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BITMAIN Antminer U2 with Additional Heat Sinks

The trip to New York is over, but it was great. Thanks to all that let us stay with them and showed us around.

Back at home, I have the chance to delve into tiny packages all waiting for my return. Also waiting was the Raspberry Pi. Before any further tinkering I should update the status of the mining as it goes with the BITMAIN Antminer U2. I left it running while I was away on my laptop with lid down in attempts to minimize power consumption. It has been running at 0781 frequency setting and is averaging just over 1.5 GH/s at 1.57 GH/s over the past week. I have no active cooling currently, so I fear increasing the frequency. This little circuit board runs hot! I will follow this post with updates on my thermoelectric cooling/energy recovery attempts and setting up the Raspberry Pi and getting it to mine with the Antminer U2.

Seebeck(Probably Peltier) Chip and Micro Heat Sink with Fan

In the packages awaiting my return from New York were a set of micro heat sinks for the Antminer U2 and a Seebeck chip - or so I thought. Excited I grabbed a battery and a candle and the tiny heatsink/fan I purchased and received before I left. I held the leads to each respective end of a AA battery. Sure enough one side grew hot and the other cold. I don't know everything about Seebeck and Peltier chips but I may have a Peltier despite the seller claiming it was a Seebeck. As I said I don't know everything about them so it may be possible to produce the Peltier effect with a Seebeck, and hopefully vise versa. Attempting a quick trial, I connected the leads to the matching leads on the fan. Next I lit the candle and carefully held the chip, hot side down, over it. No motion.

It may be possible that I am not effectively cooling the cold side of the chip and therefore not allowing it to generate electricity. Likewise my quickly finger twisted connections were not sufficiently conductive. A third option could be that the chip is producing a current, but that current is insufficient to drive the small fan. Tonight I will research a bit more about setting up a thermoelectric generator and post my findings in following posts.

The other arrival, the micro heat sinks, were pretty fool proof. The came with pre-applied thermal conductive adhesive. I shut down my mining and carefully removed the Antminer U2 (it was very hot). Once it cooled I peeled the backing off of the adhesive sections and pressed them to the appropriate chips. I inserted the Antminer and restarted mining. I don't expect a hash rate increase form simply adding the heat sinks, but I do hope they dissipate more heat while I work on alternative cooling options mentioned above.