When it’s really hot outside, mining hardware runs less efficiently and with a greater risk of failure. The consequences can cause downtime and loss of revenue due to machines automatically turning off once temperature readings reach dangerous levels. Additionally, it can lead to fried hashboards and other permanent hardware damage if the machines don’t shut down in time.

It’s no surprise then, that public miners such as Riot and Argo are building exclusively immersion cooling infrastructure for their new miners coming online in Texas. Immersion cooling alleviates the majority of the temperature impact on mining operations.

To briefly summarize, immersion cooling offers the following benefits:

• More effective heat dissipation
• Increased hardware lifespan
• Better operating conditions
• Improved Efficiency (J/TH)
• Safer Overclocking (more TH/s)

Also worth mentioning is the impact of immersion on hardware resale value. Once hardware has been running in immersion, it probably shouldn’t ever be run in air. For one thing, the thermal paste used in hardware including Antminer X19’s will dissolve in most dielectric coolants, resulting in poorer thermal conductivity which would make the machine dangerous to operate in air later on.

As a result, the future of the secondary hardware market will likely be segregated between machines that have been used in immersion and those that have not (but still can be in the future). It’s hard to say whether the immersion machines will be worth more or less relative to the non-immersion machines.

Immersion systems are better at efficiently (and quietly) capturing the heat output of the miners and transporting it elsewhere. The majority of the time, that 'elsewhere' is a cooling tower or dry cooler, but sometimes it might be a swimming pool, green house, or some other place that can use the heat from miners.

If you don’t have easy access to capital, or you are building a smaller-scale operation and using older, less efficient mining machines, then immersion likely won’t make sense. But for well-capitalized miners building industrial-scale operations, particularly in places with hot summers like Texas and the rest of the southern US, then immersion is probably worth it.