Gekkoscience Compac F
The most powerful USB Bitcoin miner ever made, this is the red Ferrari of USB miners.
- Stock hashrate of 220 GH, can be overclocked to 400 GH.
- With sufficient cooling, the performance can be increased even further by adjusting the clock rate and core voltage.
- Equipped with an AntMiner BM1397 ASIC chip, which is also used in the well-known AntMiner S17 and S17 Pro.
- A custom version of the well-known mining software CGMiner with GekkoScience drivers is available for download. This allows clockrate adjustment using console parameters.
- Core voltage can be adjusted with in-built voltage regulator.
The average power consumption is 37 W/TH. The clock rate can be set between 400 MHz and 800 MHz. The miner is equipped with a large aluminum heat sink that has low thermal resistance. Active cooling is required for operating this miner. The power consumption depends on the clock frequency and core voltage and varies from 5 W to approx. 15 W. The use of a high-performance active USB hub, providing 2 to 5 A per port is highly recommended to prevent possible damage to standard PC USB ports.
Igloopac Cooler
This miner requires active cooling and we highly recommend our “IglooPac” cooling upgrade (fan + shroud) along with the miner. IglooPac is compatible with all Gekkoscience USB miners and other devices with 40mm x 25mm heat sink.
- Designed from the ground up, our innovative “IglooPac” low-profile fan shroud design allows for optimal active cooling for Gekkoscience USB miners.
- We were able to reliably overclock Gekkoscience Compac F devices to 350 Gh using this fan and shroud upgrade.
- Our custom design, slips over the heatsink and clips onto the PCB without contacting any components.
- Allows effective cooling without any cable ties, screws or adhesives, even when used in a vertical position.
- An in-built, back-stopper prevents this from sliding down or out.
- Fluted side-fin design, ensures a firm grip without impeding heat dissipation from the heatsink.
- 3D Printed with premium PETG material that prevents warpage or deformation up to 110C.
- Low profile shroud and fan with a total assembly thickness of 38mm, allowing more space for other USB miners on a single USB hub.
- High quality, low profile , whisper quiet USB fans delivers 7.32 cfm or airflow, with just 26.2 db sound level at 6000 rpm
- USB fan has life expectancy of 50,000 hours
Comes with 14 day full refund/return Altair warranty.
Additional 1 year replacement or repair warranty applies (void if the item shows signs of overheating or physical damage)
We will provide any help needed for setup or technical support to get you hashing.
Setup Instructions
1. Click here to download cgminer and Zadig winUSB driver
2. Unzip the .zip fie
3. Plug in your Compac FS7 USB miner (into your powered usb hub).
4. Open Zadig and click Options -> List All Devices
5. Select CompacF Bitcoin Miner, and then click “Replace Driver”
6. If it is successful, you will see the following message
7. Locate the start-compacf.bat file in and right-click “edit” :
8. In notepad, edit the *.bat file and add your own mining details as shown below. Close and save your changes.
-o (mining pool url):(port)
-u (your username here) -p (your password here)
9. Run the start-miner.bat file and cgminer will open automatically and start mining. If it is successful, you will see a screen like this one:
Building CGMiner
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev git
cd
git clone https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer.git
cd cgminer
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -fcommon" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko --enable-icarus
make
sudo apt-get install -y openjdk-8-jre-headless
Running CGMiner
./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.kano.is:3333 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr -p x --suggest-diff 442
if you get “USB init, open device failed, you don’t have privilege to access” error try appending sudo to elevate access. Your run command will then look like this
sudo ./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.kano.is:3333 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr -p x --suggest-diff 442
Building cgminer on MacOS using Brew – tested on Big Sur 11.16
————————————————————–
Install Apple Command Line Tools:
this can take 10 or more minutes to download from Apple
xcode-select --install
Install Brew
this should take about 5-10 minutes on a recent mac with MBit internet
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew analytics off
Build cgminer:
brew tap kanoi/cgminer
brew install cgminer
If you already had brew installed, you should instead do the following steps:
brew analytics off
brew doctor
brew update
brew upgrade
brew cleanup
brew tap kanoi/cgminer
brew install cgminer
To install minor updates to cgminer, if you already have upgraded everything
brew reinstall cgminer
Older macs
———-
If you are running an older mac without proper multitasking,
you may need to add the option –mac-yield when running cgminer with a gekko miner
Frequenty Asked Questions
This is a learning device aimed at makers, tinkerers and hardware enthusiasts. Low noise and the ability to run this on USB outlets makes this an ideal home miner. Profitability will depend on many factors such as power cost, bitcoin price etc.
