However, before that I need to ask, isn't 2x5970=4GPU and I'm not sure but does MOBO usually support more than that? And PSU that can support future expansion? Can I find a value-for-money configuration for such a consideration to exist. If not, shouldn't I just go for the cheapest config I can get starting from a 2x5970 point?
If such case, now it's looking like
1. GPU - 2x5970 ($810)
2. Power Supply - Seasonic X-850 ?? 80+ Gold PSU ?? (Not sure what's 80+Gold but should be around 850 Watts OC?)
3. Mobo - Dual PCIe2.x16x AM-Compatible MOBO
4. Processor - Cheap Sempron (Not sure which)
5. RAM - 1 GB
6. Casing - As cheap as possible, open aired or might not even get one.
Still need to find out
7. OS - I read there are readily scripted ubuntu/linux distro for mining. Please point me to the right thread plz
8. HDD - I also read that I may be able to just run (7.) off a USB stick/ext. HDD (Which I own) Plz clarify and point me to the right thread
But if it's possible to get more GPU on 1 machine after 2x5970 I'd appreciate it if you point me to the right thread so I may look at the possibility of future expansion.
2 x 5970 is 4 GPU's, yes. As long as the motherboard has the slots for it, it will support as many video cards as you put in it. There are many people running 6 processors on 1 board (3 x 5970 or 6990 cards) and a thread http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8847.0 of someone reporting running 4 x 6990 (8 gpus) on 1 system. The OS is the limiting factor. Windows will only support up to 4 GPU's, Linux will handle up to 8. You should go for the best quality (reviewed) for the price, not the absolutely cheapest. 1. Wish I had them. Looks good. 2. Should be good to run a system with 2 x 5970's. Won't allow for an expansion to 3 though. 3. AM3 compatible board, rest is correct. 4. Sempron 140 or 145 is fine. 5. I went with 2 G of ram just because it was worth buying for the price. You probably want 2G if you go with Windows, 1G is good for Linux 6. It's personal choice. I like having a case and leave the side panel off. 7. Another personal choice. I like Linux better and think it's better for dedicated mining machines. If you decide to go Linux, Ubuntu is the most popular and well supported here, I recommend that one. http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.0 The dedicated one still has some work to be done on it to make it easier from what I've read. 8. I haven't tried it yet (but I will soon). Ubuntu can probably be run from a USB stick or USB hard drive without much trouble. You need at least 8G. I don't know of any specific threads. You would have to plug them in and install it to the USB device. Windows will require a hard drive or SSD. |
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Yes, he is serious. It hardly takes any CPU power to mine. Buy a AM3 compatible board and put a sempron in it for mining. When he's done mining he can pull out the sempron and put an Athlon or Phenom in it. That way he's not wasting money and power up from on an Intel setup.
Thanks, I guess I've been reading the right stuff. I don't know what is an AM3 compatible board. But I think you've at least taken a read at my long-winded post which I'm grateful for. So I'm really confused about the whole motherboard thing as I'm reading on DIY computers right now. The Athlon or Phenom I assume are processors that I may upgrade to later on, I'm worried about the bottlenecking issue that I'm reading on 2x5970. But I think this is a problem for later, I need to complete this mining build first so I can get mining. Care to shed some light on 'bare minimum' (for mining) and around how much they'd cost? Better yet, link me the URL. I'm situated in South-east Asia and I'm not sure about the whole DIY scene. I don't know what retailers and online computer shops you have available to you in southeast asia, so I can't really link anything for you directly. The best motherboards and CPU's for the price for mining purposes specifically are AMD motherboards and Sempron processors. The CPU socket type (pin configuration of the CPU) is called AM3. Basically you need a motherboard that will support the number of cards that you want to mine with. You also should think about future expansion. Motherboards with 2 video card slots are pretty common. The best entry level cards for mining right now are the HD 5830, HD 5850, and HD 5870 but that depends on the availability and pricing in your area. You will need a good power supply to run them. It would not be a good idea to pick the cheapest on on any list from any store, you need to look at reviews. Depending on what cards you get and how many you get you will be looking for a power supply in the range of 750-1000 watts. Here are some threads you should read through to get a better idea what people are planning to put together for mining rigs. http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8546.0http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8169.0http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8506.0 |
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Quad crossfire 5970's with a Sempron 140 and 1gb of RAM?
Are you serious?
At least put an i7 in that system. Go with Sandy Bridge even or wait for Ivy.
Yes, he is serious. It hardly takes any CPU power to mine. Buy a AM3 compatible board and put a sempron in it for mining. When he's done mining he can pull out the sempron and put an Athlon or Phenom in it. That way he's not wasting money and power up from on an Intel setup. |
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Thanks for the link.
If I just want a command line linux install - no desktop - what is the simplest linux install, i can probably figure it out from the link, but thought I'd ask - machine will not be used for anything but mining....
Distro's most familiar with are Gentoo and Centos (leaning towards)
You have to have a desktop running to mine. You don't have to use it, you can do everything from the command line once it's set up but it does have to be set up and working properly with your video card(s). Ubuntu is quite popular here, it would be much easier to get support for here if something isn't working. |
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Update: A restart seems to have done the trick??? What could have caused this in the first place? Ideas?  Windows 7 Aero interface? General Windows slowness? Crappy ATI drivers? |
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I've been mining for deepbit.net, but wanted to get my cash because I've changed. I had just small change now, 0.04230547 bitcoins. However, when I asked for payments, I only got 0.04 bitcoins, and deepbit.net keeps the remaining 0.00230547?? Maybe not a lot of money, but for every user they keep up to 0.009999 BTC when that user quits. I guess that's in addition to their 3% fee, so in reality it's 3% plus 0.005 BTC on average. But for me, the 0.005 BTC is more than 3% of what I've put in...
