I bought a cheap used Chinese branded GPU (nvidia 1080) from ebay.  It is listed in the device manager but it has an exclamation mark next to it (google says that this indicates a driver issue).  It is listed in HWinfo but not in afterburner.  

On reddit someone said:
I was able to locate the driver on the manufacturer's site (http://www.xyingba.com/index.php/pro_v_116_147.html) but the latest driver is like version 377 from 2017.  

I had some trouble downloading the driver because it is hosted on baidu and you need an account to download it and you cant make an account without a chinese phone number.  thankfully someone was able to download it for me and they re-uploaded the driver here (http://www.mediafire.com/file/d7tm4cv2fyocdz0/377.35_win10_64bit_international-1022014-02.zip/file).  

After installing the driver I was able to see the gpu in my device manager as well as afterburner.  It ran games well and benched as expected for 1080 in PCMark.  But no mining programs recognized it.  just said that there is no device detected or no Cuda devices detected.  Im starting to think that the driver was released before cuda 9 and the two miners I tried dont have a version for earlier than cuda 9.  

What can I do?  Is it possible to run newer drivers on this gpu somehow?  Can I run any mining programs in the card's current state?  Or is there no option and this card is a dud?

EDIT: turns out it works in hive OS.  woo! hashes on eth ez pz.  so weird that its plug and play on linux but such a hassle on windows.

i can confirm that the gpus dont work with only 6 pins (even though the 1660tis get a large majority of their power from the risers).  I didn't purposely test this out.  I just didnt fully plug in the last two pins on one gpu and was wondering why it wasn't being recognized.

Anyways I no longer have any issue with plugging in my gpus properly since I contacted evga about providing extra 8+6 pin cables so im all good now. 

Here is my current issue (which I posted in my most recent reply): ive had my rig up for a month (pretty stable for the past 2 weeks). So I have devoted my time to tweaking the OC settings so that I can extract a little more juice out of the cards. I had a few questions about my process and results.

For the past couple weeks I have been mining zcoin (mtp) on the trex miner. I have been overclocking with nvidia inspector.

I started by undervolting the cards to .8V and +150 core clock. (Well I bumped the core clock up by +25 until +175 caused imediate crashes).

I kept it at +150 and the rig ran for 15 hours straight without any gpus crashing. Then one gpu crashed. So I changed that gpu to +140 and the rest to +150. I ran the rig and now another gpu crashed after only 3 hours of uptime. Strange because that gpu was fine during the 15 hours uptime previously. Anyways, I lowered the clock on that one.

And I have been doing that process on repeat for about a week and a half. The rig will run fine for half a day but then I will check on it and see that a gpu had crashed. Ive had uptimes of 24+ hours and uptimes as low as 15 minutes. The good thing about trex miner is that it restarts itself (https://imgur.com/a/qcknxQW) and the affected gpu is running like normal, its not "crashed", as in it is not working anymore. Trex keeps a running list of all the gpus that crashed during the current session so that helps me from having to scroll up to find any errors(https://imgur.com/a/WHORZA7).

My questions: Am I doing this overclocking thing correctly?

I keep lowering and lowering the core clocks, seemingly without end. For my 9 gpu rig my core clocks are: +110,+110,+130,+150,+100,+100,+70,+100,+100. And still the rig will have a gpu that crashes once a day. And the weirdest thing is that one gpu will be running fine at its current clock for days and then it crashes for some reason. When will it end??

Why is it that one gpu ran fine for 24 hours at +130 but then couldn't run more than 2 hours at +120? Is the issue my core clocks or something else?

The gpus never "crash" so hard that they freeze the pc or even cause the gpus to be non responsive. Trex miner restarts its processes and all the gpus are operating like normal after restart, sometime for many hours afterwards. Other miner apps Ive used freeze or cause the pc to freeze when a gpu OC error occurs so thats neat. So should I even lower the core clocks or leave them high since the downtime is only for a few seconds? Is there any long term damage to the cards from the crashes?

Could this be a trex issue?

ive had my rig up for a month (pretty stable for the past 2 weeks). So I have devoted my time to tweaking the OC settings so that I can extract a little more juice out of the cards. I had a few questions about my process and results.

