Factors Bitcoin Miners Must Consider – Bitcoin Magazine
A framework for decision-making for Bitcoin miners – what different Whatsminer models tell us
The Bitcoin mining site is full of anecdotes, best practices and old wives’ stories about ideal operating conditions for ASIC computers. Beyond this, the market only begins to discuss environmental factors, contracting and alternative cooling mechanisms. For example, newer market participants such as MicroBT Whatsminers and their various M30S ASIC models are often seen as excellent hardware, but are relatively understated compared to market competitors. In this article, we review empirical data generated via API query across multiple models of Whatsminer M30S to begin answering the broader ASIC question, “How do I make intelligent decisions about self-recovery and / or hosting my computers?”
This data should be seen as the beginning of a conversation about ASIC optimization and not a series of hard and fast rules for operating machines or plants.
Distributed cannabis research is dedicated to studying the mining ecosystem and producing content that empowers miners of all sizes and levels of experience. For project consultation, hosting or general inquiries, send an email to [email protected]
Notes on miner data
The following data were collected in a dry, western environment at an altitude of over 4000 feet, but below the manufacturer’s recommended maximum operating altitude of 6561 feet (2000 meters) for most new generation miners. Data were collected via API query in a single air-cooled data center over several weeks. Temperature conditions varied between 94.3 F (34.62 C) in the middle of the day and 41.2 F (5.1 C) in the evenings. The precipitation was 0.22 inches during the data collection period with humidity between 93% and 15% (average 49%).
Decision making for miners: Prices, hosting and contracts
Bitcoin miners are trained to consider kWh as the golden number. The sacred kWh is often the only vector for decision making when deciding when and where to extract. But, as experienced miners will attest, cheap energy is only meaningful when 100% machine uptime is assumed. In addition, for miners who host their machines with third parties or have signed power purchase agreements with mandatory minimum requirements or fixed consumption agreements, these contracts are only cost-optimized when uptime is almost maximized.
Assessing only kWh when mining or hosting is both naive and financially reckless.
Imagine hosting a new generation of miners for the agreed 6.5c / kW. Your bill starts at $ 154 per month, plus most companies have surcharges that can push your bill closer to $ 200 per month per miner (so you already have an effective rate of 8.6c / kW before you turn on). However, not everything affects your effective kWh speed. The total uptime of the machine or plant and the way in which these conditions are entered into, especially these days, is becoming a major factor for profitability.
If you have agreed to pay a fixed $ 200 per month on your machine (we assume that a host provider has a cheaper price per kWh than 6.5c and makes money on the spread). What happens when a heat wave rolls through your state? A supplier, or you, who turn off your machines 50% of the time while paying a fixed $ 200 / month to generate bets via your chosen pool effectively doubles the cost of bet production to over 17c / kW.
Apart from contract issues, uncontrollable factors such as environmental conditions, supply issues at the grid level (not to mention unexpected geopolitical upheavals) can invert even the most optimal contract for cheap kWh and allow operators to receive money bleeds without recourse. Moreover, these factors come before assessment of macro bitcoin market conditions like degree of difficulty and price.
In the future, we hope to offer additional tools for miners to better navigate hosting agreements, plant operations and external environmental conditions to maximize batch production and minimize risk.
Heat, modes and downtime in Whatsminer M30s models
Ambient heat poses a significant challenge for today’s air-cooled ASICs.
All miners should consider geography, altitude, humidity and temperature when choosing which machines to buy and operate. We especially look at the following data on various Whatsminer M30S ASICs (M30S 86T, M30S 92T, M30S + 102T and M30S ++ 106T) and have some broad suggestions for which machines are optimal in environments that are exposed to high summer heat.
Consider the above capture of machine-reported environmental temperatures over a period of five and a half days. You will notice a general sine wave pattern that reflects the heat from dinner and the cool night. There is a more general cooling effect for the first three days, followed by a series of hot days in quick succession. Also notice how machine-reported environmental temperature on the right side of the diagram becomes more chaotic as the ambient temperature increases overall.
A number of hot days are what pose the greatest risk to mining. During high heat hours, miners will automatically reset or switch to idle until the ambient temperature cools sufficiently to resume normal hashing. Evaluate the catch on the next page of four days of terahash miner data reported on the upper lines and temperature reported on the lower lines. At approximately the same ambient temperature every day, a series of machines in this subgroup will overheat and release hashish power until the ambient temperature drops sufficiently. In total, this is a significant amount of downtime with negative outcomes for miners on fixed contracts.
