Wondering if anybody on here might be able to help me out with a problem I'm having with the bottom PCI-Express slot on an ASRock 770DE+ motherboard. I bought it as a budget board for a mining rig since it has two PCI-E slots. I'm using two 5830s in this rig, but only one of them will show up anywhere in the Windows 7 environment. That is, GPU-Z has only one card present, CCC also lists only one card in its hardware tab. Even the device manager lists only the one card under display adapters. Now here are the facts I've confirmed:

1. Each card will work in the top PCI-E slot, no matter which one I switch into it.
2. The PSU is a 650w Apevia that, while may not be a high-end PSU, has supported two 5830s in another rig no problem before.
3. The current rig is a single-core Sempron CPU with a single SATA hard drive, two DDR2 memory sticks, and the 5830 cards. The PSU is by no means overworked.
4. With only one card in the bottom slot, the system will turn on, and the POST will beep several times, and nothing appears on the monitor, which goes into standby.

I do not have the cards connected with a crossfire bridge, but I never use one with mining rigs. I'm hoping there's some adjustment I can make to the motherboard or the BIOS to enable the bottom slot. Is there anything I can do here to bring this second slot online, or is it probably a dead slot?

I've just started using BTC after a few months and I notice that mtgox now requires a photo ID (passport, driver's license, etc) to withdraw any currency to either bank accounts or dwolla. This was never the case in the past when I had used mtgox to exchange BTC to USD. From what it looks like now, all exchanges are mandating this. Is this in fact the case with all exchanges now, and what is the reason for this requirement? It's been a few months since I've used these services, so anybody who could fill me in on this, the information would be very much appreciated.

I'm wondering if there's any way for a solo miner to keep track of stats, like one would have access to as part of a pool. For example, if I had 5 machines each contributing 500 Mh/s for a total of 2500 Mh/s solo effort, and I wanted to pull up a quick stat page on my smartphone while at work and away from the miners to check and make sure that the hash rates are where they are supposed to be. Is this something that is possible to author for a solo mining effort?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113001

Perfect for mining rigs especially considering there are a few low-priced AM2 boards with two PCIe x16s.

I've got a 650w PC Power and Cooling PSU in this rig which would easily handle the load of both 5970s, but the problem is that the PSU only has two PCIe connectors, a 6-pin and 6+2 pin. Each 5970 requires a 6-pin and 8-pin. Anyway, I was trying to find a way around this when I remembered I have a brand-new Apevia 650w PSU sitting in my spare parts closet with 4 6+2 PCIe connectors of its own. It's a 4 rail design, but what I had in mind was something like this:

1. The PC Power and Cooling main PSU powers everything in the computer, except for one of the 5970 cards.
2. The Apevia 650w gets tacked on top of the case, or next to it, some place practical (which definitely is not inside of the case) with the main 20+4 pin motherboard connector shorted and two of its PCIe connectors plugged into the one remaining 5970.

Would this be possible to do with the Apevia PSU's mobo connection shorted? I know that most PSUs will not power on unless this plug is connected, or at least tricked into thinking its connected, so other than that only two PCIe connectors would be used. On a 650w supply with four 12v rails, even that load of a single 5970 can be easily handled I'm sure. I just wanted to run this by anyone who might have experience piggybacking PSUs to gain some insight into the feasibility here. Thanks!

Every time I am out with a woman I will eventually steer the conversation into Bitcoin territory, explaining the nuances and subtleties of this saucy and sensual cryptocurrency that I'm involved with. As I describe the hours upon hours that I put into building and maintaining each individual mining machine and the intricate dance of skill and luck which ultimately dictates my overall hash rates, she inevitably casts a gaze into my eyes which tells me that she could not be more invigorated and enchanted if James Bond himself were sitting across from her, detailing his exploits from any given day... okay okay so you must obviously realize this is sarcastic and the reality is that I have not been touched by any woman for months and Bitcoin is simply ruining my life, it's not worth the cost which I pay for my sweet bitcoin success, because my genitals are now mutilated from all the times that I stick them in my CD-ROM drive tray, opening and closing the drive to punish myself and to bask in the anguish and shame of this pitiful predicament. There was even one day which found me in a particularly vulnerable state, in which I stripped down to complete nudity and tea bagged my processor's heatsink and fan. After running Super Pi for an hour or so, I very carefully lowered my sack down towards the fan until finally one of the spinning blades caught hold of my junk, twisting it around until it became jammed, pinning my nuts against the piping hot copper heatsink which consequently singed the scrotum like a branding iron, indeed the marks are still visible to this day. After shrieking like a pathetic, nubile little schoolgirl while all this was happening, eventually I tore my toasted sack out of the mangled remains of the heatsink fan and slowly shrunk down to the floor, into the fetal position, where I spent the rest of the day quietly weeping to myself.

Does anybody else share these feelings and experiences? I've often wondered whether or not I am alone in this.

If my client says, "Generated (50.0006 matures in xxx more blocks)", but under the Credit column, it is listed at 0.00. If I generated a block on my own, wouldn't I earn 50 BTCs instead of the 0.00 listed in the transaction?

