January 13, 2025

Antminer S9 board - Power

Unlike the EBAZ boards, these are ready to go, no need to do any soldering or moving around of big surface mount diodes.

The connector may not be immediately convenient. It is a 6 pin modular thing. The trick here is to find some old derelict PC power supply and then cut off 2 or 3 sections from the connector. This fit perfectly into the white modular connector on the board! Pick out some wall wart from your junk board, and with a bit of soldering (and common sense), you are in business.

Note that grounds are towards the board edge. The 6 pins towards the center of the board get whatever voltage you select.

Voltage and current requirements

I have some notes on this from my days with the EBAZ: These notes (from 2021) indicate that any voltage from 6 to 12 volts will work. Perhaps 5 volts would even work? The board itself generates 4 voltages, the highest of which is 3.3 volts.

I have been using a 12 volt, 3A supply for over a year with complete success.

I measured the power draw with a 12 volt supply and my meter shows 150 mA.

I just tried a 7.5 volt 600 mA wall wart and it is working just fine -- the S9 I just connected to it, booted up linux from and SD card and seems perfectly happy.

I tried a Qualcomm branded 8.4 volt 400 mA wall wart, and it also works fine. I soldered a PC modular chunk into this and will use it for various S9 projects.

My notes from the EBAZ record that I tried a Sony branded 8.4 volt 400 ma "wall wart" and it did not work. I found this same wart, tried it again with the s9 -- again it did not work, so I tossed it in the trash.

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org