Read the article to know if high temperatures can cause your Bobcat Miner 300 to break.
With many areas of the United States and Western Canada experiencing record heat waves, we thought it was crucial to remind the customers that the Bobcat Miner 300 is not intended to be used outside. While the miners have undergone rigorous lab tests and performed well after 13 days in a thermal chamber at 60 degrees Celsius, we would strongly advise that you carefully read the datasheet to familiarize yourself with the working and operating temperature guidelines.
Outdoor Enclosures
While outside enclosures marketed by third parties as being made for Bobcat Miner 300s, we want our customers to know that we have not endorsed or tested any enclosures that make this claim. If you still decide to buy an enclosure, we STRONGLY advise you to make sure that the enclosure has adequate methods for dissipating heat. You run the risk of harming your miner if your enclosure has no means of transferring heat outdoors.
Not An Opportunity to DIY
While we admire the ingenuity and initiative that go into DIY projects, we don’t think it’s the best idea to use your DIY skills to build an outdoor enclosure for your miner. Numerous images and emails from customers who attempted to weatherproof their miners by treating it like a sandwich and slipping it into a Ziploc bag have already been sent to us. They may have shielded it from the rain and other elements, but they effectively encased their miner in a sweatsuit and heated it above 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
Outdoor Temperature Tests
A customer subjects his miner to varying conditions with the intention of “burning his miner.”
His testing aimed to replicate actual circumstances in order to compare how well a laptop and a Bobcat Miner 300 handled different heat levels.
A third party enclosure is put to this test by this user whose miner reached (135F!) when deployed outside. He goes on to highly recommend using fans to create the airflow necessary to transfer heat out of the enclosure. Despite claiming that “in the sun [his enclosure] does not get hot at all” the user still ensures to leave his miner in a shady area and creates airflow by opening portions of his enclosure.
While temperatures of 182F caused the miner’s LED to turn from green to yellow, he ended up concluding that “the good thing is that In comparison to my laptop, Bobcat is very strong. In the future, I’ll conduct additional testing. Of course, I’m not advising you to leave your Bobcat outside in the sun, but you also don’t need to keep it in the refrigerator.”
If you insist on doing it yourself, this video shows how one user created a unique A/C enclosure to handle the sweltering temperatures in his region. Two USB-powered fans were integrated by the user to remove heat from the enclosure, and a thermoboard was used to control the temperature inside the enclosure. Again, we don’t advise DIY techniques, but this is a much better choice than letting your miner bake in an oven or perish if left outside in the hot summer sun.
