Bitcoin Forum

It's f'in killing me at this point. seems I have to reload the entire OS every time one of my gpus overheats or goes dead or whatever the hell you call it. The whole xorg, graphical interface error comes up and I'm screwed. I've used the sudo aticonfig -f --initial --adapter=all line to try and reconfigure the gpus and it never works. l also use the auto start script from the headless wiki, but it seems if i just hold the shutdown button and restart it, it rarely restarts.

Is linuxcoin just buggy? or am i just too much of a noob to do it right? Does it need to be updated? i just can't understand why a system is so damn fickle. You move a gpu to try a new slot or add a card and you have to start all over again.

Is there a more stable way to do this? is following the linuxcoin wiki just out of date?

I'd greatly appreciate some advice on getting some stable rigs. The longest I've kept one stable is about a a week now and I am fairly certain I am not having heat issues.

Thanks in advance.

Have no stability issues with linuxcoin whatsoever. I just boot it of an USB stick in persistent mode and launch cgminer and it runs and runs and keeps running on both my rigs. Worst thats happened is the GPU crashing when I overclocked too far, all I have to do is restart cgminer- although I read if the first card crashes, you may need a reboot to cure it.  If I add more cards, I also do need to run aticonfig, and then reboot. Thats completely normal.

Anyway, I think you should find out and/or describe more in detail whats happening. Is it just the GPU crashing, is there a problem with the OS or stick perhaps? What do you mean its not starting, is the machine not booting or only the miner app not launching? What cards, miner etc do you use? What clocks on the cards.. You are running this in persistent mode, right?

Yeah basically followed the linuxcoin headless install wiki to start. I wrote a mining bash script for cgminer to handle my pool, fan, engine and memory control. I also use the auto start script from the wiki, but I think I'm going to cut that out, because when the gpu's get sick, I hold down the power button to shut down and then restart it. sometimes the auto script works and I'm back in up in no time, most of the time it doesn't. So then i hook up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and go for a restart and usually what happens is I get the graphical interface failed to load error message and it asks if I want to see the log, which means zero to me, so i click no and end up at a command prompt. I can then run my mining script, startminers.sh but only my cpu mines, but cgminer does start.

So i use that adapter command to try and reconfigure the gpu's, but they are never recognized again unless I just start over with a fresh install.

I run linuxcoin on a 16gb flash drive with a 2GB persistence file and yes I go into the live/image syslinux.cfg and delete everything except the persistent command lines and memory test in case I need it. Ma king for a default persistent install.

I guess my cards eventually shut down from heat, but the gpu temps are never above 70 on any of my cards. i have all 5970's and 5870's. I clock the 5870's at 950/300 and the 5970's at 820/410. Here is my standard mining script:
 
This is for my four 5870's on x16 extenders on an msi 890FXA-GD70
/usr/local/bin/startminers.sh
#!/bin/bash
sudo aticonfig –-od-enable
cd cgminer-2.0.7
./cgminer –o http://us.eclipsemc.com:8337 –u username –p password –I 9,9,9,9 --gpu-fan 85 --gpu-engine 950 --gpu-memclock 160

This has been my most stable rig. It ran great until my ethernet port shit the bed last night. Ran for over a week without issue. i just added two scythe ultra kaze behind the four cards to blow air through them.

I also have a rig with two 5970's in slot 1 and slot 5 on and MSI 890FXA-GD70 with fans blowing through the cards also from behind

Those have been at 820/410 with same script as above.

I also have a mongoloid rig with this set-up:

MSI 890FXA-gd70
3 5870's and one 5970. 5970 and one 5870 on extenders other two cards on board.

I use this script for that one.
./cgminer –o http://us.eclipsemc.com:8337 –u username –p password –I 9,9,9,9,9
gpu-fan 85 gpu-engine 950,950,820,820,950 gpu-memclock 410


Oh and all rigs use amd semprons and seasonic x1250 gold psus.

any help is greatly appreciated.

A few things.
I just glanced over that wiki, it uses AMDOverdriveCtrl  to set clocks. You dont need that, and shouldnt use that if you use cgminer.

Second remark, dont use keyboard/screen on the miners. There is no need. Assuming you have a network connection, there is this thing called SSH. I am assuming your main PC runs windows, if so just install putty:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Use it to connect to the miners. Just enter the IP address and set connection type to SSH, and connect (save sessions for each of your machines so its easy to connect to them). You should get a shell, enter ÿour linuxcoin credentials (username="user" and password="live" by default. Note that you dont see anything while typing the password, thats normal).

