Hashboard
A hashboard is a printed circuit board with rows of computing chips. A typical asic has three of them, and together they give all the hashrate.
What a hashboard is
Inside an ASIC sit three hashboards, a control board and a power supply. All the arithmetic happens on the chips of the hashboards: they are clamped against heatsinks, wired into a chain and fed from shared power domains. The number of chips per board depends on the generation and differs even within one series.
It helps to count in thirds. When one board stops answering, the asic keeps running while hashrate drops by about a third, and in the pool stats that looks like the miner simply got worse. The beginner mistake is to hunt for the problem in the firmware or the pool, when the thing to check is how many boards the system sees.
The chips on a board are chained in series for data, so one dead chip can take the whole board down. From repair practice the most common causes are overheating from a clogged heatsink, a chip lifting off from vibration and the aftermath of power surges. Repair is possible, though it takes a hot air station, a microscope and spare chips, so cheap boards are sometimes better replaced.
Quick reference table
| How many per asic | usually three |
| What is on it | computing chips, heatsinks, power domains |
| Losing one board | about a third of the hashrate gone |
| Where to look | the asic web interface, the count of live boards |
| Common failure causes | overheating, a lifted chip, power surges |
How to tell a board has died
The first thing to look at is per board hashrate in the web interface. A zero or a gap in the list means the board is not answering. The second sign is a flat drop of about a third in daily pool hashrate with no change in draw at the outlet.
Next you check temperatures and ribbon cables. A board that comes and goes usually suffers from a connector or a cable rather than from chips. That is good news, because such a repair is fast and cheap.
And keep the warranty in mind. An opened board with solder marks means the warranty is void, so an asic still covered goes to a service center instead of the kitchen table.
An example from the bench
A complaint comes in: an S21 used to put out 200 TH/s and now puts out about 133. Draw at the outlet fell by roughly a third as well. We open the interface: two boards out of three are alive. Firmware and the pool have nothing to do with it, and the only question is whether to repair the board or swap it.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Hardware
- ASIC Chip and Hashboard knowledge base
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Guides
Questions and answers
Can you run on two boards out of three
Technically the asic runs and brings in about two thirds of the income. Do the math though: on expensive electricity such a miner can end up right at the breakeven line.
Is a hashboard better repaired or replaced
It depends on the model and the price of the board. On recent series repair is usually cheaper, while on cheap desktop asics the repair bill creeps up toward the price of a whole asic.
Why do boards die after a hot summer
Heatsinks packed with dust plus a high room temperature speed up degradation and lifted chips. Regular blowing out and decent airflow extend board life more than any setting does.
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 .