AntMiner upkeep

Hey fellow miners, I’m curious about what I should know about keeping my Antminer in good shape. Got a few questions rolling around in my head: 1. Which parts tend to fail the most and why? 2. Can I prevent these issues by using a UPS or voltage stabilizer and that kind of stuff? 3. What’s the easiest way to find spare parts, and are they pricey? 4. What’s a typical lifespan for these miners, and is it worth it to extend it with spare parts from a cost perspective?

It depends on the miner version, the most common would be the chips themselves, there is no exact reason as to why that happens, it just happens, and it happens more often on some gears than the others, it's also common for PSUs to die. Unless your voltage is out of the specified range labeled on the miner's PSU which is usually (220-240) it makes no sense to add those, or at least, the cost outweighs the benifit. Buy them online, from places like Alibaba or Zeusbtc, some are cheap some are expensive, but that should be the least of your concern, the question is, will you be able to fix it yourself? if it's just a matter of a dead PSU or a dead fan, anyone can replace those, if it's a bad chip then you will need a lot of skills and tools to fix it. It depends on the model, Some S9s have been mining non-stop since 2017, some S17s died after 2 months, it all depends on the quality of the miner and pretty much your luck, of course, keeping them clean and cool will at least in theory give them a longer lifespan, but the things you can do to "extend" their lifespan are pretty limited to taking good care of them, there isn't something you can buy and install on them that will magically make them live longer.

I have faced the same issue and clearly have no idea why it occurs in the first place. Maybe the miner’s version is pretty old. I’ll try to upgrade mine and see it still occurs or not

If you are talking about losing all chips on a board from the 2nd stage DC-DC regulator failing, firmware version is irrelevant. With gear that has been resold, odds are the previous owner(s) over-clocked the hell out of them before reselling them. To put it mildly that is very hard on the miner and drastically shortens the life of hardware that is often not that well built to begin with...

What I'm trying to tell you is that the most commonly damaged parts are different for each different miner. The good news is that recently the zeusbtc Youtube channel released an introductory video for "Easily damaged parts of ASIC miner", which I think will solve your problem. Here is the video channel for wearing parts: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg1kmGkrRa7XRmF02Qln3FpYYXXElgOc7