How to overclock a Bitaxe safely: frequency, voltage and temperatures

Two settings do everything. Frequency (in MHz) is the chip’s clock speed, and hashrate Computing power: the number of attempts per second of a machine or of the whole network. The higher it is, the more tickets you play in each draw. follows it in proportion. AxeOS The open-source Bitaxe software, set from a browser: pool, frequency, voltage, fan. Update it even does the math for you: on the dashboard, the Expected value is the frequency multiplied by the chip’s number of small hashing cores. A BM1370 Bitmain's chip from the Antminer S21 Pro, also used in the Bitaxe Gamma and most recent desk miners., the chip in the Bitaxe Gamma, has 2,040 of them: 525 MHz gives about 1.07 TH/s expected, and each 25 MHz step adds about 51 GH/s per chip.

Core voltage (in millivolts) is what the regulator feeds the chip. The higher the frequency, the more voltage the chip needs to keep its results correct: the official Bitaxe FAQ warns that when overclocking Pushing the chip's frequency and voltage for more hashrate. It draws and heats noticeably more: on the Thor X1, +50% hashrate for 2.1 times the power. The review you may need to raise the voltage to match the frequency. Too little voltage and the error rate climbs; too much and the chip runs hot and wastes power.

The catch: power draw rises faster than hashrate. My clearest wall-meter example comes from the Thor X1, which is not a Bitaxe: 2.1 TH/s for 22 W in normal mode, 3.22 TH/s for 46 W in overclock mode. About 50% more hashrate for more than twice the power. The community figures in my Bitaxe Gamma review point the same way: you will find them further down, with their effect on your odds.

Stock values are written in the code of ESP-Miner, the Bitaxe firmware whose web interface is AxeOS: in main/device_config.h and in each board’s configuration, such as config-601.cvs for the Gamma 601. Here they are, read on 28 October 2026 in version 2.15.4:

Bitaxe stock settings in ESP-Miner 2.15.4 (device_config.h and config-xxx.cvs files, read on 28 October 2026). Expected hashrate: frequency × small cores × number of chips, the AxeOS calculation, not a measurement.

Model (board number)	Chips	Stock frequency	Stock voltage	Expected hashrate
Max (102)	1 × BM1397	425 MHz	1,400 mV	0.29 TH/s
Ultra (201 to 205, 207)	1 × BM1366	485 MHz	1,200 mV	0.43 TH/s
Hex (302, 303)	6 × BM1366	485 MHz	1,200 mV	2.60 TH/s
Supra (400 to 403)	1 × BM1368	490 MHz	1,166 mV	0.63 TH/s
Supra Hex (701, 702)	6 × BM1368	490 MHz	1,166 mV	3.75 TH/s
Gamma (600 to 603)	1 × BM1370	525 MHz	1,150 mV	1.07 TH/s
Gamma Duo (650)	2 × BM1370	400 MHz	1,150 mV	1.63 TH/s
Gamma Turbo, or GT (801)	2 × BM1370	525 MHz	1,150 mV	2.14 TH/s
Gamma Hex (1300)	6 × BM1370	690 MHz	1,200 mV	8.45 TH/s
Naja Duo (1201)	2 × BM1372/BM1373	327 MHz	1,000 mV	4.40 TH/s

Your board number is shown in AxeOS, on the System page, as Board Version. The 1.2 TH/s rated for the Gamma, the figure in my review, comes from the project’s own math: the Antminer S21 Pro’s 234 TH/s divided by its 195 chips. At its stock frequency, AxeOS expects a little less, about 1.07 TH/s: the gap comes from the starting setting, not from a fault.

NerdQAxe, NerdQX and NerdOctaxe machines run a derived firmware, ESP-Miner-NerdQAxePlus, with their own values: this table only covers Bitaxe boards.

There are three levels to know: what the official FAQ advises, what AxeOS flags in red on its dashboard, and what the firmware does on its own when things go wrong. The last two are written in the ESP-Miner 2.15.4 code (the dashboard, the protection and the regulator).

Thresholds of a Bitaxe Gamma (5 V) and a Gamma GT (12 V): official FAQ (osmu.wiki) and ESP-Miner 2.15.4 code, read on 28 October 2026.

