Dry Water Submersion for ASIC cooling?

[KonstantinosM]

I haven't mined in years and I have never mined at scale. But if I had millions of dollars to start a mining farm, I'd submerge all the equipment in dry water, then I'd use heat exchangers by running it through a walk in freezer (dry water doesn't freeze until about -100c. The hardware itself and its heatsinks would be submerged in the dry water. Since it won't short out any of the circuits and it won't dissolve them it should function the same as air. Since the liquid would be very cold perhaps around -10c I could run the hardware really hard so I could get a lot more value out of them. The system would have to be closed so that none of the liquid or vapors escape.

I wonder if anyone is doing this in practice. Here's a video explaining dry water and it's properties. In the link I'll timestamp a place where a computer is submerged in it. The setup is only a demonstration and there is not even a heatsink in it and the liquid isn't being cooled so of course it heats up and doesn't work well.

https://youtu.be/cR4Mutf1kQg?t=757

Something interesting is that since dry water is heavier than water, you could cool the dry water by dropping ice cubes on the top layer or even running cold water over it and then out the top. The actual water would never touch the electronics. In theory you could have your mining equipment at the bottom of a cold lake. Or maybe at the bottom of a pool. The large water mass would never heat and in a cold climate the pool would always reject any heat given to it to the elements. I think something like colorado could be an ideal location. You build a deep pond or pool. You put the equipment under it. The pool will never completely freeze because the ice will insulate the top layer when it gets cold and the ground will remain hot enough to keep the rest from freezing. During the summer you cover part of the pool so that it doesn't heat up during the day, during the night the temperature will be low enough to cool everything.

[1714915202]

1714915202

[1714915202]

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[mikeywith]

Mining is a "cost" based game, you need to compete with thousands of other miners, the once that last longer are the once who keep their expenses low, that Novec 649 is pretty dope, you could probably put it in a fish tank at home and drop a miner in there for decoration purposes, but soaking hundreds of miners in it will cost you a lot, probably just enough to put you out of the game before even starting, so long story short, the idea is nice, but not practical in real life.

Since the liquid would be very cold perhaps around -10c I could run the hardware really hard so I could get a lot more value out of them.

1- Good luck getting the miners to start at that low temperature.
2- Overclocking your miners doesn't always lead to more profit, in most cases, it reduces the efficiency of the miner and increases your power bill.

[philipma1957]

2- Overclocking your miners doesn't always lead to more profit, in most cases, it reduces the efficiency of the miner and increases your power bill.

If you have a s17 pro with correct aftermarket firmware it can do 980 watts and 39.6 th

I purchased a unit with the firmware to test the most efficient setting. Just about 25 watts a th.

The unit is quiet and runs cool.

So 10 units would do 396 th and 9800 watts.

If you overclock the same unit with stock bitmain firmware it does 58th and 2700 watts which is 46.5 watts a th.

or 580th and 27000 watts.

So rather than spending the money on cooling

Buy more s17 pros and underclock

27000 watts divide by 980 = 27 s17 pros

27 set to 39.6 = 1069 th

So while super cooling look cool it is costly.

The nice thing of having 27 units set to 39.6 th.

vs 10 units set to 58th is you can crank gear up a little if coins go high.

So my advice is extra units down clocked is better than super cooled gear.

[mikeywith]

So while super cooling look cool it is costly.

Indeed, what many people seem to misunderstand that "cooler" isn't always better, these miners were not made in a way that they require water cooling, they can run in a temperature of as high as 40 degrees celsius (104 Fahrenheit for our fellow American friends), as long as you move enough air they will run perfectly, I have some S9s that have been hashing for over 3 years now, the amount of water cooling was needed to obtain that long lifespan was absolutely ZERO.

The only reason why I would water cooling systems is if the noise was an issue and I wanted to keep my miners as quiet as possible

[philipma1957]

They lower dust as a side benefit.

[mikeywith]

I don't have any filters on my intake fans, the mining farm sits in the middle of nowhere and is subject to collect dust more than most other places and I still get away with some dusting probably no more than 3 times a year, so while lower-dust is indeed a benefit in the water cooling vs air cooling but the cleanness of the air isn't very crucial to justify the cost if the air was going into my lungs then yes, but it goes to a miner that has a very short life-span and will inevitably die sooner than later.

There are other cons in water-cooling besides the initial cost, things like the complexity of maintenance, not very DIY friendly, requires the use of custom firmware or fan simulators (even more extra cost), it's SPOF (A single point of failure), one radiator, pipe, pump, etc can stop a large number of gears, I may sound biased but I really just like to "keep it simple stupid".

[philipma1957]

I don't have any filters on my intake fans, the mining farm sits in the middle of nowhere and is subject to collect dust more than most other places and I still get away with some dusting probably no more than 3 times a year, so while lower-dust is indeed a benefit in the water cooling vs air cooling but the cleanness of the air isn't very crucial to justify the cost if the air was going into my lungs then yes, but it goes to a miner that has a very short life-span and will inevitably die sooner than later.

There are other cons in water-cooling besides the initial cost, things like the complexity of maintenance, not very DIY friendly, requires the use of custom firmware or fan simulators (even more extra cost), it's SPOF (A single point of failure), one radiator, pipe, pump, etc can stop a large number of gears, I may sound biased but I really just like to "keep it simple stupid".

Yeah if you have water cooling it does have multiple failure points.

While air cooling just has the fan as a failure point.