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Hello people! Newbie here saying hi and asking a question to know your suggestions.

My name is Julio and I am planing to build a litecoin mining rig but...

I've been searching Google and every question is about "maximum safest GPU temperatures" but I want to know what's the "MINIMUM safest temperature".

In example:
I have the ability to flow air to my GPU's of -20 celsius which is -5 fahrenheit and I can flow even colder air if I want to but I don't know what's the safest coldest air I can give to my GPU's.

If anyone have experience or can share a nice suggestion that will be awesome.

I know I don't want to send extremely cold air flow to my GPU's due to condensation but that's why I have the question.

What's the lowest safest GPU temperature.

Thank you very much! :-)

Here is a link that I found which is the most common one related to my question but still it talks about very low temperatures but it doesn't talk about the safest lowest.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72684

That thread talks about 30 celsius but that could be very dangerous.

That's why I need suggestion from experienced people or good suggestion before I jump and start flowing -20 celsius air flow to my rigs because I saw someone else did without being sure if it was safe or not.

Thanks a lot guys! Anything can help! :-)

I don't think you need to worry about that.  room temp is 25C, and it would be near impossible to keep any gpu that cool when it mining.  airflow in the case should eliminate condensation issues.

and 20C = 68F :D

LOL! Thanks for pointing that out! I will fix the first post.

Definitely my celsius to fahrenheit calculator is drunk! :D

Also thanks for your suggestion.

So saying that it's almost impossible to keep a GPU cool while mining then a better question could be:

What's the lowest temperature someone is being able to keep a GPU while mining?

I've found a very nice thread that answer my question a bit.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62814.0;viewResults

It still doesn't talk about the lowest safest but I guess I wont be able to get the GPU's lower than 40C and if I do I will worry to keep them at least between 40C and 50C.

Anyways I still feel like 40C is pretty hot.
But I guess is not like that for a GPU meant to be running over 60C.

With a modern card 40C even 60C is fine,  I only get concerned if my temp go above 70C, I have my fan set at 75% and my card at the stays at 60C while mining in the background and about 30 when idle, of course the cooler you can get it the better for the health of your card :)

Thanks for the suggestion digit!

Appreciated a lot! :-) Thank you very much!

I don't have any direct experience with this, but my guess would be extremely cold. Take a look at some of the "extreme" overclocking websites where they discuss phase-change cooling. You can get down way below zero with a phase-change setup. It works like a refrigerator or air conditioner. There's a compressor and evaporator and it is filled with freon (or something like freon). The biggest worry is condensation of the humidity in the air on the cold plate attached to your GPU (and/or CPU). You need to insulate the cold parts very well to keep water out of your computer.

You can also use dry ice, liquid nitrogen, or liquid helium to cool your CPU/GPU to extremely cold temps. This is what the world-champion overclockers do. Unfortunately, you can't run 24/7 on any of those technologies; the dry ice (or LN2 or LHe4) evaporates and must be constantly replenished.

If you really can force -20C air into your case, you should be fine. Since you will be blowing air through the case, you shouldn't have a condensation problem like you would with phase-change cooling. You probably can't hurt the GPU itself with cold. Heat is a killer, but cold won't do any long-term damage.

People cools them with liquid nitrogen, no need to worry for a simple -20

http://www.corsair.com/it/blog/setting-up-your-gpu-for-liquid-nitrogen-overclocking

Wow thanks guys! ::)

That thing about the nitrogen is crazy. :o

I'll stick to the cold air flow and try to keep the GPU's the lowest I can but I will be comfortable having them between 40C and 50C. ;D

Watercooling (WC) is the probably the safest long term cooling solution that provides safe low temperatures.
There are method to cool it way beyond what WC can do, but I'd not recommend it; Pelters, phase changers, Liquid Nitrogen, Coolant submerging etc

The sort of temperatures you can expect out of water cooling will be dependant on your WC setup, how many parts you are cooling and your air temperature around the PC, since that is the coldest it will get too.
Usually I'd go for 1 240x120mm Radiator per CPU or GPU needing cooled, so room temperature is the best it will be at.
By the way, some of the best fans for WC and air cooling is Scythe Gentle Typhoon series, noisy, but does the job and you can always use a fan controller to lower the voltage if you need it quiet.

