Bitcoin Forum

The Next Big Boost for Bitcoin Mining: Oil Immersion Cooling

Bitcoin mining, by design, is increasing in difficulty. Enthusiasts mining in their basements have given way to professionally managed cloud services that deploy equipment on a massive scale. Growing energy requirements and rapidly evolving hardware are testing the limits of traditional infrastructure. GRC’s oil immersion cooling technology promises to boost efficiency while making infrastructure extremely flexible, quick to deploy, and easy to scale.

http://www.grcooling.com/bitcoin-mining/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5zoIEjo1Zk


what do you think?

Seems more like a company hoping to jump on the bandwagon.

ASICMiner already had a liquid cooling setup, BitFury straight-out acquired Allied Control, and if you search these forums for 'novec', you'll find all sorts of outfits trying out 3M's liquid for cooling Bitcoin mining rigs.

Moving miners to colder climates to begin with seems a more workable solution for now ;)

It seemed to me novac was always pretty pricy.  I wish I could find the video but I think it was ASICMiner blades from long long ago they showed a decent setup.

I don't see immersion cooling as the next big thing for miners.

Can't really say they are jumping on the bandwagon considering they've been in business before Allied Control or ASICminer even existed. (founded in 2009)

IIRC Guy from Spondoolies-tech said some customers were using GRcooling systems for their SP3X's.

Someone from the company made a few posts here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=376444;sa=showPosts

They claim it's better than 2-phase immersion cooling in every way but I doubt it. I think 2-phase can be much cheaper than 70 cents per watt and with better cooling density/efficiency.

I didn't mean the liquid cooling bandwagon - there's companies on that one possibly from before I was born ;)  Their Bitcoin pages seem to have popped up ~March, though.. that's the bandwagon I was referring to.  I'm also not saying that as a negative thing - but they're not really bringing anything new to the table that hasn't already been at play..and hasn't been a 'big boost' so far.

That video looks awesome, but the downside I see is that you will need more space to house mining equipment.  Tons more space.  It may increase efficiency by 95%, but it looks to lower the number the number of units that can be installed by 95% as well.

I like many have been following the changes in cooling techniques offered by datacenters for consumer and commercial miners. Sometime ago I was discussing a similar oil immersion cooling option from Gray Matter Industries and NextFort. I'm not sure if they ever proceeded with the plan but I suspect they were utilizing the same GRC product or similar.


Moving to colder climates is definitely a workable solution: KNC, BitFury, PeerNova and DigitalBTC would all agree given their primary operations are in the Arctic Circle. However for the small medium business mining operator that doesn't have the resources to orchestrate an overseas enterprise, immersion cooling is definitely an appropriate move. Taking ASICMiner as the example mentioned, they recognised the potential of 2 phase immersion cooling while they were still experimenting with FGPA clusters. It should very interesting too see how BitFury scales up Allied Control and the 2 phase immersion cooling configurations.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZavKweMrP4

My BTC isn't Immersion cooled but in the mid 2000's I had a Performance PC I did with submersion Cooling, lets just say its a pain in the ass, and its not worth the troubles, unless; the item was designed for immersion, or you're using a designed liquid.

The Hardest part after that is the added weight to a rig/set up/rack, a 42U rack sitting has weight around 3000lbs, I know a standard rack is basically a 265gal tank, that would be adding roughly 2200lbs, so that rack would now weight roughly 2.5tons....... you also need enough "coolant" to move and pumps/circulation to move all that, and on top of that with that much heat you need a heat exchange to dump that heat elsewhere or a chiller.....