Next thing you want to do is install a little utility called "screen". That allows you run cgminer over SSH, and close SSH and be able to reconnect to that same "screen" later.

To launch a miner now, just run


You can close SSH now if you want, and if later you want to reconnect to that screen, start the ssh session and run


I see you are using gcminer 2.0.7. its pretty old, you will want to download the latest version. If you need help with that, Ill talk you through it, but lets start by seeing if you manage the above.


As for the rig without lan, let me know what I asked in the other thread about the lights. To troubleshoot that one, we will need monitor and keyboard, unless youd have a spare network card that does work.

Yeah i don't use that amdoverdrivectrl thing since I started with cgminer. I've been hesitant to go ssh since it just seems I can't even get the basics working. I've also been using the older cgminer because when I first started these things, I was told to do that because of the older version of ubuntu /debian or whatever linuxcoin is built with.

First things first, I think I need to lower all my clocks and start there, let's face it, GPU's are going to get sick more often when they are overworked.

Also i just had a neck fusion and can't work for long periods, so that doesn't help. Thank you and I'll get to work on a few things and report back.

Will putty work if the windows computer I use is a laptop on wireless lan and the miners are wired?

I packed up the mobo on the rig with the lan not working and am going to RMA since I had a second mobo sitting here anyway. The board just pissed me off too much.

Sure, no problem, as long as all the machines are on the same subnet (if you dont know what that is, then they are)

also, could one of my issues with the autostart script be that when the miners get locked up or whatever, I use a power button to power down, basically forced power down instead of using the restart button?

BAMT > LinuxCoin

I know, maybe i need to switch over.

Now i'm having a hell of a time with an ASUS P8P67 WS motherboard and 4 5870's on extenders. they were doing great for days on an MSI 890FXA-GD70 until the damn lan port went up on me. I had those suckers at 950/160 cranking along. decided to mess with the rig to put two fans behind the gpu's for better cooling and here I am three days later with jack shet to show for it.
 
Also this damn asus board is freaking me out with the uefi bios i don't know which settings to do for the flash drive with linuxcoin, uefi boot or regular or what. I can get in with a fresh install, gpu's then hang. I try to reboot and then after linuxcoin graphic, black screen.

yes that sometimes can be a problem..  linuxcoin should be shutdown gracefully. i have had problems when shutting down if files get corrupted. I then just replace the /live read write part of the stick and go again.

Sounds like you have too many potential sources of problems. If I were you, Id start by plugging in a single card, with no extender cable and see what happens. If that magically solves all problems, slowly build form there, by adding the cables and extra cards and see when the problem occurs.

That. Right on, P4.

Exactly right guys, the extenders are killing me. I just whacked in 4 5870's on the asus p67 board and BANG, no issues. Even able to take a card in and out. WTF is wrong with extenders and why do they cause so many issues? It's killing us on my other rigs too. I've realized the cards do fine even in close quarters on the mobo as long as you blow some extra fans through them and screw the overclocks. Get what you can and just f'in leave it alone.

I do have those 5870's at 950/160 and they are fine. worst temp is 71c. These are stock 5870's from ben's outlet.

I do have one box with one card on an extender and its been fine. I'm going to move toward always putting the first card on the board in slot 1 and then a card in the last slot. Open cases of course, basically mobo trays nailed to boards or whatever and then maybe put one more card on an extender in slots 2 or 3 or 4.

I've also learned we are getting killed by trying to use two psu's. We have two rigs with 3 5970's connected to two seasonic x750 gold psu's connected with a lian li PSU connectors and those bitches fry pci extenders like they're going out of style, powered or not. Nevermind they are NEVER stable.

So I'm going to either unload the 750's or actually, probably cheaper to just buy one more motherboard, cheap ram and cheap cpu.  Just a shame to have boards like MSI 890FXA-GD70's with only two cards, but F it. We can mine for a while and then maybe to decide to screw with one rig at a time.

Sorry for the long post, but thanks for the help and this noob has learned his lesson. Don't get too fancy maxing shet out when you're just getting started even if you think you know hardware, because mining is its own animal.

I can build and overclock the S out of a gaming machine, but so what.

