Questions about ASIC miner energy consumption, cooling and uptime

[cryptocosmic]

Hi everyone,

I have been trying to find answers to my specific questions using the search function, but didn't succeed entirely, so I am hoping that one of the mining vets could quickly help me to find out:

1. Is the energy consumption that is for example stated with the Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH/s of 3250W (+- the tolerance) the constant wattage each machine draws the moment it is in full operation ? Or is that an average and it can be lower or even higher than that?
2. Is the ideal uptime of these ASICs indeed 24/7 with absolutely no break ? What happens for example if there is a power outage in one or even all machines you have in your network? Do you loose your share of calculating a block with the pool you are connected with, if a machine breaks or shuts down in the middle of it ?
3. What is the ideal working temperature of the newest ASIC miners? I read somewhere it is 20-25C, is that correct or does it make sense to cool the environment further down, for example with liquid cooling (given that you have a way to do that without causing much additional energy consumption in order to do so)?

Thanks

[BitMaxz]

For your first question is not the max wattage when it was in full operation that is why there is + and - tolerance it depends on your miner it could be higher or lower and the s19 Pro PSU is around 20 amp so it can handle more than that.

About your 2nd question if you are in solo mining you will lose them but if you mine on pools then it won't lose you are still paid on the valid shares you submit.

For your 3rd question, you can see the list of normal operating temperature from here and for s19 pro, it's around 5 - 40 °C more than that the miner could lead to "high-temperature protection mode". So the miner should run only on that temp range.

[mikeywith]

1. Is the energy consumption that is for example stated with the Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH/s of 3250W (+- the tolerance) the constant wattage each machine draws the moment it is in full operation ? Or is that an average and it can be lower or even higher than that?

The wattage is the actual draw when the miner works at factory mode with no overclocking/underclocking, it starts at 1-2w and then slowly climb to 3250w +/-, the PSU can handle a bit more than that, and of course, if you happen to underclock it will consume less wattage.

2. Is the ideal uptime of these ASICs indeed 24/7 with absolutely no break ? What happens for example if there is a power outage in one or even all machines you have in your network? ?

The ideal is 24/7, but we have a lot of power outages where I run the miners, I don't think that creates any major issues, although some people claim that this will negatively affect the miners, I tend to believe that is far from accurate, assuming when the power comes back the voltage isn't super high/low enough to damage the PSUs.

Do you loose your share of calculating a block with the pool you are connected with, if a machine breaks or shuts down in the middle of it

There are two main types of mining payouts, one is PPLNS and another is PPS, the latter stands for "pay per share", it doesn't matter how many time you connect and disconnect every single (valid) share you submit is going to be paid for, the former is a bit more complicated and every pool has a different N value in it, but in general, the power outages or network issues will have an impact on your earnings. if the pool is small and they hardly find blocks you could lose months of mining if your gear goes offline when a block is found, so if your hashrate isn't dead stable, you might want to use a PPS pool.

3. What is the ideal working temperature of the newest ASIC miners? I read somewhere it is 20-25C, is that correct or does it make sense to cool the environment further down, for example with liquid cooling (given that you have a way to do that without causing much additional energy consumption in order to do so)?

The ideal room temp can be found on the specs of the miner, basically 20c to 40c is ok, liquid cooling is costly and it's not needed, just make sure you move enough air and your gears will mine just fine.

[cryptocosmic]

Thank you both for taking the time to answer my noob questions
It's very helpful and I appreciate that a lot!!!

[NotFuzzyWarm]

The ideal is 24/7, but we have a lot of power outages where I run the miners, I don't think that creates any major issues, although some people claim that this will negatively affect the miners, I tend to believe that is far from accurate, assuming when the power comes back the voltage isn't super high/low enough to damage the PSUs.

Aside from possible voltage spikes when power comes back on, the real potential damage comes from thermal cycling when the miners repeatedly cool off and then heat up again. If an outage is fairly short duration so the miner is still hot when power comes back on, then not too much concern there.

Material expansion/contraction will stress the solder connections which can lead to cracking. In the case of the infamous S17's my concern would be the solder attaching heatsinks to the chips and/or the copper plating on the chips that the solder bonds to.