After ASIC mfgs, comes the ASIC recyclers?

[ThePrinceofTea]

With all those paper weight around, I am sure there is some $ to then convert in btc in those old ashers? What do you think?

[Coinminer11]

You could repurpose them as heaters. I dont know what else you could use an asic for.

[TheRealSteve]

Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Mining > Hardware > Non-Bitcoin Uses for Old ASIC Miners?

However, since you mention 'recyclers' specifically; there's quite a few people who sell major components of miners - e.g. individual blades of a miner that has a blade design, heat sinks, controllers, power supplies, etc.  For those building or servicing their own miners, older boards to salvage chips from is also not unheard of.  But this seems to be more sporadic than an actual business plan.  There's little value in taking in old miners and then disassembling those for component resale.

Other than those,full recycling is the same as for most other electronics - i.e. if being processed well they'll separate out the major parts, heat sinks can be resold, fans can be resold, power supplies hold value, and pretty much everything else (PCBs including components) have everything desoldered, the components put on a conveyor belt, an optical system blows anything that looks like an IC off to one bin, everything else goes to scrap, that bin is then processed to reclaim precious metals like gold.

Not uncommonly, it just ends up on a landfill for future generations to deal with.

[notlist3d]

A lot of miners have multiple owners.  It's really different day's in the world of asics then GPU's.   GPU's you used them to mine and most sold to a gamer who would use.

With asic it seems higher priced electricity people stick with new gear because of efficiency.  At a certain point though it makes to little and is sold online to someone with lower electricity.   

It would not surprise me if miners at this point have 3 homes by the end of their life.   I think we will only see more of this moving to lower priced electricity places with old asics.

On old gear what I hope happens is parts are reused.   I know this likely will not happen.  But imagine if we could get a place to store A1 cases and heatsinks some third party could make a upgraded hashing pcb and you have a new miner.   I really wish there was more upgrading but it does not seem to happen much.  Sadly you are probley right about them going to recycle's who sell for metal value at some point.

[VirosaGITS]

A lot of miners have multiple owners.  It's really different day's in the world of asics then GPU's.   GPU's you used them to mine and most sold to a gamer who would use.

With asic it seems higher priced electricity people stick with new gear because of efficiency.  At a certain point though it makes to little and is sold online to someone with lower electricity.   

It would not surprise me if miners at this point have 3 homes by the end of their life.   I think we will only see more of this moving to lower priced electricity places with old asics.

On old gear what I hope happens is parts are reused.   I know this likely will not happen.  But imagine if we could get a place to store A1 cases and heatsinks some third party could make a upgraded hashing pcb and you have a new miner.   I really wish there was more upgrading but it does not seem to happen much.  Sadly you are probley right about them going to recycle's who sell for metal value at some point.

You "can" recycle a fair bit of components on used boards. The fans can be reused or at least the plastic recycled when the motors die. The metal parts could be melted.

But all in all, that is a lot of manual labor and there is a constant waterfall of them trickling down to landfills so i'm guessing Cryptocurrency related ASIC will simply just be that. A bit more electronic being dumped somewhere.

I think only the metal heatsink and cover/husk would be convenient to recycle and you could probably recycle them with home recycling bins.

[notlist3d]

A lot of miners have multiple owners.  It's really different day's in the world of asics then GPU's.   GPU's you used them to mine and most sold to a gamer who would use.

With asic it seems higher priced electricity people stick with new gear because of efficiency.  At a certain point though it makes to little and is sold online to someone with lower electricity.   

It would not surprise me if miners at this point have 3 homes by the end of their life.   I think we will only see more of this moving to lower priced electricity places with old asics.

On old gear what I hope happens is parts are reused.   I know this likely will not happen.  But imagine if we could get a place to store A1 cases and heatsinks some third party could make a upgraded hashing pcb and you have a new miner.   I really wish there was more upgrading but it does not seem to happen much.  Sadly you are probley right about them going to recycle's who sell for metal value at some point.

You "can" recycle a fair bit of components on used boards. The fans can be reused or at least the plastic recycled when the motors die. The metal parts could be melted.

But all in all, that is a lot of manual labor and there is a constant waterfall of them trickling down to landfills so i'm guessing Cryptocurrency related ASIC will simply just be that. A bit more electronic being dumped somewhere.

I think only the metal heatsink and cover/husk would be convenient to recycle and you could probably recycle them with home recycling bins.

The big thing is the heatsinks.   With the A1 Dragon 1T they are quite sizeable.  And if you happen to have a A1 1.5T they are even more sizeable.  I believe my 1.5 weighed around 50 pounds when I shipped it.

