Bitcoin Forum

Has anyone succeeded in getting a miner going with at least 4 gpus on a Z170 motherboard?
With Black Friday coming I might get one if I hear it can be used with at least 4 gpus.

I am thinking about the MSI Z170-A Pro in particular, which seems like a good deal - now $90 only at newegg.

Yup, it's all good for 4 GPU's, even for 5 GPU's, I can confirm that. Just make sure that you get the x1 to x16 USB risers as well.

Asrock H170a-x1 work well with 5 GPUs RX 480 8G

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1584973.0

 Phil likes the BIOSTAR Z170 boards you can put 4 cards on with NO risers needed.

Thanks folks
The BIOSTAR board looks nice.  Pity the price is $30+ higher than the MSI and the ASRock boards.
And I would be concerned about heat and the mobo able to deliver  power with 4 gpus side-by-side like Phils pic is showing  :P

Don't even bother doing that if you are not living at a place with extreme cold.

Hello
i have the same problem with the  MSI Z170-A Pro work fine with 4 GPU  But when i add more than 4
http://imgur.com/a/0HgUk
http://imgur.com/a/0HgUk

It worked all summer long in a 95f garage

I have three at the moment.

But  you need to understand that overclocking is for fools.

A proper Zec rig can do 500H at 400 watts a piece of cake for that mobo.

I know this because I do it.

also that board can run  at 92-96 MH for ETH PULLING  AROUND 580 WATTS been there done that.  All summer long.

While 95f is not crazy hot it is hot.

no riser costs  make up for it.  and if usa there is a rebate

120 usd

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138421&cm_re=biostar_z170-_-13-138-421-_-Product

rebate is 20 off

$164.99
$119.99
Sale Ends in 4 Days (Sat)

Save: $45.00 (27%)
$99.99 after $20.00 rebate
$0.99 Shipping (restrictions apply)

 - FREE 3 DAY or faster shipping
Sold and Shipped by: Newegg
 3 Years for the Price of 2 Years $22.00
(more options)  read warranty details

Hey Philip
how about these boards?
The gaming can do 7 GPU's but can they all work at the same time as this person had issues with his board not working with all the GPU's connected to it?
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7 MB with 5 or more GPUs? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455296.0)

MSI Z170A SLI PLUS ATX LGA1151 Z170 DDR4 3PCI-E16 3PCI-E1
http://www.ncix.com/detail/msi-z170a-sli-plus-atx-66-126208.htm

MSI MSI Gaming Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM EDITION LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130870

MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition LGA 1150
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130801

I have a Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 and that motherboard gave me nothing but trouble when setting up multiple R9 390s on it with usb risers. I switched to Asrock H81 PRO BTC motherboards after that and have been happily mining ever since.

I have been able to get 5 GPUs to work on the ASRock H170 Pro4S boards. They are selling for $85 on NewEgg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157640


I also have the MSI Z170-A PRO board you asked about, and with that I have only been able to get 4 GPUs to work. I am disappointed a bit in that one for mining, but I might just use it for my gaming rig instead.

 Reference/blower style cards help a lot, since they blow the air AWAY from the cards instead of just right around them.



 Per readings elsewhere *ALL* of the Z170 boards seem to have some serious limitations past 4 or 5 GPUs - that chipset doesn't support many PCI-E lanes to transfer data on (relies almost entirely on the ones on the CPU itself) and some of them end up assigned to stuff like M.2 SSD slots and the like.



 BTW - I finally got around to doing some tweeking on my my current 3 card 1070 builds, currenty pulling 86-88 MH/s on ETH running around 460 watts at the wall with a Seasonic X850 gold PS *WITH* the GPU on the A10 working MooWrapper - a lower-power CPU/APU would probably drop the system draw 30-50 watts.
 Stock BIOS, no undervolt, +550 memory -200 core, 75% power limit in Afterburner - and seems like there's still some room for improvement.

 Down side is the cost of the 1070s....

 [edit] was playing with a USB-drive based Win10 version, lost over 10% of the hashrate with no other changes. THAT experiment quickly got reverted [/edit]

 That BIOSTAR board seems to go on sale at $120 or so every 2-3 months for a bit.

