Throttling
Throttling is a protective drop in frequency when things overheat. The ASIC gives up hashrate to keep its chips from burning, and comes back to normal once it cools.
What throttling is
Chips have a temperature limit. As it approaches, the firmware lowers the frequency, and past it, it shuts down the board or the whole miner. The exact limits depend on the model and the firmware, but the logic is the same everywhere: better fewer terahashes than a dead board.
You recognize throttling by the chart. Hashrate moves like a sawtooth: climbs, overheats, drops, cools, climbs again. During the day the figure sits below spec, at night it is normal. Nearby in the log there are temperature warnings.
The cause is almost never the chip itself. Dust in the heatsinks, hot intake air, a stalled fan, dried paste, a cramped room where the miner breathes its own hot exhaust: these are all external things, and all of them can be fixed.
Throttling is a symptom, not a breakdown. Raising the temperature limits in the settings means muting the alarm: the hashrate will come back, but the solder and the chips will pay for it with their lifespan.
Quick reference table
| What happens | the firmware lowers frequency on overheating |
| What it looks like | sawtooth hashrate, low by day, normal at night |
| Common causes | dust, hot intake air, a fan, the paste |
| What to do | remove the source of the heat |
| What not to do | raise the limits in the settings |
How to find the cause
Compare the intake temperature with the chip temperature. A wide gap points to dust and paste, a narrow one to heat in the room.
Compare the boards with each other. One runs hot: check its heatsinks and paste. All run hot: check the room and the airflow.
Check fan speeds in the log. A fan at maximum in a cool room means clogged heatsinks.
Recall when the miner was last cleaned and repasted. If there is no answer, the answer is: long ago, and that is where to start.
An example from practice
In summer the room sits at 34 degrees, and by day the ASIC holds 80 percent of spec, coming back to a hundred at night. The boards are fine, the solder has nothing to do with it: hot intake air keeps the chips from cooling. Fresh air from outside and ducting the hot exhaust through the wall fixed it, the hashrate leveled out without a single part replaced.
Related terms
Where to go next on the site
Software
- Software firmware
Hardware
- ASIC Miner knowledge base
Questions and answers
Is throttling itself harmful
No, it is protection and it does its job. What is harmful is whatever triggers it: overheating ages the paste and the solder even after the frequency has been cut.
Can the limits be raised
Custom firmware allows it, but that is a loan against the board's lifespan. Limits get raised at your own risk and only when the source of the heat cannot be removed.
Why is the hashrate a sawtooth exactly
The protection cycle: the miner picks up frequency, hits the limit, drops it, cools, tries again. Each tooth of the saw is one such loop.
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 .