Bitcoin Forum

Price: ~US$230

Pictures:
• http://vga.zol.com.cn/269/2699569.html
• http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=14062839037

pretty Good!!

This is relevant to my interests.  But yeah, how is power handled there?

Let me know what you find out.  It's pretty interesting, though I'd like to not have to kill the CPU fan. 

Also, unrelated, plz send Thai chick.  Doesn't have to be the one in picture, just of similar quality.

Yeah. I made a post about this way back but nobody seemed to notice it :-\

I am REALLY interested in this type of setup. Seems ideal if you want to avoid dual GPU cards like 7990s.

Keep us posted !

If i remember correct, there is one, or two molex 5-12V on this board. so i wouldent worry about power.
It`s quiet nice, but not cheep. best thing is, you can buy cheepest MB on market with PCIe

There are TWO 6 pin power connectors that lead directly to the PCIe slots.

Since this was designed in mind with BTC mining, I think the product is quite nice and qualitative ( uses PLX chip for PCIe switching etc. )

But somebody needs to test it.

I don't read/speak Chinese, but if someone can order/sell me one, I will take a chance and report back as I need something like this.

Amateurs. Here's an 18 pcie slot backplane  :o  http://www.trentontechnology.com/products/backplanes/picmg-13-backplanes/pci-express-backplane-bpx6806

No idea on price of it or the required system host board tho.

Yeah that thing costs $2000 while this Chinese thing costs $200.

Worth a try IMHO.

Something I didn't notice from the first thread.

Anyone notice the slot spacing in the photos?

In the photo of blank board it looks like the slots are paired right next to each other.
Then look at the photo of the board with 7 cards loaded.

Is it just me or does the spacing not match?  I only noticed because the spacing of the slots seems foolish.  Every second card is crammed right next to the adjacent card and then there is a giant gap to the next card.

Look again at pictures.

Design is perfect.

Slots are facing opposite ways so GPU fans got tons of breathing space.

It really is thought out.

Someone needs to let us buy them in the EU and test it out.

I think the idea is to have the cards alternating front to back to allow space for airflow, actually quite a good idea, be nice to get 1 or 2 imported to the uk

Yeah. I wonder how much the tax will be when importing these.

There is like a limit for products under $60 USD or something but above that there will be duty and VAT to be paid I think :'(

True, but then maybe my long lost chinese uncle is sending me a new "Gift" that he thinks i might like :D

http://www.amfeltec.com/products/x1pcie-splitter3.php

I bet that costs like $400 while the Chinese do 7 slots for $200 ;)

but still, had Pcie ;)

Not so, apparently $188 list:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15672.msg358692#msg358692

Of course for $150-$200 I'll just build another rig and call it a day ;)

Mine only cost me $600.00... Dual LV Xeon SHB another $200... 8 GB RAM $30... 2360W server PSU $99...

How many GPU's in that system?

None yet. I need to figure out whether to:

a) Go single-slot air cooled
b) Go double-slot air cooled
c) Go single-slot water cooled

And of course that pesky 8 GPU driver limit :(
Although I hear that VT-d may work, I have yet to try it myself. Luke-Jr has VT-d working on one of his boxes, but only with one card, and it keeps freezing or crashing every so often, last I heard.

This is a take-it-easy, slow kind of project for the weekends, since I am so busy right now :(

more expensive than buying a full board; not worth it.

side note: eww, he uses deepbit ::)

No matter how it goes please do keep us posted. I am eagerly watching what people come up with this Chinese one and the HQ backplanes.

It is much cheaper getting 8*7970s than 4*7990s here in the UK etc. so I believe these boards do have a future. No need for powered extenders or racks now etc.

What is total power requirements for a 7970 vs a 7990 though?

??? How do you know price of 7990?

Inside information. Need I say more ;D ?