So... what were the temperatures of the cards in that hot (95 F) garage? It's pretty amazing to see those GPU's working this close in that hot... I personally would never try that. :P

I heard one success story on 1x to 3*1x pcie splitter with Z170 chipset. My order is on the way I should get it by 2-4th dec. I can reply on around 5th Dec. It costs almost same as H81+$25 for splitter = Biostart or anniversary etc. But there are no alternatives for LGA1151 so this is my try. Lets see how it goes

Which cards were you able to get working in the ASRock H170 Pro4S stable and hashing at a good rate?
Model specific and I guess you can't mix and match them. I mean putting in a 290 with 480's?

Depends on the cards, I tried 4 x RX470 Nitro and it's too tight, the fans touch the adjacent card.  The side fans get no airflow and temps get over 90c and the middle cards throttle.  Having 8 fans at 3000+ rpm sounds cool too.

Using v6.0 risers now.

I have ASUS H170 Pro Gaming can work fine with 6 x 370 but when it come to rx470. Max 4 rx470 working or only 2 when more than 4 installed, the rest give error code 12, it even same at Windows 10.

  70c at 70% fans

now doing zec which is less power 55c at 50% fans

back plate gpus do not work on that board

I use 5x of these SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 470 100407NT+4GOCL 4GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202229) in each rig with that motherboard. Currently I have three of those rigs up and running in that configuration with no issues. I do not mix or match GPUs in any of my rigs as I usually buy everything I need to build one in a single order.

And how much in Eth or Zec are you able to pull per each rig in that configuration?
I was going to get 390 R9 cards because they can do 280 for Zec. What can these RX 470 do per card?

just because a card can do 280  does not mean you should clock like that.

Lets say you have really cheap power and don't care   that 280H speed wastes power  it  has other issues.  You tax the cards the fans and the motherboard running at top speeds.

Hi @bobben2


I got BioStar Z170GT7 running fine (Win7_64p) with
i3-6100 + 2 x 8GB DDR4 + 120GB SSD
2 x RX480/8 (Powercool Ref.)
2 x RX470/4 (Saphire wt backplate)

... now even integrated wt EVGA GQ750-v2
in a Mid-Tower Case wt 8 PCI-Slots.

Stable ~750 sol/s @ 700W from Wall.

 ;D PanneKopp

Makes complete sense to not max out the cards. That just lessens their life cycle and might end up costing you more money in electrical costs and not worth doing the in long run.
Think about what you are about to do with the GPU's you are about to purchase and know what you going to do with them before you get them.
Just as the knowledgeable Philipma1957 has said.

my z170 has 4 gpus right now going strong

I use this same board as well, no issues

just a heads up for everyone
ive flashed 10 gigabyte GA-Z170-Gaming K3 to latest bios F20
9 out 10 work flawlessly with 6 cards, problematic rig needs taking apart and resetting
been stable for 2-3 days now
for anyone with the following board

ASROCK Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6
using BIOS 2.8
can run 5 cards by doing the following in the bios
go to advanced mode
and chipset settings
Change PCIE to gen1 on both options
change max TOLUD which is the next option down from the above to 2.5GB

this makes 5 cards work
I have not got round to flashing the bios yet to reassess if can do 6 cards

The best  motherboard for mining is AsRock H81 Pro Btc, also it works very well with 6 gpu.

I managed to get 5 GPU running on Asrock Z170 Pro4s. I updated BIOS to 7.0 and set all PCIe to GEN1 in BIOS. This is not a stable fix ... after restart windows no longer shows 5 need to fiddle with BIOS again(usually I set back to Gen3 save/restart go back in BIOS set to gen1(this usually does the trick))

Since  updating BIOS a few weeks ago Asrock has released a newer version of the BIOS, maybe it will fix this restart bug I'm running into.