Why? They are what they are - nonstandard gizmos.
I can't imagine how those two hair-thin wires are supposed to carry 75W of juice *scratches head*

Still, the extenders have seen... extensive use and in general solve more problems then they create.
My only advice is, purchase more than you actually need and sieve out the bad ones.

Please don't tell me that the Asus board which did not work with extenders is the P8P67 WS Revolution motherboard.

I just bought one hoping it will solve my extender problems. I pray that S works because I am trying since June 2011 to solve this extender problem.

4 cards plugged straight into the mobo works flawlessly. As soon as I use just 1 extender and the rest plugged in normally the whole thing does not work anymore and it is not xorg.conf or any other such BS ( Linux headless so not even SSH can solve my issues without any monitor ).

I'm no noob but this issue has been killing me ever since. The PSU ( AX1200 ) is just fine etc.

If you are having the same issue maybe let us cooperate so we can solve it and use extenders for better cooling and less fan noise / wear !

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these new boards have UEFI and fancy chips like PLX PEX8608, NF200, Lucid Hydra and these chips add extra latency to the routing and the extenders also do that and the driver cuts off any cards that do not respond within a certain ms limit or something ? I have tried PCI latency timer but still the same BS. I really am desperate LOL. Is this your issue ?

I have an old Asus P5ND2-SLI motherboard which works flawlessly with the same extenders and is just perfect, old BIOS based and no nonsense crap chips like Lucid or PLX BS and it just works with 3 extenders and 1 plugged into the board directly and Linuxcoin never fails to start.

On the new UEFI rig I managed to get Linuxcoin / BAMT to start while using the cards with the extenders but it really is hit and miss. One time it works but the next 100 times it does not for some reason. I have dmesg logs if you need them etc. all using Linuxcoin / BAMT through SSH without any monitor etc.

Thanks !

UEFI; no not likely a factor. But you may have a point, if the motherboard has a PCIe switch onboard, it may give you less headroom to use extenders. Extenders do not conform to the PCIe spec, it just exploits some headroom, but there might not be enough on complex boards with long traces or perhaps slightly more crappy PCIe controllers.

I really am going mad over this issue.

Is it the P67 chipset with only 16 PCIe lanes from the CPU and the rest have to be duplicated ?

IRQ conflicts ?

UEFI problems ?

Technically the extender is just a cable extender and it is dumb ( has no extra circuitry ) so should work as long as it is within the 19 cm or so spec limit.

I can't even get 11cm and 7cm lengths to work on my motherboards. Should I stick to old hardware from 5 years ago from now on ?

I really want to resolve this issue and maybe jjshabadoo can cooperate so we can solve it since it seems that he also faces the same problem as me.

Thanks !

Perhaps you might have been a little rough on the extenders, and some of the wires have micro fractures or broke? That happened to me, and I had to solder them together and replace the ones that were ruined.

They are really fragile little things.

I am using these types of extenders right here :

http://linitx.com/product/10538 ( stacked 3 of these one in another and it works flawlessly and I am like ??? )
http://linitx.com/product/10865 ( 7cm does not work )
http://linitx.com/product/10881 ( 11cm does not work )

As you can see they are even EMI shielded and very expensive compared to your normal Chinese eBay extender. They have 6 strands of wire inside so I think it still should make contact. Anyway I am pretty sure they are not the problem because when I swap them to my old Asus P5ND2-SLI they work flawlessly so it is only on the new P67 UEFI mobo they crash the rig which is damn strange.

They are originally DeLock branded so I think they are very HQ :

http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/zubehoer/Delock_PCIe_-_Extension_Riser_Card_x16_x16_89093.html?setLanguage=EN
http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/zubehoer/Delock_Riser_card_PCI_Express_x16_with_flexible_cable_left_insertion_89130.html?setLanguage=EN

Any other ideas ? D&T, ArtForz ? Any other people running on UEFI P67 motherboards with extenders ?

I think it is definately something to do with the mobo. I have checked all things in the UEFI etc. I really am out of ideas.

Thanks !

Its not just length, there is much more to it. Just the fact you have a connector is a huge issue and greatly limits clockspeeds and can introduce all kind of problems. There is a reason soldered GDDR (vram) is so much faster than socketed DDR ram (and a reason you can not socket GDDR).

