Ok, I'll try to answer everyone's questions!
Wow, you must live in the middle of the country with great electric rates to keep it profitable with all of that running, definitely awesome. I am just running a couple of miners now and pretty much at capacity in my apartment.
I'm in Arizona - commercial rates are quite good, and even residential rates are workable (about 0.08c), but it's super convenient to be able to test things in my garage.
Really nice design do you plan to sell these to the home DIY miner?
My original acrylic case enclosure is much better for home mining I think - it reduces the operating temps when the entire mod is done, plus it's pretty basic to do. I've played around with unit-specific ducting, and probably will again - but the challenge is the amount of airflow that flex ducting allows. This was one of the better links I found that breaks out both round and square, plus also flex vs sheet:
http://www.northwestenergystar.com/sites/default/files/resources/EasyDucts%20Slide%20Deck_Final.pdfA 120mm fan exhaust hole is basically 4", so you're looking at 30cfm, which isn't great. Plus with flex duct it decreases even more over distance because of the turbulence caused by the shape, etc. Even a 4x6 rectangular duct only moves 60cfm, which is roughly the size of the back of the S5. You can increase the CFM with more and more static pressure, but the problem is that you're buying that CFM at the cost of additional amps of consumption.
That seems like it would be too unprofitable and a pain, the labor time that goes into making those pieces and the high price it would carry (and shipping) with only a small number of home miners 1. wanting a large setup 2. have enough miners 3. willing to pay for it and make roi more difficult.
Exactly - you need to be to a certain minimum size to be able to make this work. You also need to be wanting to mine for more than a year - the reason I designed it the way I did was to be able to replace the inserts with whatever new device profile that showed up. Plus you can also vary orientation to give more options as well - for instance, I originally designed it for the units to be facing down, but it could easily face up as well - so heavier or smaller items worked better.
For my ROI calculations - I consider this very much like a PSU, it's a cost that is going to be amortized over the life of more than one miner. Plus the gain in the raw amount of miners I can run more than makes up for it.
my buddy in the brooklyn navy yard has a cnc it would have to cut down the time.
My laser cutter should be faster than most CNC's - the only cutting I'm doing is for the actual inserts and the panels on the sides of the air channel (plenum). The extrusion can be ordered pre-cut to your exact lengths - but the extrusion profile is super basic, so if you've got a local place that does things like that, it would certainly cut costs down considerably. I'll use a local manufacturer for our main deployment.
Looks fantastic Mark, well done once again! Quick question, are the intake sides of the S5's supported somehow, or are they completely being held up by the 4 bolts through the acrylic cutout through the fan?
The S5's are light enough that the bolts are more than sufficient to hold it - originally I was worried about how delicate it might be, but 5.6mm of acrylic is very strong, and I did some tests to failure, and interestingly the acrylic cracks (as expected) but didn't actually come out of the plenum - it was jammed in there by the broken pieces. One of the advantages of the tight fit, and the ~5mm of acrylic embedded in the channel is that it turns out to be a very durable and equipment-safe design. And if that really is a concern, you could just change the orientation as I described above. I'd love to get my A2 Terminators running on this wall, but I'm going to have to change their cases considerably to do that, for both weight and bulk.
Iwhs I had as much space as you to out into a build like you have. Some really nice compact and tight units going on their. Maybe next step in making dust proof and getting some dust filters on units that can be took off and hovered and cleaned every now n then to keep good air flow to the units
Very impressive.
I try to manage dust coming in at the intakes and less at the device - but one of the big advantages of my original case mod is that you don't get buildup behind the fan on the heatsink anymore. Ultimately I'd like to get rid of the fan on the units altogether and just have a couple big extractor fans, but that will be the next rev...
well my farm is far from the average home miner I have a whole warehouse filled with miners and I am interested in this if you're open to selling your design and or plans to build it I could source the materials local and have a local shop cut the Plexi for me
PM me if you'd like to talk about it seriously - this is designed for maximum flexibility, but depending on your space and other variables, there could be smarter/cheaper ways to lay things out. The way we deploy these isn't exactly the same as what you see here, this is my garage version, but the principle is the same - it's all about controlling airflow.