Data Center
A mining data center is a site where the main asset is not the servers but the connected power. Everything else here is built around megawatts and the rate.
What a mining data center is
A classic data center sells reliability and connectivity: diesel generators, UPS, redundancy for every node. A mining one sells a cheap kWh. There is usually no backup power for the ASICs, and that is a deliberate call: an hour of downtime costs less than keeping diesels sized for megawatts.
The density is different too. A server rack lives at 5 or 10 kW, a mining rack carries 30 kW and up. Hence the cooling: not air conditioners but a huge stream of outside air through filters, with hot and cold aisles. Hydro and immersion do turn up, but air is still cheaper.
The location gets picked for spare substation capacity and the price of a kWh, not for being close to a city. That is why sites grow next to hydro plants, in industrial zones, near power stations, where the capacity exists and other consumers do not.
For a private owner the way in is hosting: you bring or buy an ASIC, the site provides the socket, internet, cooling and an operator on duty, and you pay per kWh at the site's rate.
Quick reference table
| What it sells | connected capacity and a power rate |
| Load per rack | 30 kW and up, versus 5 or 10 in server rooms |
| Cooling | outside air and aisles, hydro and immersion less often |
| Backup power for ASICs | usually none, downtime is cheaper than diesels |
| Way in for a private owner | hosting billed per kWh |
How to inspect a site before moving in
The rate and what sits inside it. Electricity, maintenance, internet, reboots by the duty operator: what is included and what gets billed separately.
Summer temperature. Ask for July charts, not winter ones: any site looks good in winter, throttling starts in the heat.
Spare capacity and the queue. A substation at its limit means there will be nowhere to plug in your next ASIC.
Intake by serial numbers and cameras in the hall. ASICs all look alike, and records by serial number are the only protection against a mix-up.
An example in figures
A 10 MW site running air cooled ASICs at 3.3 kW each gives about 2800 slots: part of the capacity goes to ventilation and losses. One operator per shift covers the whole hall, because the routine jobs are a reboot, a fan swap and moving a miner to the repair area.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
- Antminer S21 tool
Numbers
Questions and answers
How a data center differs from a farm
A farm is any site with ASICs, even a garage with six of them. A data center is industrial scale: its own substation, a hall with aisles, a duty shift and a contract with a rate.
Why there is no backup power
A sudden stop does an ASIC no harm, and an hour of downtime costs less than diesels and UPS sized for megawatts. Backup covers only the network and management, so the site can bring itself back up after an outage.
Which matters more, the rate or the temperature
The rate decides the economics, the temperature decides whether the hardware lives long enough to pay off. A cheap kWh with 40 degrees at the intake in summer turns into throttling and repairs.
How the terms connect
Every link in the chain is clickable. Orange marks where you are now.
Looking for an ASIC miner
The catalog holds 212 models. You can compare them by hashrate and by joules per terahash, then plug your own rate into the calculator and see what stays in your pocket.
Page written and checked by Denys Klimchuk. Updated .