At risk of pedantry that rectangular aluminum extrusion with a fan on each end and a small box clinging to one side, with external 12v PSU is very likely to be one of the older model Bitmain Antminer products. With the exception of a lightweight Xilinx Zynq(ARM core plus some FPGA gates) on the control board that handles basic housekeeping and network configuration the whole thing is nothing but SHA-256 ASICs.
A waste that it was ever built and operated; but almost wholly bereft of any use outside its original application(and, unless it’s one of the latest models, probably negative value even there). Since bitcoin mining doesn’t require particularly high data rates to/from the hashing units it isn’t even a good fit for (niche; but not nonexistent) applications like offloading ZFS checksums, since those would require high throughput of actual data to the ASICs.
Given low enough labor costs it might have made sense to separate the fans, boards, and aluminum before crushing(I am not familiar with most of their models; but on the S9i specimens I’ve seen the fans are surprisingly nice Avvid Thermalloy units, albeit ones that have had a hard life); but overall those things make the Irish Elk look like a versatile generalist.
Etherium miners, on the other hand…
