Bitcoin Forum

Hey everyone, I just finished building my first mining rig, thought I'd post it up here and see what you all think  :)

How it started...

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130424_132743_zps055df7b7.jpg

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130424_132940_zps6234b1d1.jpg

I didn't take pictures of bending it up. Press brakes are pretty damn intimidating, no distractions lol

Testing for fitment!

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130424_141942_zpsa0a26431.jpg

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130424_142206_zps2de12f1f.jpg

I managed to get everything right the first time around!

The components...

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130426_174722_zps5a888349.jpg

Gigabyte G1.Sniper 3 board. Z77, 1155. Gotta love all the pcie bandwidth!
Intel i3 3220. Probably overkill, but I want to use this for other things occasionally too.
16GB of some off brand 1600 ram
and
4 gigabyte 7970 Ghz editions

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130426_175811_zps046a3b7c.jpg

Testing out the nut riveter and standoffs.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130426_220532_zps1b247e44.jpg

The power supply, 1300W. Lots and lots of PCI-e plugs!

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130426_180603_zpscbd2c37c.jpg

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130426_183645_zps32da0f26.jpg

Dang, that's gonna be hard to keep cool....

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170054_zps0b08cbec.jpg

My "idea" of a solution...

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170114_zpsfffb6d33.jpg

Cable ties, built in so I can lightly pull the cards apart.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170139_zpsab1520ba.jpg

Fan grilles in a few choice spots to keep cables away from fans. I split the chassis fan headers to power all these fans, this board only had 4.
Oh, and a couple of baby resistors to make it all go. Anyone familiar with GM's early vats lol

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170216_zps6daee0c1.jpg

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170227_zps5b70a63c.jpg

I hate these stupid intel fans. I've built at least 6 machines with these heatsinks and I've never been able to reliably use the built in wire ties!

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170301_zps952c6dce.jpg

This thing is a gigantic piece of crap. Unfortunately my ol' trusty Maxtor died on me :(

And finally, a little results...

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170441_zps15006ba1.jpg

Damn!! Too much heat, not enough room to get rid of it! Three of the 4 are throttling at around 95-97 degrees. The one on the end manages to get 630-640 at stock clocks, -v -w128 in guiminer.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130428_170623_zps53c6db93.jpg

And with a bit of clocking... I can't get any higher than 1175 stable right now. At those clocks I'm averaging around 680. I'm hoping for a little more when I get these spaced out and cooled down a little.

So, my new plan of attack is going to be spacing these cards out. I've ordered 4 8x to 16x cable risers, 8x because that's all the bandwidth my processor has for each. I know I don't need any more than 1x for mining, but I want to use it for other things too haha.

Even crippled up she's still averaging around 1900 MH/s. I've got the top three cards severely underclocked right now. Any recommendations to increase that are greatly appreciated haha


Stay tuned, interesting things happening when the risers decide to show up  ;D


I just realized that the lights are flickering in my living room because of this beast! Good thing it's going to run in a machine shop, free power!

You should end up pretty close to 3Gh/s.  I'm running a similar configuration with (5) Gigabyte 7970's (non-GHz editions), and I'm conservatively averaging about 3.4Gh/s.  I cranked the settings on up, and it ran faster, but wasn't stable.  I didn't like waking up in the morning and finding out that I hadn't been mining for 10+ hours because everything locked up!   >:(  Just for comparisons sake, my setup is running Linux and cgminer.

I'm assuming you spaced yours apart with riser cables right? Are you using the powered version? My motherboard has a sata plug that supposedly adds extra power to the pci-e bus. Won't even boot without it if you've got more than three cards in there. If I wanted to upgrade to a few extra cards would you recommend the powered versions? I wanted to try and run them all on the mobo, but since that isn't possible I might as well add more haha

Are you running the reference clock? If not what sort of clock are you running to get that hashrate? I'd be a bit dissapointed to learn that you were able to generate the same average per card hashrate as I do at a slower clock lol. I might just return these ghz editions and switch to reference cards.

Would I see a gain in hashrate moving to Linux? I assume that the gui kinda takes away from efficiency a bit, right?

Thanks for the post Mccminer!

Not sure about Linux, but I know that you would get a benefit from moving to CGminer.

Cool, I'll give it a try. Doesn't look too terribly complicated.

Thanks!

There wasn't a difference in hashing speed on either windows or linux for me, but using cgminer should help quite a bit. I think the diablo or phatk kernel is best (it is for me anyway). I like your case :)

Same Gigabyte cards I have, the way they dump heat from one card to the next is horrid, thought you had a great idea with plenty of fans but doesn't seem to have helped.  

Mine are spaced 2 1/2 inches between and still have heating problems.  Keeping and eye on this thread to see how you work it out, please keep us updated.

