NerdQaxe++

You’ve run a Bitaxe, you get how home mining works, and now you want a bigger shot without stepping up to a screaming industrial box. The NerdQaxe++ is the obvious next rung. It takes four of the same BM1370 chips a single Bitaxe uses, bolts them under a proper CPU-style cooler, and runs the same open firmware you already know. Roughly 4.8 TH/s on the desk. Four tickets instead of one.

The take

This is the sweet spot for someone who’s already caught the bug. You get four times the hashrate of a Bitaxe Gamma, the same open AxeOS-based firmware, and a build that’s clearly a step up in engineering: a low-profile Thermalright-style cooler doing the heavy lifting rather than a whirring 40mm fan. It still won’t make you money. Four lottery tickets are better than one, but the draw is the same near-impossible draw. What it does buy is a more serious solo setup that stays livable in a home office. Own the take on that one: if you enjoyed the Bitaxe, you’ll enjoy this more.

What the numbers actually mean

Efficiency sits around 15.8 J/TH, near enough identical to a single Bitaxe because it’s the same silicon, just four of it. So you’re not trading efficiency for scale here, which is the nice part. The 76W figure is board draw, and it’s worth being honest that once you count the losses in the 12V brick, at-the-wall readings tend to land in the mid-80s to low-90s. Either way it’s a small always-on appliance, noticeable on a bill over a year but hardly ruinous. Price per TH works out around 94 pounds, which is actually better than a Bitaxe on paper because you’re spreading the board and cooler cost across four chips. Noise creeps up to roughly 40 dB under load, so it’s audible in a quiet room but nothing like a farm miner, and the thermals are genuinely well sorted: even overclocked, owners report the chips staying comfortably under 60C on the low-profile Thermalright cooler. That 12V brick requirement catches people out, since you can’t just reuse a phone charger the way you can with a Bitaxe. Plan for it, give it a bit of desk space to breathe because that cooler wants airflow, and if you intend to run it hard, know that the cheap bundled brick can get warm enough that owners routinely swap it for a proper metal-case 12V supply.

One quirk worth knowing before you start tuning: the ceiling here is usually frequency, not heat. Owners find the chips will sit cool while rejected shares climb once the clock goes too high, so the sensible tune is the highest frequency that still holds a clean share rate rather than the highest number the screen will show you. Push past roughly 750 MHz or 1200 mV and you’re into the territory the vendor guidance warns against, so there’s a real reason to stop short.

Revisions and the TinyChipHub build

This is one to buy by revision. Early boards (Rev5 and older) earned a name for heat and the odd blown fuse, and the 2025 Rev6 redesign exists to fix exactly that with sturdier power delivery and better cooling, which is why owners now nudge newcomers towards a current board rather than a bargain used one. On top of that, TinyChipHub sells a re-engineered “Remastered” REV6 build with 2oz thickened copper layers and a heavier cooler, which it rates at 5.2 TH/s (give or take ten percent) around 80W, with a peak past 6 TH/s near 95W when overclocked on a solo pool. Those are the vendor’s own figures rather than an independent bench, so treat the top end as best-case binning, but the direction of travel is real: more copper, more headroom, fewer of the early heat gripes. One owner running a copper-heavy TinyChipHub board rates it the most efficient miner they own. If you want the calmest ownership experience, a current Rev6 from any of the reputable vendors is the safe pick.

Who should get one - and who shouldn’t

Get one if you already own a Bitaxe and want a meaningfully bigger solo footprint, if you like the open-firmware world and want to stay in it, or if you want the best odds you can get while still keeping the thing on your desk. It’s the natural upgrade path, and it feels like one.

Don’t make this your first miner. Start with a Bitaxe, learn the ropes cheaply, and step up when you know you want to. And don’t let the better price-per-TH figure fool you into profit thinking. It’s a bigger hobby, a bigger lottery entry, and a nicer bit of kit.