Mining Rigs - Specifically (tech talk for noobs)

[freedomworkshop]

I was just reading this thread

..and I came across this post:

I'm curious to see some pictures of those mining rigs.  Share your pictures of your rig and then details of build and mhash/sec.  Let's get a frame of reference up here with some visuals.  I will use this first post as a place holder and take a picture of my own rig later today.

I am fortunate enough to have a shop with space for me to setup my mining rigs.  So far I've just gone with the open "bench" setup to save on costs and to make cooling easy.

In the photo you can see the bench with three rigs (a mix of 5870, 5970 and one older 5840) on the floor is the Bitcoin solo server running in -server mode, which also has 2 5870's.  There are a couple of other machines in my office with 5870's elsewhere.  I am at 3.8G/hash and adding about 1/g/hash per week buying up cheap used cards via craigslist.

I am working on building a good Ubuntu Live ATI ISO file today in an attempt to eliminate all of the hard drives by using USB thumb drives, that'll save on electricity as well as hardware costs going forward.

http://www.eskimo.com/~dan/rig.jpg

I don't want to hijack the thread with a million noob questions (and I am a noob - started learning about Bitcoin "yesterday"), but I am very curious about a lot of things. I have thee questions from reading the post above. If anyone can answer them, I'll be very appreciative - as I really love the idea of getting into mining. I know it's a tough business, from what I have read online, but it just sounds so cool, the fact that it's tough doesn't turn me off. I can't get past the cool factor

Questions:

1). In a setup such as the one in the picture, can you just keep plugging video cards (or asic cards) into 1 computer? Will that computer overheat or crash or what ever? Or, is all the work done by the "rigs"/"cards", and the completed work pretty much just seamlessly flows through the computer into the laptop? The reason I am asking this, is because I like the idea of simply buying up a heap of video cards and lining them all up, but surely there's a limit? Can anyone give me their 2 cents on this?

2). I am thinking of buying this card. What do I do with it? Do I just plug it into my laptop with USB? Or des it go into expansion ports in a PC? Don't PC's have like just a couple/few of those ports? I can't figure out what it is by looking at the picture. Can I buy a special "box" that is suited to simply plugging a  heap of those cards in? Or can I just hook them all up to a laptop via a heap of usb cables and a hub?

3). If you like (as wih the other thread, above), can you please show a picture of your "rig", but specifically explain all the "meaty" info like:

- How much did it cost?
- How old is it?
- Does it use a lot of power?
- How many Bitcoins does it mine?
- What mistakes did you make? What would you do differently? what do you WISH you had done?

I am really interested discussion relating to all of the above. Basically, I envision my apartment turning into a heap of rigs, shelves and wires - and me being very proud of it, as visitors look at it - almost looking afraid, while I smile and proudly announce: "Cool, huh?". But I need to get my head around what mining rigs are, what cards are, how they work together, how to join them together, how many computers I need, etc.

Note: I have been researching pretty heavily since yestgerday afternoon. I have studied the history. I know that it all started out using CPU's and then people realized that graphics cards are 100 times faster, and then machines were made to do the job in a dedicated fashion (asics) and now there are gigahash rigs and even terrahash rigs etc. I get all that. But I am not clued on on the specific of how all that stuff plugs into computers. So that's what I would like to learn about in tbis thread - as pertaining to how many Bitcoins can be made.

In short, I a just looking for your 2 cents, from what you have learned - in order to provide me with direction. How can your experiences help me? A noob.

[baddw]

1) No, each computer has a limited number of slots.  GPU's require PCI-E (PCI-Express) slots, most basic PC's have 1 or 2, enthusiast gaming/mining motherboards have 4 or more that can be accessible with "risers" because there is not physically enough room to fit all of those cards on a single board (the GPU cards that are good for mining all take up 2 expansion slot spaces).  5, sometimes 6 cards per PC seems to be a pretty hard limit.  Also there is the power issue, generally a PC with more than 2 or 3 GPU's will need an extra power supply (PSU) unless you get a really powerful one such as 1200W+.  (In general, a powerful GPU will take 300W.  So 2 GPU's = 600W, add in other system components and some overhead, and you need 800W or so to power the whole system.  Now, in the USA, many residential power circuits are 15 Amps, which at 110V is 1650W.  So you could only power 2 of these systems on a typical household power circuit.  If you have 20A or 30A circuits, you can go higher.)  It looks like the PC's in the photo show 2x GPU's per motherboard, which is not terribly hard to accomplish.  You see 3 "computers" in a row there on the shelf; 3 motherboards, CPU's, PSU's, and RAM sets, each with 2 graphics cards which do the actual mining.

Note, this is for GPU mining, which is basically only good for scrypt mining (Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc.) and not SHA256 like Bitcoin.  They are 2 fundamentally different algorithms which require fundamentally different hardware to mine.  ASICs are out for SHA256, nobody has yet produced and marketed an ASIC for scrypt, although several are supposedly being developed and tested.  This is why GPU's are still profitable for scrypt mining.