Very clean build, looks great   8)

I like your case  8)

Just curious how much that sheet metal cost and where you got it from.

EDIT: Thought I would give some advice for the airflow. Not sure how you have the fans blowing at the end of the card where the dvi ports etc. are, but those should be pulling air away and not blowing on the cards. Then have the ones at the back of the cards pushing air on them. Also, if possible, I would have the case flipped on the side so that the connector side of the cards are pointing up. This should help aid in removing the heat if you follow how I said you should have your fans blowing because heat rises.

I have 4 x gigabyte 7970s ghz edition and it over heats... does anyone know about water blocks for these cards? where can i get it? i saw frozencpu.com but im not sure if it will fit the PCB on that card.

Thanks for the comments on my case everyone, too bad it's not so functional right now haha

cgminer is a little improvement, at least in dealing with my hot cards. I'm getting an average 2.5GH/s now. The open air card still seems to do pretty good, so hopefully opening them all up helps!

I'm running diablo kernel -w256 and -v1, averaging around 690MH/s on the 70 degree card.

Random bit - I was thinking I could get away with around an inch of free space between the cards, assuming they stay in the little fan box. Are you just relying on the video card fans to cool them with that much spacing?

Tronath - Thanks! I've never bothered to learn to use Linux so I'm glad I don't have to start now lol

Diablo seems to be best for me so far, phatk was causing some serious artifacts. I'll need to try again when I get the temps under control I guess

Bitbrandon - I got the sheet from work, ordered in on a truck. I could hook you up with my supplier, but if you are out of their area their trucks run it won't do much good. It's made of 16 gauge stainless, and I forget exactly what a sheet runs. Luckily I don't work the purchasing dept lol

I haven't tried flipping the fans yet, but I'll give that a shot. I don't really see it being much help, but I guess it can't hurt.

Wolfgod - I believe we are out of luck as our cards are not the reference format. Universal blocks are the only real option, and I don't consider those an option lol

I do have a few mills at work though, making waterblocks for these cards would be simple. That's a lot of extra $$$ though, for radiators and pumps since I can't make those. I'd rather buy more air cooled cards personally.

Great looking setup.

Have you thought about mining Litecoin?  Its 1.3x as profitable as BTC right now.

Thanks Caesarsauce!

Notaek - I've thought about litecoin a bit, and the plan is to switch to that as soon as ASICs make GPU mining totally impossible. In the meantime I'm hoping to pay for this machine with bitcoins. If ASICs hold out for three months I should be good :D

Awesome photos!  Definitely keeping my eye on this thread. 

Love the case!

Well, the reason I said to flip the case and reverse the fans at the end of the cards is to help move the hot air away from the cards. The way you have it right now, the fans may be blowing air on them, but the air flow is all screwed up and the heat doesn't have a good way to escape so it sticks around the cards instead.

I think due to the design on these cards there's no good way for me to place the fans. They draw air in from the front, and mostly exhaust through the top leading edge of the card. The heatsink fins run perpendicular to the length of the card, so not much air can make it out the end. The rear of the card does seem to vent a bit, but I'm pretty sure most of it comes out the top or directly inside the case.

I swapped the fans and it's not much better like expected. One card seems to run a tad bit cooler (90 instead of 95), but I still have it slowed way down. The others are all still running at 95 or so, throttling every now and then. I don't much care for the cooler design on these cards!

Thanks for the comments guys!

Edit: I think I might have a problem with the thermal compound on one of these cards. It sure seems to idle higher than the others. Taking the cooler off is going to void my warranty though, isn't it?

setup looks fantastic 8)

I am a CNC Machine Operator for a 3 meter by 1.5 meter sheet at 3mm thick is about $170 You would only use half that for a case.

I am thinking of doing the same as you but main problem is your cards over heating I was thinking of getting the "EVGA X79 Classified" motherboard since it has 3 graphics card slots evenly spreed out a lot of room be twin them.

How much did that setup cost you? I have around 5k to spend and am looking at getting 1 dedicated pc or 2-3 pc's with 3 7950's
What would you guys recommend to do I will be using it just to mine coins.

I just noticed that the fins are indeed not parallel to the board... stupid design IMO. Also, re-applying the thermal compound is alright with some manufacturers, but I'm not sure if Gigabyte is one of those. *IMPORTANT* If you do apply new thermal compound, please please only apply a super tiny amount. Less = More in this case and considering the GPU chip is less than half the size of a CPU, it should only be around a couple millimeters at most. Let me get a link for you that describes this, but for CPU's. Found it: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/What-is-the-Best-Way-to-Apply-Thermal-Grease-Part-1/1303

Thanks, that is really expensive for a sheet... I'm looking for some type of metal that is ~3mm thick that is cheap.

Now, if I were you, I would not blow that much money on a setup. Go for some old ATI cards that are rated really well for M/hashes and throw a bunch of them on a decent motherboard, but not an expensive motherboard like the EVGA one.