Or is there a way for me to get it? Do I have to mine until I get exactly 1.00 bitcoins or something like that before I receive everything?
Those sub-bitcents are never taken by the pool, they still are in your account. Of course i'm not sending full-precision sums because this will cause problems for users with previous versions of clients and then they will ask me why their money is lost. So it's better to send only >= 0.01 BTC at least until most clients will upgrade to the official bitcoin client that doesn't discards < 0.01 change. You can mine 0.00769453 BTC more and withdraw 0.01 BTC then. I started on 3.20 client and when I upgraded to 3.21 all my sub 0.01 transactions were listed. |
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Sorry I have to be a total noob and i hate it lol. So I seem to be having an issue  I am VERY new to bitcoin, dont fully understand it.. But I figured I would once I got some coins. So i downloaded the bitcoin GUI miner and saw that my ATI Radeon 5770 should probably help me out.. and I got this message  Cant seem to figure out why... I game with it all the time. I'll leave GPU mining on today till I get back. it still says "Starting..." But.. we'll see What OS? Looks like Windows 7, is it x32 or x64? |
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It is up to the sellers to increase the BTC value! Just stop selling below 10$!  It's so dumb it just might work. Give it a try. I'm sure there are some people at Mt. Gox that will never be on this board, they probably won't get the memo. |
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EDIT 2: I have now flashed all of the cards back to their original BIOSes... boot into ubuntu recovery mode "root" terminal... and ran aticonfig --adapter=all --initial which found all of the cards (yay!) but I am still met with that non-moving ubuntu logo screen. Does ubuntu say something like "we will only work with 5 cards on this install" and then if you install a 6th is blows up or something?? This is all I can deduce from this at the current moment. I guess I will try re-installing ubuntu completely and starting over.
Sounds more to me like the fglrx driver and your BIOS weren't geting along. I happened a few times to me in testing different BIOS's. I would boot up and get a really weird almost checker board pattern when the desktop came up. |
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You guys are forgetting one point.
When the difficulty changes, the supply supported by a block resolution rate of about 10 per hour is now reduced to 6 per hour. That's effectively a lower supply for the days to come. Anyone selling for cheap right before a difficulty change is just throwing his coins away.
OH MY GOD WHATEVER WILL WE DO?! THERE'S ONLY 14,746,000 MORE COINS GOING TO BE MINTED AT A STEADY AND PREDICTABLE PACE IN THE FUTURE! IT'S PANDAMONIUM I TELL YOU! |
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There are ask orders in the system all the way up to US$11.80 http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.htmlYou can put whatever price you want on them. No one has to take you up on it either. Someone's only going to buy them if they decide they are worth that much. Bitcoins don't have a generation stamps or difficulty stamps on them. A coin minted last year is not worth more than a coin today A coin minted at 26,000 difficulty doesn't have more value than the last difficulty level. Physical coins only become individually valuable from actual scarcity. There is a determined amount of bitcoins being generated at a determined rate for quite a long time to come. The only way to make them more valuable is to give people a reason to want to have them, use them, and keep them. Less coins in the marketplace than money makes the price of coins rise. More coins in the marketplace than money makes them less valuable. |
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So in about seven hours the difficulty will change. Where do you see it going next? It is going to be around 156000 today.
My guest.... 170000
My guess.... 222222 So... I'm closer, new diff is 244139, I'm off by -8.9% Did anyone else get closer? My guess was 245-250,000. I think I just deleted the post when trying to quote it, oops. I lose by Price is Right rules, I was pretty close even though I went over. I wish everyone was right when they were saying 170,000-220,000. |
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Also they will draw more power than specified via the PCIe slots, so you might kill your hardware this way.
Haha... no. PCI bus limit is about 75W. These have dedicated 8 pin PCI-E connectors. -------------- The problem I see with 4 of these in a system is heat and the fact that 2000W = more than a 15A breaker will handle. I'd say your best bet would be 2 rigs. Plus if one goes down, everything isn't down. Much better for reliability. Shouldn't four run somewhere around 1600W? Still, you make a valid point. It is like running a hair dryer 24/7  Yes, 4 cards would run at about 1600W but I would spec another 300 to run the rest of the system, thus arriving at about 2000 watts. Since the largest power supply I've seen is 1500 watts it would have to be broken up between 2 power supplies anyway. 2 x 1000 watt supplies each running 2 cards, 1 powers the motherboard and the other powers any other accessories ... hard drive, fans, etc. |
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just tried taking out the ram and put in two 512mb sticks that were lying around. same problem, and still get 3 short beeps on boot
Are they DDR3 1066 or faster? Using this ram stick, its 2gb actually http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812it says speed ddr 1333 so yeah. the 512mb sticks that i tried, probably not Did you try putting the ram in all the slots? It sounds like a bad stick of RAM but you can't rule out the board either unless you know the RAM stick is bad. |
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just tried taking out the ram and put in two 512mb sticks that were lying around. same problem, and still get 3 short beeps on boot
Are they DDR3 13333 or faster? |
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I just got one of those this week. Mine's running like a champ so far. Mine didn't have any blocker I plugged in the 8 pin connector. |
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just made sure on the bios jumper, the jumper is set correctly, or at least when i move it the same thing happens (no post)
I hate when that happens. Does it have onboard video it could be defaulting to? What's the model of the board? |
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Not everyone can afford $800-1200 for a 5970, if they could even find them. 2 x 5850's give the same performance at 1/3-1/2 the price.
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Did you check the BIOS jumper? Some vendors like to ship board with the bios jumper in the clear position and you have to switch positions for normal operation.
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