Spare Parts
Spare parts on the shelf turn a breakdown from downtime into a half-hour swap. The question is not whether to keep a stock, but which one exactly.
What a sensible stock looks like
Failure statistics for ASICs are steady: fans get replaced most often, power supplies come next, then ribbon cables and small stuff like power cords. Hashboards fail less often, cost a lot and get repaired at a workshop, so stocking them only makes sense for a large fleet.
A working rule for a small farm: a set of fans and one power supply for every ten miners of the same model, plus a couple of ribbon cables and a spare power cord. It is small money, and a kit like that covers most sudden failures.
Check compatibility before buying, not at swap time. Fans differ by tachometer, power supplies by revision and connectors, and a part for "the same model" from another batch sometimes does not fit. Go by the marking on your own part, not by the ASIC's name.
The point of a stock is time. A Friday-evening failure with no spare part means downtime until the middle of next week. With a shelf it is half an hour with a screwdriver, and the dead part travels to repair or the trash with no hurry.
The short version
| Fails most often | fans, then power supplies |
| The norm per ten miners | a set of fans and one power supply |
| Plus the small stuff | ribbon cables, power cords |
| Hashboards in stock | only for a large fleet |
| What the stock buys | time: half an hour instead of days down |
How to build the shelf
Copy the exact markings of your fans and power supplies from the parts themselves: buy by those, not by the ASIC model.
Buy the spares from your ASIC supplier together with the hardware: compatibility becomes their job, and it is cheaper than an emergency purchase.
Store dry and label everything: a power supply off the shelf in an unknown state is not a stock, it is a lottery.
Restock right after use: a stock nobody refills runs out at the most expensive moment.
A case from practice
On a farm of ten miners, four fans, one power supply and one ribbon cable died over a year. Everything was swapped from the shelf on the day it broke, total downtime under a day for the year. A neighbor at the same site kept no stock, waited a week for every fan, and his downtime ate more money than the whole shelf would have cost.
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
Where do I start if I have one ASIC
With a set of fans: they fail first and cost the least. A power supply is the second step.
Are secondhand spares worth buying
Fans are better new, a used one's remaining life is unknown. A secondhand power supply is acceptable from a trusted seller and with a test under load before it goes on the shelf.
Should I keep a spare hashboard
For a small farm, no: expensive and almost certainly the wrong revision when needed. A broken board goes to the workshop while the ASIC keeps running on the remaining ones.
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 .