Noise Box
A noise box is an enclosure with sound insulation around an ASIC. It honestly removes some decibels and just as honestly raises the temperature, and the whole trick is in the balance.
What a noise box can and cannot do
A realistic result for a good box is minus 10 or 15 dB. A miner at 75 dB turns into 60 or 65: no longer a vacuum cleaner in the room, but still far from silence. Do not expect a library-grade 30 dB drop from an enclosure, only moving it to another room or hydro cooling cuts that much.
Sound leaves together with the air. An ASIC needs a huge airflow, and every opening for it is a hole in the insulation. That is why working boxes are built around air labyrinths: the flow gets through, but sound has no straight path.
The price of quiet is temperature. Even a well-built box adds 5 or 10 degrees at the intake, a bad one chokes the flow, and the miner answers with throttling: formally quieter, in practice slower too. In summer this trap snaps shut especially fast.
Vibration is a separate job: the ASIC inside the box sits on rubber or felt, and the box itself never touches the walls rigidly. A hum through the floor bypasses any sound insulation if you forget about it.
The short version
| Realistic effect | minus 10 or 15 dB |
| The price | plus 5 or 10 degrees at the intake |
| The key to it | an air labyrinth, not a sealed crate |
| A separate task | decoupling vibration from floor and walls |
| Main risk | a choked flow and throttling |
How to build a box that works
Start with a measurement: how many dB now and how many you need. If the gap is more than 15, a box will not solve it, think about another room or hydro.
Size the air channels with headroom over the ASIC's stock flow: the labyrinth adds resistance as it is.
Watch the intake temperature after installation: plus 10 degrees is your new ceiling for the summer.
Vibration decoupling everywhere: the miner on dampers inside, the box on dampers outside. Cheap rubber settles half of all neighbor complaints.
A case from practice
A plywood box with lining and two air labyrinths took 12 dB off a miner: the garage stopped droning into the yard. Intake temperature rose by 7 degrees, and the firmware's summer profile became mandatory. The neighbor is happy, the ASIC runs, but you still could not put that crate in a bedroom.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Numbers
Questions and answers
Will a box make my ASIC silent
No. Minus 10 or 15 dB is noticeably quieter, but not silence. For a living room the answer is hydro or a different room.
Can I wrap the ASIC in foam without an enclosure
No: you will block the air intake and get overheating. Insulation only works together with a thought-out air path.
What are boxes built from
Plywood or MDF, acoustic lining inside, channels with turns, dampers. The materials cost pennies, the geometry does the work, not the price.
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 .