Bitcoin Forum

Hi Guys,

I am considering buying 3x ATI Sapphire 5850 Extreme 1024MB graphics cards for bitcoin mining, however as these cards do not have a blower style fan, will the temperatures struggle a lot when three of them are sandwiched together in crossfire? Due to the design of my motherboard, there will be no "breathing" space between the cards.  A picture of the card is below:

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2011/06/sapphire-hd-5850-xtreme-1gb-review/radeonhd5850-3b.jpg

I have been looking for some "reference" style cards but all the stores I have tried so far have been out of stock unfortunately. So that is why I am looking at these cards, hoping that they will be able to bare the temperatures and so suffice for my requirements.

If any of you have had experience with these cards, please do feel free to reply to this thread with your experiences and opinions.

Kind Regards,

Alec

I have 2x of these coming tomorrow man I hope I did the right thing. Havent built a PC in over 5 years so should be a mixture of Zen/Rage as I work thu it. 

Either way overclockers UK told me

1. Dont put it in a case

2. Large room is good

3. Buy fan and send the air flow down the space between the cards.  <--- I got big cool glowing Blue LED one but im a total sadnerdgeek it seems.

4. Dont put in fridge

5. Stop hastlling chevron for mineral oil freebe's and ebay fishtanks because of somthignt o do with hotspots and oil cooling just didnt work with GPU's <----- dude had 20 years doing this stuff so i just took his word for it .......Sad panda face tho cos was goign to make a bit of an art project with it.

6. Hide in your air conditioned companys server room.



If your interested will post my system specs once its all going and will let you know how it goes. As this is my prototype miner might be a while cos I gota get it working.

For best mining results, don't run in crossfire mode.

My pototype system arrived today. \o/

WIll be mounting on  http://www.finemeshmetals.co.uk/perforated.htm (http://www.finemeshmetals.co.uk/perforated.htm) as I could end up having a big farm. Also Im a handy with a welder and a bit arty so wana make this rack look cool as well as making bank.

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 PCI-Express ATX Motherboard   
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** 
(XFX Pro 750W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply 
OCZ Agility Series 30GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT30G)   
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 250 3.00GHz (Socket AM3)
Kingston HyperX Blu 2GB (1x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Single Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1/2G)
Akasa AK-274CB-4BLS 120mm Blue LED Fan

Friend will be setting up Linux for me over the next few days will let you know how these cards are with heat.

Im really lucky tho becuase my two PCI's that run at 16x are slots 1 and 3 meaning I have a little air gap. Maybe you need to think about upgrading your motherboard.

Dont flame me to hard this is my first ever build and I started learning about all this a week ago and I dont have an IT back ground and followed alot of advice I gained from these forums + some dude at overclockers who seemed to know his stuff.

Constructive crit would be great.

OP I hope to have some data for you soon TM.


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In b4 overspec system for mining: If bitcoins die overnight I wana beable use/sell them as basic gaming rigs to the eve-online comunity as they all dual box and need 2 x screens.


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Freindly bump for a fellow noob.

Well Alec its up and running. If your interested I can share some data with.