I want to drop two 5970s in a box I've been running two 5830s on for about a year now. It's a very basic i3, 2x2gb DDR3, 32gb SSD rig running off of a PC Power and Cooling 650w PSU. I've run this setup thru the PSU calculators and I'm well within the power budget when two 5970s are added in place of the 5830s. It comes out to 494w minimum, 544w recommended. What I'm not quite sure about, though, is the fact that I'd have to add an 8-pin PCI-e adapter since the 650w PSU only has one 8 pin. While I know that theoretically, I'm well within my power budget, I'm not positive on what the 8-pin adapter will actually do when plugged into one of the 5970s. I know they pull more wattage than the 6 pin variant, but wouldn't that be taken into consideration in the PSU calculator estimate? Anyway, I defer to those with a clearer understanding of the PCI-e connectors as to whether or not I'd be safe to run these cards in this machine after adding an 8-pin adapter. (As a side note, I know that 8-pin adapters come in at least two variants, one adapting an existing 6-pin PCI-e connector to 8-pin with a female 6-pin to male 8-pin, and another adapting two 4-pin molex connectors to an 8-pin male connector. Any difference here, or is it the same amount of power being drawn from different connectors?)

Many thanks.

I've never heard of this happening and I failed to find any similar incident over the course of several searches. Anyway, here's what I can tell you. I have two mining rigs in the same room as my LCD-TV. Just earlier today, I upgraded my TV service from basic to digital HD service. I added the HD cable service with the same company which has provided my 10Mbit cable internet for almost a decade now, without any incident I might add. So anyway, this morning I connected the digital HD box to the LCD-TV and everything has been working fine, until only a few minutes back when I fired up the second mining rig. Doing so instantly scrambled the television signal into total static. This only happens when turning on the second mining rig - the other rig has been running all day without incident, while the other rig I started up for the first time today only a few minutes back. The only thing that seems possibly relevant is the fact that the TV, digital box, and the meddlesome mining rig all share a power strip, while the mining rig that has been going all day without incident is on its own power strip (along with monitor, speakers, and an ethernet switch) from a completely different outlet. The problematic rig runs headless, so it's the only other thing plugged into the strip besides the TV and cable tuner. The only other relevant information that I can think to add right now would be that the problematic mining box is running two 5830 cards, while the trouble-free rig runs two 5970s.

This seemed really strange to me. I hope someone familiar with this type of issue can point me in the right direction. I haven't tried any troubleshooting yet in the hopes that I can find the solution on the net. I thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.

Most 5970 owners probably know that the VRMs are a bottleneck to overclocking and cooling. Though they were on the market for some time, I know that the Accelero aftermarket HSF has been discontinued for some time. While I'm sure water cooling is an effective way around this problem, I'm limited to air for the time being so I want to cool these chips as best I can.

I plan on trying a couple of ideas I've read about so far. One is placing a fan below the GPUs at the bottom of the case, blowing air up to the cards. I guess the idea behind this is that it provides an additional stream of cool air in addition to the case fans blowing from front to back. If this turns out to lower the temperatures significantly, I might consider adding more fans along the way to keep this bottom to top flow moving with an exhaust fan at the top of the case and perhaps another on top of the upper GPU pulling the air from the cards and up to the exhaust.

An idea that I had which is more on the ridiculous side of the spectrum is to somehow recycle my old accelero x2 coolers (these adorned my nvidia 6800gt cards many years back) to give the VRMs their own heatsink, fan, or both. Maybe a more practical solution would be to add some copper RAM heatsinks to the chips on the top side. As for the chips under the stock HSF, I'm at a loss right now for additional cooling. Anyone experienced with the 5970 card have any pearls of wisdom?

EDIT: I finally took apart one of my cards to try and reverse-engineer my way to more efficient cooling and so far it looks promising. I've removed the stock fan and the outer shell casing, leaving the heatsink exposed.







The heatsink fins are bent at the very top, perhaps in order to channel airflow through the fins and out the exhaust. While I could just strap a few 120mm fans across the top of the card a la Arctic Cooling's 5970 HSF, what I estimate would be the most effective way to cool the heatsink would be to channel the airflow of a single 120mm fan down through the fins, possibly cutting out a makeshift duct out of cardboard to adapt the fan down to the opening of the heatsink. More updates to follow.

Another edit: I added two 120mm fans on top of the heatsink but barely got to test it out. While the GPU temps looked very promising, the VDDC sensors ran up to the 130s so I shut it down right away. I sent for some new thermal pads in the hopes of bringing these temps down.

With the bitcoin.conf file set up in the Namecoin directory, complete with server=1 for solo mining, I'm still not sure on a couple of points. Using GUIMiner, does the Bitcoin client path still point to Bitcoin.exe like it would for solo mining BTCs? Or, does it need to point to Namecoind for the purpose of solo mining NMCs? Finally, is there any way to verify that the miner is in fact solo mining NMCs and at what rate?

