My "mini" mining farms , set up + wiring

[mikeywith]

The front



The back



I have now about 30 Asics in this room, still have room for a few more that i am getting in a few days.

I used MDF 16mm to divide the room into 2 smaller rooms , used a CNC router machine and trilled squares of 121 square mm, so i could easily insert the fans, then dealt with the 1mm with tapes to try and perfectly isolate the the intake from the exhaust.

difficulties i faced:

1- the alignment of the rack , as i used cheap racks to save cost, and they are not very flat, neither was the floor, i knew this from the start so i had my initial design on the CNC to keep a margin to the downside, as i can lift the miner up by putting anything under it but cant force it down ! , so it made more sense to do it this way, that's why you can see some miners sitting on a small peice of wood " the left-overs from the mdf sheets i used".

2- the initial work on the CNC machine, it took me sometimes to perfectly align everything all together, the metal poll in the middle "visible on the second picture"  was taken into consideration while drawing the design which made it less efficient, but still worked. the pole was important as the size of the mdf sheets i had access too were either not large enough to cover the whole space or too large to sit on the cnc table, therefore i had to cut it two 4 pieces and used the pole to hold it.

advantages of the current set up over the previous ( before the split)

1- the miners run cooler as most of the hot air has no way to go back to the intake
2- way less noise
3- potential of better and easier use of the hot air in the hot room ( maybe put a few egg incubators in it and they will crack in hours   )
4- in the summer it gets extremely hot here, up to 45 degrees c  is normal  >: , oh that is (113F for fellow Americans   ) ,,so no matter how much airflow is put, they will still get hot, so i have to use an AC to let the miners inhale   some cold air or they would melt. this was not possible in an open room as i would need a dozen of ACs to beat the hot air,but now i only have to beat the ambient temp which is enough by using a single 24000 btu AC

so you can actually use anything to isolate, whatever is cheap and at your disposal.

* I have very cheap power rate so i could care less about an AC running 24/7 in the summer, and the ACs here are designed to do so.
* i know the spacing is too much, but i had a lot of room with FIXED power, so 40 miners will be it for this farm, an upgrade is NOT possible  

i did all the wiring myself, including the electricity, if you have any question regarding that , feel free to ask.

cheers.


Farm no.2

So here comes the second farm, actually it's the first but i haven't had the chance to share it with you guys, so i had to manually reset one of the miners today and decided to take a few photos and share my humble set up.

The set up is pretty similar to the other farm > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5087770.0

but this one is a a lot smaller.

so here is the view from the outside



i used gypsum board to build this small farm, don't ask why , i always use the cheapest martial i have at my disposal  

same split set up. hot room to the left, cold room on the right ,notice that i don't have an easy to open door for the hot room since i don't need to in there often.



here is a view for the racks

3 rows, each row takes 4 miners, there is currently only 8, i sold the other 4 for a good price, bought another 4*s9s should be here in a week or so.



here is the 2 intake fans, they are not industrial , just the once you would use in a kitchen, and they are doing pretty good, i have 3 of them attached to the roof to exhaust the hot air from the hot room, sorry i forgot take a picture  of those, but they are the same exact once.



and here is the main and sub circuit breakers



so the main cable that runs to the main breaker is 16mm2 (5awg) , the main circuit breaker is 80 amps at 220v it should handle 17600w, but i am only consuming something below 15000w.



I have 4 MCB of 25amp each , 1 is for the AC , and every 4 miners are connected to 1*25 MCB ( 3*4 = 12 miners).
the 16amp MCB  is used for the switch and the fans.

you can see in the image, there are 2 wires  going out of each MCB, every wire is used by 2 miners, the wire is 6mm (9awg).

so every wire goes to 2 plug sockets as shown in the image below



i use those sockets only to cover the wires, i am not a big fan of using plug sockets for over 1kw , i cut the end of the psu cable, and joint it directly to the cable using the same blue joint kit that you can see in the image of the circuit breakers, the initial set up was using those outlets but then i realized that it was a bit risky as those sockets were not very good quality.

some people  think it's not the best practice, but i don't always good by books, i prefer real life experience and practice, and jointing the miners that way has always worked well for me, i had bad luck with using outlets/sockets, but not a single problem using these joint kits , plus i get to save some money with this set up.

also notice that wiring + breakers set up might not be something that people who go by the book agree with, but this has been going well for over a year and not single problem.

the total cost for building this was about 400-500$ from scratch to end including just about everything except for the miners of course.

edit: the place is quite dusty, am planning to clean it this weekend  

[1713869948]

1713869948

[krisgt30]

Nice setup. What are you using to suck the hot air out of the hot room?

