Topic: Creating Box/Cabinet for Miners (Read 647 times)

That's a good noise reducer. Since I live in an apartment, for now, I may have to do something like that for my D3. I GPU mine mostly, if I mine BTC it will be a home unit so I can place them in various rooms to heat lol.

Yeah, I saw that video a while back. I think he's got too much open space in the boxes, but the concept is solid. My only question is what those huge fans are costing him in energy costs. The shop fans from home depot aren't particularly efficient. He's using GPUs, though, so the little fans probably can't move enough air inside the box.

I was happy to see that humidity hasn't been a problem for him. His area in Florida is probably more humid on average than where I am in Louisiana.

Found this one the other day after I got the idea to use a cooler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvzP4g1bfh0. Same principle, but only large enough for a single miner.

This guy keeps his miners cool on his enclosed porch in over 90-degree weather. I may do something similar to keep the noise down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-_9F8R_PFU

Check out this operation...https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/introducing-our-canadian-mining-farm-at-25phsec-1498901
By flush mounted shrouds ..I meant .... exhaust is well vented to hot aisle..
See second pic from above post...

they are flush but looks like they are not well sealed/shrouded to prevent hot air returning..sloppy considering the rest of set-up is sweet

Think .....lots of little round windows where fan fits just right to hole...to exhaust..rather than just one big window with a zillion gaps for air to return..

Thank you for the response. I thought Support was the better sub-forum when I created it, but the two responses I got after multiple days seemed more like someone testing bot responses (e.g., they weren't great) than someone who actually understood anything I said.

I understand most of what you're saying, but not sure exactly what you mean by the shrouds being flush sealed to the cutouts. Do you have an example?

Fuzzy, thank you for the response. If I design the rack to house horizontal miners, then I would definitely lose capacity by then turning them vertical. However, if I design the rack to have the miners hanging, then there shouldn't be any loss in capacity, right? The limit being what you've mentioned by the need for venting.

I'll try to mock something up this weekend or at least get some 3D sketches up so you can either give me the thumbs-up or laugh and mock me to the point of tears... 

The miners are stacked horizontally because you can fit more in any given rack space -- only floor space is needed to handle the inflow and outflow. (hot-aisle/cold aisle) Doing that they can be stacked floor to ceiling. Stacked vertically you lose vertical space because of the need for ducting.

As for the bearings in the fan - the main is a sleeve bearings with a pre-loaded thrust ball bearing that removes any shaft play. They don't care what direction they are pointed.

You were better off staying in mining SUPPORT...

Anyway...
Remember... especially in your case.... HEAT IS IN the MOISTURE..A/C is really just another name for DE-humidifier..

So YES build a small room with VAPOUR BARRIER (insulation is secondary) and can be added to exterior to house the units..and make sure all units have shrouds flush sealed to cutouts in a wall which vent outside of it..
2x4's for frame & decent gage of plastic sheeting does fine..gyproc just for the exhaust wall area...
There goes your heat..

Now just make sure you keep a good volume/supply of COOL DRY CLEAN air feeding the room...
I'd run a dehumid unit inside the room...and also cut window at floor level for air intake and fit a shrouded fan to window to push fresh air intake through filters and give slight overpressure to room..dust is deadly..
You might need more cool air and need fit A/C in same fashion..just be sure compressor is outside room..
Be prepared understand that you will need to pay some serious extra electricity to keep that air supply cool and dry...

Noise will be the least of your problems...

Appreciate the feedback. Good point on the bearings.

In my experience the physics fact is true, but not relevant to mining. I mean hot air does want to go up. But it does it very slowly, so it doesn't do any good with the amount of air a miner pushes through itself.

New miners are officially operational until 40C (Bitmain), so 90F should be ok assuming you can keep that 90F air flowing.
The FANs power usage is negligible to the ASICs. So there is no point to worry about that.

Also don't forget that these 12cm FANs have bearing built for vertical operation. I am just guessing, but operating them horizontally would lower their lifespan a lot.

Pretty much decided on using the garage to house the miners. Keeps it out of the house and won't increase the cooling cost.

A couple concerns are temperature, humidity, and dust. I'm in Louisiana and the summer months' average high temperature is 90F (32 C). We also have to fight humidity which can reach over 90% in the evenings.

I've seen a lot of open-air concepts and I appreciate the simplicity, but I'm wondering if that's really an option for me.

I've thought about building a box/cabinet for my miners instead. At first I will have three Avalon 741s. I plan on expanding in the future, but for now I only need enough room for these three.

Options:

• Open Air Rack
• Construct a new box
• Use an old ice chest/cooler and modify

The idea I like the most right now is the Ice chest/Cooler. I have a couple older ones in the garage that are big enough to house all three miners. I've read that minimizing the unused space around your miners helps keep the temperature down.

It would be very easy to modify the coolers to allow for ventilation through a filter and reduce/eliminate the dust that can be introduced into the miners. I actually have a stock air box for my 2013 V6 Accord that I could use. The Filters would be cheap, high-quality, and obviously allow plenty of air flow. The air box would also help cut-down on the noise. For the exhaust I'm thinking of running a flexible duct up into the attic. The coolers are double-walled, so I also have the option of filling the void with sound insulation to further reduce the noise.

I'm hoping this would also reduce the miners' exposure to humidity. I thought of adding desiccant on the inside of the cooler, but I'm guessing that the volume of air I'd be moving would make that pointless.

My final question for you guys is why does everyone set their miners down horizontally? Why not mount the miners vertically so the fans are blowing the hot air up, where hot air wants to go anyways (exhaust duct would be at the top, parallel with the air-flow)? It seems like mounting vertically would give at least some kind of reduction in the energy required to move the air across the miners. Even if it's 0.5% - 1.0%, it would be a power reduction (e.g., cost reduction) that doesn't require any investment or upkeep to achieve.

Still at the brainstorming phase and have plenty of time to decide what to do. Canaan.io has my order, but I haven't received any of the payment info yet... Hoping to have everything done with mining started by November.