Almost a success story with the MSI Z170A pro carbon

Hi

I would like to  share  my own experience with MSI Z170A pro carbone motherboard. First of all and in order to get it to accept USB 3.0 Powered PCI-E 1x -16x Risers, I have to mod the bios and set all PCIe lanes to gen1 (all 20 of them, I did this because I was unable to find which PCI socket goes with which pci lane).
Under window 10, I have succeeded in getting 4 GPU's to work fine (Rx480, R9 380 or R7 370). But I have not succeeded to run more than 4 x Rx480 gpus nor more than 4 x R9 380 gpus, I get the famous message "not sufficient resources ... code 12".

!!!!! However, 7 x R7 370 have worked just  fine with no issues whatsoever !!!!

1) I don't think that the problem is a pci lanes assignment Chipset issue as is often reported, since 7x R7 370 has worked fine.
2) I don't think it is a IRQ issue as often reported also, because each R7 370 have had it own IRQ assigned.
3) I think that the problem is Memory Resource Assignment. By examining the control panel, I noticed that the R7 370 reserves much less memory and I/O port resources than the Rx480 or the R9 380.

Is it a driver issue?  Is it possible to mod the driver in order to delete unneeded resources.

Does the  chipset has anything to do with  memory and i/o port assignment ??

In any case, the news here is that the MSI Z170A pro carbone works perfectly with 7 x  Asus Strix R7 370 4Gb

Hey Phil did you finally put your Z170GT7's in PC Cases(towers) like you were planning to?


This is great news, Ill try to source those Gigabyte boards now.

Exactly!

It's so frustrating and I don't know if I can do anything to make it work with more than 4 gpus,
I have the new MSI Z170A-PRO (bought it 2 weeks ago) and couldn't manage to run more than 4 x sapphire 390X nitro

I mean its the latest consumer intel chipset with the latest 1151 socket but it's garbage for mining, any mobo that can't handle more than 4 gpus nowadays is a garbage in my book as one guy has said.

btw any success stories running 4+ gpus?

ASrock H170A-X1 work fine with 5 GPUs - rx480 8G
Gigabyte Z170 gaming k3 work fine with 6 GPUs - rx470 8G

Ok now the story is a success  ;D

by setting TOLUD to 3Gb instead of Auto,  6 gpu's  Rx480 and/or R9 380 work fine on the MSI Z170A pro carbone motherboard (with 12 Gb ram)

 :D

Are you sure guys? I would want to try the Gigabyte Z170 Gaming K3 if all of you can get 6 RX 470/480 cards working on it. Also, on the MSI Carbon, you said you can get 6 RX 480 working. Can you please test if 7 work too?

 Too bad that MB has been out of production for years.

hi everybody,

I am getting mad to successfully setup a 6x GPU mining rig...I have been experimenting with
3 motherboards but I never managed to have more than 4 GPUs working.
I would go with the "traditional" Asrock motherboards that work flawlessy but they are not easy to find at the moment.

I see some of you managed to setup 6x GPUs on Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 and Gigabyte Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon.

@racminer and @IojkinKot
can you please confirm this?

@deadsix
did you try with one of those motherboards?

Thanks!

Has anyone managed to get this board to do 5 cards with 17.4.3/4?  I have tried almost everything to get it to work.   I had 5 cards working at one point -- reboot and back to 4 -- reboot 4 times to get the 5th back.  It has something to do with the board having 2 x16 slots I believe.

Haven't read the thread but I have had 7gpu working on my MSI z170a gaming pro carbon (currently running 6gpu on it since 1 card or riser was giving issues after few hours of mining)

I have a z270A running 6x Rx480s

new motherboard bios for MSI on May 1, 2017 enabled me to do this solidly.

exactly what brand of z270? could you link it? have you tried 7 gpus? thanks

Sure.  It is the MSI z270A Pro.  Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MR31OZ8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have not tried 7, there is only 6 slots on this one.

Asus Z270-p also works with 6 cards with the latest bios. I've read posts that It can go to 10 cards with extension boards under Linux but haven't tried that personally, but that does make this my go to board for all future builds.