Value in AxeOS	Advised by the FAQ	AxeOS “Danger” warning	Automatic protection
Chip temperature (ASIC A chip built for a single task. Bitcoin mining chips can only compute hashes, but extremely fast. Temperature)	under 70 °C	from 70 °C	above 75 °C: stop, then restart lower
Regulator temperature (Voltage Regulator Temperature)	under 90 °C	from 105 °C	above 105 °C: same stop; the regulator itself shuts off at 145 °C
Input voltage of a 5 V Bitaxe (Input Voltage)	4.8 to 5.3 V	below about 4.75 V (94.9% of the nominal 5 V)	the regulator stops below 4.5 V
Input voltage of the 12 V Gamma GT	not specified	below about 11.4 V (94.9% of the nominal 12 V)	the regulator stops below 10.5 V

Above 75 °C for the chip or 105 °C for the regulator, this is what ESP-Miner does:

1. It stops mining: frequency wound down to 50 MHz, core voltage cut.
2. It switches the fan to manual, at 100%.
3. It waits at least 30 seconds, and until the regulator is back down to 95 °C. On boards that can read the chip temperature while it is off, it also waits until the chip is back under 45 °C.
4. It restarts 100 MHz and 100 mV lower, and saves those values in place of yours: a Gamma set to 625 MHz and 1,200 mV comes back at 525 MHz and 1,100 mV.

In practice: if your Bitaxe suddenly gets loud and its settings have dropped, this protection has kicked in. The fan then stays on manual at 100%: tick Automatic Fan Control again in the settings and review your values, the machine will not do it for you. While it cools down, and for good if the restart fails, AxeOS shows “Device has overheated - See settings” and a Disable Overheat Mode button, asking you to reset frequency and voltage before clicking it. On a Gamma GT, which shows two chip temperatures, one of them going above 75 °C is enough.

Because heat is the first limit you will hit. The official Bitaxe Gamma repository is blunt about it: active cooling is mandatory, the heatsink alone is not enough, and the Gamma, which draws more power, overheats much more easily, especially with the stock heatsink and fan. It suggests replacing the fan with a 5 V, four-pin Noctua NF-A4x10. The official FAQ, for its part, advises upgrading the heatsink and thermal paste before any overclock, and to keep a margin for days when the room is warmer.

My own readings point the same way. On my Gamma GT, read in AxeOS: 2.08 TH/s for about 44 W with the very loud stock fan at 55%, then 2.28 TH/s for about 50 W with a 60 mm Noctua at 28%. And in my cooling video, a €35 fan let me raise my miner’s hashrate by 80%: cleaning, thermal paste and choosing a fan are covered in the Miner running hot guide.

While testing, take the precaution from my NerdQX 8T review: fan at maximum rather than automatic, and two temperatures to watch, the chip and the regulator. Once you have found your setting, go back to automatic: AxeOS then aims for 60 °C by default (adjustable from 35 to 66 °C), with a 25% minimum fan speed. In manual mode, it shows a warning below 33%.

A Gamma takes 5 V DC only: the official repository warns that any other voltage will damage it. It asks for a supply that delivers more than 4 A (20 W) without dropping below 5 V, which often means one rated at 25 to 30 W. My Gamma review lists a 5 V, 6 A supply, so 30 W.

Overclocking raises the draw: the community figures in that review mention about 22 W around 1.5 TH/s and 35 W around 1.8 TH/s. A 30 W supply is no longer enough for a pushed overclock: get a 5 V supply with headroom, and cables of a decent gauge. The barrel jack remains a weak point: the benchmark script from the video caps power at 40 W, with a note in its code saying it is because of that plug.

Watch the Input Voltage line on the dashboard. Below 4.8 V, the official FAQ reads it as an undersized supply; AxeOS shows “Danger: Low Voltage” once it drops below about 4.75 V, and the regulator cuts power to the chip below 4.5 V. Before that point, an undersized supply can already push the errors up: the AxeOS tooltip lists it among the causes.

The Gamma GT is different: it runs on 12 V through an XT30 plug, and its two chips were already drawing 44 to 50 W, read in AxeOS at my place. With its stock power supply, I find pushing it past 3 TH/s risky, and I did not do it for my review. What those extra watts cost over a year: Bitcoin miner power consumption.

What follows applies to ESP-Miner 2.15.4, released on 21 October 2026, the latest release as of 28 October 2026. On an older version, start by updating AxeOS.

Open AxeOS (the machine’s IP address in your browser, or its hostname, http://bitaxe by default, if your network supports mDNS, possible since version 2.15.0), then the Settings menu. By default, Frequency and Core Voltage are drop-down menus limited to the values planned for your chip, with the stock value marked “(Default)”. For a BM1370 (Gamma, Gamma GT):

These values are guidelines, not hardware limits, as the AxeOS code itself notes. To go further, add ?oc to the end of the Settings page address, for example http://192.168.1.50/#/settings?oc with your machine’s address: this is the method described in the ESP-Miner README. Both menus turn into free fields, a yellow banner warns that custom settings can damage the machine, and the choice is saved on the Bitaxe: it stays on after a restart, until you press Disable Overclock Mode. That button does not bring back the stock values: pick them yourself in the menus.

