Bitcoin Forum

I want to upgrade my mining rig.

Right now I am using my Desktop PC:

R9 290
i5 2500k sandy bridge
Asrock P67 Pro3

I want to have 3-5 Cards in my rig. As for now I dont want to buy a new CPU or a second PC to mine.

Any recommendations for a motherboard for 1155, sandy bridge cpu?

Or is my MB able to use more than 1 card with risers? I realy didnt get that risers thing yet...

Risers do not expand capacity in terms of number of cards, unless you have more PCI slots available that are blocked by the GPUs sitting on the board.  They simply move the GPUs up and off the board, which moves the heat away from the board, creates space between the GPUs, to help cool them, and if there are more PCI slots available, exposes them so you can get at them

this will also be dependent on whether or not your current board supports crossfire, if you're using AMD GPUs, which you are.



I'm using this board in mine and running 7 GPUs:  MSI Z77A-GD65 (911-7751-032)

What I will mention if you choose this board is NOT to use MSI's update to update the BIOS.  It totally killed my board and online forums indicate this is a common problem, which seems stupid, but that is the case.  They RMA'd it and replaced it, but that took weeks.  So, just leave the BIOS alone.

You will also probably have to beef up your power supply.  DO NOT simply split power outputs to accommodate more GPUs.  Tried that and melted some wires.  Get the proper PSU for your load factor and run single power leads to the GPUs

thanks for the quick reply.

i was looking at your board and the specs are saying:

PCI-E x 16 Slots: 3
PCI-E x 1 Slots: 4

i always thought, that the mining GPUs fit in the PCI-E 16 slots... because the slots are not as long as the PCI-E 1?
so this is where the risers come in, right?

I was seeing this board on other discussions, I think i will buy this one and make my firt BTC purchase :-)

yep, you can use the pci-e x 1 slots with a 1x to 16x riser cable.  that cable will have a fitting that fits into the PCI e x 1 slot and a pci e 16 x socket for your gpu.

depending on your cards you may need powered riser cables.  These come with a molex connection soldered on to provide power to the card.  you can find both the powered and non-powered types on ebay.  I've had no luck at local electronics stores such as Fry's or Tiger Direct.

Some people also indicate that you will not need your crossfire cables bridging your cards to mine.  This was not true in my case, as I could not run multiple GPU's without the crossfire cables, although that may vary from card to card I suppose.

if you're going to use the risers, your GPU cards will not be fastened to anything solid and you'll have to fasten them to something, as you don't want them flopping around.  I took a piece of aluminum bar and some some self tapping screws and just drilled the cards to the bar and then fastened that bar to a shelf that the rest of the system is sitting on, although where and how you firm these up will depend on your setup.

and make sure your CPU will interface, naturally....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131858 Asus Maximus V EXTREME