HELP! MY ANTMINER IS TOO LOUD!
If you were anything like me, I was pacing at the door waiting for my Antminer to arrive. Once the postal worker placed that beautiful brown box from Bitmain in my hands, I ran inside to hook it up. I was salivating at the idea of finally doing some Bitcoin mining. Within a few minutes of getting it setup, it was up to full hashing power. That’s when the wife looked at me and said turn that thing off! I was crushed. She was right, my new Antminer was way too loud. Especially with a newborn at home.
After some scanning of the Internet I found there were several expensive sound boxes available. Me being the Hillbilly Engineer I am, I gravitated towards the Do-It-Yourself style boxes. The one that I kept coming across was a thick walled cooler being used to help reduce the noise levels. After building this box, I was able to get the decibel level down to around 70 dB which is bearable. According to Industrial Noise Control 70 dB is comparable to: Passenger car at 65 mph at 25 ft (77 dB); freeway at 50 ft from pavement edge 10 a.m. (76 dB). Living room music (76 dB); radio or TV-audio, vacuum cleaner (70 dB).
With the Antminer in the cooler and the door shut to the room it is in, you wont even know it is on! Back to mining Bitcoin I went!
SUPPLIES NEEDED TO SOUNDPROOF A BITMAIN ANTMINER
Each item you need below is linked to Amazon to hep keep the costs down.
- Coleman 70-Quart Extreme Cooler
- 4″ Flexible Ducting
- 4.5″ Hose Clamps
- Fan Duct Shrouds
- 4″ Hole Saw
- 1.75″ Hole Saw
You will also need a Drill, a Phillips head screwdriver, a sharpie, utility knife, and a wire snipper.
BUILDING THE ANTMINER SOUNDPROOFING BOX
Now that you have all of the supplies and tools needed for the build, let’s get started! First, find a good area that you can work in. We will need the cooler, 4″ hole saw, drill, and sharpie for this part of the build.
We need to mark off the holes for our intake and exhaust ducting. Eyeball the center of the cooler on each side, and go up about 2″. Take the hole saw without the mandrel in it and trace it on each side of the cooler.
With the intake and exhaust holes outlined, we now need to drill the holes. **Tip: Have the drill in the forward direction until the mandrel punches through and the hole saw “bites”. Once it bites, stop and put the drill in reverse. Be prepared and brace yourself as the drill will want to snap as you drill through. I have found that going in reverse seems to lessen the chances of it snapping your arm off!
Once you have drilled through one side, switch and go to the other side. The insulation of the cooler will make a mess. Make sure you are wearing safety glasses and are doing the drilling where it is easy to clean up.
Sweet! You drilled the exhaust and intake holes without snapping your arm off. Your cooler should now look something like this!
Now we need to drill the hole for our power and ethernet cable to go through. Line up the 1.75″ hole saw with the left edge of the Coleman logo.
I did the drilling outside to avoid making a mess inside. To ensure none of the insulation debris gets inside you Antminer, I strongly suggest you wipe and vacuum out the cooler before moving on.
PREPPING YOUR BITMAIN ANTMINER FOR THE SOUND BOX INSTILLATION
With the heavy lifting out of the way, let’s get our Antminer ready for the next step. Grab your Antminer, Antminer fan duct shrouds, and screwdriver.
There are four screws that attach each fan to the Atminer housing. Remove these screws on the intake side one at time while holding the fan.
Once all four screw are removed, take one screw, slide it through the upper right hole of the fan shroud, then through the upper right hole of the fan, and turn the screw a couple of turns into the Antminer housing. You do not want to completely tighten the screw until all four are through the shroud and fan. Attach the remaining screws in the following order.
- Lower Left
- Upper Left
- Lower Right
Once all four screws are through the shroud, fan, and started into the Antminer housing, go through and tighten all of the screws. Make sure they are tight but not too tight! You do not want them to come loose or snap off.
Flip your Antminer around and add the cooling fan duct shroud to the other side.
WE ARE GETTING CLOSE TO A QUIETER ANTMINER!
With our cooler having the holes needed and the shrouds on the Antminer, its time to get this bad boy hooked up! For the next step you will need the 4″ flexible ducting, 2 hose clamps, screwdriver, and a utility knife. Open the cooler and place your Antminer in the middle. Carefully feed the flexible ducting into the hole. You need to do a little finagling to get it in but we want a tight fit.
It is up to you where you run the ducting. Personally, I have the intake ran to another room for fresh air. I have the exhaust going out a window. Below I attached a picture of the exhaust going out the window. Just note that you will want to run the exhaust somewhere where the heat will be removed. This thing will heat up a room quickly if you do not.
Once the ducting is in, place the 4.5″ clamp over the ducting. Slide the ducting over the fan duct shroud.
Before you tighten the clamp, make sure the ducting is pulled fully onto the fan duct shroud.
With one side complete, repeat the above steps on the other side.
VENTING YOUR EXHAUST
As I mentioned above, I strongly suggest you route the exhaust to another room or outside. I am currently running two Antminers and pipe the exhaust out a window. I bought Mylar Blankets and covered the majority of the window. With the window partially opened, I used Styrofoam Insulation and ducting tape to seal the outside elements. Using a 4″ ducting union I cut a hole through the Styrofoam. I left the union in the Styrofoam and attached the exhaust fan with a clamp. The hot air flows outside and I no longer have temperature issues in that room. Once winter hits our area, I will add another hole towards the bottom and suck cold air in!
HOOK UP YOUR POWER SUPPLY AND START MINING!
With the ducting all hooked up, we are in the home stretch!! Close the cooler lid and grab your power supply! Feed the power supply wires through the top hole one-by-one.
At this point I like to tape the power supply to the cooler lid. Carefully open the lid and hook your power supply connections to your Antminer. Don’t forget your Ethernet cable.
BOOM!! You are ready to start mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, or whatever you want without pissing everyone in your house off! With lid of the cooler open I get 86 dB. With it shut, I measure just over 70. That 86 dB is with the ducting hooked up. It is even louder if you were to have the Atminer blasting by itself in a room.
I hope you have enjoyed this guide and it has helped reduce the noise level of your Antminer(s). With these coolers, I cannot even tell I have these miners on when I am in a different room. More importantly, my wife cannot tell they are on!! Please check out the rest of our site for other awesome posts. Crypto Currencies and mining are just a small part of what this website is all about. Follow along with me and others as we build our Net Worth’s to Millionaire status through different business and investing ideas. This guide was/is one of those ideas 🙂 Check us out!
