The best cooling system for crypto mining rigs between hydro and air cooling is a decision that depends on several factors. But, there must be a winner between hydro-cooled mining vs air-cooled mining. Here, we explore the two types of cooling Bitcoin mining rigs.
What is hydro cooling?
Hydro cooling is the use of a liquid substance to cool heat-producing elements or components in a crypto mining device. Also known as liquid cooling, the cooled element doesn’t come into contact with the liquid.
The heat on the components is absorbed by the coolant and a radiator helps cool the liquid which is in continuous circulation.
Advantages of hydro cooling
- The cooling system isn’t as noisy as with an air-cooled system. This is because the work to cool the system isn’t left entirely to the fans.
- It improves a crypto mining device’s performance. A properly cooled system is bound to perform better than a system whose temperatures run wild.
- It has a visual appeal. Liquid coolants come in different colors and provide for the addition of RGB lighting which helps personalize a crypto mining rig.
Disadvantages of hydro cooling
- It’s more expensive than air-cooling
- Requires professionals to set up effectively to ensure there are no leaks
- Requires a higher maintenance care than air cooling
Hydro-cooled mining vs Air-cooled mining (Immersion cooling)
This can also be considered a type of hydro cooling since it uses a liquid substance to cool a crypto mining device. Immersion cooling differs from liquid cooling in the sense that with immersion cooling, the entire Bitcoin mining device is immersed into the coolant.
In this case, the electrical components directly come into contact with the coolant. To avoid electrical short circuits, the liquid used in immersion cooling is specially formulated in a way that it doesn’t conduct electricity but has a high thermal conductivity.
Advantages of immersion cooling
- It uses less energy compared to seperate air or liquid cooling
- It’s more effective than air and liquid-cooled systems
- Its effectiveness makes ASICs last more
- Doesn’t require extensive maintenance
Disadvantages of immersion cooling
- Has a higher initial setup cost compared to liquid and air cooling
- It’s complex and requires professionals to set it up
Hydro-cooled mining vs Air-cooled mining
As the name suggests, this is the use of cold air to cool a computing device like an ASIC. The system utilizes fans strategically placed on and in a device to help move hot air away from heat-generating components inside a Bitcoin miner. Air cooling is the most used by cryptocurrency miners to cool booth GPU and ASICs used in the mining operation.
Advantages of air cooling
- It’s cheap. Compared to liquid and immersion cooling, air cooling is cheaper to install and maintain
- It’s safer. Air cooling doesn’t employ any liquid coolant making it safer to use since it eliminates the possibility of accidental liquid leads when employing liquid cooling or short circuits when using immersion cooling.
- It’s easy to install and use
Disadvantages of air cooling
- Increases the electricity bill. A solely air-cooled system uses more electrical energy since fans also consume a considerable amount of electrical power unlike in an immersion or liquid-cooled system.
- It’s not as efficient as the other two types of crypto miner cooling methods.
- The cooling fans are noisy thus polluting the environment.
Conclusion
In our above “hydro-cooled mining vs air-cooled mining” debate, it’s clear that air-cooled mining, despite being cheap and widely used, isn’t the most ideal making hydro-cooling the future of cooling crypto mining devices like ASICs.
