NerdQaxe++ review: 4.8 TH/s from four BM1370 – is it worth upgrading from a Bitaxe?

At some point the first Bitaxe is set up, the pool is running, “Best Difficulty” keeps climbing – and the question changes: no longer whether home mining works, but how much hashrate fits on a desk without electricity, noise and effort getting out of hand. That is exactly where the NerdQaxe++ sits: four BM1370 ASICs on one board, around 4.8 TH/s at roughly 80 W, a 92 mm fan, AxeOS in the browser. It is the device that shows up most often in our support as “the second miner” – and one we have been running in every variant for a good year.

This article is not a spec sheet. It answers the questions buyers actually ask us: how much faster is the NerdQaxe++ than a Bitaxe Gamma, and what does that cost in electricity? How loud is it in the living room? When is the water-cooled Hydro worth it, when the Copper Pro, and from what point is a NerdQX or NerdOctaxe the better choice? And: what are the odds of actually finding a block with 4.8 TH/s?

What the NerdQaxe++ is – and how it differs from a Bitaxe

A Bitaxe Gamma has a single BM1370 chip, the same ASIC that works in Bitmain’s Antminer S21. The NerdQaxe++ puts four of them on one board and feeds them through a considerably beefier voltage regulator. Everything is controlled, as on the Bitaxe, by an ESP32-S3 running AxeOS: you open the miner’s IP address in a browser, enter pool, worker and Bitcoin address, done. No PC or Raspberry Pi is needed for operation or setup.

Its predecessor, the NerdQaxe+, still used four BM1368 and reached around 2.5 TH/s. The move to the BM1370 almost doubled the hashrate without changing the concept: an open board on a 3D-printed stand, a large fan above the heatsink, a 1.9-inch TFT display that shows hashrate, temperature, voltage and best difficulty without a browser.

Two things stand out in everyday use. First: the miner sits there in the open. That is intentional on all Nerd*axe devices, because the heat is supposed to escape freely – but it also means dust, cats and curious children can reach the board. Second: the power supply is included. With a Bitaxe many people buy a USB power supply that is too weak and then wonder about crashes; with the NerdQaxe++ the 120 W supply is part of the package and properly sized.

Hashrate and efficiency: 4.8 TH/s at 80 W in context

Around 4.8 TH/s at roughly 80 W works out to around 16 J/TH. That is a solid figure, but not the best in the range – and the reason is instructive. A single BM1370 in the Bitaxe Gamma runs at around 14 J/TH, the new BM1373 in the Nerdaxe Gaia even at around 10 J/TH. Four chips on one board run slightly higher clocks and share one cooler; add the efficiency of the larger voltage regulation. So with the NerdQaxe++ you are not buying efficiency per terahash – you are buying hashrate per device.

The table shows the pattern: within the four-chip class, cooling shifts performance. The Copper Pro gains around 1 J/TH from its copper mass, the Hydro trades a little efficiency for a quarter more hashrate. The standard NerdQaxe++ sits in the middle – and that is exactly why it is the right choice for most people.

Important context: all figures are guide values from continuous operation at room temperature with factory settings. A warm attic in summer costs a few percent, a flatter fan curve likewise. The mining calculator works it out for your device with your own electricity tariff.

The real question: how much more chance of a block?

Hardly anyone buys a NerdQaxe++ to collect cents in a regular pool. The device is a solo miner, and hashrate is the number of lottery tickets. By the rule of thumb from our article on the probability of finding a block with a Bitaxe, a Bitaxe Gamma has odds of around 1 in 15,000 per year. The NerdQaxe++ at 4.8 TH/s comes to about 1 in 4,000 per year, the Hydro at 6 TH/s to around 1 in 3,200, a NerdQX to 1 in 2,400 and a NerdOctaxe to roughly 1 in 1,600 – each based on the network hashrate of summer 2026.