Active cooling is required for running a Compac F. If you try to run this without a cooler, the USB miner will overheat and shut down in a few seconds.
Compac F requires 2-3.5 Amps of 5V DC USB power. While some desktop devices might be able to provide that over USB, it is best to have a powered hub.
Cgminer is not a virus. This is a false positive. All versions of cgminer are often flagged as suspicious by virus scanners. Simply google ‘cgminer false positive virus scan’ for more information.
Default settings are 400Mhz clock frequency and voltage potentiometer set around 5 O’ clock position. This setting provides about 220 Gh hashrate.
This miner is built to be overclocked, it is not stable under 300 Mhz clock frequency.
Start with default clock frequency of 400Mhz and you should get about 220Gh hashrate. Then increase clock frequency 25 Mhz at a time, until you reach your desired overclocking target. If the miner fails to reach target frequency, increase the voltage by turning the voltage potentiometer clockwise by 30 degrees and try again.
Overclocking potential is dependent on your cooling setup and power available through USB hub. With a IglooPac cooler and powered hub, the miner can be overclocked into the green, yellow and orange zones shows in the table above.
Shown in image above.
Voltage Regulator (also called voltage potentiometer or v-pot) is the small adjustable screw knob on Compac F. It can be turned using a small Phillips-head screwdriver. The flat part on the circular dial determines the voltage setting. These settings are analogous to clock bearings with 1 o’clock position being the lowest voltage setting and 11 o’ clock being the highest voltage setting. The voltage regultor resets at 12 ‘o clock position. Most Compac F miners are set between 3 0’clock and 6 o’clock position from the factory.
You might have to increase voltage to support higher clock frequencies. It is recommended to turn the dial in 30-degree increments. Higher voltage while necessary to support overclocking, will produce more heat and reduce mining efficiency.
You can measure voltage at the arrows shown in the picture with a multimeter. The stock voltage is around 1.45V DC. Most users will never need to do this, the information is for advanced users.
There are two LED indicators. One is red, the other is white. Solid Red LED light indicates your USB miner is getting power. White LED blinks when the miner is hashing, with the blinking frequency proportional to the hashrate.
Compac F does not have a temperature sensor, so chip temp is not displayed on cgminer terminal. The rule of thumb for checking temperature is just that. If the heat sink is not too hot to touch with your thumb, the chip temperature is OK.
The minimum payout on most bitcoin mining pools is too large for sub petahash mining operations. Gekkoscience devices are better suited for lottery mining for a chance at winning 6.25 BTC block reward on solo mining pools like ckpool and kano pool.
While the odds of hitting the block lottery on a USB miner are low, it happens more often than one might think. Compac F is a proven winner with several well-documented instances of miners winning 6.25 BTC block reward with these USB miners.
Gekkoscience is an electronics hardware manufacturer based in north-central Missouri. The company was started by legendary bitcointalk member ‘sidehack‘ at Missouri University of Science & Technology in Rolla. Gekkoscience is focused on manufacturing ASIC miners for home mining. Their miners are whisper-quiet and run on common household electrical service.
Gekkoscience is focused on manufacturing high quality bitcoin miners. Marketing, social media promotion and technical support for their products are handled by their distributors.
You can support sidehack’s mining hardware development by sending donations to: 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr
Although most of the computation is done on the ASIC chip on Compac F, cgminer does use small amount of CPU power from the attached computer. In our tests we were able to run 10-12 Compac F sticks on a Raspberry Pi and over 50 Compac F sticks on a modern PCs (12th generation Intel core i5).
Kris Wesmael –
Shipped from US to Belgium in 3 days with regular shipping.
A++.
G Asaro –
Great after sales support. Helped me figure out how to overclock these past 300 Gh.