If you have a question it's helpful to provide as much info as possible. What motherboard? What power supply? How are they connected? To what PCI-E slots? With what power connections?  Does windows see the card in device manager or nothing at all? Have you tried detect hardware changes? Have you installed the latest catalyst drivers? Are your cards in crossfire? Are you using dummy plugs?

Actually that's probably it right there. No dummy plug. Build a dummy plug or plug your monitor in and see if the card works. Done. /thread.

Are people using the pay per share option? That's the only place that deepbit excels over other pools. And it's a terrible option unless you're a very intermittent miner. BTW PPS is not 7%, it was only 7% during the "apology period". It is normally 10%.

Most 5850s can overclock to get ~325KHash/sec without much difficulty. If you get a particularly sucky one I suppose it's possible to not get any more than what you say.

God why do people make spreadsheets and why do other people take this crap seriously? These projections are totally bogus, we already had a huge ass thread about an "analysis of mining profitability" not 2 days ago, with some super "legit" looking spreadsheet showing why it would be completely unprofitable to mine. The first very first step in the projection was 100% wrong. They projected a 60% difficulty increase for the next step (this one is about 25%) and a 10% increase in coin price (this one was about 120%).

No one knows the future. This is the key component to making every spreadsheet projection completely worthless. A static rise in difficulty, a static coin price, none of these make any sense. The market is especially volatile right now.

I made a spreadsheet with some conservative values showing I could make ~100% profit return from mining hardware starting tomorrow, but I don't even want to post it as a counter argument because it's just going to feed into the idea that spreadsheets mean anything.

You could have saved yourself as much or more heat/energy by locking the card affinity to a single core, and still had a usable computer.

The only sense that is a good read is in the sense that it's a cautionary tale of why not to listen to other peoples nonsense.

If someone listened to JJG in April they would have missed out one of the most profitable mining spurts in bitcoin history. It's interesting to look back on such things and go "Wow was that wrong" I suppose.

Not really sure where to post this, but it made me laugh. The forum front page says:

"Child Boards: Selling, Buying, Chinese students"

This can be read in a funny way.

I respect your decisions, but I'll put in one last plug for my thinking:

Heat issues -- 5830s run pretty cool, I currently have 4 5870s smushed together and that's hot, but they're all surviving happily. A small piece of plastic to space cards and a fan helps a bit.
Cost issues -- For a single rig, obviously your build is fine, but if you are planning on expanding consider the following:

$75 for mobo $85 for PSU $40 for CPU $220 for 2x cards (lets say ram is free for you and no case) vs. say $160 for mobo $150 for PSU $440 for 4x cards.

So 420 for 2x gpus * 2 = 840 for 4xgpus vs 750 for 4gpus. More heat, less space.

The more you expand the more you save. Just throwin it out there of course.

A 6 year old PSU will not be able to handle a modern GPU. ATX specifications have changed, as well as how power has been distributed. It used to mostly be on 3.3 and 5v rails, now almost the entire power draw is 12v. Sorry

RAM?

Also, that board is pretty awful. I'm not sure if VRMs will be a problem with a low power CPU and multiple GPUs, but be aware that that series of motherboards are known for their low quality mosfets. I personally wold try to find something that can support 3 GPUs, as you want as many GPUs running as possible to recoup cost on other components. I'm not at all a fan of the ASRock extreme4, I hate it, but it's only $50 more, has 3 double spaced x16 slots, and if you later need it an x1 slot you can run an extender off. Or potentially the best would be the 870FXA, 5 x16 slots (4 double spaced) and an x1 slot if you ever decide to go really crazy. It's twice the price, but you can immediately get twice the videocards (which will require a bigger PSU obviously).

If heat and noise are a concern I suppose it's fine, but remember that it will take a little longer to recoup investment (assuming you can recoup heh)

Well, I've never tried it, because I'd be terrified of something going wrong. I suppose if you super ziptied it in it could work (perhaps use zipties to suspend the card), and propped up some fans into the bays... Be aware though that the maximum cable length for PCIE-Extenders is 16" I believe. This severely limits the workable space you will have to play with.

I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're desperate for high hash:cost ratio I won't say it won't work heh.

