Antminer S19K Pro
The Bitmain Antminer S19K Pro is a workhorse in the current mining landscape, but like any piece of high-performance hardware running 24/7, it develops characteristic faults. One of the most common headaches technicians face with the S19K Pro hashboard is power irregularity.
When a hashboard domain isn’t receiving the correct voltage, it simply won’t hash. While there can be several root causes for these power failures, our recent repairs indicate that a frequent offender is the antminer boost chip.
The Case Study: Severe Undervoltage
Recently, an S19K Pro hashboard landed on my bench exhibiting significant power issues. When diagnosing the board with a multimeter, I found a critical power domain that was completely undervolted.
Where I expected to see a healthy, required 1.2V to power the chips, my meter was only showing a paltry 0.4V. This massive drop in voltage indicated that a component upstream was failing to deliver the necessary power, effectively starving that section of the board.
Diagnosis S19K Pro: Moving Beyond the LDOs
In many Antminer models, the first suspects in voltage issues are usually the Low Dropout Regulators (LDOs). However, on this specific board, the LDOs checked out fine.
I moved on to examining the main boost section. The role of the boost chip in this circuit is to step up voltage to specific levels required by other components, such as amplifiers. If this chip fails, the downstream voltage crashes.
A close visual inspection confirmed my suspicions. As you can see in the image provided below, the failure wasn’t subtle. There was a distinct burn mark—a small, visible crater—right on the surface of the boost convert chip. The component had failed catastrophically.
A Pattern in the S19K Pro
We are beginning to notice a pattern with the S19K Pro series. They seem particularly prone to issues regarding powering specific board sections, especially around the amplifier modules and LDOs.
While older, reliable models like the standard S19J Pro have their own known common faults, the power architecture of the newer S19K Pro seems to place different stresses on components. My theory for this board was straightforward: the burnt Antminer boost chip was the sole cause of the voltage collapsing to 0.4V.
The Fix and Results
The repair process is straightforward for an experienced technician but requires precise micro-soldering.
- Removed the faulty, burnt boost chip from the hashboard.
- The pads were cleaned and prepped for the new component.
- A brand-new replacement boost convert chip was soldered onto the hashboard.
After allowing the board to cool down completely, I hooked it back up for testing. The results were immediate. The domain voltage jumped right back to the required 1.2V steady reading. As shown in the final test logs, the hashboard initialized correctly and is now working perfectly.