The only way your cards will not over heat is by water cooling them all, All them fans arnt going to do much when your cards are squashed together like that, Since all your fans are doing is trying to force air be twin them in which case wont cool then down much due to the heat they are making is just over powering. It may drop a little bit but not much. Watercooling is the way to go if your cards are like that.

Why I have been told its better to get cheaper rigs with a few cards then it is to spend it all into one big machine. They will mine at the same speed but you wont have heating problems.

I too would not spend that much on a setup. I'd put half into bitcoins, and use the other half to build a rig like mine  ;D

But don't do what I did and buy an expensive motherboard. Go for a cheaper one and use riser cables to make them fit. I'd probably use powered riser cables, just because the cheaper boards aren't designed with 4+ high end cards in mind. If you did it that way you could fit more than 4 cards on a board, meaning less money wasted on cpus and mobos.

2mm thick aluminum would be cheaper and more than sturdy enough for any computer case. Last I checked a 4x10 sheet of 14 gauge aluminum was around $60 bucks. That's right around 2mm, and would also be plenty sturdy. Plus you could have it anodized and it would look wicked cool!

This case is made from 16 gauge stainless which is only like 1.5mm. It's plenty sturdy, so long as you get a few bends into it. I could stand on this one if I wanted, with the corners welded up that is :)

Meathelix - riser cables would solve the spacing problem, assuming you are using a custom case. Then you could run 4 cards spaced the same as they would be as two on one motherboard. I'm patiently waiting for my riser cables to come. With the extra space between these cards I don't think all these 120mm fans will have a problem keeping them all cool.

I'm even thinking about making some ducting to channel the air directly out of the heatsink... Anything ought to be possible if you can mount them freely!

Thing is now days the cards the old cards cost as much as the new ones.

I guess 2mm is fine, I just didn't want some flimsy piece that I could dent by pushing on it with my finger.

Yea come to think of it 3mm is quite thick :P So I am still considering if I want to spend so much on mining. People are saying go this way or go that way quite confusing.

But yea riser's would do the job since your cards wont be squashed making it hard for the air to flow through them.

Mine are actually on two different motherboards.  One unit has 3 cards and the other has 2.  All are connected directly to the motherboards.  Mine is just an open air setup with a good fan blowing across all 5 cards.  I setup a script to monitor my card temps every 15 minutes and log them for me to keep track of, and none of them get over 72C.  I've played around with the core/mem settings quite a bit on my cards and most of them are running at 1150/800, if I remember  correctly (don't have access to my machine right now).  Not sure how much is to gain, if anything from running Linux.  I just used it because I like it, it's free, and I don't have a copy of Win7 laying around.  ;D

WOW nice setup !

Do we all agree that this rig at 3Gh/s would net about 55 Bitcoins in a year at a 2% difficulty per month increase?...according to the calculator I used.

So, an approx. $2500 investment would bring back about $7500 in a year at $136 price of Bitcoin at the time of this post?

Is this how the math should work?

A true Newbie question.....

Minus electricity

Good luck with that...

Expect x10 to x30 in the next 12 month

nice setup!

how much money did you spend on it?

The card I've got in open air manages to stay around 75 degrees, but that's at 1175. I can't seem to get windows to take anything less than 1500 for a memory clock, I can try and set it in CGminer and I get a confirmation that the driver reported success or something, but it resets back to 1500 or never changes in the first place. I'm going to have to look into that a bit once the heat is under control!

I bought a bunch of off lease PCs a while back for work, a couple are just lying around as spares so I borrowed the refurbished keys. Don't tell Microsoft!

Degart - Thanks!

TriplD- I'm expecting this thing to pay for itself in a little over three months. I'm not expecting GPU mining to be profitable for much longer, either BFL will finally deliver or someone else will. Either way, my already insignificant % of network hash rate will become even more insignificant!

I'm thinking of preordering a few BFL bits too. Least I can physically drive over there and kick some butt if they don't deliver. Only like 20 minutes away from me!

Mxmz.in - Power is free for me as I'm running this thing at work. I manage all the computers across the shop so this one is just going to blend in. With as much power as we use (three phase too!) we get it pretty cheap anyway.

This thing managed to crank my living room temperature up to around 85 degrees in the three or four hours I had it going last night. NOT cool, at all! That alone is reason enough not to run it at home to me lol

Edit:

Grinandbearit - I've got about $2500 in this one, not counting the stainless sheet or any labor/machine time going into making it. I did all that on my own, so I consider that free. My time is worthless I guess haha  ;D

Impressive machinery  :P

Great setup!

can you share the link of the calculator?

http://blockchained.com/profit/ (http://blockchained.com/profit/)
https://bitclockers.com/calc (https://bitclockers.com/calc)
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ (http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/)
http://dustcoin.com/mining (http://dustcoin.com/mining)

Looks awesome!