Note: This is the reason why distributed hash chooses to bill our hosting clients only on power consumption. This protects the miner from predation and becoming massively unprofitable under tighter market conditions.
So how can a miner maximize uptime in the most punishing midsummer environments?
Whatsminer computers have the ability to switch between “low”, “normal” and “high” power modes. The vast majority of the time, miners will choose to drive their machines in
normal mode, which almost delivers TH that is listed on the machine at the specified power. However, in times of high heat, it is preferable to run the machines in low mode, which by reducing the effective power of the machine provides an extra ambient temperature buffer to the hash trays. Think of the image below over five days showing a series of miners switching from normal to low mode on June 18 and the subsequent elimination of machine overheating.
The effect of switching the M30S ASIC to low mode from normal mode is obvious. No machines overheat on days with high temperatures, as the lower power consumption has added an operating buffer for ambient temperature. This transition to low mode has proven to be an effective remedy for overheating in the middle of the day, but miners wonder how much hashish they lose by doing so. The answer is a discussion of chip production and PSU efficiency that is beyond the scope of this current article; However, we are submitting the data below to open the conversation around different models of Whatsminer M30S ASIC:
As you can see in the diagram above, when the machines are switched from normal to low mode, there is a general trend going: drop in hash effect, larger drop in watts, increase in watts per terahash. This is intuitive, the less energy consumed by a miner increases the efficiency of the miner. Increasing the heat in a system will introduce some inefficiency.
What is most exciting is how a drop in hash in low mode does not directly correlate with watts on all variants of the machine. Note that the highest powered new generation machines, the M30S ++ series, remain largely stable in both normal and low mode. This suggests that you can run your top machine in low mode, get a temperature buffer for ambient conditions and still hash within 2Th of the machine’s rating (104.27 actually versus 106 rated). At the other end of the spectrum, the M30S machines, more specifically the 92T rated M30S machines, show a significant non-linear variation in hash and power when switched from normal to low mode. For the miner using these machines, it suggests that mode switching should be considered in competing markets or high ambient temperatures when the efficiency gain is meaningful for sate generation. We speculate that the differences between efficiencies in M30S 86T and M30S 92T ASICs are a consequence of the chip manufacturing process (a claim outside the scope of this discussion, but interesting nonetheless and worth future study). Finally, the center of the package, the M30S + machines, shows efficiency gains that fall directly in the middle of the M30S machines in the lower part and the M30S ++ machines at the top.
The last question miners must have is when to switch between modes given certain prices and operating conditions in kWh to maximize the efficiency of their machines. We have developed the larger model below, which takes into account different bitcoin price points at different electrical prices, so you can decide how to run your personal machines.
Consider the following as gross data aggregation for the purpose of optimizing the amount of bitcoin you are able to generate during tight markets. During clear beef markets, the best option is generally to operate with the highest recommended power consumption of your machine.
If you would like a higher resolution version of this image, please contact us at [email protected].
Conclusions
In summary, we began by assessing the risk associated with using kWh as a single determining calculation when operating ASICs. It is important to look not only at the terms of your contract with either the tool or your host device, but also to consider the political and geographical risks associated with hosting in certain jurisdictions or climates. There are no hard and fast rules for driving X-Miners in Y-location, but introducing these factors into the conversation will help miners make better decisions.
We continued to review data center level figures around ambient variations in temperature and how midday heat can drastically increase downtime for miners. We argue that running low mode machines is the best option to mitigate this threat and continue with an in-depth analysis at a per-machine level to better understand what the nominal terahash losses are, versus efficiency gains measured in watts per terahash .
We found that the tallest Whatsminer M30S ++ machines show incredibly stable operation across different modes, while the higher terahash M30S machines (92T) show the highest watts per terahash efficiency gain when switched to low mode. We end our discussion by sharing a more comprehensive table of efficiency per machine across different prices per kWh and bitcoin prices to better teach miners about when to change operating mode.
We hope you have found this data and the surrounding discussion informative and are better able to lay out strategies around your particular mining business. Whether you are a backyard miner or a client of a host facility, the more information you have about your particular operating situation, the better you will be able to navigate market conditions and defend yourself.
Knowledge is power.
-distributed hash team
This is a guest post by Colin Crossman and Robert Warren. Expressed opinions are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