Frequency and voltage apply as soon as you click Save, with no restart. Everything can then be read on the dashboard: the hashrate and its 1-minute, 10-minute and 1-hour averages, the Expected value, the error rate (Error), the temperatures, the power draw (Power) and the input voltage. The method, step by step:

1. Write down your stock values and a one-hour baseline: 1-hour average hashrate, error rate, temperatures, watts and input voltage.
2. Raise the frequency one notch, from 525 to 550 MHz for example, without touching the voltage, then save.
3. Wait at least 10 minutes and compare the 10-minute average with the Expected value. The benchmark script from the video considers a step stable when the measured hashrate reaches at least 94% of the expected one.
4. If it is stable and temperatures stay within the advised range, go up one more notch. If not, add a little voltage (one menu step, or 20 mV in ?oc mode) or go back to the previous frequency.
5. Stop at the first limit you reach: chip approaching 70 °C, regulator around 90 °C, input voltage below 4.8 V, or power draw at your supply’s rating.
6. Keep the last stable setting and let it run for 24 hours before adopting it, as I advise in the video. If the machine stops hashing altogether, the troubleshooting guide goes through the causes one by one.

Every chip is different: a setting found on a forum is only a starting point. On my Thor X1, the chip tended to cut out as soon as I left the stock settings.

AxeOS 2.15.4 has no built-in auto-tune. An auto-tune proposal with Eco, Balanced and Aggressive profiles was submitted to the project in July 2026, but it was closed without being merged. The tools that exist are community scripts, outside the official project: they run on a computer on the same network, change the settings through the AxeOS API and usually restart the machine at every trial. Read their limits before you run them.

Two warnings. The guard rails in mrv777’s script target a 5 V Bitaxe on a barrel jack: on a 12 V Gamma GT, which was already drawing 44 to 50 W at my place, it would stop at the very first sample unless you edit it. And its “best setting” has only held for ten minutes within its limits: let it run for 24 hours before keeping it day and night.

Solo, your odds are exactly proportional to your hashrate: 50% more TH/s means 50% better odds, no more, no less. The math, with the difficulty How many attempts it takes on average to find a block. It adjusts itself about every two weeks. Difficulty explained as of 17 October 2026 and electricity at €0.20 per kWh:

Bitaxe Gamma solo mining Bitcoin: odds of finding a block and yearly cost by setting (network as of 17 October 2026, electricity at €0.20 per kWh, 18 W for stock settings). Hashrate and power: rated and community figures from my Gamma review, not wall-meter measurements; both overclocks are examples. Average earnings: what a regular pool A server that machines connect to. A regular pool shares the earnings, a solo pool does not. Solo or pool? would pay on average, before fees.

Setting	Hashrate	Power	Block odds per year	Average earnings per year	Electricity per year
Stock settings (rated)	1.2 TH/s	15 to 18 W	1 in 16,000	about €14	about €32
Example: moderate overclock	1.5 TH/s	about 22 W	1 in 12,800	about €18	about €39
Example: pushed overclock	1.8 TH/s	about 35 W	1 in 10,600	about €21	about €61

Going from stock settings to the pushed overclock of this example brings about €7 more a year on average, for about €30 more in electricity. So overclocking costs more in electricity than it brings on average: it buys lottery tickets, each one more expensive. On my Gamma GT, switching to the Noctua (2.08 then 2.28 TH/s, read in AxeOS) takes the odds from 1 in 9,200 to 1 in 8,400 per year. For your own numbers: the solo mining calculator; for the money: How much does a Bitaxe earn?

On Bitcoin Cash, whose difficulty is far lower, the same Gamma goes from about 1 chance in 58 to 1 in 39 per year between stock settings and the pushed overclock of the example (Bitcoin Cash network as of 28 October 2026). The details: Bitcoin Cash solo mining.

• Stability. A chip pushed too far makes mistakes: the error rate goes up, the real hashrate falls below the expected one, and the machine may end up rebooting. The AxeOS tooltip says it plainly: frequency changes, aggressive overclocking, undervoltage or a bad power supply can significantly increase the error rate.
• Wear. More voltage and more heat age the chip, the regulator and the power plug. The official FAQ is clear: overclocking can permanently damage the device. The ESP-Miner README also warns that without additional cooling, it can overheat or damage your Bitaxe.
• Warranty. It depends on the seller: read their terms before touching the settings. Some spell it out: for the Thor P2 I reviewed, the seller states that any turbo or boost mode counts as overclocking and voids the warranty.
• The bill. Every extra watt runs day and night: 10 W more is about €18 a year at €0.20 per kWh.

My advice: cool it first, stay within the range the FAQ advises, and keep your stock values written down somewhere. A moderate, stable overclock beats a record that does not last the night.