Which Z68 or P68 board for tri or quad GPU setup?

[supermine]

Which board would some of you pro-miners recommend if I have an idle Sandybridge CPU lying around and want to get 3-4 6870 or 6950 cards?

This ASUS board should support quad setup, but I have no idea how 4 cards should fit into the board. I see no difference to the Asus Z68 Pro.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68V/

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[grue]

2 cards directly plugged in, 2 using extenders

[smoki]

For a quad gpu setup - none. An MSI 890FXA-GD70 with the cheapest AM3 cpu (Sempron 140) or even an overkill-for-mining Athlon II X2 will cost less than any Intel-based board with 4 full-length pci-e slots. And it will take 4 video cards without extenders (additional cost and waiting time) or 6 with them.
Heck, if it's a higher-end Sandy Bridge, you can probably sell it for more than the MSI + Sempron will cost you

[supermine]

I see - however I got the 2500K for $100. I also want to have a nice Workstation PC when the Goldrush is over. Do you have a link to such an extender? Cheers.

[Xenon971]

I would go a generation back with buying a motherboard, and CPU if it is a dedicated rig. for mining the CPU is not a bottle neck at all. However if it will be a multi-purpose machine (aka gaming ) than I would invest in a 2500k and a motherboard with enough ports. Also a P68 will do, since the Z68's main advantage is allowing you to use the CPU's on board graphics.

[scifimike12]

I see - however I work at Intel (but all my posts being a private matter!) and got the 2500K for $100. I also want to have a nice Workstation PC when the Goldrush is over. Do you have a link to such an extender? Cheers.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200521164326#ht_3589wt_905

Or you can buy them from this guy.  He also has an eBay store.

[supermine]

Nice prices for a riser! Will the Z68 even be able to handle four or even six 5850 cards? The MSI obviously does.

[jwzguy]

Has anyone gotten a quad setup with that MSI 890fx board running under windows? I'm having serious issues. The cards show up but Afterburner throws a driver error and guiminer won't run at all.

[supermine]

Don't use Windows for creating a cryptographic, decentralised and open sourced currency. Windows is the opposit of all three things.

[jwzguy]

That's quite an ironic statement. Also, not very helpful.

[supermine]

You hijacked this thread, now you have to live with the consequences.  Did you try dummy plugs for your cards in Windows? I highly recommend to switch to Linux, gives higher hash rates and Compiz-Fusion looks better than any OS on the planet right now.

[jwzguy]

Actually,I did try the dummy plug trick, but it didn't work. That's not really an issue, though. I have 4 monitors I can just plug in, so I did that instead. I had many problems, but mainly, none of the hardware monitors or overclocking tools would work. Guiminer wouldn't start. I tried using the first 2 cards in Xfire, as done by someone with a similar problem, but while I could run Guiminer, I couldn't downclock memory or monitor temps, and the fans started screaming at full load very quickly, so I shut it down.

Not to mention, I was only getting around 880Mhash total for 4x 6870's. I can get 865 with a very conservative overclock on 3 and keep all temps under 67C. So that's pretty worthless.

About linux. I've given linux a shot many times in the past but honestly, I've always spent 90% of my time trying to get either software or hardware working and only about 10% of the time actually using the OS. While I respect the ideals that it's founded on, and I realize it's come a long way, I've never had enough time to invest to use for real work.

If I were to try it again, what would you suggest I start with? Latest Ubuntu? Are there good overclocking and GPU monitoring tools available?

Thanks.

[supermine]

Hi again - I can't help you with your Guiminer/6870 problem, I highly recommend to open an own thread with a meaningful subject for this and answers will start coming.

As for the Linux/Windows discussion, I agree with you, in terms of Usability I would chose OSX first, then Windows 2nd and Linux last. However, I invested time and effort in Linux since 2002 and even own some certifications. Therefore I was able to set up the whole mining game in 1-2h on Fedora15. It doesn't make sense for me to go back to propietery software for me now. I -LOVE- the fact that GNU is a political movement and Linux is the biggest community effort I have ever witnessed. Making money isn't the top priority and that's why Linux matures over time and doesn't get worse 8except maybe Gnome3, lol). The endless number of tools that come preinstalled with FC15's KDE made my jaw drop.

There are 200 distributions - and you should try a quite a few. Enterprises tend to use RedHat or Debian and at the moment of writing ArchLinux, Fedora (RedHat) and Ubuntu (Debian) are the most favored amongst end-users. This can change anytime as Gentoo or SuSE were really the Linux OS to use in the last decade. For mining, Ubuntu is the most well supported - so I recommend that one, there are also some pre-compiled VRAM / Voltage tools around in this forum that you can install in Ubuntu w/o compiling.

If you settle down on Fedora or Ubuntu it is mandatory that you buy yourself a book about package management with RPM, DEB, YUM and APTITUDE. Without having profound knowledge of package managment of your chosen distribution you will be absolutely lost.

If you really want to start with Linux now for the purpose of mining, prepare for a rough ride. You will learn a lot and probably start hating Linux - but it will pay off later when you get a $90K+ offer by Akamai w/o ever having attended University. =oP

Now... back to topic - I found out that all P67 and Z68 boards by ASUS have massive bugs, like sleep modus won't work and the multiple boot bugs. This seems still to be the issue with latest Rev. 3 boards, also for Z68 - so beware of ASUS! After having read a lot I would recommend these manufacturers for the 1155 socket, on the top of the list being the best (I did no research on Gigabyte, since I do not like their lack of UEFI Bios):

(1) MSI (Stable / €160)
(2) ASRock (Very bad cooling on MoBo-Bridges, shld upgrade w. Zalman / €140)
(3) ASUS (A lot of bugs! / €130)

Any more thoughts on the topic of "1155 mining"?