How to Improve Operations at a Bitcoin Mining Company
Many people start their own Bitcoin mining operations without fully thinking things through. In order to actually make money, you need to be able to generate enough cryptographic transaction records to offset the cost of energy used to make them. Quite a few individuals have found that’s much harder than it seems and gone out of business before they really had a chance to even get started.
That’s why the primary goal for new miners should be to reduce electricity costs if at all possible. Using the most energy-efficient equipment available is always a good starting point. Renewable sources of power are normally less expensive than those purchased from the grid, so it might make sense to take the plunge and finally invest in a set of solar panels.
Aging computer hardware probably needs to be replaced, especially if it’s been in service for more than a few years. It’s tempting to think that buying second-hand equipment is a great way to save money, especially if you represent a very small mining operation. The problem is that power supplies used to need more current in order to keep their machines running. All of the extra electricity needed to run them can quickly get expensive. Technicians and those with at least some background in hardware design can probably upgrade the power distribution circuits on older desktops themselves, but this gets into questions surrounding whether or not you’ll ever be able to clear your total overhead using chips that can’t compete in today’s dynamic mining environment.
The answer might be to optimize your hardware installation by investing in additional gear, but doing so could potentially raise the amount of heat your operation generates. Technologists recommend that anyone who runs into this problem adopt immersion-cooling technology so that their equipment doesn’t run into any sort of thermal problems. Immersion coolers coat mainframe hardware in a fluid bath that absorbs excess waste heat much more effectively than air ever could.
That’s good news because autotuning and overclocking have become extremely popular with those who want to optimize their current installation. Some hashing chips will outperform others due to manufacturing irregularities, even if they all came from the same batch. Engineers have figured out ways to tune these chips using software, which means people don’t have to physically tweak them if they want to try and get the same level of performance out of all the gear they’re invested in.
Overclocking existing chips runs them at a slightly higher rate in order to make them function as though they’re physically faster pieces of hardware. Individuals who are interested in doing this should note that it actually causes them to potentially generate even more heat than hardware that properly runs at those speeds. While this can be an excellent way to squeeze a bit more performance out of an existing device, it all but necessitates the use of a dedicated immersion cooling tank to ensure that you don’t damage the underlying equipment.
Individual Bitcoin miners might find themselves experimenting with all of these techniques before they figure out what works best for them.