[mikeywith]

Nice setup. What are you using to suck the hot air out of the hot room?

a single 600mm2 exhaust fan which i think is about 70cmm or 2000cfm

i have to guess because it is a second hand with no label what so ever   and it is doing the job just fine, also when it get's very hot and i have to increase the fans rpm( of the miners) i simply open the door of the hot room to allow some of the hot air to go outside, the intake for the cold room is on the opposite side so the hot air has noway of going back.

i know many people say that you need at least 150-200 cfm for each miner which means i will need about 200*40 =8000 cfm but really for this set up a single fan is doing the job, in fact it stopped working once so i had to rely on only the pressure of the miners' fans to push the hot air out of the door and temps were not even that high, i think as long as the hot room is large enough then there is plenty of room for the hot air to find it's way out. i know this might not make sense if you would go by the BOOK , but it's working for me



I will take more pictures when i set up the coming miners to give  you a better overall view.

[krisgt30]

You’ve posted about the hot and cold wall in my mining farm thread. I’m up to 38 miners now with another 10 en route. I was hitting the 80s on my miners with 25 machines last summer during 90 degree days. I’m sure I will need to build this same wall to avoid overheating in the summer with 50 machines. My upblast fan is rated to 30000cfm. I’m thinking if I build the wall halfway up (15 feet on a 30 foot ceiling) it should direct the hot air high enough where the fan should just suck everything out. What are your thoughts on that approach?

[mikeywith]

You’ve posted about the hot and cold wall in my mining farm thread. I’m up to 38 miners now with another 10 en route. I was hitting the 80s on my miners with 25 machines last summer during 90 degree days. I’m sure I will need to build this same wall to avoid overheating in the summer with 50 machines. My upblast fan is rated to 30000cfm. I’m thinking if I build the wall halfway up (15 feet on a 30 foot ceiling) it should direct the hot air high enough where the fan should just suck everything out. What are your thoughts on that approach?

if i remember correctly you have quite a large space,  15 feet is more than enough, depending on the width you going with.

if you want to have a decent spacing like mine, then all you need is 11.5 feet of height, which is about 3.5 meters ( same as mine)

with this height you can have 5 rows and the space from the highest miner to the roof will be about 5 feet which is good enough.

here is the initial design
 


of course having a higher ceiling is better if you do not plan to exhaust air through the ceiling  , because if you do, then what matters more is the space from the mining room ceiling to the main room ceiling, if you planing to suck the air out from one of the sides, then the higher the ceiling the better, but i still think 5 feet from the top miner to the roof top is more than enough.

also with 30000cfm i am sure the hot room will not be too hot   , but you will need to have a large intake fan in the cold room, facing the opposite direction of your exhaust fan , because the air pressure created by the 30000 cfm along with  miner exhaust fans will be too much for the miner intake fans to handle, they will be spinning at high rpms and the pressure in the cold room will be so low, like latterly you will not be able shut the door of the cold room if it opens to the inside, it will feel like a very strong person pulling it from the inside, therefore you need to force at least something close to 30000cfm to the cold room, which does not have to be a single fan, maybe 10000cfm fan and make a few holes on the side of the wall of the cold room for air to come in easily.

[mikeywith]

You can heat up the house in winter with it  

sadly it's far from home   , but you can actually roast a whole chicken in the hot side of the room  

What pool are you mining at?
Just came up with a thought on how much we do lose by mining at pools like antpool, slush or btc.com...
Nice farm, though

oh the majority of the miners are not BTC miners, but if you asking about BTC mining i use ck pool and slushpool. i never liked antpool to be honest.

also i don't see how would you lose by mining at those pools unless the luck happens to be so bad while you were mining ( assuming it's not PPS) or they are simply scamming you. I had zero problem with slushpool and ckpool.

for the non btc miners i usually stick to nicehash, for mainly 2 reasons.

1- i get paid straight in BTC
2- the payout is usually higher for God knows why " probably the noobs over pay to rent hashing power on nicehash to mine shitcoins" or could be people like BCH buying the hashrate to win the war against one another, but i could care less as long as the payment is good.

[minefarmbuy]

I will pm you to not take your thread too far off topic.

Essentially mikey is saying you need to ensure static pressure.

[not_g]

4- in the summer it gets extremely hot here, up to 45 degrees c  is normal  >: , oh that is (113F for fellow Americans   ) ,,so no matter how much airflow is put, they will still get hot, so i have to use an AC to let the miners inhale   some cold air or they would melt. .

