Hey guys.
I don't know if you remember me with my problems with my S9 K/SE.
Yeah, I know it's not really a miner really worth having, but this was a learning experience. I'm okay with all the trouble I went through to know what it really takes to have an ASIC miner in the house.
So I want to share with anyone interested in building an enclosure inside the house and my process. It took a lot of trial-and-error, revisions and tweaks to get it to where I'm satisfied. There was a time I almost abandoned the entire project and cut my losses.
The past few months I have been making improvements to my enclosure since my first attempt a year ago, finally making an effective soundproofing enclosure.
Last year, my first attempt, if I remember correctly, the sound dampening was about -15dB, which was really impressive with only using one layer of plywood, acoustical foam, cardboard and polyethylene foam.
It kinda worked, but you can still hear the whining of the fans especially when it got hot. One design the unit overheated cause of poor airflow. A lot was left to be desired.
I had some help on design with looking up soundproof boxes.
Problems I kept running in to was space, noise and airflow.
Designs that typically take -20dB off, take up a lot of space and not pretty to look at. Not ideal if you have other people living with you.
For my tight space, I barely had enough room to add much material. Not the most optimal situation. The reason I chose this small space, is cause I wanted a place that was out of sight out of mind.
I didn't want a big, ugly box with ducts and cords in the middle of some room. So I built an in wall enclosure in the laundry room. There was a tall cabinet that had a lot of unused headspace.
I cut a large panel to be the hatch opening.
The heat exhausts to the inside of the house, cause I heard that heating your house with a miner sounded like a novel idea. Though unfortunately, with my set up, it really doesn't put out that much heat. Cause I only power one hashboard. That's all I can afford with my really high kw/h rate.
Regardless, with the S9 K/SE with a noise rating of 85dB. I measured 89dB with my SPL meter next to the fans.
With my current design, I'm really impressed with the effectiveness of the soundproofing. Even with the fans at 100% I can barely hear the whining of the machine even standing next to the enclosure walls.
Standing next to the exhaust vent in the house all I hear is the air rushing out with the inline fans at full power. And not getting complaints of noise.
Here is a diagram of a layout that is the current one I'm using now. I didn't provide any dimensions, I'm leaving that up for interpretation, but the design should work all the same.
Here are actual photos of what it looks like