Here in the UK the 5970 still costs 400 GBP or about 633 USD while a 5870 can be had for about 180 GBP or about 284 USD so MUCH cheaper going that route rather than with dual GPU cards. Only in the US 2*5870 > 5970 in terms of price. Here it is 2*5870 < 5970 in terms of price.

I've ordered two of these from the taobao.com vendor and am going to try them out with 7x 5750s and 7x 5770s.

I'll post back here once I receive mine and have tried them out.

If anybody has any experience with virtd I'd be very interested in hearing about it as I'm going to try adding these to one of my other rigs long term.

What's the original purpose of this kind of equipment? Folding? Cracking password hashes?

Yeah. It seems you cannot buy directly from taobao ( only if you are in China ).

Let us know how you get on. A review would be great. Thank you very much !

Would someone be willing to purchase one for me, and send it to me?

There are services for shopping on Taobao from outside China.

Any chance you might be able to share 'the wealth' as it were ?

I would LOVE to get my hands on 1 or 2 of those extenders.

I see he sent you one of these extenders : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64514

Did you get it ? Does it work ?

A little review with pictures would be epic.

Thank you !

If anybody is interested in getting one of these babies checkout https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64514.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64514.0)

This is the best I can do as I will not ship junk and ruin my rep, but if some of you get together a substantial volume (5-10) I'm 100% certain that I can get some kind of discount out of them and get them to speed up shipping. Mine should have shipped to me this week but atm I'm still waiting :(

Clarification:

I have shipped extenders (the regular cables) to Goat. Not one of these splitter I'm still waiting for my own to arrive.

OK. I think it would be great for you if you post some pictures and a proper review when you get your unit in.

If people see that this is working properly they will be more inclined to buy some from you ;)

I will be doing so asap. But I need the damn boards to arrive first.

any news?

The batch I ordered in had issues with one or more of the components. So my new eta on hardware is the end of next week.

There'll be pics etc as soon as they land here  ;D

I can't wait for the detailed pictures.

Thanks so much Bigpiggy01 !!!

This may be really useful for me in the future.

How much to ship to UK ( duties ??? )

Shows up fine in my browser - hit the auto-translate button (chrome).  1399 yuan isn't too much.

Subscribing as this looks like a perfect fit for my oil cooled rig.

one small comment; rather than removing the cpu heatsink, I assume you could use a PCIe16x cable with their male/male adapter and put the entire board a bit higher. At least Id give it a shot.

UPDATE:

The taobao.com vendor (link in the op) now has a notice on their site saying shipments are delayed until mid March  :'(

mind if I bud in to lurk about ? looks very interesting

This is their new product, PCI-E 1x extender with external power supply, using standard SATA cable, so the length is customizable, only $15:

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=15891260200

http://img03.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i3/35847560/T2g.OvXhdXXXXXXXXX_!!35847560.jpg

http://img02.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i2/35847560/T21nGvXalbXXXXXXXX_!!35847560.jpg

http://img02.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i2/35847560/T2goGvXkpXXXXXXXXX_!!35847560.jpg

And new 1-to-7:

http://img01.taobaocdn.com/imgextra/i1/35847560/T2Ln1vXmtaXXXXXXXX_!!35847560.jpg

pci-e riser using sata cables is awesome.

Is there a limit on the length of those SATA cables?

China is too awesome, why am I stuck on the wrong continent?  :-[

WOW. Those products are EPIC.

Somebody really needs to let us buy these puppies up !

Sata cables is also very nice idea and this time there is no need to have a different CPU cooler.

Any news from Bigpiggy01 ?

This new version arrived yesterday.

Expect pics etc over the weekend possibly Monday as I'm busy moving atm.

any updates?

sorry, none yet. fulfillment issues.

Late tonight my time  ;D

yay

Got a link to that other board with the 7 ports?

That Taobao site is a pain to navigate! I live in australia so shipping is usually easy from china, i'm definitely going to order a couple of these and the sata extenders when I can figure out how to get them to send me the verification code properly!

