Your Miner's Dashboard: Reading Hashrate, Temperature, and Fan Speed

Think of your ASIC miner’s dashboard as the instrument panel in a car. You wouldn’t drive for hours without glancing at the speedometer, fuel gauge, or engine temperature, right? The same logic applies to mining. Your dashboard tells you whether your machine is running smoothly, burning through power efficiently, or screaming for help.

In this guide, we’ll walk through every major section of a typical miner dashboard. By the end, you’ll be able to glance at the screen and know exactly what’s going on inside that noisy little box.

What Is the Dashboard?

When you type your miner’s IP address into a browser and log in, the first thing you see is the dashboard (sometimes called the “Status” or “Overview” page). This is your miner’s health monitor. It pulls live data from the machine’s sensors and controller board and displays it in one convenient place.

Most dashboards show you five key things:

Hashrate — how fast the miner is crunching numbers
Temperature — how hot the hash boards are running
Fan speed — how hard the cooling system is working
Uptime — how long the miner has been running without a restart
Errors and status — anything unusual that needs your attention

Let’s break each one down.

Hashrate: Your Miner’s Speedometer

Hashrate is the single most important number on your dashboard. It tells you how many hash calculations your miner is performing per second. Think of it like the speedometer in your car — except instead of miles per hour, you’re measuring terahashes per second (TH/s) or, on newer machines, petahashes per second (PH/s).

Real-Time vs. Average Hashrate

You’ll usually see two hashrate values:

Real-time (or “instant”) hashrate fluctuates constantly. It might jump from 90 TH/s to 105 TH/s and back within minutes. This is completely normal. It’s like watching the tachometer needle bounce while driving on a bumpy road.
Average hashrate smooths out those fluctuations over a longer period (typically 15 minutes, 1 hour, or 24 hours). This is the number that actually matters for your profitability calculations.

What’s Normal, and What’s Trouble?

Every miner model has a rated (or “nominal”) hashrate — the number the manufacturer advertises. Here’s a quick rule of thumb:

Within 5% of rated hashrate — perfectly healthy
10-15% below rated hashrate — something might be off (high temperature, throttling, or a chip underperforming)
More than 20% below rated hashrate — you’ve got a problem (dead chips, overheating, or a failing hash board)
Zero hashrate on one board — that board has likely failed or lost connection

Your dashboard usually breaks hashrate down per hash board (Board 1, Board 2, Board 3). If one board shows significantly lower hashrate than the others, that board needs attention.

Temperature: The Vital Signs

Temperature is arguably the most critical metric for the long-term health of your miner. ASICs are dense collections of tiny chips running at maximum intensity, and they generate serious heat.

Types of Temperature Readings

Most modern miners show several temperature values:

Chip temperature (Tchip or PCB Temp) — the temperature of the actual ASIC chips on each hash board. This is the most important number. On Antminers, you’ll often see this labeled as “ASIC” temperature.
Board temperature (or inlet temp) — the temperature of the circuit board itself, measured at the air intake side. This is typically lower than chip temperature.
Outlet temperature — the temperature of air leaving the miner. The difference between inlet and outlet tells you how much heat the miner is adding to your room.

Temperature Danger Zones

Here’s a general temperature guide:

Temperature Range	Status	Action
Below 60 C	Cool — excellent	No action needed
60-75 C	Normal operating range	Monitor normally
75-80 C	Warm — getting toasty	Check airflow and ambient temp
80-85 C	Hot — throttling likely	Improve cooling immediately
85-90 C	Critical	Miner will auto-throttle or shut down
Above 90 C	Danger	Shutdown is imminent or already happened

Temperature differences between boards matter too. If Board 1 reads 65 C and Board 3 reads 82 C, something is wrong with the cooling on Board 3 — maybe a blocked air intake, a thermal paste issue, or a failing fan on that side of the machine.

Ambient Temperature Matters

Your miner’s chip temperature is always ambient temperature plus the heat the chips generate. If your room is 35 C (95 F) in summer versus 15 C (59 F) in winter, that 20-degree difference shows up directly in your chip temps. There’s no magic — hotter room means hotter chips.

Fan Speed: Your Cooling System

Fans are the lungs of your miner. They pull cool air in from one side and push hot air out the other, carrying heat away from the hash boards. Most ASIC miners have two to four fans.

Reading Fan Speed

Fan speed is measured in RPM (revolutions per minute). A typical ASIC miner fan runs between 3,000 and 7,000 RPM depending on the model and temperature.

Low RPM (below 3,000) — the miner is cool and doesn’t need much airflow, or there could be a fan issue
Medium RPM (3,000-5,500) — normal operating range for most conditions
High RPM (5,500-7,000+) — the miner is working hard to cool down, possibly in a hot environment

Auto vs. Manual Fan Control

Most miners default to automatic fan control, where the firmware adjusts fan speed based on temperature. This is the recommended setting for most people. The hotter the chips get, the faster the fans spin.

