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Hello guys,

I have few problems with getting heat of my R9 290x down. I am at moment runing them in computer case with very good ventilation (4x 10cm vents), however it looks like thats not gona work so i am gona first try with open comp. case and big went blowing into it. Can anyone confirm if that is good solution, i have seen few rigs with cards still being in omputer case and no problems with temperatures, what is so different on my side if ambient temperature is 15 degrees?

Also is liquid cooling worth it (only considering noise). I want to reduce my noise on GPU fans for 50% will liquid cooling do that?

First, having passive ventilation isn't good enough, you need intake/exhaust fans. Second, try using a good thermal paste like Arctic MX-4. If that doesn't drop the temps enough, I recommend finding a way to get more airflow to the card. I keep the side of my case off with a floor fan blowing at the gpu (a small desk fan would probably work alright too).

If that fails, watercooling is a great solution if you have the money and space for radiators, fans, pump, tubing, etc etc....

Oh didnt know there is thermal paste for GPUs as well as CPUs. I am not sure if i would know how and where to add it on. As for ventilation computer box has actually intake/exhaust ventilation sucking air at bottom and then exhausting it on upside creating airflow trough cards, but it doesnt help much since GPU temp goes straight to 95 on first minute of mining.

seems rather high for just a minute of mining, I'd suggest getting decent case fans and check the target temperature for the GPU

Yep, both cpu's and gpu's have thermal paste on their chips.

You can use this to see how to take the card apart and clean/repaste it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvD1s83u_hQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvD1s83u_hQ)

Then just go in reverse order to put it back together.

Thanks leetmodz for help.

seanmtc where can i set target temperature for GPU, GUIMiner does not have that option only CGminer has. Should i get rather CGminer?

Water cooling is beautiful. It is so nice to sit next to a reasonably powerful rig while it's mining away without it making a racket

cgminer is supposed to have some autotemp settings, though I've never used this as many people say it is ineffective and decreases hash rate, with an older ATI card I had I could set it using the GPU overdrive I believe, you can manually control the GPU fan for some AMD cards within CCC although I'd imagine having it maxed out would cause the fans to fail prematurely, as well as being extremely noisy, so try and get a nice balance :)

Ye the balance is the real problem. I cant get it. I get 95 degrees on card if i set vent to 100%, i cant even think on current setup having it lower. Also i noticed that my computer did not shut of when temperature reached 96 degrees on card, it just completly froze, i noticed that CGminer does have settings to use max temperature, is there any way how i can set max temperature in other software? I havent noticed it in MSI Afterburner.

Drop your ASICs in a tank of mineral oil.  Pump that oil through a radiator (heater core) with a blower to push air through the cooling fins.

You can put just about everything except HDDs in oil, even the PSU.  The CPU/GPU/PSU fans will help circulate the oil to aid in thermal dissipation.

Google it =D

As a hobby, watercooling is a blast.  Combining it with another hobby, altcoin mining is also a blast.  However, its fairly expensive to combine the two.  For every card you watercool add 100$ for the cooling block, then you have radiators, fittings, reservoirs and pumps.  But nothing compares to mining at 3Mhashes in near silence..

if you're just talking about 1 or 2 290x on your desktop give watercooling a shot.  remember to keep the stock cooling around in case you resell it. 

if you're building a farm for profit, a few box fans from the hardware store are more economical. 

Spiffy ok so you can confirm that water cooling is nearly silent?

Kalus does watercooling "fridge" spend so much electricity? What is its power in W of some default water cooler? Also does anyone has aprox estimate how much does it cost full water cooling setup for 2 cards?

Compared to the fans spinning on your videocards, watercooling is near silent.  You will still have noise from the fans on your radiators but if you get good quality fans the noise tradeoff is perfectly acceptable... I have three videocards watercooled and one not, all 7950 msi twin frozr, and the one that isn't watercooled drowns out the rest of my computer. 

Not always on the GPU, he needs to be careful that they did not use a pad, unless they have changed that practice.

Also, try open case first OP...with a fan blowing on it or whatever. Unless your wanting total silence, try this first.

You also have to think about the extra power your using for the WC system. Many of us are living on the edge getting as much watts/amps out of a PSU... adding WC will only add to the load.

It wont be cheap.  Your best bet is to look and build your own system which can get expensive. Few hundred low end once you factor in the blocks and the rad. The pre built all in one package's for watercooling are not that great.

I hesitate giving advice to you on this, because you still seem to be "green" with computer hardware.... WC is a little more complicated to put together and working without leaks and stuff.

LOL forgot to add that he/she should only do that if they never plan on reselling said items LOL. I dont thank a person buying would be very happy getting a card dripping with oil!. Though that is one of my wishes before I die is to make a system like that.

Thank you guys very much for help so far. I have opened case, purchased table fan and its blowing right onto card. Temperatures on 50% GPU fan are now 75 degrees.


I dont want to open new topic so i am gona ask here do i need to create two workers if i am using two GPUs each with its own GUIMiner instance runing? Becouse now it looks like that on Litecoin pool all i am getting is read in KHahs only from 1 card, so i am guessing i need two workers.

Also do you guys think its ok to run 2 r9 290x GPUs at max + CPU I3 4130 (all three of them mining)? I am on 850W PSU.

I'm glad you got the temp problem fixed! As for the workers, I am not sure.