Got my card a few days ago. I plugged the SATA extender into my PCI-E 16x extender, which was plugged into a PCI-E 1x-to-16x extender. I haven't got time to fill all 7 slots with video cards, only 2 slots on the extension card are currently occupied, with one more on the mainboard's PCI-E 16x slot. All three cards work great.

Sorry for the poor pic quality:

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/5699/img0009apq.jpg

OK. Where can I buy lots of these for cheap in the UK ;D

What is the price for the old product and the new one with the SATA cables ?

Interested also, these + a small atom motherboard would make a nice litle gpu rig

ask bigpiggy for a quote as he will test them first then ship them to ya

I like these cables and the extension card, send some to Canada eh !

just putting that out there

I'd be interested in buying this product, message me when someone starts selling these things in the US.

Sorry guys,

I'm having trouble with my PSU for this build so pics will have to wait another 24 or so hours.

What I will say atm is don't get overly excited. This supplier has ISSUES to work on like improper placing of holes in the board for support legs or fitting into rack mounting and they can't even pack domestically shipped product so it arrives undamaged :( (only snapped off pci-e locks but still damage). The sata connectors are a nice touch but the ones that ship with the board are well on the short side for anything but a motherboard next to the splitter/bridge.

I'll do proper pics etc once I have proper lighting in the morning.

News ?

Pulling my hair out atm with getting this to work with a VM with GPUs assigned to it.

Pics in the morning.

Long promised pics:

https://i.imgur.com/Rwogq.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CUe6D.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RfUC8.jpg

Problems so far,

The connector only being 20cm effectively means that you need to mount the mobo on a tray especially if you want to run 69XX or the slightly longer reference 58xx. I have tried replacing the two sata cables that the board ships with with 2x sata III in 35cm I get a board working light as per the instructions on
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=14062839037 (http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=14062839037) but I get weird detection errors.

Detection of GPUs is flaky at best under both ubuntu 12.04 11.10 and Win7. Even if you remove GPUS from the main mobo.

Atm this still need quite a bit of improvement those being A) better preferably longer connectors if you want to use the sata setup. B) An atx power connector from the board so you could use it to power a mobo as well. C) bringing back the pci-e 16-16 connector.

EDIT: the setup in the picture is 8x Saphire 1gb 6950 with 7 on the extender and 1 on the MSI GD-70 when running they do 2900 m hash in total under Win7 I will post hash results once I get proper virtualization up and running.

Why need to virtualize ?

8 is the GPU limit ...

Nope with virtualization you can get beyond that by assigning gpus to individual VMs.

Sunbreak had a working setup at one point so does I believe Luke-jr.

 :-[ I had it running with 11 GPUS as well at but then decided to do a :tidier set up and ended up breaking it. So getting that working again will have to wait until dISh comes over to help me out as I'm kind of a linux idiot.

It's a shame you are testing on such an unstable platform, but if you are able to test on a bigger board without the special expansion card, I would be interested in the results. So far, the expansion card seems to be causing most of the instability, am I right?

I'm guessing you are using KVM and IOMMU?

qemu-kvm and IOMMU  ;D

One of the things that has been giving me trouble has been linux and the linux amd drivers not liking my saphire 1gb 6950s (the ones that don't unlock but the memory down clocks nicely even under windows). dISh tweaked that during the initial install that worked out ok but even repeating what he did initially it hasn't worked for me, as I am like I said a linux idiot. (and before someone brainy tells me to boot with nomodeselected in grub, that isn't enough it's a driver bug apparently specific to the card I was dumb enough to decide on for this build)

The driver issue seems to be specific to this card only as I tried with a pair of 6990s and some 5870s and had no issues what so ever.

Under WIN7 it boots up and detects just fine provided that you remove the GPU from the mobo during the initial driver install.