Any these should work too right? I can get any of these for the same price of the z270a, thanks for the replies :)
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z270-SLI-PLUS.html#productSpecification-section
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z270-KRAIT-GAMING.html#productSpecification-section
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z270-GAMING-PRO-CARBON.html#productSpecification-section
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-Z270-A/specifications/

"Should Work" unfortunately isnt how this works at all. All motherboards with 6 PCIe slots "Should Work" but they dont.
I would recommend only buying what other people have confirmed already to be working with 6 cards.

Did you had to do anything special? or just enabled 4G/crypto mining bios option in Settings?

Hi Guys,
im planing building a rig with 5 Gigabyte rx580 aours 4 gb
i want to use a Gigabyte ga-z160 gaming k3 Motherboard:
http://www.rakuten.de/produkt/gigabyte-ga-z170-gaming-k3-eu-mainboard-1840810105.html?sclid=p_idealo_DE_1840810105_SOMMER-12&portaldv=6&cid=idealo&cc=SOMMER-12
or this one:
https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/msi+z270+a+pro/?nbb=pla.google_&wt_cc2=912-0001_Hardware_294994&gclid=CjwKEAjwse7JBRCJ576SqoD7lCkSJABF-bKuHsQ47PDw1b0bbbZgpP8lBh86Ea3sDMk7CZuGQASulxoCLczw_wcB

do you think this motherboard will be fine for my rig?

The result is yes, my 4x GPU (3GB Gigabyte GTX 1060 Gaming G1) setup on Gigabyte GA-Z170-Gaming K3 has worked!

1) I have upgraded the BIOS to latest version currently available - F22.

2) I installed Win10Pro x64 in UEFI mode (it was incorrectly installed initially - a hint from my observations: when you remove all logical partitions from the drive, and when installing in UEFI mode, and when the system allocates space for the installation - it creates at least 3 additional logical volumes / partitions. If booted up/installed in any other mode, the system creates only two such partitions! If you see that only two partitions on the hard disk were created before the Windows installation, then you booted up incorrectly, not in UEFI mode). For booting up from USB drive into UEFI mode, I went to the BIOS, in the section where you can save its settings - the BIOS shows the devices connected to the motherboard in the Boot Override section, and among all the options chose where the word UEFI is present.

3) before booting into Windows, I went to BIOS and disconnected EVERYTHING that I do not use, like SATA ports where nothing is connected and all other ports like serial, audio panel, onboard graphics, etc. In M.I.T. section of BIOS I tuned PCI to Gen 2, but works in Gen 1 mode too.

4) after all these settings and installation of Windows - I connected ONLY one GPU (3GB Gigabyte GTX 1060 Gaming G1) with the riser to the slot PCIe x1 which is closest to the CPU (in BIOS I've set this port to be recognized as the first), immediately updated the chipset driver (downloaded from the manufacturer's website), and the latest nVidia driver. After that, I connected 3 other GPUs.

5) But then only 3 out of 4 GPUs were recognized. Therefore, I can not further reliably say that this was the solution, but I connected another, fifth GPU (Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce 2 3GB) through a new riser to an open slot PCIe x1, loaded the system, and it detected this fifth card. In the system was defined as the fourth in the list of adapters. Using the GPU-Z utility, I checked each card using the Lookup function to see which card was allocated at number 4 - when clicking Lookup in GPU-Z, the browser opens with the photo of the card that you are detecting/looking up, so after checking each one in turn, I immediately realized that it was the fifth new GPU that was detected. Next step, I decided this way - I will disconnect only the GPU from the old riser that was not detected (I left the PCI x1 adapter in that slot), and I will swap it with the new fifth card, which was detected on a new riser with a PCIe x1 adapter. Another detail - for this new riser I used a different power source - the SATA to MOLEX adapter (the previous riser, where GPU was not detected, was powered directly from the EVGA Supernova 650W G2 80+ Gold Modular) via a modular cable with 3 MOLEX connectors).The fifth GPU - I have put it back in the box.

6) rebooted the system - and YES I have had all 4x Gigabyte GTX 1060 Gaming G1 3GB working.

7) The old riser with a PCIe x1 adapter (where GPU was not previously recognized) I have pulled it out during another reboot.