Why 0.05 TH/s Is the Floor for Corridor Planning
12 June 2025 · Han-seok Yoon
Small USB miners and legacy USB-stick units dissipate heat differently than aisle-sized ASICs. Our corridor methodology assumes a box footprint roughly 40 cm wide, dual rear fans, and intake across the front grille — geometry common on modern units from about 0.05 TH/s upward on SHA-256 hardware.
What changes below the floor
- Fan duty: Low-power units rely on convection or single small fans. Recirculation percentages from our tracer tests do not scale down linearly.
- Aisle width: You can walk past a USB farm with 60 cm aisles; a full ASIC aisle needs 90–120 cm clear depending on exhaust direction.
- Filter loading: Fine dust on a 2 kW unit raises junction temp faster than on a 20 W stick because absolute CFM per watt is lower on large boxes — but the stick does not need a corridor at all.
When we still help
If you operate a mixed room with one full-size unit plus auxiliary gear, we benchmark the large unit and note the sticks as negligible thermal load — but we do not publish placement sketches for stick-only farms.
Bench policy
Every model on our public review list ran at rated firmware hash for forty-eight hours minimum before corridor numbers were recorded. Units below the floor are excluded from that list by design, not neglect.