I'm interested in one of these boards as I have a need for higher density to free up some space. The issues though have me slightly deterred. Macbook-air's setup seems to work with 3 gpus. Bigpiggy01, have you attempted pulling a couple cards out of the setup to see if it is the number of cards causing the issue or is it just the 6950s? I was having major boot issues with my 6870s in 11.04 as well. I don't think the 6 series cards and linux like each other very much. My plan was to use a 5870 in the zero video out slot and the 6870s in the others, but I just stuck with windows and it has been running fine for a month.

At minimum could we get a list of people interested in ordering some of these boards once they're confirmed working so we can get a bulk price break. I'll start as number one:

1. Beaflag VonRathburg - 1 board
2.
3.
.
.
.
etc...

Copy, add your name, and paste.

Could be fun, and they are not too expensive.

Just a quick word of warning on the new model you need a MONSTER PSU to power up the board properly the two 6 pin power in lines each need around 350W for the board to work properly.

If you happen to have a large single rail PSU no problem but getting that much juice from single lines on a multi rail psu is a bitch. Should you happen to have a nice single rail it's easy as pie. Atm I'm working on a rig case to hold two of these babies along with a mobo. Please note this power is not used by the board it only actually uses about 6-10W (which adds up with what the supplier states on Taobao) it just needs it to meet the pci-e standards.

Some of you guys have been asking for prices on these boards in BTC all I can say atm is bear with me as I'm still working on freight pricing, this is a much more complicated procedure from here than it initially seems as A I don't feel comfortable shipping these boards as regular courier freight (I had two damaged ones arrive initially) but rather as fragile freight furthermore B they have a pretty awful volume to weight ration making air freight overly pricy :( .

Very interested in these, power should not be a problem. I wonder how these would run if you connect 2 to 1 PC for 14 GPUs with VT-d.

Also has the problem been solved, where running an 8th GPU on the motherboard would cause issues ?

I don't have a clue about intel as I'm AMD all the way.

But this is running atm with 11 GPUS using qemu-kvm and it's going really nicely :)

The 8th GPU issue is fixed by not having it on the mobo during driver install so that's a fairly simple fix. Atm I'm working on a proper rig case for 2x extender and MSI GD 70 mobo including PSU mounts.

I fully expect that 2-3 of these extenders attached to a single rig is fully doable by instead of assigning individual GPUs to each VM assigning each controller to each VM in order to simplify the process. If anyone has any kind of experience with doing something like that please share :)

This is good news. I have been in discussions with Advantech about lending me a VT-d capable host board for 30 days, I guess we will see how that pans out. They haven't tested it with my board, but their engineers say there isn't any reason that it shouldn't work.

For VT-d all you need is a motherboard based on Intel Q series chipset, Q35/Q45 for 775, Q57 for 1156 and Q67 for 1155. It doesn't have to be an expensive server. Ofcourse CPU must support standard VT.

Few questions:

Will the board take triple slot cards in all slots ( such as ASUS HD7970 DirectCU II )
When can you ship to UK and how much ?

Thanks.

I am sure you are bound to hit some limit sooner or later.

32 GPUs I think is the max even for Nvidia per one system board.

Take a look at my sig link. ;) Can't get much other than server parts for it. If you know of an inexpensive, VT-d capable SHB to fit on it, by all means please let me know. I've been looking at a C206 based board, because I want to ensure compatibility for the future, as well as giving me sufficient RAM headroom for all the VMs I need to run.

It looks like macbook-air has a purchase solution. Shipping at the rate mentioned on there is going to be a  rather interesting proposition.

What's the catch ? he is selling for $200 but official price is $230 ? Or is he the one who manufactures them ?

Well the supplier whoever he is may be has had issues delivering undamaged product domestically at a comparable freight price. However, it is a good product but anyone claiming to be able to ship something that belongs in fragile freight with the volume and length of one of these + packaging is either A) the supplier and eating at least some freight costs or B) about to get seriously burned.

If you're interested go ahead and buy one but I'd advise using bitmit's escrow until you see undamaged product arrive.

