4 ms·

I ran a bitcoin mining rig in my garage in Houston, Texas (6x Radeon cards across two workstations) for two years in 2010-2012. No issues, no loss of hardware.

I ran a bitcoin mining rig in my garage in Houston, Texas (6x Radeon cards across two workstations) for two years in 2010-2012. No issues, no loss of hardware. Ambient temperature went from 40F to 140F.

tshoaib 6y ago
Wow those were the early years of mining, must have been quite profitable if you kept the yield for a couple of years till the price skyrocketed.
- shiftpgdn 6y ago
  I sold coins along the way to cover initial investment and then exited the majority of my holding at $500-1500. I sold my final bitcoin in 2017 when prices were sky high. If I had sold everything at peak I would have been extremely wealthy. Maybe next time. :)
kbenson 6y ago
That is interesting. Do you know if the Radeon cards throttle automatically when they get too hot? Did you have any custom cooling? I can't imagine they would perform all that great at 140F if they throttles themselves, but them doing so may have kept them functional and error free at the expense of hiding poor performance, unless you have data showing otherwise (and you totally might, it seems like the person setting up that system might also check to ensure it's performing to spec :) )
- vvanders 6y ago
  140F/60C is not really out of band for a GPU, usually throttling starts around 75-80C.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Yes, but they said ambient temperature, and I assumed that to mean the temperature inside the garage (I grew up with a detached garage that was not insulated, it got very hot in the summer, especially when it's over 100F outside, so this doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to me). It would be significantly harder to disperse heat from the CPU and GPU in that environment.
    - nijave 6y ago
      Open system with a box fan probably has better cooling than a mediocre, closed case. Cursory searching says 105-110F isn't too crazy for a closed case
- shiftpgdn 6y ago
  No custom cooling other than a box fan to move air around inside the garage. Honestly I didn't keep a close eye on them other than making sure they were connected to mining pools.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Ah, well good to know they didn't crash at least. That's better than I would have assumed.

tshoaib 6y ago

Wow those were the early years of mining, must have been quite profitable if you kept the yield for a couple of years till the price skyrocketed.

shiftpgdn 6y ago
I sold coins along the way to cover initial investment and then exited the majority of my holding at $500-1500. I sold my final bitcoin in 2017 when prices were sky high. If I had sold everything at peak I would have been extremely wealthy. Maybe next time. :)

kbenson 6y ago

That is interesting. Do you know if the Radeon cards throttle automatically when they get too hot? Did you have any custom cooling? I can't imagine they would perform all that great at 140F if they throttles themselves, but them doing so may have kept them functional and error free at the expense of hiding poor performance, unless you have data showing otherwise (and you totally might, it seems like the person setting up that system might also check to ensure it's performing to spec :) )

vvanders 6y ago
140F/60C is not really out of band for a GPU, usually throttling starts around 75-80C.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Yes, but they said ambient temperature, and I assumed that to mean the temperature inside the garage (I grew up with a detached garage that was not insulated, it got very hot in the summer, especially when it's over 100F outside, so this doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to me). It would be significantly harder to disperse heat from the CPU and GPU in that environment.
  - nijave 6y ago
    Open system with a box fan probably has better cooling than a mediocre, closed case. Cursory searching says 105-110F isn't too crazy for a closed case
shiftpgdn 6y ago
No custom cooling other than a box fan to move air around inside the garage. Honestly I didn't keep a close eye on them other than making sure they were connected to mining pools.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Ah, well good to know they didn't crash at least. That's better than I would have assumed.