I have recently begun a new mining venture and am ASIC mining. Not my preference, but it’s another adventure to say the least. I have 4 units now and I got them knowing I wanted to immersion cool. I don’t want this to become a cost debate of air cooling vs immersion cooling. I do have costs in mind, however I have a LONG term vision in mind as well. Immersion will pay for itself in time due to how I would like to use it for heat reclamation purposes and to keep things quiet.
Why do I want to do immersion cooling:
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It would allow me to utilize the heat from the miners very effectively (hot water for the house, heat for the house, hot tub, heated walks to keep snow melted, in floor heating in any new expansion, and a myriad of other possibilities in the future as I think of them).
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Noise: This one seems obvious and anyone that has these can relate
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Miner Longevity: The word on the street is the miners should see a longer life cycle with respect to hardware failure, proof anyone? I would like to find someone that works at an immersion mining facility to confirm this.
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Maintenance: I always like to keep my equipment clean, so I wouldn’t have to take the miners apart and clean them except for when they went into the tanks for the first time. There could be additional maintenance with the immersion and heat reclamation system though. This might end up being a wash.
*Overclocking: I wouldn’t go crazy with this, but it would be nice to be able to do some overclocking when/if it makes sense. I would be able to overclock with more stability and less likely be prone to hardware failure due to the immersion cooling.
My general heat reclamation plan:
Immersion Cool tank with a dual loop. The dual loop will allow me to transfer heat to other things and then lastly through the dry cooler at the end to make sure the coolant is sufficiently cold. This is what a very very rough system might look like linearly.
Miners’ hot oil → heat exchanger → glycol or similar mix → 120G water heat storage tank → any other items I want to heat → dry cooler → Miner tank cold input
This is very one dimensional, but you get the idea. The water heat storage tank will feed a hot water tank in the house to supply already heated water to the hot water tank. This basically makes the hot water tank hardly have to work at all except to maintain the temp. Looking at cost. I have two hot water tanks and they state about $500 a year to operate. Let’s just say that’s what it is. This could effectively save $700-1000 a year in hot, not to mention I would have AMPLE hot water with a 120G reserve tank. I would actually eliminate one tank too and keep it as a backup, giving me 160G of hot water as opposed to the original 80 (2 x 40).
I don’t want to get into details too much at this juncture. Where I struggle is to pick an immersion system. I have been reading and researching for several months. I want to go with a system that is already designed and basically ready to go out of the box with a dry cooler. I will work in heat reclamation after I am up and running because this will take time.
I originally saw the octotank12 that octominer is releasing and I was quite excited about this. Upon doing more research and thinking of the design, I figured it would be better to have a single larger unit. I then looked at foghashing’s setups, single and double (C1 and C2).
Reasoning:
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There would be less moving parts and maintenance (negative is if it goes down the whole operations stops)
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In the summer I can leave the unit in the garage where the heat from the tank is not a problem.
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If I had individual tanks like the octotank, I would have to move them outside (octotank is rated for outdoors). I estimated the octotank would weigh in around 300lbs with an S19 and fluid. Not to mention the fluid would be sloshing everywhere while moving.
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Easier to expand when/if I want to add another miner or two. Pretty much no additional cost or work.
I don’t want to bash on any tanks that I have found or companies, but I will mostly say that I wasn’t keen on a particular tank and why. My reasoning could be wrong and please correct me if you think so.
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Fog hashing B6D or B6. The B6D (3 phase dry cooler and can be run on 240v single phase) is a single loop, won’t work. About $6500 delivered to the US with fluid. The B6 is more or less a tank and then they add on what you want. I can get a dry cooler and heat exchanger for a dual loop with fluid, however I have to source/figure out my own pump for the second loop. This was configured all for 240v single phase. A little less than $7k.
Immersion mining home mining – FogHashing -
DCX. I don’t know, I have heard some mixed things on this and when I ask questions I mostly get told to look at the website which doesn’t have what I’m inquiring about. I’m not too hot on this setup.
https://cryptocooling.eu/#tab-1660549643698-2 -
Box Technology: I didn’t scour this as much as the others, however they utilize a cooling tower vs a dry cooler. It could be a great system, but it doesn’t fit the needs as far as I can see.
40KW Immersion Cooling BOX - BoxTechy -
FlameIT. Great responsiveness and knowledge. He is really just building 12 unit tanks and larger now, I think. He has a couple older tanks that are up for grabs. Kind of expensive for what his tank is IMO. Probably close to 6k delivered with fluid with no pdus or breakers etc… Just a tank, exchanger, pumps, and fluid. He is developing some great stuff though and I will continue to follow him.
Edit: He does have smaller tanks as well and from my understanding his newer tanks will incorporate the electrical to run miners.
https://flameit.io/ -
Aiproenergy: hotbox liu plus - interesting concept, but not for me. It is a pumpless oil system where the fans on the miners are responsible for circulating the fluid. It just seems like more to go wrong IMO and the system wouldn’t be flexible. It does have a dual loop for cooling the oil. You have to have aftermarket firmware too in order to control the fans.
HOTBOX LIU Plus allows stable overclocking of Antminer S19 from stock 3250W to 6500W -
Apexto: This one looks decent as well and looks quite similar to what I’ll show next. I have not dug into this tank/system much.
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Asicshield/cryptomininglab: ASX6 - Some of the options I’ve shown so far have “bells and whistles” that I’m not really certain are necessary for a home setup where you might have one or two of these tanks. Most notably foghashing in this category. I have spend the most time looking at foghashing and asicsheld. The asicshield IMO might be the sweet spot. It is simple yet, I think, going to be very effective. From what I can tell the exchanger is larger than most tanks, the pump is quite large for the water loop, it has temp shutdown based on oil temp, and an oil filter before the oil goes into the oil pump from the tank. I have not seen this on other tanks. It is removable and can be cleaned. The bottom flow plate can easily be removed and if you need to make a different one then you just get one CNC cut at a local place. Most other machines the flow plate can not be removed very easily or at all. His support and responsiveness has been great. He is probably sick and tired of talking to me. He can supply immersion fluid as well with this system. The system looks good and I do like that there is a lid that you can see through. I think with the simplicity of the system there is less to fail. I think the pdu plugs on the back leave something to be desired, but perhaps I can get those changed. Pricing is on par with most other units.
https://www.asicshield.com/product-page/asic-shield-asx6-immersion-coolingfor-crypto-mining
I have very heavily looked over the asicshield, octotank12, and B6/D setups. Most of the others had something immediately that I didn’t like or they didn’t work for me. It was also important to be able to change the immersion flow plate. I can see a lot of these mining companies releasing specifically immersion cooled units just like whatsminer/microbt just did. If you have a tank build specifically for the current S19 and you can’t change it then you’re SOL.
PLEASE let me know your thoughts, opinions, experience etc… If you have another tank you would suggest, feel free to let me know and I’ll look at it.
Edit: I am not affiliated nor do I receive anything from these companies.
