Bitcoin Forum

I have a few older systems I use just as good old file servers and im wondering if I could use there pci slots for mining, I know the one has a cheap replacement card but does not do any thing fancey,

any ways I have 3 slots per system, and four the the said systems,

then I have another tower with 4pci slots and an agp slot all are unused as its a headless server,


The systems run all of the time and I was just thinking they could have some adition usage out of them.


So I got a total of about 16pci slots and one agp slot,

I've seen PCI-PCIe adapters but don't know if they work well for this. But also keep in mind you'd likely have to upgrade power supplies substantially as well.

Servers often have good power supplies but they typically don't get up into the high wattages that 4 card systems require. I've found so far that the single most costly part of these systems is a solid power unit that can actually deliver full load 24/7.

im not looking for the best cards on the market, for the older systems something small and light weight that can fit in them and give me like 40mhash per card or something,

It's probably not worth doing it. You would likely need about 40 MHash just to pay for electricity.
I haven't calculated that exactly but it's a ballpark figure worked out given my own results.

eg.

You can get 300 MHash from a 5830 and electricity runs about 12% of that.
An old system with a lesser card would use almost as much perhaps due to the older CPU/power supply. So my guesstimate is that 12% of 300 = 36 MHash to cover that electric cost.

I'm sure it's not quite that bad but I wouldn't think it's too far off.

I just ran some break even calculations on my test system. I pay about 13 cents per kwh and for me it requires about 100Mhs just to pay for the electicty.

well can any one recomend me a card to try?

I know that the 4XXX series has a model with openCL. Runs like 7-8mhs if I remember correctly. You can get the pci -> pcie adapters, but you cant run more than 1 per mobo, and I would say about 50% of the boards Ive tired with one dont work.

Eh that sucks royaly thenI doubt the systems I have could handle a pci adaptor,

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

There are a few cards you could use with out adapters but the most powerful tips out at 50mh/s. Granted agp and pci don't deliver as much power as pci express but you're thing to be at break even at best. The 4670 is agp and can hit 50 and the 5450 can be found as pcI and hit a whopping 15. Both cards cost about a hundred you're not going to pay them off at this point.

I've tried some of the old geforce 7xxx and 9500 cards (which are even PCIe) and they get 1-4,hash/s. NONE of the standard PCI cards are going to give you anything worth the expense of electric costs. One PCIe system with one decent new radeon 5770 ($130) will give you more mhash than 16 old PCI/AGP cards will do.