Some interfaces let you set fan speed manually — for example, locking fans at 100%. This might make sense in extremely hot environments where you want maximum cooling at all times, but it creates more noise and wears out fans faster.

What Happens When a Fan Fails?

When a fan fails (or its RPM drops below a safety threshold), most miners will:

First, try to compensate by spinning the remaining fans harder
If temperatures keep rising, throttle the hashrate to reduce heat
If temperatures hit a critical level, shut down entirely to protect the hardware

A single failed fan on a four-fan miner might not cause an immediate shutdown, but it will definitely reduce performance and increase wear on the remaining fans. Replace failed fans promptly.

Uptime: The Reliability Counter

Uptime shows how long your miner has been running continuously since its last restart. You’ll typically see it displayed in days, hours, and minutes — for example, “Uptime: 14d 7h 32m.”

Why Uptime Matters

A healthy miner should run for weeks or months without needing a restart. Frequent restarts (especially unplanned ones) are a red flag. Here’s what different uptime patterns tell you:

Weeks or months of uptime — your miner is stable and happy
Restarts every few days — could be a firmware bug, an overheating issue causing shutdowns, or unstable power
Restarts every few hours — something is seriously wrong (bad hash board, power supply issue, or network instability causing the watchdog to trigger)
Constant restarts (minutes) — the miner can’t stabilize; likely a hardware failure

What Resets Uptime?

Uptime resets to zero whenever the miner restarts, whether that’s from:

A manual reboot through the web interface
A power outage
An automatic restart triggered by the watchdog (the miner detected a problem and restarted itself)
A firmware update

If you see uptime reset unexpectedly, check the system logs (we’ll cover those in a later article) to find out what caused the restart.

Error Indicators and Status LEDs

Beyond the numbers, your dashboard typically shows a status summary for each major component. This might be a simple color-coded indicator:

Green / “Normal” — everything is working correctly
Yellow / “Warning” — something is suboptimal but the miner is still running (for example, one chip is underperforming)
Red / “Error” — there’s a failure that needs attention (a dead hash board, a fan failure, or a critical temperature)

Common Status Indicators

Indicator	What It Means
Chain Status: Normal	Hash board is working correctly
Chain Status: Warning	Some chips on the board may be underperforming
Chain Status: Error	The board has failed or has too many dead chips
Fan Status: Normal	All fans spinning within expected RPM range
Fan Status: Error	One or more fans have failed or are below threshold
Pool Status: Active	Connected to mining pool and submitting shares
Pool Status: Inactive	Not connected to pool (network or config issue)

Physical LEDs on the Miner Itself

Most miners also have physical LED lights on the chassis:

Solid green — normal operation
Blinking green — booting up or looking for network
Red — hardware error detected
Red + green alternating — firmware update in progress (do NOT unplug during this!)

Practical Tips: The Quick Health Check Routine

Here’s a quick checklist you can run through any time you glance at the dashboard:

Hashrate — Is the average within 5% of the rated value? Are all boards contributing roughly equally?
Temperature — Are chip temps below 80 C? Is there a big difference between boards?
Fans — Are all fans showing RPM values? Are they running at a reasonable speed for the current temperature?
Uptime — Has the miner been running steadily, or did it restart recently?
Status — Are there any yellow or red indicators?

Troubleshooting Common Dashboard Readings

Here are some scenarios you might encounter and what to do:

“One board shows zero hashrate, the other two are fine.” That board has likely failed or lost its connection. Try rebooting the miner first. If the board still shows zero after reboot, it may need physical inspection (reseating cables, checking for burned components).

“Temperature on one board is 15 degrees higher than the others.” Check for blocked airflow on that side of the miner. Make sure intake and exhaust are clear of dust and obstructions. The thermal paste between chips and heatsinks on that board might also need replacing.

“Fan RPM shows 0 but the miner is still running.” Physically check whether the fan is spinning. If it is, the sensor may be faulty. If the fan has actually stopped, shut down the miner immediately and replace the fan before restarting.

“Hashrate is 30% below normal and temperatures are fine.” This could indicate dead chips on one or more boards. Check the detailed chip status in your miner’s logs (covered in Article 5 of this series). It could also be a pool-side issue — check your pool dashboard to compare.

“Uptime keeps resetting every few hours.” Check the system logs for the cause. Common culprits include unstable power supply, overheating (the miner shuts down and restarts when it cools), or a watchdog timer triggering due to a software hang.

Wrapping Up

Your dashboard is the first place you should look when something seems off, and the best place to verify everything is running smoothly. Learning to read it quickly and accurately is one of the most valuable skills a miner can develop.

In the next article, we’ll cover how to configure your mining pool settings — telling your miner where to send all that hashing power so you actually get paid for it.