Christ... each PCB-to-wire connection, each solder point decreases the SNR ratio. If your mobo starts with noisy pcie lines in the first place the SNR can only go down from there.
Should it drop below a threshold value, your reliability goes bye-bye.
Unless that "EMI shield" is properly grounded I'd call it more of an EMI-gathering antenna. If that shield doesn't look as if it's grounded at all try removing it from one of your failing risers.

A poor or overloaded PSU is perfectly capable of generating out of the spec electrical ripple and noise on its output lines. Combine that with a less-than-perfect mobo with a whole damn lot of risers sticking out of it and you've got your recipe for disaster.
Why do you think ripple and noise has been included into ATX spec?

EDIT::On the same subject of SNR, does anybody remember the transition from 40-wire IDE cables to 80-wire? Those additional 40 wires were never used for carrying the signal, they were just grounded. This very trick allowed for over twice higher transfer rates using the same interface.

Quite so, and the ones that Bulanula showed actually have 4 connection points instead of the usual 2 with an extender. First and last points are the motherboard connector, and the video card connector. But in addition, the extenders he uses have 2 more connectors where the ribbon cable meets the PCB on each end.

However, if they fit together tightly, it *should* work fine. Mining uses very little bandwidth, and shouldn't be overly sensitive to latency either. That is why x1 connectors work fine for mining. (I use a few)

Maybe others using P67 UEFI Asus or similar motherboards can chime in ?

How did dishwara and likuidxd run 8 * 5870 on a Big Bang Marshall mobo ?

Just to say I have also tried Windows 7 64 and same thing happens ( black screen ) although I am not very familiar with Windows and tend to use Linux most of the time.

As I said before. The extenders work FINE with the older mobo but they refuse to work on the new Asus P8P67 WS Revolution with UEFI and P67 chipset so I am 90% sure the extenders are fine and it is a mobo issue or other type of issue.

In Linuxcoin the cards are all detected just fine but the Xserver refuses to load and I get black screen ( with monitor ) and CTRL-ALT-F1 does not work OR any Xserver app refuses to load ( using no monitor and SSH headless setup ).  

I have a MSI Big Bang Marshall and the same thing happens. I will get the Asus P8P67 WS Revolution this week or the next and try and see if the issue is solved but I doubt it.

I even tried standard Debian sid and wheezy and same issue with kernel 3.2.1 and driver 11.12 ( latest available ). Maybe I should start a different thread ?

What I was trying to say with my previous post is, if you're experiencing stability issues, make sure you have a decent PSU installed, that is isn't being overloaded, and - what should be obvious - that your machine is properly grounded.
A computer is no more than an electronic machine which needs to be grounded to work as expected.
A non-grounded PC (connected just with hot and neutral wires) will boot up and might function well enough for casual use but is still is in violation of the spec. Trying to push such a machine to hard work is asking for trouble. This simple fact of life seems to be often forgotten.
Pay close attention to the foundations guys, ok?

Unfortunately, measuring electric noise at the PSU won't be an option in most cases but I'd expect serious miners to have an extra PSU in the "trash pile" somewhere. Make sure it's at least as strong as the one currently in use and try replacing the PSUs. If you've tried a crapload of extenders and all the wired ones fail, this might be your chance of restoring just enough magic for the whole rig to work.

Well AFAIK I am using a HQ Corsair AX1200 ( best PSU I think but very expensive ) which is grounded and only 4*5870 on that board and it still does not work so it is either software or mobo related not extender or power related ( I think ).

If the P8P67 WS Revolution comes and it does the same BS to me I swear I am going to jump out of the window LOL.

I mined with 8 cards for only half day i think.
After that something happened which didn't allow to even start pc.
so i took mother board for repair & after that i got many personal problems (seller changed my mobo & gave me another BB, broken one & India is corrupted in everything)

I think may be its a over kill to a motherboard to run all the 8 pcix slots.
motherboards like BB are designed in mind to play games or graphics things which MUST not use 100% GPU all time.
mining may be overkill to them, gradually loosing ability to work, not sure.  

maybe trying with less cards will help.
maybe even a slot on mother board broken. have to check every slot individually to confirm they working correctly.

A very decent PSU provided it's still in excellent condition. Good stuff... gold certified... the only thing it lacks is sugar frosting and a few specks of chocolate...  ;D

All equipment is 100% new bought by myself new June 2011 ( since then I have been trying to make this work ! )

I cannot get the following setup working on the BB Marshall ( and I suspect with the P8P67 WS Revolution as well ) :

2 cards plugged into the mobo directly

2 cards using x16-x16 extenders.