I have a spare one that I don't have enough video cards to fill all the 7 slots. The card had been tested and confirmed working well. 42+5 BTC is the starting price, you can bid for it. Warranty goes to the original seller, but I can help you communicate with him if needed.

I'm intending on getting one of these soon, I have the cards to fill it just need to arrange an order ;)

Same here but concerned about a couple of things :

-warranty
-who the actual seller is
-product arriving intact through post
-what revision will we get
-does it have bugs still like short SATA cable
-costs of import + shipping etc.

Anyone else in the UK buying this ???

Would SATA cables rated for SATA III work better than SATA II? I don't know if the cables are actually different, but maybe they are.

I tried with SATA III instead of II hoping to get an extra 5cm but it didn't work stably :( However SATA III in the same length works just fine thought I don't see any performance difference at all difference.

Other options for better connectors would be HDMI cables that are supposedly also capable of handling pci-e 1x in much greater lengths USB 3.0 is supposedly also capable of handling pci-e 1X however I have 0 info on lengths etc.


Well if I sell stuff I'm the seller however I'm not willing to move these personally until I have a proper working solution.

After receiving damaged product via domestic shipping here, I have become extremely leery of just selling this as I do with other taobao items, as basically I don't want to deal with the hassle of returns etc except in fairly extreme situations such as lost/damaged in transit and would rather leave it than having to deal with such on a regular basis.

Atm they're shipping 2.0 with the sata connectors.

My only complaints atm are again shipping and sata length (this needs resolving in order to use multiple boards or attach this to a cased rig).

Import costs ought to be negligible as I can at least ship 1-2 pieces marked as "samples" shipping however is atm NASTY the cheapest fragile solution i have atm is around 95 USD per item to US/EU I'm still working on this as it really ruins the economic feasibility of this as an expansion route.

I could only hazard a guess how insane the costs will be to australia then :( ironically TAOBAO to here would be an easier solution however the onsite translation really sucks through chrome and they dont seem to like my phone number for their "verification' thing so i'm trying to get some help in sorting this out

Good luck in getting the issues sorted out Bigpiggy

Ummm AUS is about 35% cheaper than US/EU on regular courier freight from China the same applies to fragile but the cost is still daunting. I think this is going to end up with me taking a trip down south (planned anyway) picking up a smaller batch and then packaging them myself prior to shipment (if I can figure out something fairly easy this might even be able to go through regular freight) as dISh has also just received a damaged batch :(

Where does the damage usually occur? Is it just the thing snapping in half because it is so long? You might be able to alleviate that with double corrugated cardboard on both side of it. Wrap the sandwich in tape, and add bubble wrap to that.

This made me LOL. Cables are exactly the same.

SATA III is just controller mambo jumbo magic.

I just prefer this, clean and confined


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816152125R

The point here is to get the most hash/$. That server is a ripoff.

That power distribution PCB is awesome. Wonder how much that part would cost. Looks like it has pairs of 6 and 8 pin connectors.

I read the posts but unless I somehow missed I didn't see the details on your actual computer setup, MB, CPU, Video Cards used. Will that AMD virtualization and KVM work on any modern AMD setup or is it limited to certain MB chipset & CPU series? Which virtual machine software are you using? VMware is the only one I've played around with a long time ago.

I am pretty computer savy, worked doing computer repairs for a few years, but never worked with server hardware so never had a need to learn about virtualization on hardware/software.

I think the chipset on motherboard your using and CPU has to support VT-D virtualization for it to work, my current setup seems to support this so i'm probably going to bit the bullet and buy one of these this week

Got a whole bunch of 5850's for cheap that need a good home :)

AMD offers the equivalent of VT-d (some say it is even better actually), called IOMMU. If you have an AMD based platform, that is the option you need for this to work.

Any update on this board ?

Where can I get some too ???

This thing is really cool, but I am guessing it would face a lot of power problem and hardware issues...