Bitcoin Forum

So, just finished putting together my mining rig, have a few more tweaks. Specifically, dummy plugs and jumping the PCI-E x1 slots on my motherboard.
Build is as follows:
 
3x Asus R9 280X's - R9280X-DC2T-3GD5
1300 Watt EVGA PSU - EVGA SuperNOVA 1300G2
Gigabyte Motherboard - ga-ep45-UD3L from an old computer
4GB Corsair RAM
1 double wide milkcrate + wood holders
2 PCI 16x to 1x risers - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I4BUUKM/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
1 PCI 16x to 16x riser - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008BZBFTG/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I'm using SMOS - I removed the auto donation script and will give the guy a few bucks instead.
Still learning a lot, especially how to tune the cards, how to configure BAMT (SMOS) correctly, and getting all 3 cards to function correctly. If I can, I may squeak another R9 280X in there, but that may be overdoing it for the PSU.

Looking for a few people to collaborate with and for suggestions in regards to which coins to mine, pools, etc.

Litecoin would be your best option for now, no opinions on pools though

IF you are interested in multi coin pools then you can try clevermining, whaffleppool, multipool. You can make little bit more than Litecoin mining.

Agree.

Litecoin would be reasonable and might make a profit.

Use this site to find the best profitable to mine. http://coinchoose.com/.

According to coinwarz site today zedcoin is more profitable to mine.

Does coinwars actually consider trading volume?

litecoine or dogecoins

Just mine some litecoin or dogecoin wait for their price to go up sell and make profit or mine using hashcows pool to get max profit for the current day( They mine profitable coins) :P

dustcoin.com is a decent site to work out profit also.

Thanks for all the advice guys, appreciate it!

Unfortunately, just had a nice setback last night. I was having an issue getting my 3 R9 280X's working and I'm guessing I found the cause. Last night my motherboard died on me, blinked off and on multiple times, then passed away. No POST, no LED's, no beeps, with and without everything plugged in. Just hoping it didn't hurt my cards as it was dieing.

Anyways, now I'm looking at a new CPU and motherboard probably. Time to research - AGAIN.

Hi, I think your AC is a little too high for the 3x 280xs , unless you are about to add one in the future I would recommend to go down to 1000s one

Nice rig and congrats on all the DIY work.

Litecoin is a very good choice. For multiple coins multipool is tried and tested. And for auto profit switching why not try easypool.me.

Happy mining!

Agreed Litecoin or Dogecoin

One thing though, you mentioned dummy plus and that you were using BAMT and SMOS. If that's the case you do not need the dummy plugs in Linux distro's

pbj sammich - Thanks, didn't know that about the dummy plugs!

nthunder - Thanks! It's been fun to get it all together. Even with the frustration. ;)

Timacek - I have a 4th R9 280X sitting around, but was trying to get the first three working first. Hence the 1300 watt.

So, just purchased a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ and a Sempron 145 processor.

My old motherboard is toast, but I have the Q8300 2.5Ghz Quad core from it. Anyone need it? Have a Rosewill cooler as well.

I am also having same problem . My motherboard causing huge problem. It restarts every 30-40 min.

Go4Nature, you had the same mobo as me? Mine was doing it in 1 second increments, then stopped taking any power at all. At first I thought it was the power supply, but further investigation (multiple other PSU's I had laying around) confirmed that it was the motherboard.

For what it's worth, 4 x R9 280x should add an extra consumption of roughly 900W. Normally motherboards are not designed to carry that much current directly, hence the auxiliary power cables for the GPUs. Make sure these auxiliary power cables get enough juice (from the power supply) to power the boards otherwise there will be extra demand in the motherboard. Some motherboards (like most processors) have a thermal shutdown point. Good ventilation can help in this case. Hope it helps.

Yep, had powered risers as well. Not sure what caused the final meltdown. ;) I'm just guessing it was a dieing motherboard that wouldn't post with more than one card in it. The last thing I had done, which made me capable of seeing both cards, was turning down the PCI frequency to 90, instead of the default 100. That allowed me to get actually boot the system entirely, rather than not even making it to the BIOS. After that, I turned everything off, tried connecting the third card, turned it on, and watched the disco lights as the motherboard turned on and off in rapid succession.

LTC, DOGE, other cryptso, but the scrypt asics are already out.

So, finally got the rig running perfectly. It was the motherboard giving me the issues originally. Upgraded to:

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3
AMD Sempron 145 Processor
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2X4 GB) (since my old RAM was DDR2, heh totally forgot about that until I tried putting my old RAM in the new board. "Why won't this fit?!?! Ohhh, right.")

I ditched SMOS and BAMT for PiMP (http://getpimp.org) - what a difference. Cards are running like champs and what a simple, painless and quick process. Loving Lily's Pool Manager as well.

So, already thinking about having this GPU rig start mining the ASIC proof currencies and purchasing a few GridSeeds for the ASIC capable coins. Pretty much any profit made will be spent on more hardware for mining.

what pool do you use?