@Finksy
In the test I did, the fluid temperature reached a maximum at 62 degree Celsius at a room temperature of 23 degree.  So the miner can run at full power most of the time in cold places.

“Hotmine Smart Heater-Miner” is a similar concept yes, but I feel that it has a smaller market compared to a space heater.


@sidehack
No, this is not a 1st. April's fools joke :-)

I think that these kind of ideas may bring the bitcoin mining to the masses, reducing the dominance of those huge mining farms placed where the electric power is cheap. So the everyday man will not be able to compete. These "free" electric power concept may level out the field and make the bitcoin ecosystem more decentralized.

It will not be easy to create new, step-change bitcoin mining chip after reaching 16nm. So the bitcoin chip development speed will slow down soon.

Proof of concept showed that this idea will work, at least technically. Economically is another beast. That is the reason for my questions above. Please comment if you have time.

@sidehack and NotFuzzyWarm

I have run a fan-less s5 submerged in oil for some time, clocked down so it uses only 200W. Then pumped the oil through a conventional raditor heater which was able to keep the whole system around 60 degrees Cellsius.

Next step is to design a miner board that can be inserted directly into an oil-filled radiator, replacing the conventional heat elements. The whole system will then be controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero alike computer with Wifi and power supply outside.

One important requirement is the shape of the miner board and the power supply, so they fit into conventional radiator heaters. The other important requirement is that the whole system will be able to pay for itself after say 2 years, provided that the electricity is for free.

Which such a system, I believe that we can introduce bitcoin to the masses living in the cold part of the world. It will be profitable for them to buy this bitcoin miner instead of a conventional radiator heater. But people are conservative. They may only do the transition if it looks like a radiator heater :-)

Questions:
1) Do you have an estimate of how much money an integrator will need to take a working ~200W board and redesign/reshape it to a 5cm x 40cm board?
2) What is the estimated cost price for such a board, if it was populated with Bitfurry 16nm or BM1385 or other similar chips?

Best regards,
aknnig

@ sidehack
I have a tested an indirect proff of concept system/miner that is able to run with nearly 200W with absolutely no sound. Such a system if made easy, neat and cheap can enter the mass-market as a living room heater/miner. Then the electric power for mining is "free" or vise versa the electric power for heating is free, due to the bitcoins created. With mass-market I really mean customers that has little or no technical insight. They have no clear idea of what a power supply is.

So I am in the process of raising money to build ~10 prototypes for testing. I will need to make contact with integrators when the money is raised.

The prototype should have the following requirements:
1) They look like standard room heater
2) No sound or virtually no sound.
3) Plug and play with wireless connection, so the only technical thing the user needs to do is to type in their wireless WPA-key. An online bitcoin wallet should be pre-created for each miner.
4) Not so much more expensive than conventional space heater

Point 1 and 4 above demand some special form factor for the miner board and power supply, in additional to their price.

Sorry for being brief on the explanation, the idea is fairly simple so I want a head start first before coming with more details :-).

Best regards,
aknnig

@sidehack and Finksy

Thanks for the useful comments.

I am considering the possibility of putting together a small nearly noise-free miner ~200W for the mass-market. To make this miner available for the mass-market it must be very cheap, of course on the cost of quality and risk of failures. I wonder if these cheap/bad power supplies with cost of 10-15 USD is sufficient.

It might be worth a test. So I am looking for the most important factors I must consider for the test.

Best regards,
aknnig

Hi.

I very often read that it is wise to invest in very good power supply, due to their efficiency, durability, stability... Dogie had a nice review about good power supplies, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486121

However, to introduce bitcoin mining to the masses, sometimes we must consider prices, noise and form factor (shape) over the other points mentioned above.

Is it possible to use cheap 12V DC power supplies like this one http://yqunique.com/products/s-201-singe-output-power-supply-ID584.html#.Vv0nnNWLSVM  or other similar instead of ATX alike power supplies?

Are their specifications too far away from standard ATX specifications that typical 12V ASIC miners will not work, or even worse they will burn down the miner? Here I have assumed that the power supply can give the necessary output.

If so, what is the minimum requirements a DC power supply must have to be able to drive the miners?

Comments from you will be highly appreciated.

Best regards,
aknnig

@ sidehack

An extremely interesting project.

A question: Do you have some thoughts about the dimensions of the board(s) you plan to work with? I am in the process of raising money for hiring a system integrator to build a similar board. What I need is that the board(s) is only ~4cm in width, no restrictions in length.

Comments from you will be highly appreciated.

Thanks for the useful tip VirosaGITS.

In more details for the other newbies. For Antminer s5, use

   cgminer-api -o stats

to get all status data. temp1 can then be extracted using for example

   cgminer-api -o stats | sed 's/,/\n/g' | grep 'temp1='

Hi.

I am running Antminer s5. It uses cgminer.

I wish to monitor the temperature as a function of time and am interested in either the temperature log file or the file containing the current temperature. Or a simple Linux command that gives me the current temperature.

I am inside the s5 through Linux so I can easily create the log myself, if I knew where the file with the current temperature is.

Any comments from you will be highly appreciated.

Best regards,
aknnig

Phase A (make s5 start mining in oil) completed.

Here is a simple workaround that made my s5 run in an oil bath.
1) I took an old 3 pins fan, remove the blades and plug it into s5's fan position 1. Kept it in air while running. Virtually no noise, since no blades.
2) Connect stock fan to s5's fan position 2 to move the oil. No noise from here either.

The s5 runs fine till I stop it due to high oil temperature after sometime.

Now I will start with phase B, remove the heat from the oil and make the whole system more stylish 

VirosaGITS: Thanks for the comment. I have started to read myself up on the fans, to find the possible options :-)

yslyung:   First attempt indicates that just putting the whole s5 into oil does not work. Motherboard seems to demand air-based RPM, which is not possible in oil, for the large stock fan.   

Thanks all for the nice comments.

NotFuzzyWarm: Agree, very good comment. The original heat sink ribs will prevent an upwards oil flow in the horizontal position.

VriosaGITS:       I thought more about putting a resistor there. The question is then what kind of resistor and resistance is most appropriate.

BitcionLover:     Could be. I take this as a “scientific” experiment

Hi.

I plan to start a project of creating an oil cooled antminer s5 system, mostly for fun and educational purposes. I want to see, through transparent oil, my ant miner creating bitcoins in my living room with nearly no sound

The present plan is easy.

1) Submerge an antminer s5 into a bath of oil.
2) Cool down the heated oil by other means. I plan to use a (car?) radiator where I will pump the heated oil through using a small fan submerged in oil.

Challenge 1.
I want to remove the original 120mm fan attached to s5. I think that it will be too strong and disturbing if running inside the oil bath.

Questions.
1) Will s5 still run OK when the stock fan is disconnected from the system and the power pins for the fan left open?

2) If "no" in 1, is it a simple way to trick s5 to make it works with no fan?

3) If I want to use the power pins meant for the original 120mm fan to drive another smaller fan (to pump the oil through the radiator), are there some important requirements the smaller fan needs to fulfill?

Any comments from you will be highly appreciated.

Best regards,
aknnig