Creating a mining-farm. Setting priorities
In recent years, crypto-enthusiasts from around the world have found their place in the fast-growing world of blockchain and become part of its rapid rhythm. Like any ecosystem, it has also formed its own institutions: developers who literally pave the way for evolution of the system, miners, ICO-specialists, traders. While the bride heads at the conferences decide whose blockchain is steeper, every 10 minutes somewhere an ordinary man rejoices. Let’s stop on this man.
Every day he sacrifices his funds, time and nerves for a chance. Let’s find out if such sacrifices worth it?
Initially the system was designed that any interested person could mine cryptocurrency. Instead what we have now is high competition where only users with high investments and technologies can survive. To get profit you must invest in mining. Today the only chance for miners-beginners to compete with large mining-farms is to unite in pools. But, anyway, whether a miner own one ASIC or a thousand, he inevitably faces the same problems.
A brief overview of an ordinary mining-farm functioning. Daily you need hundreds of kilowatts to cool your equipment if you want it to serve longer than a few weeks. You have to try hard to make sure that your cooling system is powerful enough to provide your equipment with effective conditioning. Your worst enemies from now are dust and ants. It can bring your equipment to fail faster than you could pay off its cost.
Also, to start mining we should take care of the place where the farm will be kept. You shouldn’t keep it in your flat if you don’t want to get mad because of the consent noise generated by the equipment. While choosing a place, you should also consider electric power rate, which depends on the region and usually differs. It can save you pretty much money if you operate hundreds of hashrate.
A perfect place for the farm placing would be a detached house, a garage or any other building with good ventilation. Also you can rent an industrial premise. Such option is suitable for people with large farms or for those who are planning to scale in the future. In case of apartment it would be better to keep the equipment in a room without sunlight. You definitely won’t need an extra heating for your equipment.
Now, when the suitable place is found, it’s time to make some preparations before the launch. Make some shells for the equipment, check the electrical wiring and switchboard equipment, get reliable power supplies. Also, don’t forget about fire-alarm boxes and extinguishers. Extra conditioning is a must. In order to control the air flows, we need to organize hot and cold corridors. If everything is covered, we can move to the final step.
Maintenance. Unfortunately, even those preparations are not enough for stable work of the farm. A constant monitoring is needed. And it considers not just the mining process but also the equipment itself. Overheating, temperature drop, clogging, failures, etc. – all this will require an immediate reaction, because sometimes even a minute of delay can ruin the whole equipment.
It’s time to calculate the cost.
Expenditures:
- Equipment (miners + cooling system)
- Electric power (!)
- Rent
- Construction work (electrical wiring, setting of ventilation system)
- Maintenance of equipment (replacement of components, cleaning, etc.)
- Workforce (if needed)
We have already spent a decent amount, and how much remains to be! It will take a while to figure out the most efficient and optimal working conditions. Through trial and error, we will learn to maintain a comfortable room temperature, overlock the equipment safely and eliminate endless minor failures promptly.
Since we're dealing with expensive equipment, let's do it wisely. Our main problem - we need to prevent miners from any temperatures drops and dust. And here where immersive cooling comes to our aid. Isn’t trustworthy for you, right? But owners of the largest data centers and farms doesn’t think so.
Well, let's get this sorted out. Immersion cooling is a method of heat removal from a working device by immersing it in a specialized container with a dielectric fluid (immersion liquid). This liquid on the market is represented in the range from popular Novec or Syntec to the most dubious domestic broth. Unfortunately, there are lots of amateurs who sell cheap analogues of the famous and expensive brands. But don’t be greed, such fakes will destroy your equipment. Failures with using low-quality liquid have risen the mistrust to such ways of cooling.
Companies that offer ready-made cooling solutions tend to primarily conduct their own development and provide a guarantee for their equipment only if you use their patented liquid.
When upgrading a farm, using a qualitative immersion cooling is an essential step, which requires some expenditure. However, once having paid and running all the processes, you can notice a significant change: our idea began to resemble an investment.
So, we can try again, now with immersive cooling. While using the liquid you don’t need coolers anymore, so remove it from ASICs, place them into a cell, for example, a cell from BiXBiT, which has a size of a small kitchen oven. Since we got rid of coolers, the liquid provides the equipment with thermal stability, so that we gain a maximum density, meaning that 24 GPUs can be placed closely to each other without any risk of overheating.
It’s time to start mining. Now we have to deal with the equipment generated heat. We are used to utilize it through connected radiator, installed outside the building. But what about efficient utilization of the heat? The amount of the accumulated heat will be enough for heating water supply, for example. If You have more heat, you can also warm the flours or the whole house.
Such way of heat utilization significantly reduces the monthly expenditures on gas, electricity, water heating. Saved money can be invested in scaling, for example.
What about maintenance?
BiXBiT cell is equipped with remote monitoring and controlling system. The liquid must be changed or regenerated (what is much more profitable) ones per year. That’s it. That’s all the maintenance the BiXBiT installations require. Let’s calculate the cost now.
Expenditure:
- Equipment (miners + cooling)
- Electricity (significantly cheaper than in case of air cooling)
Where did the rest of the points disappear? It’s simple: we reduced our future expenditures through initial investment. The pay off period reduces and our project will become profitable much sooner. Now our project looks like a perspective project, isn’t it?
From all of the above, it should be noted that every business project requires a reasonable approach. Sometimes we fail, but it’s never too late to try again in a different way. Be flexible in your decisions!