2) HAHAHAHA!  That card doesn't exist and it won't for several months, if ever.  Nobody knows what you will really have to do with it in order to get it to run.  BFL seems to be promising the impossible with it.  Who knows?  Maybe you have to slot it into a PCI-E slot, maybe you can run it on a USB cable.  Maybe it consumes goat blood for its energy.

3) Any reasonable Bitcoin rig nowadays will consist of ASIC miners.  There are many different configurations.  Some of them are "standalone" (meaning they don't need to be plugged into a PC) while others require USB connections to a PC in order to mine.  I am not aware of any that use PCI-E connections like GPU's that allow them to be directly plugged into a PC motherboard, but there's no reason why they couldn't exist.

In general, you sound very naive, not really technically inclined (if you were then you'd know what you were looking at in that photo -- regardless of mining, computer hardware has looked pretty similar for decades) and probably not getting into this for the right reasons.  You are the "sucker in the room" and despite your inquisitive nature (I'm glad you're asking here before just pre-ordering a BFL card), you will be taken in by somebody and be ripped off.  The power requirements are significant and will require expensive upgrades to most residential systems.

[IamCANADIAN013]

1) No, each computer has a limited number of slots.  GPU's require PCI-E (PCI-Express) slots, most basic PC's have 1 or 2, enthusiast gaming/mining motherboards have 4 or more that can be accessible with "risers" because there is not physically enough room to fit all of those cards on a single board (the GPU cards that are good for mining all take up 2 expansion slot spaces).  5, sometimes 6 cards per PC seems to be a pretty hard limit.  Also there is the power issue, generally a PC with more than 2 or 3 GPU's will need an extra power supply (PSU) unless you get a really powerful one such as 1200W+.  (In general, a powerful GPU will take 300W.  So 2 GPU's = 600W, add in other system components and some overhead, and you need 800W or so to power the whole system.  Now, in the USA, many residential power circuits are 15 Amps, which at 110V is 1650W.  So you could only power 2 of these systems on a typical household power circuit.  If you have 20A or 30A circuits, you can go higher.)  It looks like the PC's in the photo show 2x GPU's per motherboard, which is not terribly hard to accomplish.  You see 3 "computers" in a row there on the shelf; 3 motherboards, CPU's, PSU's, and RAM sets, each with 2 graphics cards which do the actual mining.

Note, this is for GPU mining, which is basically only good for scrypt mining (Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc.) and not SHA256 like Bitcoin.  They are 2 fundamentally different algorithms which require fundamentally different hardware to mine.  ASICs are out for SHA256, nobody has yet produced and marketed an ASIC for scrypt, although several are supposedly being developed and tested.  This is why GPU's are still profitable for scrypt mining.

2) HAHAHAHA!  That card doesn't exist and it won't for several months, if ever.  Nobody knows what you will really have to do with it in order to get it to run.  BFL seems to be promising the impossible with it.  Who knows?  Maybe you have to slot it into a PCI-E slot, maybe you can run it on a USB cable.  Maybe it consumes goat blood for its energy.

3) Any reasonable Bitcoin rig nowadays will consist of ASIC miners.  There are many different configurations.  Some of them are "standalone" (meaning they don't need to be plugged into a PC) while others require USB connections to a PC in order to mine.  I am not aware of any that use PCI-E connections like GPU's that allow them to be directly plugged into a PC motherboard, but there's no reason why they couldn't exist.

In general, you sound very naive, not really technically inclined (if you were then you'd know what you were looking at in that photo -- regardless of mining, computer hardware has looked pretty similar for decades) and probably not getting into this for the right reasons.  You are the "sucker in the room" and despite your inquisitive nature (I'm glad you're asking here before just pre-ordering a BFL card), you will be taken in by somebody and be ripped off.  The power requirements are significant and will require expensive upgrades to most residential systems.

Gotta agree with above.

2 weeks ago I had no clue what mining was and how to do it.  I started out small, just using my graphics card with bitminter to learn about it. 

I hadn't sunk any money in and I learned a lot.  I went out and found 10 333 mh usb miners for cheap knowing I would never make money off them.  learned a lot with them, still learning.  Been using them for just over a week.

Decided to step it up and learn more.  Ordered a 30 gh cube.  Took me a lot of research and searching to come to the conclusion to get it.  Managed a pretty good deal I think, when I get it, I'll try to sell the 333 mh miners, still seem to be going for more than I paid on Craigslist and Kijiji. If I break even I'll be surprised, nor do I care, i learned a lot.

Tonight I started to figure out bfgminer, since bitminter wont work with the cube?  Got the usb sticks working and it looks like they even perform better in bfgminer.

When I get the cube, again, learning curve.  Looking into a power supply and what have you.  When I have that all figured out and mining for a bit, I'll think about my next move.

Maybe I'll look into a better graphics card and try litecoin.  Who knows. Maybe I'll look into something big (2 th) Keep in mind, I'm still only treating this as a hobby because it interests me.

Don't get into this with the mindset that you're going to get rich.  Start out slow and learn as you go.  That's my advice.