Is the GAW Falcon 27MH/s ASIC Scrypt Miner Noise Level acceptable? (Review)

Posted in Computer Hardware, e-currency, Technology

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only guy on the planet wondering about certain things.

This blogpost is about the noise level of both the Zeusminer Thunder X3 (nothing to be found), and it’s GAWminers equivalent: The Falcon (which is basically a rebranded Thunder X3 from their 1st batch with some small tweaks). They both mine at ~ 28MH/s. And this is what it sounds like:

Not that bad! Not that bad at all!

What PSU / power supply to use ?

Well in the video above you see a Lepa G-series G1600-MA 1600W. But according to MinerEU a Corsair RM1000W suffices.

Lowering the noise level?

The boys at crypto coin blog have already found out the following:

The cooling of the Falcon miner is done with two 120mm fans (HFD12038M12BL), the larger type that are 38mm and not 25mm and these are quite powerful and not so silent. But that is to be expected considering the power consumption of the miner, and is something that pretty much all big ASIC miners that provide a lot of hashpower have in common. Unfortunately we could not find details about the specifications of the fans used, but in general it is not a good idea to try to replace these fans with ones that are more silent as that may lead to not so good cooling efficiency and the device overheating. The cooling of the miner is designed in a way that the fans are pulling the air from inside the case and the airflow goes through the large heatsinks, an effective solution from our tests, though the chips still do get quite hot. almost 68 dBA.

Something else they found out in a different article:

The device uses two large 120mm fans that pull the hot air through the case of the miner over the large aluminum coolers inside the case, these fans are very powerful and a bit noisy. In fact they are so powerful that they cause some vibrations of the whole case of the miner and since there are no rubber feet at the bottom of the case the miner might sound noisier if the surface it is placed on picks up the vibrations and amplifies them.

Apparently a Scythe Slip Stream 1900rpm, 120mm does

7,50 dBA /   24,50 CFM = 42 m³/h / DC12 V / 0,07 A   (500 rpm Version)
10,70 dBA /   40,17 CFM = 68 m³/h / DC12 V / 0,10 A   (800 rpm Version)
24,00 dBA /   68,54 CFM = 117 m³/h / DC12 V / 0,26 A (1,200 rpm Version)
33,00 dBA /   88,11 CFM = 149 m³/h / DC12 V / 0,41 A (1,600 rpm Version)
37,00 dBA / 110,31 CFM = 187 m³/h / DC12 V / 0,53 A (1,900 rpm Version)

Could be a viable alternative? Or a Scythe Ultra Kaze DFS123812-H-3000, 120mm: 45dBA / 132CFM ?

Source: Scythe.com