I'm not familiar with inline low profile connectors. The problem I see with any setup is that you will still need some space of some kind to place the cards. The Antec one hundred is a pretty shoddy case, fairly cramped, would require a lot of modding to fit 5 cards in it.

I still think you're setting yourself up for a real headache unless you make a custom enclosure.

In no particular order:

There are almost no cases that can handle 5 double slot GPUs. THe rosewill Thor is the only one I can think of that costs less than $300.  Unless you want to build your own custom case tt might behoove you to pay a little more and get something like a 890FXTA-GD70 and write off the savings on riser cards.
Two smaller PSUs are rarely a superior alternative to a single large PSU, pricewise, hasslewise, dangerwise. Perhaps in terms of cabling...
I'm a little unclear on the 5 card thing myself, some people claim windows is limited to 4 physical GPUs, very little proof offered though. It has been suggested linux will overcome this issue. And yes x1 slots will do just fine.
5870s are very easy to overclock, in windows. In linux, a little harder. Forewarned is forearmed.
Cooling and tidyness are always a hassle. Lots of cable ties and lots of fans I guess.

I'm  not that familiar with other pools, so I can't speak to them, they may have awesome features, I just don't know about them which is why I'm not going to mention them:

BTCGuild has the same options as deepbit.net for .5% less fee. If you donate 2.5% (you get to choose how much to donate rather than it being decided for you) you get:

0.5%: The crying smiley face next to your donation percentage will be replaced with a happy smiley.
2.0%: You would be able to receive Miner Idle email warnings, which notify you if a miner has not submitted work in a certain timeframe.
2.5%: You would receive your rewards without waiting for 120 confirmations on the block. This includes receiving payouts for blocks which become invalid.

The only thing it doesn't have is a 24 hour average, which I agree is sucky, but is it really such a dealbreaker? You get free money for sacrificing it. And if you don't need instant payout you get even more free money. Neato.

They had some downtime while migrating to new servers, and seem to be back up and running now. I personally like deepbit, I think Tycho has done a great job, but 50% is 50%, and so BTCGuild looks attractive to me. I encourage people to solo mine and do smaller pools as well, but deepbit and btcguild are my experience for now so that's what I speak to.


Apples and oranges for this thread. He is speaking of double-spending attacks and the like rather than overall network security from outside DDoSing and whatever.

My main rig is a 3x5870 setup and I do the same as you heh. Although I will have to adjust the memory back up manually because my friends are getting annoyed with me for not gaming with them (want to keep all my gpu power hashing!)

Even without downclocking memory a 1200W is enough to power 3x 6990s, though it is pushing the envelope a little bit. 6990s use ~375Watts per card (300 from 2x 8pin and 75 from PCI-E slot). That's 1125Watts max to be within ATX specifications. In reality they pull less but anyway I digress.

To power 3 6990s you will have to get an 8-pin adapter cable. 8Pin PCIE cables supply 150Watts, 6Pin 75, so do not simply try to plug a 6 pin into the 8pin socket. There are 2 extra ground cables iirc in the 8pin.

Ok that's a pretty standard windows setup. Well make sure your priority is high, you can try -f1 I believe the flag is for GUIMiner for your secondary card, and maybe -f30 for your primary card (you can adjust this if things get laggy). If that doesn't work you can try opening up a second client on the same card and see if that changes anything just as a diagnostic test.

That's fair, Lots of people don't feel comfortable for some reason, and that is a steal even if it's not the best unit in the world. It will definitely power you through hard times heh.


I run my memory @ 300Mhz on all cards. Less power, less heat, good times.

Need more information:

What miner? What OS? Crossfire? Solo? Pool? Flags? Etc.

Fire hazards are real but unlikely. Depends on the type of wood used, so use a type with higher ignition point. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but ignition temperature for most common woods is around 300F? Unless you take off the heatsink and lay your cards directly on the wood and place some insulator around it I don't see that as very likely. It can cause off-gassing though, so be aware of that.

Is your cabinet for sound proofing or simply to take up less space? If it's simply a space issue running open air with some fans should be fine. If it's sound as well and you are enclosing it, make sure that you have proper risers for airflow and reduced contact and maybe some window fans to keep air moving through the enclosure.