I've been curious about this for some time - the ability to operate a mining rig that is not in your immediate vicinity. I've heard a lot about remote desktop software but I've never had the opportunity to try anything like this yet. I've tried the Windows 7 remote desktop feature, but couldn't figure out how to control another desktop from my main machine. I couldn't even be sure if this is the right type of software to utilize for the remote mining I have in mind. Anyway, here's my thought:

If I have a mining rig assembled and booted to whichever OS and connected to the internet using WiFi, for example, in the basement of my house, am I able to operate this machine remotely from, say, the second story of said house? If so, to what extent can I operate it? Aside from being able to run the relevant mining software, I'd also want to be able to reboot the system, write to its drives, etc.

I've got two monitors set up on my desk. Ideally, I'd like to configure the remote system to appear on my second monitor as if it were plugged into it physically.

Anybody familiar with this concept please fill me in on what you can, I would very much appreciate it.

Here's what I've got to sell:

1. PC Power & Cooling 750w Silencer - 20BTC - Bought this brand-new from Newegg but never used it for intended project, which another PSU that I had wound up in.

2. Apevia Java 650w -10BTC - I blew up a Java with a high voltage load and RMA'd the unit. They sent me a brand-new in-box 650w Java unit to replace my broken unit, but I don't need the unit now so I'm selling it.

I finally got my 950w Silencer in the mail last night, though I didn't have time to really put everything together until I got home from work an hour ago. All I can say is that watching my mining client start up with four GPUs in the 370Mh/s range (I'll get around to reasonably overclocking these once I verify the system's stability) is pretty exhilarating for my inner geek, although when I start up each GPU the lights in my house flicker for a second  . Cheers to my fellow miners!

Anybody else take advantage of the $400 5970 sale from Newegg?

After picking up a couple of 5970s from Newegg's recent promotion, I switched my two Sapphire 'Xtreme' 5830s to another case to use as a headless mining rig. While setting up the cards with TRIXX, I steadily ramped the core clock all the way to 1080, with the memory at 360 and voltage at 1.195 using the stock heatsink and fan (although I removed the thermal paste that came with it and replaced it with non-conductive AC MX-2). In the case is a 120mm Scythe 'Ultra Kaze' 133CFM fan directly behind the graphics cards, pointed at the exhaust openings at the back of the case, blowing at max speed over the cards. This keeps the GPU temp at 72C under the full load at 1.195v.

I've always been a fan of Scythe's case fans, especially the high-CFM models, and this reinforces the idea that airflow is key to solid GPU performance. I noticed that they also produce an aftermarket GPU heatsink fan. I'd be interested in installing these on my 5830s in the headless rig to keep them cool over the long term.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121375R

$126.99. Not only are they 5850s, but ASUS DirectCU, one of my favorite aftermarket coolers.

EDIT: Sold out. Although it was definitely nice to see these pop up in the Open Box section.

Shell Shocker deal.

Great buy if anybody has been looking for a high-RPM drive.

I know I'm cutting it awfully close here. The PSU in question is a PC Power and Cooling 750w unit, with said GPUs to be hanging on a single 12v rail @ 60a.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703009

I also plan on overclocking these units as much as I can on stock cooling. I'd possibly put water blocks on each GPU in the future.

Anyway, as I said I know I'm cutting it close here. Anybody have experience crossfiring 5970s on similar wattage? Am I safe here or do I add something like this supplemental supply?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104054

I'd also think that for the price of that supplemental PSU, I might as well just spend the few extra bucks to get something like PC P&C's 910w unit.

http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx?cm_sp=ShellShocker-_-17-703-022-_-10012011_2

Thanks for your input!

EDIT: Oops, probably should mention what the rest of my system contains. Intel Core i7 920 at stock volts/clock on a Gigabyte x58 board with 3x4gb DDR3 RAM @ 1.5v. 3 x 640gb WD 7200RPM HDDs in RAID0. Four 120mm LED fans and two 60mm fans mounted in a PCI slot, powered by 4pin Molex, to cool GPU.

I pulled the heatsink fan off of my 5970 to put some MX-2 on the chips. Every time I see this thing it reminds me of how much I can't stand it. If you have a 5970 you know how loud, obnoxious and inefficient it is, almost as though it was trying to mess with your head. "That's right, I do an awful job of cooling your expensive GPUs and I'll be glad to remind you of that every second of the day with the dull roar of my seemingly-contradictory low-CFM high-decibel noise wheel!"

Anyway, I'm looking at this thing and the copper heatsink underneath all the plastic seems like a good starting point. After all, not many heatsinks are even out there for dual-GPU cards. Maybe strap one or two high CFM 120mm fans onto it. Unlike the stock fan, something that would actually push the air through the copper fins. Or draw the air away from it. Or both? All I know is that this card sits at 90C in its current state so bringing that max temp under load down would definitely be worth the time. Aside from that, the only other thing to address would be the memory chips on both sides of the board, but I don't see why you couldn't stick those little copper heatsinks on each of them.

5970 owners, any thoughts?

4 sticks of 256mb PC800 RDRAM 184-pin. Looking to sell for BTCs but would like to see if anyone is interested in these before negotiating a price.