4 cards work fine with BB marshall.
I am sure abt even 6 cards, coz i managed to mine with 6 cards for days, except i got powercut daily & a lot of heat.

When using only the two extended cards, is the rig stable? What about three cards? Have you tried using those cheap pcie1x-pcie16x powered extenders?
Are your pcie16x-pcie16x risers externally powered?
If they aren't, you may be drawing more juice with those four GPUs than the board is able to supply.
If the rig works fine with less cards but fails at four, make sure you use powered extenders.

Retuening to PSUs, do you have another PSU you could try?
The AX1200 is great but stuff happens. A few failed capacitors may result in elevated ripple levels.
The only problem is, you'd need a local electronics guy with an oscilloscope to be able to say for certain whether or not the PSU is to blame.
Much easier to just use another PSU.

i used cooler master SPG 1200W , still it refused to power 4 cards.
i can only able to power 3 cards with a single CMSPG1200W, but with just extenders, never used externally powered extenders.

The rig does not work even with just one 5870 connected with an extender. I just get black screen at Linuxcoin.

If that same 5870 is used but in the slot it works fine.

If 4*5870s are used directly to the mobo it works perfect.

If 3*5870 are direct on the mobo and just one 5870 uses an extender Linuxcoin fails to start.

Basically whenever I use just one extender on the BB Marshall it makes the driver somehow crash so none of the other cards also work.

Tried with Linux, Debian, Windows etc. BAMT and same problem everywhere. I got multiple AX1200s and BB Marshalls so it really is strange.

BIOS works fine all the time with extenders. Open source radeon driver works 100% as well and all the cards are detected in lspci and aticonfig --list-adapters.

Xserver does not work and I get black screen all the time even with just one card and one extender and even with SSH any X application does not launch at all.

My personal belief is that there is some extra latency and the aticonfig / fglrx driver module does not properly initialize when using an extender but I am not 100% sure.

I am pretty sure it is not a power problem because even powered extenders do not work. It is either a software ( fglrx issue / bug ) or a mobo issue I think.

I can post detailed dmesg and other logs if needed.

Thank you for trying to help !

The solution is:

I sincerely hope you won't get to the defenestration part :)

It took more than 2 days for me to figure out that slot 3 & slot 7 NEED 16x extenders, while other slots work fine with 1x extenders.
I used extenders for all cards & no gpu is directly connected to mobo.
Try extenders for all.

These are the extenders I have :

http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/zubehoer/Delock_Riser_card_PCI_Express_x16_with_flexible_cable_left_insertion_89130.html

Using just one 5870 and this extender and Linuxcoin still fails and even with plain Debian the driver fglrx does not properly function.  ???

check the slot switches in BB.
it has hardware switch to disable pcie slot 1,2,3,4 on top left.

EDIT:
also make sure OC GENIE & MUTLI BIOS switches DIDN'T pressed.

Yeah. I had them all set to on already.

Can't you get a couple cheap ones from Cablesaurus (http://cablesaurus.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1&zenid=btiprn3e6ckft4pisrpa3opjc4)? Should the cheapest pcie1x-pcie16x (powered!) ones do the job, you're gonna laugh your ass off.
That might be the cheapest solution I can come up with.
Each day that rig of yours is inoperable you're losing profit.
I'm going out of my way to help you out here but remotely, only that much can be done.

If even with one extender with card fail means , it must be faulty extender or not properly getting connection.
u sure, the fans on card works when u use extenders?
coz u using a left side extender, so instead of standing straight the card will be rotated/tilted 90 degrees & fan faces down & may be not rotating.
i used straight extenders from cablesaurus.
 

As RJK mentioned; those are the worst, because of the design. Its 2 slots and 2 sockets.
Without extender, so plugging a card straight in to the motherboard, you have a single non-soldered socket. With a regular extender cable you have 2. With your clumsy extender there are 4 per device!

I have no problem spending to get another extender but these work absolutely fine on another rig. Exactly the same extenders.

The open source "radeon" driver works wonders with these so there must be a problem that prevents the fglrx module from loading and that is why I get black screen and X server refusing to work and fglrx refusing to work as well.

