What is the NerdQAxe++?
The NerdQAxe++ is an open-source home miner designed by shufps. It puts four Bitmain BM1370 chips, the same chip as in the Bitaxe Gamma, on one board with one heatsink, one fan and one 12 V supply. At stock settings it hashes about 4.8 TH/s on 72 to 76 W, which is close to four Bitaxe Gammas in one box. Its firmware, ESP-Miner-NerdQAxePlus, is a fork of AxeOS, so the dashboard and pool fields will look familiar if you have used a Bitaxe.
Do not confuse it with the NerdQAxe+, which uses four older BM1368 chips, or with the NerdOctaxe Gamma, which has eight chips. The setup below works the same on all of them.
What do you need before setup?
- A 12 V supply that can deliver 10 A. Sellers usually include one. Never plug in a 5 V Bitaxe supply, and never use an unknown adapter with the same plug: the wrong voltage can damage the board.
- A 2.4 GHz WiFi network. The ESP32 inside does not support 5 GHz.
- A Bitcoin address starting with
bc1or3, copied from your own wallet. - A spot with airflow. At 76 W the unit is warm and audible, around 40 dB, like a desktop PC under load. A shelf in an office or hallway works; a closed cupboard does not.
76 W is a small load for any household outlet. You do not need a special circuit, unlike full-size ASICs.
How do you connect the NerdQAxe++ to WiFi?
1. Power on and join the setup hotspot
Connect the 12 V supply. The screen lights up and the miner opens a WiFi hotspot named after the device. Join it from a phone or laptop.
2. Enter your WiFi
The setup page usually opens by itself. If not, browse to http://192.168.4.1. Enter your 2.4 GHz WiFi name and password and save. The miner restarts, joins your network and shows its new IP address on the screen.
Which pool settings does the NerdQAxe++ need?
3. Open the dashboard
Back on your normal WiFi, type the IP address into a browser. Open the settings page where the stratum fields are.
4. Enter the DirectPool values
| Field | What to enter for DirectPool |
|---|---|
| Stratum Host | stratum.directpool.io |
| Stratum Port | 3333 |
| Stratum User | bc1qyouraddress.bedroom |
| Password | x |
Use the bare host name without stratum+tcp://; the port goes in its own field. The word after the dot, here bedroom, is a worker name of your choice. If your firmware version shows fallback pool fields, you can leave them empty or point them at a second pool.
5. Save and restart
Save, then restart the miner. Within a minute or two the dashboard should show around 4.8 TH/s and accepted shares. Paste your address on the DirectPool home page to see the worker there. The pool's hashrate figure takes about an hour to settle.
Careful: use the firmware made for this board. Flashing Bitaxe firmware onto a NerdQAxe++ does not work. Updates come from the ESP-Miner-NerdQAxePlus releases or its web flasher.
How do you update NerdQAxe++ firmware?
The firmware author publishes releases on GitHub and maintains a web flasher, a fork of the Bitaxe web flasher. It runs in Chrome or Edge on a desktop computer over USB. Most owners update over the air instead, from the dashboard's update page, using the files from the same release. Read the release notes first; some releases change settings or need a specific update order.
What numbers are normal on a NerdQAxe++?
| Reading | Typical at stock | Worth checking if |
|---|---|---|
| Hashrate | about 4.8 TH/s | below 4 TH/s for an hour |
| Power | 72 to 76 W | well above 80 W at stock |
| Chip temperature | roughly 50 to 65 °C | near 70 °C or higher |
| Rejected shares | under 1% | a few percent or more |
High temperatures usually mean dust, a blocked fan or a hot room. Like AxeOS on the Bitaxe, the firmware throttles or stops mining when chips get too hot. If you want to tune frequency and voltage, the principles in the Bitaxe settings guide apply here too: small steps, watch temperatures and efficiency, and back off at the first instability.
Which mistakes do new owners make most?
- Swapping power supplies between miners. A household with a Bitaxe and a NerdQAxe++ often has a 5 V and a 12 V adapter with the same barrel plug. Label them.
- Putting the full URL in Stratum Host. Enter
stratum.directpool.ioonly, with3333in the port field. - A shared 2.4 and 5 GHz network name. If the miner will not join, give the 2.4 GHz band its own name in your router.
- Placing it in a closed space. Heat builds up, the fan spins faster and the firmware throttles the chips, so you get more noise and less hashrate.
- Overclocking on day one. Run it at stock for a few days first so you know what normal looks like for your unit.
- Comparing pool and dashboard hashrate after five minutes. The pool estimates speed from shares, so give it an hour.
If it still will not connect, work through the troubleshooting checklist.
What can you expect from it on a pool?
At 2026-10-05 difficulty, 4.8 TH/s earns on average about 229 sats a day across all pools that pay fairly, roughly $72 a year at $86,431 per bitcoin, before pool fees. Running it costs about $100 a year at $0.15 per kWh. So on most home electricity prices it does not pay for itself. People buy one for more pool shares than a Bitaxe, for the open hardware, and for a better lottery ticket.
On its own, the chance of finding a block in a year is about 1 in 3,800. On DirectPool, it earns a slice of each block the pool finds, in proportion to its shares over the last 7 days. DirectPool is a small pool, so its blocks are irregular, and balances under 10,000 sats are carried forward to a later block. See how PPLNS works on DirectPool.