With the autumn setting in in the Northern hemisphere and the temperatures dropping, it's time to turn on the heating. For this I use electric heaters ranging from 600W to 1200W, depending on the room size. And as with the previous winters, I turn on the trusted KnC Saturn (2 modules x150W, 300GH). It gives warmth, and is quiet enough with its 140mm/120mm fans.
This time I thought I'd check if there are any viable upgrades, which would be quiet (<28-32dB), draw under 1500W of power and be a bit more efficient, than the Saturn.
Profitability was not a concern - this would primary be a glorified room heater with a side bonus of giving something in return and supporting the Satoshi vision of decentralisation (why not a miner in every house?).
After analysing data at
https://www.asicminervalue.com/ (it has dB readings!) and ploughing through a few threads, I came to the conclusion that no such option, sadly, exists. The now-defunct and trouble-riddled Antminer R4 was the closest, but even it was too loud for my taste.
I'd love to see a form factor, similar to the stand-alone, modular and compact one of the Antminer S9 (or, even, S3), yet equipped with a couple of Noctua NF-F12 or NF-S12A fans and as much hash power that such cooling could handle. I guesstimate that the power draw of such system would be limited to something between 600W-800W and about 5-6Th/s of hashing power.
Not as spectacular as Whatsminer M3, but that would allow the mining (which is still a race to the bottom) to come to the homes as an unobtrusive heating hardware.
USB sticks are an option, and I still have a few U1s running in the same heating setup, but they are not as manageable as a stand-alone mine, which you can place anywhere in the house.
So, have I overlooked something? What are the options for a home miner, who is not after maximising the profitability or hashing power, but rather after minimising the noise level?