Trying to go significantly below room temperature is not recommended, as you have a lot more to consider in the areas of condensation and other issues if you go below freezing. It can be done, but it's not for those for good for those with more experience in this area of more cooling first.

Thanks a lot Lethos!

I will definitely consider about being careful with freezing temperatures.

Obviously I don't want to have any kind of condensation in my $300+ video cards.

I will try to keep them between 40C and 50C with the highest ambient temperature I can!

Thanks again for all your suggestion guys! :-)

The biggest issue is you'd have to worry about condensation which occurs when the delta temp between ambient air and air on the surface of an object falls outside of a specific range. As cold as you're pumping air onto it, if your ambient temp is too warm the condensation will form on the card and short it out. There's really no need to ever pull a card below ambient air temps unless you're either in a really hot climate or going for some extreme benchmark, but even if doing the latter, it's not good for mining for extended periods of time.

Another very good sugestion.

In my case I live in Connecticut US. So I will place my rigs in a room where the heater is controlled by one single thermostat that gives the same temperature in the whole appartment.

So my idea is to built some ducts that grabs air from the outside that will be between 5 and 35 degrees fahrenheit. I can insulate the rigs very well because inside the room will be at 70 fehrenheit but the ducts will be flowing very cold air.

I will give this a try with my HD 4850 because it's a poor video card and if it fails due to condensation I will try to post the results in this thread or maybe I can create my build up thread in this forum. Who knows?

Thanks for participating PenguinWriter!!!

I'm starting to love this forum! Lots of helpful members willing to help in anything they can!

Thanks again to all of you! :-)

Submerge the whole thing into non-conductive oil. Then circulate the oil. Then cool the oil. Make sure you have an oil filter to keep it clean.

People have used cheap mineral or synthetic oil.

While a lot of fun to do the whole oil submerge thing (done it in a "designer" fish tank for my media center), unless you use very expensive industry grade non-conductive coolant (rather than just mineral oil), it's actually got worse cooling properties than water and also it's usually got a viscosity many times higher than water so you need a really heavy duty pump, so it be noisy as hell because of it.

So I can't recommend it for any big power guzzling PC as cooling that oil is certainly not as easy as water.

Thank you all for all the tips and suggestions!

I really learned a bunch with all the information provided.

I will definitely start my build up thread here to share my experience with everyone!

Thanks again! :-)


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Tags for other people to find this thread in search engines:

Coldest mining rig?
Lowest mining rig temperature? temperatures?
Safest coldest mining rigs?
Mining rig condensation?
Cooling freezing temperatures for mining?
What's what is the lowest temperature I can give to a GPU? GPUs? GPU's?
Coldest mining rig?
Low lowest temperature litecoin mining?
Cold air flow for to my video cards?

any updates on your success?

I am thinking of putting my rig in the attic but worried of winter temperatures, as the attic is not insulated or isolated from outside direct wind and dust. similar to yours I guess; I am curious what happened to your project as I am looking at building like a massive net box to put the rig and then see if the hot air dissipates in the vast space, also worried about bugs and insect being drawn to warm at night, or those bright white blinking lights/ among condensation and other issues.

I look forward to your reply

No one has actually answered you. You should be googling "subzero overclocking" you can run in the sub zero tempretures. There is no condensation since it evaporates in the air in case you wondering.

Unless you massively over clocking your rig I don't see how doing this helps. Therre is a reason people don't do this to their rigs. If you can do it for free then go for it.


40 is cold. A gpu can run in the 90s celcius. I mined for months with my rx480 on full load at like 80 celcuis. It is normal for a high end gaming pc to reach temperatures like that on full tilt. Obviously, people lower it with fans and such. If I put the cover back on my pc is gets much hotter. I have 4 150mm fans in it.



Dust causes static and static destroys electronics.

60C is the highest safest temp for GPU mining and we have few AMD GPUs that can handle 65C heats too but i like NVIDIA GPUs because they are better at cooling than AMD