For the past couple weeks I have been mining zcoin (mtp) on the trex miner. I have been overclocking with nvidia inspector.

I started by undervolting the cards to .8V and +150 core clock. (Well I bumped the core clock up by +25 until +175 caused imediate crashes).

I kept it at +150 and the rig ran for 15 hours straight without any gpus crashing. Then one gpu crashed. So I changed that gpu to +140 and the rest to +150. I ran the rig and now another gpu crashed after only 3 hours of uptime. Strange because that gpu was fine during the 15 hours uptime previously. Anyways, I lowered the clock on that one.

And I have been doing that process on repeat for about a week and a half. The rig will run fine for half a day but then I will check on it and see that a gpu had crashed. Ive had uptimes of 24+ hours and uptimes as low as 15 minutes. The good thing about trex miner is that it restarts itself (https://imgur.com/a/qcknxQW) and the affected gpu is running like normal, its not "crashed", as in it is not working anymore. Trex keeps a running list of all the gpus that crashed during the current session so that helps me from having to scroll up to find any errors(https://imgur.com/a/WHORZA7).

My questions: Am I doing this overclocking thing correctly?

I keep lowering and lowering the core clocks, seemingly without end. For my 9 gpu rig my core clocks are: +110,+110,+130,+150,+100,+100,+70,+100,+100. And still the rig will have a gpu that crashes once a day. And the weirdest thing is that one gpu will be running fine at its current clock for days and then it crashes for some reason. When will it end??

Why is it that one gpu ran fine for 24 hours at +130 but then couldn't run more than 2 hours at +120? Is the issue my core clocks or something else?

The gpus never "crash" so hard that they freeze the pc or even cause the gpus to be non responsive. Trex miner restarts its processes and all the gpus are operating like normal after restart, sometime for many hours afterwards. Other miner apps Ive used freeze or cause the pc to freeze when a gpu OC error occurs so thats neat. So should I even lower the core clocks or leave them high since the downtime is only for a few seconds? Is there any long term damage to the cards from the crashes?

Could this be a trex issue?

so i was reading online that pcie x1 slots are routed through chipsets generally.  the b250 chipset on this board has a max of 12 pcie lanes so that seems pretty spot on with the amount of gpus this mobo can run.

 I can run 9 no problem so I need to figure out what is occupying the other pcie lanes.  Is there an easy way to find out whats on those pcie lanes or is it only possible by disabling certain things in the bios and seeing if that frees up a pcie lane? 

I have so far tried disabling all sata ports, lan controller, audio controller.  I guess i can try disabling the usb ports but then i wouldnt be able to control the bios afterwards.

actually, what is your storage?  is it via sata port or via usb stick?  maybe the storage device is hogging the pcie lanes.

which cpu do you use?

so i converted the ssd to gpt right from windows.  I changed the "storage boot option control" to UEFI and when i booted into windows I confirmed that the BIOS mode was UEFI.  but when i tried to connect the 10th gpu it still wouldnt work.  Is there a setting that I missed or am I misunderstanding you completly and I am changing the wrong settings?

I do think the issue is the pcie lanes being occupied.  I think the cpu is running with 8 1x lanes and 2 4x lanes but I don't know how to force it to run at 16 1x lanes, or perhaps i am misunderstanding the possibility of that.

From another forum it was suggested that I do not have enough available pcie lanes which makes sense.  I took a look at the intel site for my processor, g4400 (https://i.imgur.com/oFKUggx.png) and it states that the processor can do 16 lanes at 1x or 8x1 + 2x4.  so this makes a lot of sense.  i have 9 gpus running fine but not 10. so it must be using 8 lanes at 1x and 2 and 4x.  how do i change it to 16 lanes at 1x?



thanks for the suggestion. ill give this a shot.  Can i convert my partition and keep my windows exactly as it is or will i have to reinstall windows?

Yes csm is enabled. When I turn off mining mode it is enabled.

What do you mean by installation media type? Like the USB drive I used to install windows has to be formatted a certain way? Or are you referring to the BIOS option "Storage Boot Option Control"? I have that setting on legacy.  Should I change it to UEFI?

