In an ideal world, you would want your hardware to last a 4 year halving cycle but there are several factors that affect the lifespan of miners. The below factors mainly apply to air cooled miners:
Cool Climate:
It is optimal to run the air cooled miners in a colder environment with ample airflow. All of our mining facilities are strategically located in colder climate conditions to prolong the life of the hardware. We still have some clients with their Antminer L3+ running solidly since 2017 and mining dogecoin.
Studies show that proper cooling and airflow can extend ASIC lifespan from 3–5 up to 6+ years and that a cool, clean, stable environment helps ASICs perform better and last longer.
Density of miners:
Mining is a capital intensive industry and most operators want to maximize the infrastructure output. Sometimes it leads to power dense setups which makes the miner heat exhaust difficult to manage especially when miners don’t have enough airflow. It causes strain on the fans and makes the chips hot causing faster deterioration of the hardware. Our facilities are designed to be able to withstand even 100 F intake temps with ample airflow for the miners.
Indeed, heat stress and poor airflow are leading causes of ASIC degradation and heat management is pivotal for miner longevity.
Precipitation and Dust:
Most of the air cooled data centers are a negative pressure environment and dust is very common in negative pressure environments. Dust in itself is not as harmful as it may seem to the miners but coupled with precipitation it becomes very detrimental to the miners. In hot and humid places like Texas, miner life is reduced by almost 50%. Our crews use filters with MERV 8 rating and vacuum the premises regularly to keep the dust to a minimum.
Research confirms that humidity, dust, and moisture significantly shorten ASIC longevity.
Silicon Lottery:
Last but not the least, the quality of hardware and pure luck of chip allocation plays a big role in hardware longevity. From our experience, its best to spread out hardware purchases over time and across a few manufacturers to get the optimal results. A few bad batches can sour investor appetite for mining very easily.