To your last Q, it depends if guiminer is already combining some of the cpu power like Cudaminer does on Nvidia cards. On Cudaminer, if you run a cpuminer as well, the gpu kh/s goes down more then cpu mining adds. You will have to test it and see. 850w gold, silver or bronze? I say gold and silver rating would probably be ok for that setup.

Yeah, you can make two workers

just call cgminer two times using the -d switch:

cgminer.exe -c configfile0.conf -d 0
cgminer.exe -c configfile1.conf -d 1

Then is GPU 0 "OFF" in the first process, and GPU 1 is "OFF" in the other process.
This can be useful if you want separate worker for each card.

Thank you guys for all help here, i have solved now all problems except 1:
Hash rate reported on pool is much lower than what is on my GUIminer. GUIminer says 700khahs per card, coinotron pool says 100Khahs. I have tried changing settings all arround with no much luck.

a refrigerator will add to the cost by $100, but you need to have 3x or 4x the loop volume in the refrigerator, or else you'll overwhelm the refrigerator with the heat being generated.    a fridge compressor isn't designed to run 24/7; it has an on-off duty cycle.  make sure there is a lot of reservoir water in the fridge.  

There was a project i read some time ago that utilized a water cooling system and a pump to supply the underfloor heating of a bathroom.  the builder remarked his family had actually asked him to build another mining rig to warm a second bathroom up, and this was the first time his wife was supportive of his mining hobby!

Your original goal was to make a quiet, desktop system.  if you add a fridge to the room, you will be adding the compressor noise of the fridge.  

have you tried other pools?  and do you have the same issue with accepted hash rates?

Have you checked in your cgminer stats if you have many reject or HW errors?

The pool hashrate is only based on valid shares.

Yes all pools report same problem, 10%-20% of my actual GUIMiner hash rate.

Could it be drivers? Could it be that internet signal wireless is only 4 of 5 in quality and not 5 of 5?

GUI miner reports no rejected shares. I have not yet had chance to do mining with cgminer to check HW.

Ok tried with cgminer now, tried different pool, 0 Hardware errors.

However on pool website it says 377 valid shares and 27 invalid shares. Is that high ratio of invalid shares. CGminer says 0 HW i dont get it .
Cgminer says hashing at moment with 400khahs, pool says 140khash. Please guys i need your help i dont want to spend 100 eur on electric bill just to found i mined single LTC.

Guys does anyone has aprox number how many shares should i get on 500Khahs speed in lets say 1 hour, or maybe 1 day?

That is impossible to say, depend on the difficulty, Which for some coins change a lot.
It also depend on the pool, and pure luck.

Its much better to estimate on basis of coins per day:

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Its ok to have 0-3% invalid/reject/stale shares, if you have more then look at your setting or pool connections. HW errors is imo not acceptable in any case (unless you know what you are doing).    

Alright, well my pool hash rate got better now, close to about 60% of actual hash rate.

I have further problem which is my actual hash rate, i am can run 600khahs and max intensity 15. If i get intensity 20 on both GPUs computer freezes.
Also very wierd it is if i use settings that are suppose to be best for r9 290x   (--thread-concurrency 32784 -i 20 -w 512) i get only 80Khahs??? I have AMD catalyst 13.11 beta 9, should i get never drivers even that those are reported to be the best for r9 290x?

Dunno if it will help, but these are some epic configs: http://rumorscity.com/2013/12/03/litecoin-gpu-mining-with-amd-r9-290-and-r9-290x-sweet-spot-for-1000khashsec/ (http://rumorscity.com/2013/12/03/litecoin-gpu-mining-with-amd-r9-290-and-r9-290x-sweet-spot-for-1000khashsec/)

Justin Soo who wrote the article are awesome - I used to guide to undervolt my MSI R9 280X, Justin is pretty helpful if you post on the page.
Highly recommended.

Thanks for help, those are all 20 intensity setups though, i will try on 15 probably wont get close to that hash rate.

Are you only trying with both cards at the same time? maybe it's screwing up on 20 intensity because the psu can't provide enough power for both cards. Try mining with that config on one card, and see what happens.

Just spitballing.

Liquid cooling is worth it for GPU longevity.

Heat is a killer and my liquid cooling setup runs 15-20*C cooler than air fans.

I have 2x 7950's that use non-standard PCB's that are air cooled.
They run in my open rig at 64-70*C

The 2x 7950's that are using EK waterblocks with a 4x120mm radiator and 4x fans runs at 48*c all day in my house that swings from 71-80*F.

It's expensive though. My watercooling setup alone is at least $500-600. (radiator, Resevoir+pump, flow meter, tubing, fittings, GPU waterblocks)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/585/4uw7.jpg

Love it! <3

Im sure your wife approves :)

leetmodz Actually it does work on 1 card, performace is quite bad but it works on single card. Once i go to two it hangs. Do you think its becouse of PSU? I really dont think it is becouse many people are mining with 2 r9 290x on 850W PSU (gold) at high intensity 900Khahs settings.

I am still very much puzzled i have tried many different pools tried everything that is based in EU only and i still get bad reports on Khahs. Could it be internet signal? At moment i am having 3 of 5 in quallity of wireless. I really dont know what else could be.

did you try both cards separately?  maybe one just can't handle the config. also try upping the voltage a little bit on the one card and see if the perf goes up (stability reasons).

oh, and are you talking about pool kh/s or what is displayed on the terminal? if you making anywhere near what similar miners are making,  I would just ignore it(click the "pool"  button on the pool website and look for similar kh/s).

edit: ping test the pools and post what numbers you get.