Bitcoin Forum

Looking thru my boxes of old hardware, I found my old Socket A Athlon and my MSI K7T Turbo2 motherboard (agp and pci slots only, no pcie slots).

Would I be able to get away with using this as a mining rig if I add in those "PCI 32bit -> PCIe" adapter cards and then use the PCIe extender cables?

Has anyone had any luck with older hardware such as this, and if so how many GPUs were you able to deal with in this type of setup

why you should do this?
A new board coast about 70USD with can handle 4 gpus, 40USD for an cpu and another 20 for ram.

Isnt this better (also less power consumption) then buy for about 30-60usd sutch questionable adapters?

thanks for the input, but my question was if people had any luck using this type of set up with old hardware, not the financial implications of it vs a better one.  In addition, power is not much of a factor for me at this time (well, it is a factor, but since I operate a motel my guests use far more power on a daily basis than my mining rig would, what with AC units in the rooms, mini fridge, microwaves, tvs lights, etc).

If the PCI -> PCIe adapters do in fact work and work well, there wouldn't be anything stopping me from moving them to another board at a later date.


I currently have the following boards...

Socket A board: 1x AGP + 5 PCI slots ( one PCI slot is blocked by oversized AGP card)
LGA 775 Board: one x16 PCIe, one x1 PCIe, 2 PCI 32bit (one PCI is blocked by oversized x16 card)
LGA 1156 Board: two x16 PCIe (one acts as x4 when in CF mode), two PCIe x1, two PCI 32bit

None of these are very desirable when it comes to a dedicated mining rig, but at the moment they are the hardware that I own.

The LGA1156 system, at this time, has one of my 6870s in it.  It is also my Home Theater PC.

The LGA775 I just put a new heat sink/fan on the CPU due to the previous heat sink having a defect and not seating properly.  It runs well enough to be a secondary PC upstairs for my girlfriend to use for her hidden picture games.  As of right now I have another 6870 in it and am using it for 24/7 mining, to supplement the HTPC when I am gaming on the HTPC.

Which leaves me to the system collecting dust, the Socket A.

Since all of these systems have PCI slots to some degree, and IF those PCI to PCIe adapters were actually usable and viable with relatively no major slowdown to hashrates, I could use the Socket A system as a temporary 24/7 miner until I get around to putting together a better setup, and possiably "pass down" the hardware.  775 would replace Socket A, 1156 would replace 775, and new hardware would go into the HTPC.

I haven't used the PCI-PCIe adapter (yet, but plan to buy one as I also have quite a few old PCs that I use for other stuff), so I do not know about that, however, I am mining with a PC that has Athlon64 2800+ (1.8GHz) downclocked to 800MHz with 256MB RAM (Windows XP 32bit) and still get the ~305MH/s with my HD6870 overclocked to 1GHz core (default memory and voltage).

CPU wise it would be fine but power supply might be an issue. ATX 1.x supplies (20 pin mobo connector, and what was used during the socket a era) were light on 12v rails. check your rigs current PSU.

ATX 2.x (24 pin mobo connector) had beefier 12v rails as thats when mobos switched to deriving most voltages from it. ATX 2.x is backwards compatible so you could get a ATX 2.x PSU, drop it in if need be and later put it into a newer build.


your cables extenders would need molex connectors to get the 75 watts that the pcie spec calls for, doubt a pci slot will give that. dunno if the pci to pcie adapter takes that into account, so watch out for it.

Even if it doesn't, some time with a soldering iron would fix it :)

true, that :) soldering irons are your friend. and a molex pin extractor (DIY or bought) is a wonderful thing too, heh.

then again, i may just see if I can swap cases between the LGA775 and the SocketA systems.  I doubt that Hidden Picture games would stress an Athlon all that much.  I'll wait until a cooler day before I do that.  Too hot right now for me to even think about walking, let alone any hardware swaps.

Thanks for the information.  I will still need to get myself one of those PCIe x1 to x16 adapters before winter though.

I ahave a pci ->pci/e adapter and it works.  However, I am using it on a biostar via c7 fanless motherboard viotech 3100+ I think.  I am having problems from which I don't believe is the adapter, but from the cpu.  I can still squeak out 500 mh/s from it at 400 watts.  But, I was hoping for good perfomance and It is not.  linuxcoin does not work, unless there is some option in start-up I have to set in us 32 bit?.  Only 1 core. 1600 mhz.

Current LinuxCoin 0.2.1b is 64-bit only IIRC.