Just tried it again right now. Fresh install of Debian Wheezy LXDE and ati 11.12 driver with just one 5870.

When I use it with the extender it fails and when I plug directly to the mobo it succeeds.

When I use 3 of these piled one on top of another it works  http://www.delock.com/produkte/gruppen/zubehoer/Delock_PCIe_-_Extension_Riser_Card_x16_x16_89093.html ???

By "it fails" I mean that the X server does not start and the DE is not shown. Not even num lock or CTRL-ALT-F1 works but if I SSH into the rig I cannot load any X program as it simply hangs there and does not load xeyes for example.

I will probably buy two of these ( http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Flex-Ribbon-PCI-E-Extension-Cable-1x-16x-Slot-Extender-Riser-Card-Adapter-/110743662420?pt=UK_Computing_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item19c8d62f54 ) if I confirm that it does the same on the P8P67 WS Revolution !

Sorry man, yes that is the exact board i am using ASUS P8P67 WS motherboard and i had the same exact issues you had. tried booting uefi and without, nothing. Then suddenly I would get into linuxcoin, set up, mine and then gpus all dead and then can't get back in. I re-loaded linuxcoin 15 times at least over past 24 hours. then i just said F it, i only have 5870's for that board, so i threw them all on the board without extenders and BAM, 100% stable since

I just placed a scythe ultra kaze behind the cards and one kind of angled over the top and that beast has been cooking averaging 1.8 ghash at about 780 watts with kill-a-watt meter and that is without turning off any power saving features yet because it was 430am and i was just happy it was working after two days of wanting to sell all my shet on ebay...lol

The MSI 890FXA-GD70 seems to not mind extenders, but only a couple and I've noticed you usually need slot 1 populated directly and then you can screw around from there. For example, a rig of mine that has been rock solid for over a week.

MSI 890FXA-GD 70
AMD sempron 145
2gb ram
slot 1 actually a 5870 on powered extender but no molex connected to it
slot 2 5870 directly connected to pcix16 slot
slot 3 5970 on powered extender with no power to it
slot 4 empty
slot 5 5870 directly on the board

when I say slot I mean pci-e x16 only

turned off as much crap in bios as i can think of to save power and it does 1.8 to 2 GH/s at about 750 watts average.

settings in cgminer as follows in my startminers.sh script:

./cgminer –o http://us.eclipsemc.com:8337 –u username –p password –I 9,9,9,9,9
gpu-fan 85 gpu-engine 950,950,820,820,950 gpu-memclock 410

Thing just beasts along with good temps. TIM and thermal pads replaced on 5970, 5870's just stock from that ben's outlet sale. man i wish ai bought more of those, they have all been great out of the box except one has no fan control. I got 8 and they all do 950.

on the asus board with the 4 5870's all in the slots. I have them at 950/160 and they have been fine overnight worst card temp right now is 74c lowest at 62.5c
They are also in an old case lying flat with sides still on. I'd probably be doing better with temps once I get the gumption to just rip it out and put the mobo on a wooden board with motherboard plate underneath of course and just line up two kazes behind the cards.


I also need to mess with the memclocks on that cgminer script, but have just been happy its been stable for a week so I don't dare.

I keep saying we need more sticky's/threads with just pure specs and settings for folks.

Linuxcoin 0.2final seems to bring stability issues with some motherboards. I had similar problems with X server unable to boot, gpu undetected and being unable to use more than 2 cards (on a Biostar A870 who can take 4).

I've switched back to Linuxcoin 0.2b and all the problems disappeared. It booted normally, detecting all my 4 GPUs and it's mining right now.

Just waiting for the P8P67 WS Revolution to arrive. I will keep you posted.

I am just PRAYING it will work because I have too many mobos that do not work with extenders now :(

I have been told not to use extenders when i first started mining by many professional miners here.
They told me to avoid extenders coz, extenders wont work.
Then cableaurus opened shop & i had pm with him & he confirmed me that his extenders will work & also told me, that i don't need powered extenders if i don't use dual gpu 5970.
All the extenders i bought from cableaurus worked for me.
It seems as said by professional not all extenders work except cableaurus.

If this guy is not a professional, then I don't know what he is: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg547120#msg547120
See all the extenders?  Maybe its the mobo, maybe its the cards, but you can't argue with 30 Ghash worth of cards all using extenders. They work, and when they don't something else is usually the cause.

