The Bitaxe Gamma 601 is pocket-sized

The Bitaxe Gamma 601 is pretty small. I've only had my Bitaxe running for a little while, and I'm curious if it might overheat and shut off if it's pushed to its limits for an extended period. Has anyone else experienced any heat issues with it? Do I need to invest in an extra cooling fan?

I run mine at 625Mhz with stock voltage. They run hot around 55-60C depending on ambient. I found turning the voltage down does nothing but reduce the reliability and turning it up just makes it get hotter. I have the fan fixed at full speed, rather than on PWM since they tend to make more noticeable noise when driven in PWM mode since you can hear the fan pitch changing constantly. I also changed the stock fan to a Noctua fan to reduce the noise. They average 1.2-1.4TH/s each. I have seen other people change the thermal paste as well which apparently helps reduce the operating temperature, but I've not bothered to do that 55-60C is fine, if it were above 70C I'd start to get concerned. The 601's I've got have been running in this configuration for around 6 months, additionally I always update the firmware to latest as and when its released.

A temperature of 70 degrees is okay, so there's no need to worry too much. Doesn't the 601 usually not disconnect, and only disconnect when the temperature is too high or the mining machine malfunctions? I had seen this issue on Facebook before; the person said their 601 always disconnects.

Yes, I believe the thermal management will shut the device down if it gets too hot. I'm not sure what the threshold for this is set to. I say 70C based on my own experience with other BitMain ASIC IC's anything beyond 70C with BM1397, BM1362 & BM1368 and things tend to become unreliable. I expect the same is true of the BM1370 used on the Bitaxe Gamma.

Thank you very much for your explanation. I understand now—no matter what kind of device it is, the result is the same: if you don’t take good care of it, it will malfunction. Problems caused by overheating, in particular, will occur in all cases. The only difference is that we now have heat sinks, which protect the device’s lifespan more effectively compared to the past, when there were no heat sink components used for mining.

70 degrees is already too high; 55-65 degrees is ideal. It's better to buy good thermal paste and change it, and you'll see a 3-5 degree temperature drop. I've often encountered poorly applied thermal paste at the factory.

I think it also depends a lot on the type of heatsink you get with the Bitaxe as well. I've got two different types of heatsink in the collection of 6 gamma's that I've bought and one type is clearly 5-10°C better with factory thermal paste. It looks to be about 5mm or so taller and wider than the other so I expect that accounts for the difference. But you're right 70°C is pushing the limits anything beyond that in my experience results in the chips not hashing at all or just randomly dropping out. So you're right ideally <60°C is where you need to be.

It should be around ~60 degrees. Mine had reached above 75 in summer, and it stopped hashing. But, I've left it running below 65 since then, no problems encountered. Hashing non-stop since summer. Where can I find that cool whitepaper stand, btw?

You can buy it from the Zeus website; I bought one from them before.  https://z-m.cc/16/3803

stand is good. i let my bitaxe run on solo ck pool. I do only 700gh as I down clock it a bit. it runs well nice piece of gear.

I completely agree! However, a 4.8T version is also available now. I bought mine for much more than the 601, but the experience has been fantastic—no problems so far! I haven't encountered any issues, but I haven't had any successful experiences using it yet; I wonder if I'm just unlucky.