Cooling-Path Guide

Reference guide to heat exit routes on mining rigs at 0.05 PH/s and above — inlet, board, exhaust, and facility stages.

This guide explains what we trace during every cooling-path assessment. Use it to prepare your facility before a visit or to interpret findings in our reports.

Stage 1 — Facility inlet

Ambient air or coolant enters the hall. We log temperature and humidity at each rack intake face, not just at a wall-mounted HVAC sensor. Filters loaded with dust raise effective inlet temp by forcing fans to pull harder through restricted paths.

Prepare: Clear debris from intake grilles. Mark any racks with recent fan replacements so we can compare break-in behavior.

Stage 2 — Rack face and shroud

Air should enter hash board channels uniformly. Gaps between shroud and chassis let air shortcut without absorbing die heat. After maintenance, shrouds often sit crooked by millimeters — enough to streak hot on IR maps.

Prepare: Do not tape shrouds for our visit; we need to see actual seating. Note any racks where hash dropped after shroud removal.

Stage 3 — Hash board and TIM

Heat crosses the thermal interface material into the sink. We use proxy measurements and IR where safe. TIM dry-out and uneven clamp pressure show as board-level gradients before facility alarms trigger.

Prepare: List racks with recent TIM rework. We correlate dates with throttle logs when operators share them.

Stage 4 — Fan and exhaust channel

Fans move heated air out of the rack. RPM alone does not prove airflow — stalled blades or weak motors can spin. We map curves against voltage and compare siblings at the same load.

Prepare: Ensure rear exhaust paths are accessible. Panels mounted against walls are our most common Greater Seoul finding.

Stage 5 — Hall plenum and facility exhaust

Heated air must leave the building or loop through a heat exchanger. Recirculation at this stage affects every rack regardless of individual fan health. Ceiling gaps, open doors to warm corridors, and undersized exhaust fans compound inlet problems.

Prepare: Unlock access to plenum hatches and dry cooler yards. Reports cannot certify paths we cannot physically trace.

Liquid loop variant

For immersion or water-cooled rigs, we replace Stage 2–4 with bath fluid flow, heat exchanger delta-T, and parallel branch balance. Air paths still matter for control electronics and PSU cooling on hybrid setups.

Prepare: Grant access to pump gauges and filter housings. Note last bath fluid analysis date if available.

Ready for a field trace? Book a cooling-path assessment or ask a question.