Hydro miners: water-cooled ASICs

What is a hydro miner?

A hydro miner is an ASIC miner cooled by liquid instead of fans. Coolant runs through cold plates on the hash boards and carries the heat away to a dry cooler or heat exchanger. Bitmain sells these units as Antminer Hydro or Hyd models. Because nothing needs to move large volumes of air, a hydro miner runs far quieter than an air-cooled one, keeps its chips at a more stable temperature and can be pushed to a higher hashrate per unit.

The heat also leaves the building as warm water rather than hot air. That makes hydro mining a good fit for sites that want to reuse the heat, for example in greenhouses, district heating or industrial processes.

Antminer Hydro models

We stock the current Bitmain hydro line-up for Bitcoin (SHA-256) and for Litecoin and Dogecoin (Scrypt):

• S23 series: Antminer S23 Hyd 3U, S23e Hyd 2U, S23 Hydro and S23 XP Hyd, Bitmain's newest and most efficient generation.
• S21 series: Antminer S21+ Hydro, S21 XP Hydro and the rack-mounted S21e XP Hyd 3U.
• S19 series: the Antminer S19 XP Hydro, a proven unit with a lower entry price.
• Scrypt hydro miners: Antminer L9 Hyd 2U, L11 Hyd 2U and L11 Hyd 6U.

The 2U and 3U models are built to slide into a server rack, which lets you fit a lot of hashrate into a small footprint.

What you need to run hydro miners

A hydro miner only works as part of a closed cooling loop. Plan for these parts before you order:

• Dry cooler or heat exchanger to release the heat outside, or to pass it on for reuse.
• CDU (coolant distribution unit) with pumps and filters that keeps the coolant flowing at the right pressure and temperature.
• Rack and manifolds to mount the miners and connect each one to the loop.
• Power distribution: hydro miners draw a lot of power per unit and usually run on a 380–415 V supply, so you need a suitable PDU and a site connection to match.

We supply complete setups as well as individual parts, such as the Foghashing H200-S CDU with dry cooler, the Lian Li water cooling kit for hydro ASICs, the Bitmain ANTRACK V1 and a PDU for hydro miners. Not sure what your site needs? Send us your power capacity and the number of units, and we will put together a setup that fits.

Hydro, air or immersion cooling?

Air-cooled miners are the simplest to install: plug them in and provide plenty of airflow, at the cost of noise and heat in the room. Hydro miners need more infrastructure, but run quietly, reach a higher density and make the heat easy to reuse. Immersion cooling submerges the miners in a dielectric fluid and suits operators who already run tanks. For new installations above a few units, water-cooled hydro miners are often the best balance between efficiency and running cost.

Buy hydro miners in Europe

Antminer Distribution Europe has supplied mining hardware since 2014 from our own warehouse in the Netherlands. Every hydro miner comes with full warranty, and repairs are handled by our own repair centre in the Netherlands. Prefer not to build your own cooling site? Take a look at our hosting solutions.