Avalon Miner 6.0 (Avalon A6) Bitcoin Miner Review

According to the news on December 25, Avalon A6 is the fifth generation of Bitcoin mining machine released by Avalon (>AVALON), a Chinese Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer. The computing power is 3.5T±5%, and the wall power consumption is /1050W. The new fifth generation A3218 chip still uses TSMC's 28nm process and adopts fully customized technology. The performance has been greatly improved compared with the previous generation A3222 chip. Today, I received the Avalon miner6 (Avalon A6 Bitcoin mining machine, hereinafter referred to as Avalon A6 mining machine) sent by the manufacturer for evaluation.
Appearance

The Avalon A6 Bitcoin miner uses a 3-layer hard carton. Although the box is a bit thin, it is very strong. Foam is used to reduce shock inside the box, and the miner is encapsulated in plastic to prevent water and moisture.

One side of the mining machine uses a Delta 12308 fan. The fanless side is the air inlet, and the fan side is the air outlet. Pay special attention to the air inlet direction when deploying.

The air inlet of the mining machine has four PCIE power interfaces and two data interfaces. The data interfaces can be cascaded through data cables to enable one controller (Raspberry Pi) to control multiple Avalon mining machines, greatly saving deployment time. The fan is designed with suction to prevent the data cable and power cable from being in high temperature for a long time.

A full set of accessories, only the mining machine data cable is included. Other accessories need to be purchased separately. The 5V power supply is actually a mobile phone charger, and the two USB cables are universal with Android phone cables. Each Raspberry Pi can carry about 50 Avalons. The mining website recommends that miners buy another set of spares so that they can replace accessories in time if they are damaged during mining. The SD card needs to be flashed with the system, and a tutorial will be provided at the end of the review.

The final connection diagram, pay attention to AUC not short-circuiting. In the text, for the convenience of everyone to watch, the Raspberry Pi is placed on the chassis, but in actual mining, it is recommended to keep the Raspberry Pi away from the mining machine. The mining machine data cable is connected to AUC at one end and the first interface on the top of the mining machine at the other end. If there are multiple mining machines, the second data interface of the first mining machine should be connected to the first interface of the second mining machine, and so on.

The four PCIE ports on the side of the mining machine must be fully plugged in. This article uses a 1600W server power supply.

Start-up and use

The default IP of Avalon A6 is 192.168.0.100. It is recommended that you change the router at home to the 192.168.0 segment when debugging. If the mining farm is deployed in batches, it is recommended to use a dedicated router, modify the IP of each router to the IP of your mining farm, and set up the miner.

The default password of Avalon A6 is blank. Click Login without entering any password to enter the home page of Avalon Miner. The hashrate is 3.5T and the fan is 3000 rpm. Avalon is not noisy during operation and can be used in home environments, such as balconies and idle rooms for mining. In office environments, the noise can be further reduced by reducing the frequency or setting the fan speed.

Avalon A6 miner configuration page. Here are the factory default miner settings.

The IP settings page of the Avalon A6 Bitcoin miner. I have modified the DNS server here. If you find that the miner cannot mine during use, you may want to check the DNS settings.

Click Advanced Version, then click Cgminer Status to enter the Avalon advanced page, where you can view more mining status of the miner. Here I use F2pool for mining, and you can see that the average speed of 4 minutes is about 3.6T. There is no need to set the frequency, voltage, and fan when A6 is running. As long as the mining pool and network are set in the control interface, the miner will automatically adjust and run. From the long-term running mining pool chart, Avalon A6 is still very stable.

The power consumption of Avalon A6 is 1061W (power supply is 1600W, conversion rate is 93%). The computing power is calculated based on 3.6T, and the power consumption of Avalon A6 per T is 295 watts.

Disassembly

After unscrewing the screws of Avalon A6, you can open the iron shell. A huge aluminum heat sink is used inside to ensure the heat dissipation effect.

After opening the iron shell, you can see the PCB board of Avalon. Avalon A6 puts the chip on the back, which allows the chip to achieve good heat dissipation through the heat sink.