These old heatsinks really could be put to good use if reused.  But sadly they most likely will end up in some kinda metal recycler eventually.

[VirosaGITS]

A lot of miners have multiple owners.  It's really different day's in the world of asics then GPU's.   GPU's you used them to mine and most sold to a gamer who would use.

With asic it seems higher priced electricity people stick with new gear because of efficiency.  At a certain point though it makes to little and is sold online to someone with lower electricity.   

It would not surprise me if miners at this point have 3 homes by the end of their life.   I think we will only see more of this moving to lower priced electricity places with old asics.

On old gear what I hope happens is parts are reused.   I know this likely will not happen.  But imagine if we could get a place to store A1 cases and heatsinks some third party could make a upgraded hashing pcb and you have a new miner.   I really wish there was more upgrading but it does not seem to happen much.  Sadly you are probley right about them going to recycle's who sell for metal value at some point.

You "can" recycle a fair bit of components on used boards. The fans can be reused or at least the plastic recycled when the motors die. The metal parts could be melted.

But all in all, that is a lot of manual labor and there is a constant waterfall of them trickling down to landfills so i'm guessing Cryptocurrency related ASIC will simply just be that. A bit more electronic being dumped somewhere.

I think only the metal heatsink and cover/husk would be convenient to recycle and you could probably recycle them with home recycling bins.

The big thing is the heatsinks.   With the A1 Dragon 1T they are quite sizeable.  And if you happen to have a A1 1.5T they are even more sizeable.  I believe my 1.5 weighed around 50 pounds when I shipped it.

These old heatsinks really could be put to good use if reused.  But sadly they most likely will end up in some kinda metal recycler eventually.

If the manufactures cared about the ecology, they would just print new PCBs and sell those and design their units to easily change the PCBs, effectively being a purely upgrade system.

But i very much doubt we'll see this kind of eco-friendly modular plan from the ASIC companies. A shame.

[UfoRia]

I had a friend for fun try and re-purpose them to crack sha-256 hashes for fun, but he ran into issues with removing the polynomial logic (?) on the chips with software workarounds that made it moot. In his words, the asic's are worthless for anything besides their original design unless you have an electron microscope and access to semiconductor facilities, but even then they are worthless outside of their original purpose.

The other components are mainly garden variety and as others pointed out will be heated so the solder melts for them to fall out. Everything else will be smelted in a cancer factory for a small amount of precious metals that will kill generations of people from the toxic process.


Ufo

[notlist3d]

I had a friend for fun try and re-purpose them to crack sha-256 hashes for fun, but he ran into issues with removing the polynomial logic (?) on the chips with software workarounds that made it moot. In his words, the asic's are worthless for anything besides their original design unless you have an electron microscope and access to semiconductor facilities, but even then they are worthless outside of their original purpose.

The other components are mainly garden variety and as others pointed out will be heated so the solder melts for them to fall out. Everything else will be smelted in a cancer factory for a small amount of precious metals that will kill generations of people from the toxic process.


Ufo

They are designed and do one thing well with Asics.  No matter what you try this will not crack sha-256 hashing on security, that is just a different kind of element these asics were not desigbed to do.

I think your thoughts are a little tough on recycling.  With asics compared to computer waste there is a lot more metal (or other types of material). Some will be e-waste.  But that is the problem with any tech item.

[jstew]

   

It would not surprise me if miners at this point have 3 homes by the end of their life.   I think we will only see more of this moving to lower priced electricity places with old asics.

most of my gear that i get comes to me after having a few owners , as u say it moves down the line with each new owner having cheaper power , useually once it gets to me i run it till it breaks , or is only breaking even for a while then i gut the useable parts off them i.e fans, psus controllers etc and trash the rest

[notlist3d]

   

It would not surprise me if miners at this point have 3 homes by the end of their life.   I think we will only see more of this moving to lower priced electricity places with old asics.

most of my gear that i get comes to me after having a few owners , as u say it moves down the line with each new owner having cheaper power , useually once it gets to me i run it till it breaks , or is only breaking even for a while then i gut the useable parts off them i.e fans, psus controllers etc and trash the rest

Its kinda the circle of life on miner gear.   The great thing is this moving from one miner to lower priced electricity miner keeps prices up some on old gear, allows old gear to be sold pretty easily (as long as its bot obsolete).

Pretty amazing process  but it does just work.  Nothing like this happened during GPU days.  It was sold to gamer at end in most cases.