Jeeze whereabouts are you that 45C is normal?

We get hot and humid summers in southern Ontario and as long as their was managed airflow there was no need for AC. But agree that introducing some cold air will maintain the health of the miners long term. Easy to calculate your overhead and stay profitable.

[mikeywith]

Jeeze whereabouts are you that 45C is normal?

We get hot and humid summers in southern Ontario and as long as their was managed airflow there was no need for AC. But agree that introducing some cold air will maintain the health of the miners long term. Easy to calculate your overhead and stay profitable.

very close to the sahara desert "no joke" ,  if power is dirt cheap AC is the way to go i the summer, if not the you will need to move a ton of air around the miners when it get's really hot. it's just a matter of everyone own abilities.

cheers

[sarcheer]

You may want to look into what are known as swamp coolers, assuming you have access to a cheap and readily available water source. Very efficient cooling, especially when the air is very, very dry like I would imagine the region near the Sahara to be. If it also happens to be humid, then these will not be very effective.

[mikeywith]

Swamp coolers are rather expensive here, they will be a perfect solution but honestly i am not looking for perfection, i am trying to keep the cost as low possible, it's also that most likely that mining asics will be outdated before going bad, so i see no need in providing the perfect cooling method for those soon to become paper weight, i always try to roi asap, because you may never know what could happen next week.

[romelitounknown]

Very nice set up man but hey you must cover those small opening under the exhaust fan for a better suction of the hot air. Be sure to cover any open wall and windows inside the hot air room.

[mikeywith]

Very nice set up man but hey you must cover those small opening under the exhaust fan for a better suction of the hot air. Be sure to cover any open wall and windows inside the hot air room.

would you please explain how will covering the open area around the fan will increase suction? i think fans are rated at x amount of cubic unit they can suck, so regardless , they will only suck what they can , some of the hot air will go through those spaces which supposedly slightly  better with than without them, i am a newbie when it comes to air follow/pressure/ventilation. i only do trial and error and have almost no solid numbers based knowledge, so i hope you can explain. thanks a lot.

[romelitounknown]

would you please explain how will covering the open area around the fan will increase suction? i think fans are rated at x amount of cubic unit they can suck, so regardless , they will only suck what they can , some of the hot air will go through those spaces which supposedly slightly  better with than without them, i am a newbie when it comes to air follow/pressure/ventilation. i only do trial and error and have almost no solid numbers based knowledge, so i hope you can explain. thanks a lot.

Hello, I will give you a more simple explanation. If you were to drink a bottled soda ,which are the easiest way to drink it, sucking it with one straw inside the bottled soda OR sucking it with 2 straw with one straw inside and one straw outside of the bottled soda ?

[minefarmbuy]

Just remount the gable to some plywood that fits over the entire open area, cut out of course for the fan. Essentially your removal will be more efficient.

[Artemis3]

Oddly enough you might need some of the heat to control humidity, makes for a fun discovery after taking so much effort to isolate the hot air...
Still, very nice setup!

[aswithin]

How many amp do you have access to, and how much is a KwH there?  My poor house's 100A feed is maxed.

[mikeywith]

How many amp do you have access to, and how much is a KwH there?  My poor house's 100A feed is maxed.

it's 3 phase , i have roughly 75amps on each phase so more or less 225amps in total

[NotFuzzyWarm]

it's 3 phase , i have roughly 75amps on each phase so more or less 225amps in total

No, you still just have a total of 75 amps but with a 3rd leg feeding the panel you do get to pull 1.732x more watts from the panel.
ref http://www.oempanels.com/what-does-single-and-three-phase-power-mean

[mikeywith]

i am already consuming  well over 150 amps. the link you sent me only applies to USA old Electrical infrastructure.

for the the rest of the world ,it's a whole different story.

3 phase means this :

you get 4 wires ( 1 neutral and 3 hot/live )

between every N and L you get 220v
between every L and L  you get 380V

so in my case I have either

75amps on 380V.
or 75*3 on 220V.

depending on how you deal with the cables, you can have both 380v and 220v.

so what i did is this.

I bought 3 main circuit breakers
each has a hot wire attached to it.
N wire is shared by the 3 phases.

just in case my explanation is hard to get > read this > https://hotkilns.com/what-difference-between-220-volts-3-phase-and-380220-volts-3-phase-overseas-applications

they refer to this standard as being used in

... like a lot of foreign countries...

very poor choice of words to say the least, it's more like  like " The Majority of foreign countries"