That remains a lottery, and it is meant to be. But the relation is honest: for a good five times the electricity you get almost four times the tickets, in one device, with one power supply, one socket and one line in the pool dashboard. If the miner finds a block, 3.125 BTC plus fees go straight to your address via the coinbase transaction – on our Bitaxe Pool with no fee and no account.

Noise and heat: the point spec sheets leave out

A Bitaxe Gamma is practically inaudible at under 15 dB(A). The NerdQaxe++ is not. 80 W of heat has to go somewhere, and the 92 mm fan above the heatsink is audible in operation, clearly so at full speed. In an office or utility room that bothers nobody; on a bedside table it does.

Three things help. First, the fan curve in AxeOS: the large fan already moves a lot of air at low speed, and a flatter curve brings noticeable quiet at one or two degrees higher chip temperature. Second, the location: free-standing, not in a shelf compartment, not in a closed cabinet – it gets quieter there, but the heat builds up and the fan ends up spinning faster. Third, the variant: the NerdQaxe++ Hydro moves the noise to the radiator and is the more pleasant solution in a living space; the open Performance Case guides the air along the heatsink more deliberately on the standard model.

As for heat: 80 W is about the same as an old incandescent bulb. In winter that is a welcome contribution to room temperature; in summer give the miner some space all around. More on airflow, fans and quiet setups is in our guide making a Bitaxe quieter – the principles apply to the NerdQaxe++ just the same.

NerdQaxe++ or NerdQaxe++ Hydro?

Both models have the same four BM1370 and the same firmware. The difference is the cooling – and performance hangs on it. The Hydro removes heat through a closed water loop, the chips may clock higher, and so it reaches around 6 TH/s at 100 W. The surcharge therefore buys about a quarter more hashrate and a different noise profile: instead of a fan directly above the ASICs, a radiator does the work.

Our recommendation is clear: if the miner lives in a living space or should get the most hashrate out of a four-chip board, take the Hydro. If it is your first device beyond the Bitaxe, or the miner sits in the basement, office or homelab anyway, the standard NerdQaxe++ remains the simpler and cheaper choice. Buyers describe the Hydro as slightly more demanding in balancing performance and cooling – nothing dramatic, but a difference from the “plug in and forget” of the air-cooled model.

And the Copper Pro?

The NerdQaxe Copper Pro is the third variant with the same four BM1370. It stays at around 4.8 TH/s and roughly 80 W but cools through a solid copper heatsink with two PWM fans (60 and 92 mm), reaching around 15 J/TH instead of around 16 J/TH. Its argument is not peak performance but headroom: if you raise frequency and voltage in AxeOS and want to run the miner at the upper end permanently, the copper mass pays off. At factory settings the everyday difference to the standard model is small.

NerdQaxe++ versus NerdQX and NerdOctaxe: when more makes sense

Above the NerdQaxe++ things get big quickly. The NerdQX packs around 8 TH/s at roughly 140 W into a closed case with a 120 mm front and 90 mm rear fan – at around 38 dB it is not quieter than the NerdQaxe++, but the closed design makes it less sensitive to dust and fingers, and the colour LCD replaces the look into the dashboard. The NerdOctaxe doubles the board to eight BM1370 and delivers around 12 TH/s at roughly 200 W; as a Hydro it is 14 TH/s at 220 W.

The rule of thumb from our consultations: up to about 100 W a miner is a desk device that runs on any socket and whose heat disappears into the room. From 140 W you should think about location, ventilation and the circuit – not for safety reasons, but for comfort. The NerdQaxe++ is the largest device that still clearly belongs to the first category. If you have a second circuit in the basement and want to maximise the number of tickets, go for the NerdOctaxe; if you want a single closed device for a shelf or homelab, the NerdQX. The figures of all models sit side by side in the miner comparison.

Power consumption: 80 W in everyday life

Around 80 W around the clock is about 1.9 kWh a day and around 58 kWh a month. That is more than a Bitaxe (around 11 kWh a month) but less than a gaming PC running continuously. What that means at your tariff you can work out in the mining calculator in thirty seconds – we deliberately keep electricity costs out of this article because they differ by a factor of two from household to household.