Awesome build. I love the custom case.

Case work looks fantastic!

Thanks guys!  ;D

That is some serious-looking hardware!

Small idea, try just use cardboard( to test it) and close your box up a bit better. So the only real airflow is the fans. im thinking the top fans will make a bit of a vacuum and pull the air out while the side fans will be building up pressure. At the moment, there is just too many holes so they are pulling a good bit of air that is just sitting around the edges, not from between the cards. Basically make some pressure in there as i don't think the fans are quite working too well being so far from the heat with so many gaps. Either being closer, or making the case closed will have the side fans forcing the air in between the cards a bit more and out the top as its the only logical way to go.

Should not take you more that a hour with some scissors, tape and cardboard and you will know very quickly if it will help.

Wont hurt seeing as you have such a beaut of a case there.

I've tried what you are suggesting, although I only used masking tape. Unfortunately that made the whole system overheat much quicker. My original plan was to cut acrylic sheets to fit and fill those large end holes, but after seeing how bad the masking tape holed things up I decided to leave it open. It's a bummer, because I was going to use cardboard to cut a template that matched the motherboard almost identically. Would of looked cool!

My new idea for cooling is going to use a bit of ducting though, cut out on the laser cutter. I don't see how I could ever keep these things cool without somehow isolating the intake and outlets. I'm still trying to figure out the best material to use, in case anyone has any suggestions :)

I remember using some sort of very thin congregated plastic on a 3d printer I built a while back, almost like those plastic signs you see on street corners everywhere. I'm thinking that stuff would work rather well.

Thanks for the comments guys! 

fan-tastic  lol

haha, adding a good bit to the price, but you could go water cooling. Gautenteed then to not have heat issues. I can say that i did that on one of my older rigs with 2 x 5970's and it worked like a charm. Wish i didnt sell that setup >_<

Really awesome looking setup! Nice work!

Thanks for posting your build, really appreciate the work you put into making that case! Is that a Plasma CNC table you used? Or water? I'm thinking those cuts look too clean to be Plasma. I've been thinking of purchasing a CNC Plasma table for some stainless work I do.. What material did you build your case with?

Thanks again!

Beatifull, i love it when people put effort into things, i have this suspicion that better looking rigs give better hashrates :)

Wow! Someone is taking this mining thing seriously with the work in that case. So many fans though. I wonder if a bigger more 'open air' type case wouldn't provide better airflow with lower power requirements (unless you're lucky enough to have free electricity).

I have 2 computers with 2x 7970 in each.. I have a 1000W power supply an dthe other computer has 1200 W power supply, Can someone help me how much my electricity gonna cost? .30 per/kilowatt ... Is that true that 2 cards my not use the whole power from the computer so lets say 1200W power supply is only draining 600W?

30 cents a kilowatt!? You might be better off selling the rig and buying/holding bitcoins. You are at a severe disadvantage when compared to folks such as myself who pay 10 cents a kilowatt. And at an even more severe disadvantage against the ASIC's that are starting to ship and can run on very little power. As far as figuring out how much power you use, get a kilowatt unit from amazon and plug in your power strip to it at the wall. Then multiply the watts shown on the display by 0.003 to find your daily electrical cost.

Chi11ed - Unfortunately water cooling isn't so simple with these cards as they deviate from the reference design. I've yet to find a full cover water block that fits this card! Of course I could always make a few, but I can't make radiators or pumps. If I can't keep these cool with air, I'll be moving to water ;)

Prelude - It's actually a waterjet table, though it did have a plasma cutter riding alongside for quite a while (the box to the left of the waterjet head.) Plasma cutting is a messy affair, and getting decent cuts in stainless comes with a pretty steep learning curve. To cut stainless without oxidizing the edge really bad you need a special mix of gas, I believe it's called H35, or 35% hydrogen remainder argon. Very hard to find and expensive! Nitrogen will leave a terrible black burr that's hard as a rock, no file will touch it  :-\

This case was made from 16 gauge 304 stainless sheet, a scrap piece I had around from some previous job. Most the stuff I do is for the food industry, so it's all stainless for me.

Miningdude - Thanks! I did try running them without the fan hoop in the way, with a 24" box fan to circulate air across everything and they still got quite hot unfortunately. Of course removing the fan hoop also means I can't spread the cards apart with the cool little flexible wire ties, so that might work if I put a little more time into it. But, with free electricity I'm not too worried :D

Wolfgod - Power supplies do work that way to a point, if you are loading the power supply a good bit under it's rated capacity it will not work as efficiently. You may be able to guess at your power draw, but the best way would be something like a kill-o-watt or inline power meter.

