Precautions for home mining

There are three main differences between mining at home and mining on a mining farm, the first is electricity, the second is noise, and the third is temperature, humidity, and site. Among them, noise and power factors are the first things that miners must consider, and we will introduce them one by one.

Noise factor

Generally speaking, if the miner is placed at home, the first thing to consider is noise level. The general noise is about 70 decibels when the miner is running, and sometimes it can reach about 80-90 decibels. This is relatively loud for families, it is also easy to disturb the people, so if you want to put the miners at home, you generally need to do an excellent job of noise reduction.

The noise of the miner comes from the heat dissipation of the fan. Because the hash board chip is dense and the miner is large, much heat energy is emitted during operation. A violent fan carries out the heat dissipation, making a more prominent noise. For miners, this is unavoidable.

At present, most of them are ASIC miners, so as long as you are mining Bitcoin, there will inevitably be louder noise, which is not desirable. Therefore, most miners who mine at home have the following options:

1) Choose a low-mute miner or a low-noise GPU miner.

2) Transform heat dissipation methods, such as water cooling and oil cooling, to achieve the effect of noise reduction.

3) Take measures to remove noise, such as installing a miner mute machine or an Antminer silencer, etc.

For ordinary users, the most friendly way is to choose a quiet small miner or a low-noise GPU miner. The most significant advantage of this is to reduce the noise from itself and not damage the miner structure to attract the attention of miners to a certain extent. Furthermore, the graphics card is not particularly loud due to the fan’s cooling noise, so it is acceptable to put it at home, as long as there is a separate room, after closing the door, it is almost difficult to hear the noise outside unless there are more miners, you may need to install soundproof cotton, Generally speaking, it is not a big problem to put an 8-card GPU miner at home to mine ETH. Most home miners are GPU miners, partly because of the low noise.

Particular silent small miners generally mine minor currencies, and their fan enthusiasm is not very big. Generally speaking, a small fan can solve the heat dissipation problem, and some small silent miners There is even no fan, so this is more suitable for placing at home. Of course, because the mining currency is small, the price of all currencies has relatively large fluctuations, so it is difficult to estimate the return period.

There are also many ways for miners to dissipate heat, the most common of which are water cooling and oil cooling. Bitmain produced a water-cooled miner Antminer S9Hydro before. Just plug the miner into the water pipe to cool the miner. To achieve the effect of reducing noise. The method of oil cooling is generally to immerse the miner as a whole in the oil tank to ensure that the miner can immediately cool down.

Ordinary water cooling needs to be modified by miners, and people with a little more hands-on ability must operate. The heat is taken away by the water flow. After transformation, the warranty policy will be lost. Oil cooling is relatively simple, but it is more troublesome to repair, making it more suitable for tossing some older models.

The miner mute machine is an additional measure to reduce noise in home mining. You can use this product only by removing the original fan of the miner. It has high heat dissipation efficiency, and low noise effectively eliminates the large fan operation of Antminer and other miners.

Mining power consumption

In addition to noise, home miners need to consider power consumption. Generally, Bitcoin miners consume more power. Even if you have suitable sound insulation measures at home, you may also need to pay for a large amount of electricity. Due to residents' relatively expensive electricity bills, the current Bitcoin miners' power consumption per day maybe around 10 to 20$. In one month, the power consumption will be more. This is also one of the things that miners need to consider most.

There are steps to use electricity in general cities, and the electricity bill is more expensive. Therefore, in many cases, it is not suitable for professional miners such as Bitcoin and Litecoin to run at home because mining these currencies at home is a loss in many periods. But, for GPU miners with low power consumption, the electricity bills borne by home mining are relatively small, and it is more convenient to accept, so it has become a good choice for miners.

It has been friendly to small FPGA miners and chia and other power mining projects in recent years. Among them, chia, mass, and other mining based on POC hard disk files have minor power consumption, while FPGA miners are mainly used for mining with new small mining coins, so the power consumption is also negligible. On the other hand, the power consumption of a GPU miner is slightly larger, generally a few hundred watts to more than one thousand watts, so it can also withstand the electrical environment of the home.

Of course, rural household electricity must do an excellent job transforming power facilities before mining. Generally, rural power conditions are relatively backward, and many places even use relatively thin wires. Therefore, if you increase high-power mining at home for equipment, it is necessary to consider the withstand strength of the fuse and the aging of the wire. For example, if aluminum wires were used to transmit power before, replace them with copper wires as soon as possible. Before the copper wires have a small cross-sectional area, try to replace them with a larger cross-sectional area or pull another copper wire to reduce the load of a single wire. Prevent serious accidents caused by long-term aging.

At present, the rural population is gradually decreasing, and many young laborers are moving to the cities. Therefore, the electricity load in the rural areas will not rise too much in the past few years. Although some rural areas also have the problem of tiered electricity tariffs, the pressure is not particularly large. For a GPU miner, it is still acceptable.

If you want to increase the scale of miners in rural homes, you need to consider other power issues. Generally speaking, solar power is currently more friendly. Generally, the power of 100 square meters of solar panels is about ten kilowatts. It can meet the needs of mining during the day, but the initial cost of the solar power supply may be relatively high.

Temperature and humidity venue

Try to choose a separate small room for mining at home to minimize the impact of mining on life. Generally speaking, the impact of mining on life is mainly from the noise generated by the miners. According to ISO international standards, the amount of household noise should be controlled below 55 decibels during the day and 45 decibels at night.

However, this standard is relatively broad. Generally, 30 decibels is a relatively acceptable number for ordinary residents, and 40 decibels throughout the day may easily affect people's daily lives. Therefore, it is recommended to set up a separate room or small warehouse area for mining is a better choice. Of course, if it is a silent miner, the impact may be more negligible.

Another point is the temperature and humidity of the mining environment. Generally, miners need 24 hours of uninterrupted operation. Therefore, temperature control is essential. If air conditioning is used, it may cost more electricity. Therefore, most measures are to place the mining room on the sun's back. Then use the fan to blow the air and open the windows to dissipate heat in time (if there is a thunderstorm, you also need to avoid the rain in time). Humidifiers and dehumidifiers can generally be used for temperature and humidity control. If the temperature changes in winter, the environmental humidity should be supplemented in time; of course, if the humidity is too high, the miners should be kept away from the kitchen, bathroom, and other places as much as possible; for dusty places, regular dust removal is required to prolong the service life of the miners. The wiring harness of the miners should be arranged as much as possible and not too messy to avoid electrical safety accidents.

Generally, home mining has relatively high requirements for miners and sites. In terms of operation and maintenance, you also need to face unexpected situations such as network outages and power outages. The frequency of occurrence in rural areas is higher than that in cities. Therefore, if the number of miners is large or the power consumption is large, they also need to be carefully considered. Of course, the most important thing is safety. If you plan to do GPU mining, you must calculate the power consumption. Otherwise, it may cause cable aging for a long time and may cause hidden dangers such as fire. This is also what miners need to consider.