How long can each miner run? 1 year? more? less? S3 or any other

[HiSoC8Y]

Hi

What is the average life of each miner (S3 for example)?

[s1lverbox]

Hi

What is the average life of each miner (S3 for example)?

depends on power price, if you comfortable to baby sit with miners.
at this diff home mining i would consider as hobby. mining become great business for asics factory and for big players like cloud mining or massive farms. profit is difficult to estimate.

[jonnybravo0311]

Hi

What is the average life of each miner (S3 for example)?

That's a very hard question to answer because it depends on so many things.  As the first reply mentions, cost of power plays a large factor in determining the life span of a miner.  Most people would agree that a miner becomes useless when it costs more to run than it can produce in coins.  Therefore, as your power costs increase, your miner's lifespan will decrease.

Another factor to take into consideration is difficulty.  Since difficulty changes are unknown, it's hard to determine how long a miner remains viable.  Just like with power, the smaller the adjustments in difficulty, the longer your miner lives.

You can also factor in alternate coin mining.  Sure, it may become unprofitable to keep your miner working on BTC, but it might make sense to mine a few other coins before sending the hardware to the recycling bin.

Of course, all of these answers are based on the assumption that your definition of a miner's lifespan is driven by profit.  If profit is not a concern to you, and you simply want to mine coins to support the network, then your miner's lifespan is as long as the hardware functions.

[HiSoC8Y]

all those things you guys mentioned side, what will be the life of the hardware? that's my question.

can it run for 5 years? for example

[jonnybravo0311]

all those things you guys mentioned side, what will be the life of the hardware? that's my question.

can it run for 5 years? for example

The answer to that question is what I wrote in my final paragraph.  It depends on how long the hardware continues to function.  People are still running hardware that's over a few years old.

[cloverme]

all those things you guys mentioned side, what will be the life of the hardware? that's my question.

can it run for 5 years? for example

I don't see any reason why they wouldn't run for 5 years... Likely the moving and high stress parts will fail first like fans the power supplies. I've noticed a lot of the boards from different manufacturers use a lot of capacitors, so those may die off after a few years  too under very high temps. I usually take my bitcoin asic miners out of production between 6-8 months and replace them with more efficient hardware. Usually after that point, it costs more to power them then they actually make in btc. Scrypt asic miners are a different story, so far, there's been no decline in profitability with using a multipool after 6 months, but it's still early in the market lifecycle.

[SquallLeonhart]

all those things you guys mentioned side, what will be the life of the hardware? that's my question.

can it run for 5 years? for example

If you are running at high temperature then 1 year is max. It also depends on your humidity level..

[DrG]

all those things you guys mentioned side, what will be the life of the hardware? that's my question.

can it run for 5 years? for example

If you are running at high temperature then 1 year is max. It also depends on your humidity level..

While high temps will indeed kill electronics all ASICs are designed to run near maximal speed before sending out too many hardware errors.  I have 6870s that never went under 75C that have been running for 3+ years no problem.

The utility of most hardware will be gone long before the actual hardware fails in most cases.

[philipma1957]

all those things you guys mentioned side, what will be the life of the hardware? that's my question.

can it run for 5 years? for example

If you are running at high temperature then 1 year is max. It also depends on your humidity level..

While high temps will indeed kill electronics all ASICs are designed to run near maximal speed before sending out too many hardware errors.  I have 6870s that never went under 75C that have been running for 3+ years no problem.

The utility of most hardware will be gone long before the actual hardware fails in most cases.

I agree with the above with some exceptions.  Or maybe caveats.

Proper cooling along with slight under clocking and down volting will allow gear long life 3 -5 years easy.  I believe an s-3 an s-1 will last 3-5 years if not pushed hard and kept pretty cool.
I have had 50-80 gpus' 2000 or more usb sticks. blades gridseeds s-1s and s-3's in my hands.. four or five usb sticks have died four or 5 gpu's died. Most gear lasts.  But I do not push the shit out of it I do not redline it.  I use really good psu's Fans fans fans. My failure rate is pretty good.

[leozzo]

A SHA miner is profitable for 6 months if you pay about 0.10$ for kwh
A scrypt miner is profitable for 9-12 months about 0.10$ for kwh