Miningdude - Here in Kansas and in an industrial park power runs about 8.5 cents a kilowatt! Luckily I don't even have to pay that  ;D

Buuuut, this thing is running in my office and it got HOT today! With the three hot cards choked down to 500mhz I still was only able to keep my mining going for about 6 hours. It literally decided to quit 6 minutes before I got home from work and I can't get Cgminer to start over RDC  :'(

My riser cables aren't marked as shipped yet either! I paid good money for US shipped cables! WTF!!

Thank you to everyone else for the nice comments on my case!

Reading this makes me really wish I didnt sell my HD5970 and buy a HD7970 but not actually mine with either card!  At the time, the value of BTC was low I guess and the cost of electricity high. But still. :(

Does anyone know if you can start mining using logmein? I haven't used it since I set up a VPN server at work, but it looks like Remote Desktop Connection does funny thing to video drivers that logmein might not.

I'm not sure why I'm asking, I'll just go install the client and try it out lol

I use Team Viewer 8 to manage all my rigs.

Thanks for the answer, I figured that was too nice for plasma. :) I also own a custom S/S business, with 99% of my clients/jobs being food industry so it's almost all S/S with a bit of aluminum in my shop. Does water produce burr free cuts? Or does it still need a bit of love after being cut? Going to have to look into getting a 5x10 table soon.

Take care!

Teamviewer works finde you can set up a account to use it with one login. But then use a secured Password :P

Oh cool, thanks guys! I'll have to give teamviewer a shot. Trying to install logmein over RDC seems to have fried my miner, looks like I'm going to have to drive over to shut it off. Damn!

I suggest nobody else try that one lol!

Water does leave a bit of a burr, but nothing you can't file away real easily. I just use a burr knife on the nice rectangular parts and toss the little bits in a tumbler for 30 minutes or so. A lot of stuff is just electro-polished which breaks the burr really well, if that gives you any idea how small it is. I usually hold a weeks work and send it out as a lot, not too expensive at lot charges and makes some killer looking parts! Aluminum is a lot more forgiving and mostly ready to go off the table.

If you do get one make sure you put some thick plate at the bottom of your tank! Oh, and shoveling the spent crap out sucks. Words cannot describe, trust me!


Edit: Whooo! It finally restarted  ;D ;D

Amazing thread, sorry for the long poast guise, just starting out on these forums and I enjoy typing  ;D



Not quite but you have a grasp of the miner's dilemma. Difficulty will not increase at 2%/monthly since ASICs are hitting the scene. Explore alternative cryptocurrencies like PPCoin or Litecoin. Expect them to flood with former Bitcoin miners as ASICs continue to penetrate the market.




'Tis a miner's life! I just think about how lucky we got it compared to San Francisco 1849, they had to give up air conditioning and consider the idea of spooning with other men for warmth!




And this one: http://bitclockers.com/miningcalculator (http://bitclockers.com/miningcalculator)




Yes, it is true that although you have a 1200W PSU, you will not draw that amount all the time. Chances are you never will even reach that limit, even for only second. I have 2x7970s (Gigabyte non-GHz ed.) and they each draw about 150W @ 551KH/s mining LTC. Windows Task Manager monitoring reports zero CPU and disk usage. DDR3 RAM usage is 1Gb (out of 4). I'm using cgminer 3.0.0 and Win8 x64. I do only pay $0.07 for electricity so check your profitability, your electric costs are somewhat on the high end of the spectrum. Are you located rurally?



Your case is indeed enviable! I would just take out one pair of 120mm fans on either side to give the hot air a place to escape. I imagine you expected to push the hot air to the middle and then let the GPU fans push down. Like I mentioned above, I have 2x7970s and I just left the PC case open and pointed a desk fan at them, solved all my temperature problems (one was running at upper 80s and the other at upper 90s, not acceptable for 24/7 use). The desk fan uses just .05KWh so it's a cost I can certainly afford especially since I have no other way to cool my GPUs enough at 550KH/s!

I would also check and see if the power connectors on your mobo are strong enough (I suspect they are). I haven't read about anyone having PCI-e problems with your particular mobo, may be something worth investigating. You can always buy custom-made MOLEX-powered PCI-e risers from Cablesaurus: http://www.cablesaurus.com/ (http://www.cablesaurus.com/).

I've had no success with Remote Desktop and LogMeIn when it comes to remote monitoring\configuring MSI Afterburner or Catalyst software.  Everything looks normal, except for those GUI windows.  I am guessing it is a video driver issue interacting with the remote logon programs (which makes sense to me).

Does TeamViewer solve these issues?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks!

I think I'll give that a try, that's about the only thing I haven't tried yet that is. My plan was pushing air down the cards, and pulling it out the top. That's still how I have it set up at least.

I'm hoping I won't have power problems, cablesaurus has a wicked lead time and I couldn't find them anywhere else. I bought some off of ebay, but they are unpowered. I'm hoping they get here rather soon haha. The difficulty is just going to keep jumpin' on up while I'm playing at half power!

