Heat, dust and overclocking

Each rig reports two temperatures, one per chip. Below 75 °C nothing is lost. Above it, the hotter chip costs 2% of the rig’s speed per degree, up to 40%.

Temperature comes from the build only: chip watts set against the cooler rating and how well the case moves air, which gets better with every fan it can mount. Higher watts raise the reading, while a stronger cooler or extra air pulls it down.

A running rig gathers 1% dust per island hour, and every percent costs 0.25% of its speed, so a fully dusty rig loses 25%. Cleaning resets dust to zero and costs a small amount that grows with the rig’s output.

An overclock adds 20% speed for 5 minutes of play, and the CPU and graphics card draw 30% more watts meanwhile. More watts also means more heat: a rig that already runs near 75 °C can lose most of the gain to throttling.