Heatsink
Heatsinks pull heat off every chip on a hashboard. While they sit tight, nobody thinks about them, and any gap under one costs hashrate.
How ASIC heatsinks are built
A hashboard carries dozens of them: a small heatsink on every chip or on a group of chips, plus larger ones on the power stages. The mounting depends on the generation: some use thermally conductive glue, some use paste with a clamp, and on recent models the heatsink is more and more often soldered to the chip right at the factory.
Trouble starts at the boundary between chip and heatsink. A dried-out interface, a skew after a knock during shipping, a heatsink that slid on hot glue: the chip underneath runs hotter than its neighbors, and the board starts throwing errors long before the chip drops out completely.
Heatsinks come off only by the proper procedure. Never rip a glued one off cold, the chip comes away with it: the glue is released with a heat gun at working temperature. A soldered one is not removed at home at all, that operation belongs in a repair shop.
Putting them back is half the repair. Old glue and paste get cleaned off completely, a fresh interface goes on, and the clamp pressure is checked by the imprint. A heatsink seated by eye will send the ASIC back to the shop within a month.
The short version
| Where they sit | on every chip or group, plus power stages |
| Mounting | glue, paste with a clamp, solder on new models |
| Worst enemy | a gap between chip and heatsink |
| Removing glued ones | only after warming with a heat gun |
| Removing soldered ones | repair shop only |
What you can do yourself
Inspect after shipping: shifted and skewed heatsinks are visible to the naked eye, and you want to catch them before power-up.
Clean with compressed air, not with a screwdriver between the fins: bent fins hurt airflow, and a torn-off heatsink is already a repair.
Watch the chip temperature spread in the log: one lonely hot chip often means a problem right under its heatsink.
Do not reglue on your own without a heat gun and experience: the price of a mistake is the chip, and a chip only gets replaced with a soldering station.
A case from the workshop
An ASIC lost a board after a move to another city: in the log, half the chips ran ten degrees hotter than the rest. Inside, two heatsinks had shifted from the impact, and one hung on shreds of glue. Warming, regluing onto a fresh interface, an overnight run, and the board came back to even temperatures. A box with foam padding would have cost less.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
- ASIC Chip and Hashboard knowledge base
Guides
- ASIC Manufacturers knowledge base
Questions and answers
Can I fit bigger heatsinks
Usually pointless: the stock ones are sized for the case airflow, and the bottleneck is air and the interface, not the area of the metal.
What do I glue a fallen-off heatsink with
Thermally conductive adhesive only, and only onto a cleaned surface. Regular superglue is a thermal insulator, the chip under it will burn.
Why are heatsinks soldered on new models
Solder holds better than glue and conducts heat better than paste. The price is repairability: removal takes a station and skilled hands.
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 .