Something interesting happened though, I'm not exactly sure what but I think cgminer might have overridden my clock values from CCC. I saw this and just had to take a screenshot though  ;D

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/miner_zps617f76dd.jpg

This was the crash I had driving home from work. Makes a little more sense now, kinda...

Lemonys - I am glad to report that teamviewer does not have those issues!

good discussions and sharing .. learning every bit 2 built my own machine

CGMiner has excellent OC controls. I'm no GUIMiner expert but maybe it's modifying your GPU's engine/memory while GUIMiner tries to do it's own thing? I don't mine with GUIMiner but AFAIK, it was built on CGMiner, which has it's own (excellent) OC controls. I know that some settings in CGMiner (GUIMiner?), when not set properly, can give higher-than-actual hash rates. Don't quote me but I think they're the "intensity" and "thread concurrency" settings. I'd be surprised if GUIMiner didn't have these settings built in.

If you want help setting up CGMiner, just download the compiled EXE from ckolivas (source code is on Github if you want to compile, otherwise, he hosts the latest version of CGMiner here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/)

Since we have the same video cards, you can probably just use my CGMiner config settings (took me ALOT of lurking to figure them out). Copy and past the following into CGMiner's "cgminer.conf" file:


You can't make intensity go above 13 on our cards.

You'll also want to create a .bat (batch, "bash") file with these contents:


Once you create that batch file, put it in the cgminer folder and run it from there. I didn't even install the OC utility on my rig, just installed the OS, GPU driver (AMD 12.8 with APP SDK 2.8 included, you need APP SDK), DirectX (may not be necessary), and CGMiner.
And Cablesaurus' lead time is ~7 days right? That's what I thought I read when I ordered. I'd be PO'd if I have to wait longer, not that I have the extra GPU's to plug into PCI 1x yet  :'( ::)

that is a huge increase. x30 and im assuming you are saying litecoin will be harder again?

I was using Cgminer when I had that spike, I've since uninstalled CCC and am using Cgminer for overclocking. CCC seems redundant now that I'm not using Guiminer anyway.

I owe you a bunch for that config file though, I'm running about 200MH on average faster now! Plus my cool card is averaging 680 on stock clock speeds, with a little overclocking 700 might be possible  ;D

Cablesaurus's lead time is up to ten days now. Might as well order them straight from china if I'm going to wait that long!

Difficulty just jumped to 10.1 million, that's somewhere near 12% right?

This is a very sweet looking set up. I am envy :)

Thanks!

I've made my first .1 bitcoin mining today. Whooo! Three cards are still clocked down to 500mhz, and I'm still averaging ~2.0GH/s according to BTC!

And my cable risers were marked as shipped! No tracking number though, which is odd for ebay  ???

I'm also no longer a noobie, guess I might have to venture out into the big forums  ;D

So then is cgminer faster or guiminer faster? Also can someone tell me what -v-w128 does?

Thanks

Cgminer is faster. -V sets the vector count, -w sets the work size, 128 in that case. You should find the values that work best for your card online, the hardware comparison is a good place to start.

Nice rig, looks like my old one with 5970's but I am shifting the cards as I am moving and won't have much space and I won't be the bill payer on the electric so it would be rude for me to take all that juice and just be complicated.

Nice rig. You spent a lot of time I think...

Looks nice

Nice case or stand! You should sell these if you can manufacture these at lower costs, this is potentially more profitable than mining.

can you share complete specs of your mining rig for reference ?

ElGabo - Thanks! I do have a lot of time into this thing though you can't see it here.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/Miningrig_zps2e1c2312.jpg

That took a while, but everything fit the first time I cut it, so in the end it was worth it ;)

Schland - Thanks! I do plan to sell these eventually once I get it set up and working well. I could make custom cases, somewhat like mountainmods, but a whole lot less universal looking. I figure the price would be around that of a nice mid range atx case, think they would sell?

Msaadw - Sure, here you go

GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 3 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GV-R797TO-3GD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video ...
Intel Core i3-3220 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ...
Team Xtreem Dark 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model TXD316G1600HC9QC-D
Rosewill LIGHTNING-1300 1300W Continuous@50°C,80 PLUS GOLD Certified,Pipe-rock Modular Design,Single +12V Rail,ATX12V v2.3/EPS12V ...

If all you care about is bitcoins then this build is overkill on mobo, ram, and CPU. Altcoins might be another story though  ;D

The HDD is a cheap SSD I had around for spare parts. It's a Corsair Nova, and it's the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen. I can not run as a bitcoin node because the blockchain corrupts before I download it all. Not the first problem I've had with corsair SSDs, but I do have many many computers running with OCZ Vertex 3's, some even striped. 1MB/s read/writes are awesome! I recommend them, big time!

wow thats so awesome :) nice work man!