I'm sorry for dedicating an entire post to this troubleshooting issue but I've spent an entire day frustratingly trying to figure this out and I have exhausted all the resources I have found online

I've tried so many different BIOS settings and I can't get more than 9 GPUs working on this board.   Has anyone else found a working solution?

I have tried the f1 and latest BIOS versions.  I have the two molex cables connected to the mobo (not sure they are necessary with power risers).  Turned off mining mode, enabled 4g encoding. tried gen 1, 2, and 3 and also tried turning off the 24-119 entries in combination with each gen link speed.  With the latest version of the BIOS I could post with gen 1 link speed but windows wouldnt load (or it loaded but the screen was just black).  I couldn't even load more than 6 GPUs on the latest BIOS, aka when I connected the second PSU it wouldnt post.  

Anything else that I missed?

  

https://imgur.com/a/5wH9a6Q

so im going to try to connect my second psu to my rig so i can add more gpus.  my mobo (gigabyte b250 fintech) came with this mobo adapater.  Is there anything I need to do in order to stay safe and not blow anything up?  I read that I need to power on the non mobo connected psu first and then power on the main psu.  and that i have to turn them off in the opposite order.   or do i not have to do that sort of behavior if i am using the adapter?  When I shut down the computer can I keep both psus in their switched "on" state or do i have to cut the power off?

so it turns out that one of my gigabyte 1660tis runs at 140w at 100% tdp.  wtf?? how is that possible?  i thought all 1660tis run at 120w.  do i have a fake 1660ti? lol. all my asus 1660tis are fine, 120w at 100%

the temps are fine, only 54C for each of those cards.  or is there a memory controller temp as well?

so i got around to doing the settings for eth and i was able to get my 6 1660tis to about 30.9 MH/s on average.  altogether that is about .0137 eth/day

so i got around to min maxing my overclock settings today and i noticed that on 3 gpus that they put out 31.2 mh/s at +895 mem clock but at +900 they each drop to 28.7 mhs. Is this some sort of a throttling? i find it strange that they would drop so much at a hard limit while my 3 other gpus all crash before the +895 mark.

im not sure about eth because i hadnt done the calculations for expected return back when i mined it a couple weeks ago.  but i know from what to mine its about 10-15% less than zcoin.

I can do about .3-.36 zcoin in a day depending on the network hashrate and such.

i dont really understand your anecdote.  your colleague used sata cables to connect to gpus or risers?  arent sata cables inadviseable because they rated for a low power consumption? im not trying to use sata connections at all.  just vga pcie 6+2/6 pin cables to power on my gpus (the 6+2 pin for my gpu and the 6 pin for the riser of the gpu above it).

thats the site i used to most when i was building my rig.  but it doesnt cover any of the overclocking aspects.  is there any site that addresses proper overclocking methods?

so ive been ming for a couple days. i have my power limit set to 80% but i noticed on the graphs(https://imgur.com/a/f5DVVfw) that there are some spikes over the limit, up to 100-120% at the peaks of the circled spikes.  is this a reading error or something that absolutely shouldnt be occurring?

Another question I have:  I have read that running GPUs at 100% power ruins the longevity of the cards.  Does overclocking the core and memory clocks have the same effect?

Last question: I've seen conflicting information.  Does running at 100% power ruin cards or does running at high temps (i.e. 70+) ruin cards.   ive been running at 60% power and have been only hitting 39-51C.  is it safe to up the power?  the thing im struggling with is finding overclock settings.  what ive been doing is upping the core by 25 and the mem by 150 and seeing if its stable.  but i feel like ive already overclocked it further than i should.  how do i know when its too much? right now im sitting at 60% power, +150 core, +700 mem mining mtp (zcoin)

I just started mining this week so I might be doing this wrong and also i havent tweaked my settings to perfection but here are my early stats:

GPUs: 1660ti x5

coin: eth
miner: claymore
hash: 29.33 MH/s each
Power consumption: 96W per gpu

coin: zcoin
miner: ccminer
hash: 1.71 kH/s each
power cosnumption: 72W per GPU