Bitcoin Forum

It seems like most people on here are running multi-GPU (3 or more vid cards) rigs... am I the anomaly in that I'm running a single card at the moment??

I'm running XMR STAK with a 980 GTX and i7 4790K getting 815-825 H/S combined (CPU and GPU)... is that decent?  I'm thinking of adding an RX 580 into the mix, but I doubt my Corsair Gold 750W could handle it?

Anybody with some advice?

Yes, they are.
Yes, you can.

Get some more cards. It's almost always worth it. Most popular coins to mine will most likely go up in price, so the sooner you start and the faster you mine, the better.

Running multiple GPU rigs is the norm because it's most profitable. With a single GPU, its more of like your GPU is also shouldering the electricity costs of your mobo,storage,etc. That doesn't mean that you won't earn anything tho. It's not just that efficient.

This is why companies like ASUS even build motherboards that can support up to 19 GPUs.

It costs $685 before the GPU's for each rig if I'm running dual 850's - it costs $845 before GPU's for my 1600w rigs, so the more cards, the better to bring down the cost per rig.


If I built 2 3 card 1080 TI's it would cost $6,200

The same 6 cards on 1 rig only costs $5,345

If you're running one card per rig for multiple rigs, you're losing out.

As others have mentioned, more cards per rig is all about reducing overhead costs, that is, costs for obtaining and maintaining components that do not directly contribute to your hashrate (and thus revenue stream).

You purchase a CPU/motherboard/RAM/storage device/1 or more PSUs for each rig. At one card per rig, you're purchasing far more of those than is desirable.

Now consider what happens as you add more cards per rig. This usually requires additional or more expensive PSUs, and additional risers. However, the amount you put down for a CPU/motherboard/RAM/storage device remains constant. (Perhaps you might pay more for the motherboard, depending on which you select.)

Thus, in terms of performance vs. initial overall cost, you're doing better. (Think hashrate/[sum of all component costs])


Also consider performance vs. electricity costs. Each CPU/motherboard/RAM/storage device draws some amount of power at the wall. The fewer of these you have for some given number of cards, the better you're doing in terms of efficiency.



Of course, not everyone wants to put tons of cards in one rig. (For most of us, 6-12 seems to be the sweet spot.) This is because A) Setting up more cards in a rig tends to be a real pain, especially with troubleshooting, and B) Too many eggs in one basket is not a good thing. If a critical component, such as a motherboard, were to fail for any reason, then you would have more GPUs down until the component is replaced or the cards are relocated.

However, the vast majority of us would agree that more than 1 card per rig is ideal for a dedicated mining rig.

(There may be an argument to make if you happen to have several unused desktops, each with room for exactly one card, and you have free electricity. However, I would assume that this situation is rather uncommon.)

Agree with everything said here!

I like doing 8 cards per rig because I find that managing them is the sweet spot for Windows. If one fails, you're still at 7 while you get a replacement and troubleshooting is simple enough.

Add more cards is easy and your 750 can support at least 1 more if not two if you get your settings correct and run them around 65-70% you should be fine.  Using more cards gains more coins and if the value of the coin you are mining shoots up then you have exponentially more than you would have mining with one.  Yes it cost more up front but it takes money to make money.

Yes, you have to put more gpu's to your sistem, in order to increase ROI
and it all depends on the price of one PCI-e slot = if your PC's price is 1000$ and have 4x PCI-e  and you are using all of them - then it means one slot's price is 250$.
But if you use only one slot, then the price is 1000 which is expensive

Yes, many reasons why some people run multi GPUs. One of them they want more profit, but if multi GPU certainly more power consumption. And need some additional cooling tools.