Re: Antminer S5 + 3D printied mods

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Chips at the back of the miner will always be very hot and will depend only on air, instead of termal conduction of a large heatsink. Meaning that they will overheat easily and thermal adhesives tend to lose their grip on higher temps. Which can end in heatsink unsticking from the chip.
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May be a good reason to try a new configuration with the S7 ... as in having the fans strapped at the top / bottom top rather than front / rear (that'll require the unit being stripped though as top and bottom are sealed). That way, I suppose, even the fan specs can be downgraded as the distance to exhaust has been more than halved. (just a thought!)

This, in fact, would be a much better solution. If miner was built to have 4 or 6 slower fans, blowing from the bottom-up, it would be very quiet and air's shorter travel distance would make sure that chips "in the back" (actually on the top in this case) would not be much hotter compared to the chips next to the intake.

However, such miners wouldn't work for most common setups, those being shelves or racks. Should I get an S7, I'll most definitely move towards modding it in such way. But the first thing I'd check is if it is possible to get those heatsinks off. Bitmain seems to really struggle with heat dissipation. I had a heatsink design which would cool 4 blades with a single fan, but couldn't get it extruded so I went with 3D printing. Embarrassed

One of the best directions with cooling solutions I saw is the Block Erupter Prisma's design. With a major pitfall, though - large hole in the middle of heatsinks, allowing the air to avoid going through the fins.

I think the re-orientation of the fans can work if you stand the miner on the current orientation's front or back, such that the current top / bottom where the new orienation fan(s) are now strapped become(s) the new front / back.
You can get as many sub $2 120mm 0.35Amp 2000rpm fans in both push / pull configuration as you want (8 or 10 no matter) and have the temps under control plus a whisper for noise!
Realistically though, there are so many practicalities to make adaptation prohibitively expensve for a $2000 ~~toy~~ lottery ticket. First, the power connectors would be in the way as they are atop, and the control board would also have to be moved, which would require getting longer data cables etc.. Bitmain themselves ought to look at the benefits (or lack of) of that design and produce a next gen miner quietly suited for home mining.