RJK as you mentioned there, the one mentioned has 4 connections.
If you look at closely the pics in link you posted , you can see extender cables similar to cablesaurus.

"It seems as said by professional not all extenders work except cableaurus."

extenders which is like the ones sold by cableaurus worked/works.

RJK Thanks for that link. Nice setup, amazing.

I have all cablesaurus cables and still ran into issues as posted above. I have never bought from anyone else and also 4 have burned out on me in the pci slot but I believe that is related to trying to use two psu's or bad power fluctuations where the miners are. Even though I was told that two psu's should not be an issue, I would NEVER do that again. Even though Jimm64 has 30 GH/s of mostly 5970's, with extenders on MSI890FXA-GD70's with two psus and he says he is mostly rock solid. I copied that model and have been slaughtered so far.

EXTRA NOTE AND THIS DESERVES CAPS, CABLESAURUS WAS EXCELLENT AND EVEN SENT ME TWO NEW EXTENDERS AT NO COST AND WAS WILLING TO PROVIDE TECH CUPPORT TO HELP ME FIGURE OUT ANY ISSUES AT NO ADDITIONAL COST.

Cablesaurus is a GREAT BTC vendor. If you're going to bother with extenders, then go nowhere else in my opinion.

BTW my solid rig with extenders actually just started to lose hashing power again and looks like it at least needs a restart, so i'll hold off on my assessment of getting ANY rig to be solid with extenders.

This site really needs its own hardware wiki for individual hardware parts and known rig combos that WORK and what stats to expect. Would be a huge resource for all of us. The current online hardware wiki is crap and out of date.

I'd also like to see the site create a section for detailed guides. I think they could charge a monthly rate for access to such things, sort of a VIP membership, paid for in BTC of course ;)

Did you manage to fix the issues on the P8P67 WS ?

Nothing against cablesaurus, but the extenders they sell are the exact same one's you can get on ebay... for a fair bit cheaper.

No, I never solved the extender issue on the asus P8P67 WS. I have had four 5870's plugged directly into the four x16 slots at 950/160 hashing away without issue for over two days with an ultra kaze fan blowing through them from behind and one angled above to blow some air onto the top and in between the cards.  See my previous post for temps, wattage and hash rates on that rig.

After nearly two days of work I was just done with it and besides, I won't get any better OC with extenders. Better temps are highly likely of course, but downtime and exces troubleshooting are not worth it to me.

My main advice to you if you expect to try with extenders is to at least leave one card on the board in slot#1 and then maybe you'll get away with extenders for the other slots. If you have an open rig, you should still get great temps.

Also, the whole booting choice of uefi or normal didn't seem to matter except I never got it to boot with extenders under non uefi boot, but I DID get it to boot at least once or twice with uefi boot. This with 16gb flash drives and linuxcoin final. Maybe the prior version of linuxcoin would work better?

I just wish one of our resident linux programmers/experts would make a newer version of linuxcoin. BAMT looks great but is too limited. Especially since they won't support cgminer which is the miner of choice for most of us.

Can someone just create CgminerCoin? I wish I had the time to do some tutorials on linux and find the best distro and just create the ultimate linux mining software with detailed tutorials for various set-ups, multi-card, extenders, etc.

From what I can tell so far, the most serious miners are using a narrow range of cards and mobos. I don't think this distro would need to be tested on everything or be stable with every miner who has a rig doing 200 MH/s.

Give us a linux distro designed for 58xx series and 59xx series cards and maybe one for 68xx series and 69xx series cards for maybe the top 5 mobos.

the MSI 890FXA series
the ASUS P8P67 WS series
and maybe the big bang and a few other boards that have 4 or more x16 slots.

https://github.com/kanoi/linux-usb-cgminer/blob/master/linux-usb-cgminer

Yes but doubt they accept BTC and / or provide support to set them up.

You get what you pay for, always remember.

You can pay with BTC on amazon or even ebay by using spendbitcoins.com. As for support.. would be nice to have a helping hand holding up the cards, but beyond that, its plug and pray.

Anyway, like I said, I have nothing against cablesaurus, and by all means, order your stuff there if you want. But lets not pretend they sell magical cables that work better than any others.

bulanula You got any improvement?
can able to mine with extender cables on BB marshal?

No. I gave up on it.

too bad to give up