Any Hope for Enclosed Mixed Use Mining/Gaming Rig?

[akrazojub]

I am in the IT industry and I guess you would say I am a mining novice. I am currently mining zcash at home on an Asrock z270 Extreme4 3PCI slot 1151 mobo with 1 MSI 1060 6GB Gaming X card at home along with a 2 card 1050 ti setup at another location.

I want to get a little more profit and sol/s from my home PC so I need to upgrade. I have this 3GPU enclosed tower case mining/gaming rig in mind. I have been told that this is simply not feasible due to runaway heat in the case and to just build an open mining rig. This is my home though and I don't want that lying around for the fact I have kids who have friends that come over, 2 cats, and to me no matter how well you manage the cables the open frame miners look terrible sitting on the floor or on a desk.

My thoughts are
* To keep my GTX 1060 6GB for gaming (My kids and I don't need much more for the games we play) and switching over to late night mining.
* Add 2 more cards for dedicated 24 hr mining. These 2 cards could be 2 more 1060's or 1070's or 1080 ti's.
* I'd like to start with air cooling but not opposed to adding water cooling.

Am I asking the impossible? If not, any recommendations on case/cooling equipment?

[binkyj357]

   Hopefully someone with more experience chimes in, but I think you might wanna go ahead and factor in the liquid cooling. I'm working on a similar concept @ home, but using a Thermaltake Core P3 case. It's an open air design, and I've currently got a pair of 1050ti cards mounted off the mobo, face forward (case configured to stand upright). Temps seems reasonable to me now, ~60°C, but one of those spaces used to have a 1060 and it was usually up around 70° until that card started acting up (may or may not be related, error code 43 that won't go away, just days after close of Amazon return window ). I guess I said all that to say I, personally, would not trust it for much w/o liquid cooling... just my 2 cents

[killerelite]

2 gpu closed rig is easily possible , u just need to make sure ur mobo has enough distance between the 2 pcie x 16 slots
Have enough air flow in casing .
I mounted a 120 mm fan by wires at the end of the 2 cards constantly blowing air through the cards
I have since upgraded to open air cause now I have 5 cards
Anyways in closed rig these used to work at 76-79 degrees at around 60% fan speed below 79 and 75% fan speed at and above 79 degrees.

[leowonderful]

Static pressure fans and/or high rpm and cfm fans could make it possible but the system might be on the loud side. You'll want a large, possibly full tower case with as many fans as needed to keep the heat down (depends on how many GPUs are running, I'd suggest maximum for emergency purposes if one somehow breaks).

I'm no expert at closed systems and I never will be because it's unconventional, but I'd stay away from anything under 40 cfm or so. This might be a good starting point. https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16835181116/specs?ignorebbr=0

Now for two GPUs one or two of these along with the preinstalled fans in a system will be fine. The question is what you'll be running in the future and how many you will be running.

[killerelite]

2 gpu closed rig is easily possible , u just need to make sure ur mobo has enough distance between the 2 pcie x 16 slots
Have enough air flow in casing .
I mounted a 120 mm fan by wires at the end of the 2 cards constantly blowing air through the cards
I have since upgraded to open air cause now I have 5 cards
Anyways in closed rig these used to work at 76-79 degrees at around 60% fan speed below 79 and 75% fan speed at and above 79 degrees.

The Cards were 2 1080 tis gigabye aurous edition
But I would seriosuly recommend getting cards that are 2 slot like msi gaming x , So you have enough spacing between cards
Anyways good Luck

[miner49er2107]

I have small kids too. I built 4 3 card rigs and put them around the house. For the last 2 I used this small and light case: Fractal Design Core 2300 Black Compact ATX Midtower Computer Case and use only the fans that come with it, they are very quiet.
 
I remove the drive holder assembly and use the screw hole to hang one gpu vertically and connect with a riser, the other two cards are on the MB, the side cover just fits over the card that hangs. I use MSI Armor RX 580 8GB cards. the temps on one are:
74C
62C
73C

The other is:
73C
63C
71C

I have another with a bigger Fractal case with 3 MSI Gaming RX 580 8GB which has better temp:
64C
55C
58C
 
For comparison I have an open air 7 card rig in my office with MSI Armor RX 580 8GB cards and the temps are
58C
49C
58C
56C
59C
59C
60C

[QuintLeo]

3 GPU in a closed rig is viable.

 Given the slot layout on motherboards though, you almost have to use something like the Gigabyte 1070 (or 1060) "ITX" card in the 3'd slot to allow for enough airflow into the middle card, and blower-type cards will probably help a LOT on keeping temps down.

 You HAVE to use a case that is designed for "8 peripheral slots" like the Thermaltake V34 and V35 series, or you get stuck being forced to use a low-end single-slot-width card in that third slot.

 Good air intake is CRITICAL - I strongly reccomend a pair of fairly high flow 120mm or 140mm fans in the front of the case, and try to keep as much stuff away from the airflow path from those fans to the leading edge of your GPUs as possible.
The Thermaltake cases I mention have 2 x removeable HD cages so you can guarentee at least ONE fan worth of unrestricted airflow into the GPU area by removing one of them completely.

[akrazojub]

Thank you all for the responses.

Since posting I have done more research and settled in on a complete new build taking only my EVO SSD and MSI 1060 GTX

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nazran/saved/2dTm8d

The Corsair 780T appears large enough and it has modular drive cages that can be removed in front of the intake fans. I will mount my SSD on the backside. I am going to water cool the Coffee Lake i5 8400 (None of the games I play... World of Warships, Tanks, Planes, Warthunder, Civ 6 are huge CPU users.) at first with a NZXT Kraken v42. The radiator is 120/140 mm fan size which I will play with mounting as a top exhaust. I figure this might take a few degrees of ambient temp out of the case.

I am going to try sandwiching the MSI GTX 1060 6GB between the 2 MSI GTX 1080 ti miners to start with and just see what the temps do. I did see an interesting fan modding idea that could put a 140mm fan right in front of the cards to force air between the card spaces.

I am also going to try to make it a work of art with the MSI Mystic Lighting RGB system and maybe even getting custom colored GPU cables.

If it doesn't work out I can always take the 1060 GTX out and put it in to my current rig and let that be the kids machine and I can use scheduled tasks and batch files to have it mine in the night.

[QuintLeo]

The case should work well - though it's about $100 more than the Thermaltake cases I mentioned, it seems to have more open space and is definitely "prettier".

Putting the 1060 in the middle might work, but be aware you're leaving it NO space to get air into the fans so it has a VERY high probability of overheating.


 I don't play Civ 6, but the other games you play aren't heavy CPU *OR* GPU users, they all run reasonably well on current AMD A10 APUs at lowish settings (the HD version of WoT vs the SD version might be more of a GPU hog though).

[Raimy]

I am pretty new to mining as well, and I was thinking along those same lines when I first started. I think the  people here are right on that say 2, maybe 3 cards are ok in an enclosed case with enough fans. Going much higher than this you should look into making an open air frame. I just recently build my first open air frame and the running temperatures dropped by more than 15 degrees to the point the fans are now barley audible.

If you have small kids you are worried about sticking their fingers into places they shouldn't, you can just put your rigs on a higher shelf. I bought a wire shelving unit from home depot that works well for allowing good airflow around the rig and also lets me keep it up higher away from small pets and children.