Thanks!

Well, after not a whole lot of abuse the power supply failed! Mining would restart the computer instantly, unless I removed two cards...

A quick trip to microcenter resulted in a EVGA Supernova NEX1500, a stupid expensive power supply but worth every penny!

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130515_145453_zpsd9e54c2d.jpg?t=1368648685

This PSU is USB connected and tells you all sorts of cool stuff like input voltage, wattage, amperage, as well as output voltages, currents, wattage and more. Would be really useful to those of you who pay for power!
This rig draws 1250W of input power at full tilt, enough to drop the 120V down to 115V or so!

I also replaced the shitty SSD with a cheap laptop drive.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130512_154652_zps78c8ea47.jpg?t=1368648715

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130512_142503_zps05f378e0.jpg?t=1368648741

In case you were wondering what a Gigabyte 7970 Ghz looks like under that honkin' cooler. I pulled this one apart to replace the thermal compound, it runs a little cooler with arctic silver now. 

The VRAM heatsink is a place of aluminum 0.050" thick. It is not attached to the heatpipes in any decent way, and on top of that it's warped all to hell and back. These cards are straight garbage! I have never in my life seen such a crappy heatsink design. I will never be buying gigabyte stuff again after this experience.

And a little teaser of what's coming next  :D

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130515_151332_zps66f254e1.jpg?t=1368648882

Looking good! I like the high quality pictures.

Really nice lookin setup.

So what IS coming next? (From teaser pic in post #79)  ???

Ah, nothing too big really. Here's a pic, and what I've got done so far.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/WatercooledBTCRig_zps4a1d2db2.jpg

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130528_091045_zpse21baf8d.jpg?t=1369750369

I'm just waiting on two 3x140 radiators, they should be delivered tomorrow. I decided 3x120 wasn't big enough  :D

Great looking rig congrats. Craftsmanship is excellent keep up the good work.

Nice setup,did you try reversing the top fans so that they push air on the cards rather than pulling air away? that should solve your heat problem :)

note : you will need 2500Rpm high performance top fans, not silent 1500rpm

Cool Rig, hope you reach your goal. I just build 2 Rigs with 3*7970 each, mining ltc with scrypt at around 2200 each at their best clocks but right now i have them at 2000 each.

dang thats a really sick rig for right now man!   hopefully the asics don't come out for a bit longer and you can hold out and make this thing profitable!

Nice looking rig you got there :)!

stick with 4 7950 per rig you can easy get 2500kh runing under 60c core 80c vrm 1050mhz core 1250 ram 1.050v core ( saphire vaporx 7950 oc dualbios edition ) i have 20 rigs of 4 cards and 1 with 3 cards

So what IS coming next? (From teaser pic in post #79)  ???
[/quote]

Ah, nothing too big really. Here's a pic, and what I've got done so far.



I'm just waiting on two 3x140 radiators, they should be delivered tomorrow. I decided 3x120 wasn't big enough  :D
[/quote]




get a 1080 rad there under 120 gbp and are brill

Thanks! I did some work on the waterblocks tonight, should have them finished up completely tomorrow!


I tried swapping the fans around in several places. Oddly enough, the best I've had it was with 4 top fans pushing down and leaving the fans off of the side completely. I have a box fan behind it all, pushing air down the cards.

I should have picked up some better fans, but even with the crazy high velocity box fan pushing down on these cards I still don't see much better than 80 degrees. 


Thanks man, and good luck with litecoins! I have a feeling I'll be mining on those before much longer.



Thanks! I sure do hope so! But I'm probably never going to be able to pay this thing off with coins, not after all the watercooling expense. But, I am still doing better on my predictions than I anticipated. I figured difficulty would be much higher than it is now, hopefully that trend continues!

But, even if I can't pay it off I just swap out the processor and memory I'd have one of the baddest watercooled gaming rigs around. At least that's what I gotta tell myself!


Thanks!


Were I to do it again I think I would go for the 7950 instead. This thing is capable of 3gh/s though, I can feel it!


I paid $80 a piece for two koolance 3x140 rads. I don't think I'd be able to get good airflow to a big one like that mounted underneath, and if I mount it up top it covers the pretty pieces!

Also, I'm going to try and vent the hot air outside occasionally. I am going to have fans on the radiators pulling air in, and two fans on the end pushing air out from under the case. I'll have a small section of ducting, then vent straight out a open window.

Kinda like this, except my koolance radiators are about 1/3 as thick as those lol

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/radiatorconfig_zpsde777dc3.jpg

Nice rig dude!

Good work on that case.  Almost makes me want to get back into mining.

jast a thort is that pump good enuf / reliable  i have 2 d5s in seris so if 1 pump fails / more presure that loop is guna have alot of ristriction i would say use 1/2" id 3/4" od pipe

Omg that rig is awsome, but that is a lot of work and seems very expensive...

