Cloud Storage, including mining program, device driver, and mining manual (English).

There are official descriptions about installation of device driver and other data. You can find them in here: ， Next, you download and decompress RAR. After opening zadig_ 2.1.1 file, you will receive information about update file and you can choose no. You will need to choose your device and click, “Install Driver” to set the WinUSB driver up for the U3 miner.

This will override any other drivers Windows may have installed already. After you perform a refresh in device manager, you will find the driver was installed successfully and this miner has connected to the computer, ready for use. If the computer is running another OS, you will have to find appropriate installation procedure in official documentation. Finally, you can open the cgminer-run folder to edit autorun.bat.

Right click it, then click, “Edit” then change enter the details for your mining pool and save it. If the miner in your pool needs a password, you can add “-p password” after miner. After you double click auto run.bat, the U3 miner will began to work. You can see hash rate, pool and real-time information. After one day working, the hash rate is about 63G, keeping steady speed. 4.0 Running Power consumption, Temperature and Noise measurement. The test environment: room temperature 25°C, indoor static noise about 39dBa When the miner is working properly, red light and green light will be lit to indicate power and data transfer to/from the miner.

U3 miner is around 56.8 watt total power consumption when the hash rate is at 63GH/s. The noise next to the miner is 54dBa.

Noise level at 20cm distance is 48.8dBa. At 1 meter, the noise level is 44.8dBa. The heat sink temperature is about 40 °C, but base temperature is 37.5°C. The base design actually helps more with heat dissipation.

Over clock test. Firstly, voltage was adjusted to the 0.83V according to the eleventh pages in official documents. Frequency was increased two notches, as described in page 12 in official documents.

After 1h working, the hash rate is about 70G, and around 64.9 watt total power consumption. The method we use is actually in the office documentation and different miners will require different voltages and achieve different maximum overclocks. Your mileage may vary 5.

Summary In summary, the Antminer U3 is not a high-end datacenter miner. It is a special miner that is clearly targeted at individuals, hobbyists and others looking to try out mining. It uses a mainstream chip, has distinctive looks and simple installation which are advantages. It allows anyone to have one and enjoy the fun of mining. Our results match with the official specifications, especially heat dissipation and noise levels. The U3 miner not only achieved the stated specifications but was able to go beyond with very minor changes and tweaking. The U3 miner requires a computer to act as the mining controller, so part of the computer power should be added as an additional mining cost.

Computer configurations vary greatly but if the machine is on all the time anyway, it wouldn’t make much difference. Currently, there is no official mining controller available, this would be nice to see in the future. There is an important potential issue in that the old miner controller is used in U3.

Th at said, Bitmain provide a lot of miner accessories and new miners can use accessories for older products and vice versa, so compatibility isn’t a problem.