ASIC Bitmain Antminer S9 for mining Bitcoin cryptocurrency has become one of the most popular models. It was produced for more than two years, and in addition to this, the life cycle of the S9 fell on the mining boom of 2017, when ASIC sales beat all conceivable and inconceivable records. During this time, several models of Antminer S9, S9i, S9j, S9 Hydro were released. Each new modification offered a slightly higher hashrate compared to the base S9 with 14TH/s hashrate. The most advanced version of the liquid-cooled Antminer S9 Hydro offered a hash rate of 18Th/s. On May 31, 2019, the manufacturer Bitmain released the official firmware for the entire S9 series with overclocking, which will increase your rate by an additional 2 TH/s. How to do this, read further in this article.
Before you start updating the firmware, make sure that the power supply units connected to the ASIC have a minimum power of 1400W. If your ASIC are not working stably or have a hashrate of more than 5% below the factory values, it is also not recommended to increase the frequency of operation of asic chips, since this may lead to even less stable operation or complete equipment failure.
The new firmware, although designed for the entire ASIC S9, S9i, S9j generation, will work only for ASIC with the Xilinx7010 control board. If you have an asic miner with a C5 control board, then the firmware with overclocking cannot be installed on such an asic. If you still need the overclocking function, then use third-party firmware, for example, from the company Braiin OS.
Now we consider only the official firmware from the company Bitmain.
Download the firmware with the possibility of overclocking S9 asic on the official website at this link.
In order for the ASIC miner Antminer S9 to be updated to the latest version, you need to do some simple actions:
- Turn on asic and go to the control panel;
- Select the tab "System" - "Upgrade";
- In the “Flash new firmware image” menu, indicate the previously downloaded new firmware file;
- Click on the button "Flash image";
- Do not disconnect from the power while the firmware is being updated.
After the upgrade, you will see new features in the "Miner Configuration" section.
Normal mode is the mode of operation that was available on previous versions without the possibility of changing the performance of the ASIC.
The Unchanged Lower Voltage mode lowers the voltage applied to asic chips, which reduces power consumption and hashrate for more stable operation if your asic has not been working stably before.
Mode Low Power Enchanced Mode is the maximum reduction in power consumption ASIC. In this case, the standard model S9 loses 4.5TH/s performance, and S9i and S9j 3.5TH/s.
Also, self-selection modes are available to you to reduce the performance of ASIC from minus 0.5 to minus 3 TH/s.
But I think that this update will be installed by many to increase the hashrate, the benefit of the new firmware allows you to do this in the range from 0.5TH/s to 2TH/s with a step 0,5TH/s.
But before you start your experiments with an increase in the Antminer S9 hashrate, check the power of your ASIC's power supply, since the manufacturer sets in this case some restrictions:
- For a 1400W power supply, you can increase the hashrate by only 0.5TH/s
- For a 1600W power supply, a maximum mode is available up to 2TH/s
For the Bitamin Antminer T9 model, 1600W and 1800W power supplies are needed, i.e. 200W more than for the S9 version.
The first miners switched to a new firmware and using overclocking report that the hashrate increase can actually be even more by 0.5TH/s from the data specified in the firmware, i.e. instead of 14TH/s at the maximum possible power of + 2TH/s, the miner will issue 16.5TH/s.