80c is a good temp for 24h mining, those cards can withstand 88c while hashing at full speed.

if you need to keep them at 70c then you have to look at those delta fans :)


http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=Apo_tgrSmps


Delta fan: 5000RPM~7000RPM, 256cfm
your fans: 1500rpm. 60 cfm.

[/quote]

7950s keep under 60c with 55% fan  no extra cooling

i like your case

Good work on that case.

Thanks!


Haha, it is fun! I love building computers, not too often I'd have a reason to need this much computer!


I've calculated pressure drop of my loop and am expecting something like 1.75 PSI of drop across the entire loop. With this pump (4.2M of head) I expect a flow rate of around 1.33 GPM. It also has a tachomoter for the pump, so if it fails I can have the bios shut the computer down.

The plumbing near the pump, res, and radiators is 1/2 OD. The tubing leaving the distribution manifold is 3/8 OD. Since I am running all of this in parallel I don't think restrictions are going to be a problem.



Haha, thanks! It sure is a lot of work and watercooling bits sure add up quickly!


I can't hold 80 at full speed, I have to downclock to 900mhz. Full speed jumps to 90-95 rather quick. I'm hoping for 70's while overclocked once watercooled.

The fans I have for my radiators are 1800RPM 103 CFM. Hopefully they will be more than enough without being too loud.




Thanks!


Thanks!

Hopefully UPS will hurry up and deliver my parts!

Edit: Looks like I found a block on my own last night, wow!

Damn ever thought of selling your cases? They look awesome for mining.

I have! In fact, I may have one for sale here in the next day or two  ;D

So my radiators showed up, and I had to put half of it together to test for leaks  ::)

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130530_165045_zps69901f6b.jpg?t=1369966345

I kinked the outlet pretty good to simulate the load of everything still missing.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130530_165107_zps4bd169e5.jpg?t=1369966311

It still moves water pretty good!

I also finished the reservoir, except for the gasket I need to cut still. I ordered some fittings for inside as well, to direct the water flow a bit better.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130530_182315_zps9848eb9c.jpg?t=1369966297

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130530_182320_zpsd16dfec4.jpg?t=1369966329

I managed to get a bit of the waterblocks done too, I'll have them finished tomorrow  8)

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130530_164923_zps68d367ed.jpg?t=1369966380

More to come  ;)

Got some more done on the waterblocks today, hope to get a lot more done tomorrow. Gotta love the weekends!

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130531_162218_zps02007c0c.jpg?t=1370053679

So I haven't posted any updates in a while, I kinda got sidetracked with a V8 S10 project  ;D

Here's a few pics of my progress though. I have everything I need now, so I hope to put it all together this weekend. Wish me luck! Custom water around ~$2800 worth of PC stuff makes me a bit nervous!

Here's my new manifold. I decided to make it out of brass instead of plastic, because drilling a ~10" deep hole perfectly straight is no fun.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130704_165711_zps02c3735e.jpg

The gasket is laser cut silicon .005" thick. It seals well, and it's reusable!

The manifold goes on top of the I/O panel, plus it also holds the cards steady. The CPU is now going to be in series with the cards, probably should have been done that way to begin with though.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130702_105044_zps1011924c.jpg

These are VRM blocks, not so sure how well this will work yet, but it has to be better than stock!

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130704_165605_zps0d2472b5.jpg

Finally, a complete GPU block with all the mounting hardware. Those little slits are .020" thick, and were an extreme PITA! The standoffs will mount through the PCB, then the brass nut will hold the block down tight.

http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/pontiacg5_2010/20130702_105306_zpsfaaf6774.jpg

Going to try laser cutting some thermal pads for the RAM and VRM blocks, that ought to be interesting. The fans I'm using are stupid powerful, and the pump has complete analog control of fan speed based on coolant temperature. Going to try and make a voltage regulating circuit that uses the 5W pump analog fan signal as reference because all these fans draw 6W+ a piece and would overheat the pump's fan controller!

More to come, soon!

Very nice case there, I've worked in a machine shop and can appreciate the time it took to punch of fold that up. Once you get your cooling controlled a bit more it it'll look nice humming along.
As easy option but maybe a bit ugly would be to use risers then mount your cards spaced out more on another plate of steal.

*edit* oh, I didn't see the last page, it looks like you'll have it under control soon.  ;)

Man Pontiacg5, it's rare I read from beginning to end on a thread. I've bookmarked this in my 'Daily Reads' so I can follow your progress. It looks like you're having fun with pushing the limits of this build. The moment when you decided to do your own water blocks just kind of blew my mind. Your machining and cad skills are seriously impressive. I'm pretty excited to see how your custom water solution works.