Two practical notes: the included 120 W power supply has headroom, but a power strip with a switch is still sensible because AxeOS has no off button. And if you want to lower consumption without losing hashrate, do not run the miner in a cabinet: every degree less chip temperature means less leakage current in the ASICs. The basics are in the article calculating Bitaxe power consumption.

Setup: on the pool in five minutes

Unbox, set up the stand, connect the power supply. On first start the NerdQaxe++ opens its own Wi-Fi network through which you connect it to your 2.4 GHz network – the ESP32-S3 cannot do 5 GHz, which is the most common stumbling block with routers that use one name for both bands. Then open the miner’s IP address in a browser and enter the pool under Settings:

Save, restart, and after one or two minutes “Best Difficulty” rises in the dashboard. On pool.bitaxe.de you can see hashrate and workers of your address without a login. The detailed guide with screenshots is at setting up a NerdQaxe; the alternatives to the pool are explained in choosing a Bitaxe mining pool.

Everyday use: display, AxeOS and updates

After setup the NerdQaxe++ runs without attention. The 1.9-inch display cycles through hashrate, chip temperature, voltage, fan speed and the best difficulty since the last restart – many users add the Bitcoin price to the screen. In AxeOS three values are worth a look: the chip temperature should stay well below the limit at which the firmware throttles the clock in continuous operation; rejected shares belong under one percent, otherwise something is wrong with pool, Wi-Fi or overclocking; and the hashrate error shows how far actual performance deviates from the target.

Firmware updates are applied directly in the browser, as on the Bitaxe, without cable and without a flashing tool: pick the file, upload, wait for the restart. Settings and pool are kept. Several NerdQaxe++ run independently of each other, each with its own worker name after the dot – in the pool dashboard they then show up as separate workers under the same address, and their hashrate counts together for the block search.

Overclocking – yes, but with judgement

AxeOS lets you adjust frequency and core voltage, and the NerdQaxe++ has headroom for it. But more clock means more consumption, more heat and a faster-spinning fan – and efficiency drops because power draw rises faster than hashrate. Our advice for the standard model: start with factory settings, let it run for a week, then raise in small steps while watching temperature and rejected shares. If you want to run at the upper end permanently, the Copper Pro or the Hydro serve you better. How to do it systematically is in the overclocking guide.

Who the NerdQaxe++ is for – and who it is not

• Moving up from a Bitaxe: if you have understood the first miner and want more tickets without managing a second power supply, a second worker and a second device. The NerdQaxe++ replaces three to four Bitaxe on one board.
• Homelab and utility room: where an audible fan bothers nobody, the standard model is the cheapest four-chip variant and runs maintenance-free.
• Living space: better the Hydro. Same handling, more hashrate, the noise comes from the radiator.
• Efficiency before hashrate: if you want as many hashes as possible per kilowatt-hour, the Nerdaxe Gaia at around 10 J/TH serves you better – or two Gaia instead of one NerdQaxe++.
• Maximum tickets on one circuit: NerdOctaxe. Double the hashrate, but also a device that needs a place of its own.

What the NerdQaxe++ is not: a yield product. Like every solo miner it is a lottery ticket with a power plug, and the probability of finding a block within a year is around 1 in 4,000. If you know that and still want to play, it gives you the most sensible amount of hashrate that can be run without rebuilding the house.

Conclusion

The NerdQaxe++ is the miner we recommend to customers who want “more” after the Bitaxe without wanting “different”: same firmware, same pool, same address, just four chips instead of one. Around 4.8 TH/s at 80 W is an honest compromise between performance, consumption and effort, the power supply is included, and setup takes five minutes. The limits are clearly named: it is audible, it is not the most efficient chip in the range, and it does not find blocks on schedule. If you can live with that, you have found the right size in the NerdQaxe++ – and if you want to put it in the living room, in the Hydro.