Adapting old HP computers for mining rigs?

[PovertyByte]

Many people have gotten  150 watt TDP cards to mine at under 110 watts, sometimes 90...  I'm holding my stance that this PSU would be fully capable....

As someone that swings 60TH/s worth of SHA256 ASIC miners around for fun (as long as I make my BTC quota, the rest is all fun), I can tell you that there is no coin worth mining that you can mine with all 3 cards using one 150w PSU.

You cannot pull the hashrate to pay for a cup of coffee!

I was not talking about a standard HP PSU, I mean I have a real PSU just sitting around that is over 600 watts. It's wattage is some odd number rather than one of the convenient rounded ones.

You went on to mention 150w PSU multiple times and even called someone else dense. For the record this HP I can use has 3 PCIe slots total

To use an old computer that has little selling value was the main idea of the thread. For just one build I have a PSU but I would need to buy PSU's for other builds otherwise and so would anybody else who was buying old computers for mining.

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[joblo]

I was not talking about a standard HP PSU, I mean I have a real PSU just sitting around that is over 600 watts. It's wattage is some odd number rather than one of the convenient rounded ones.

I suggest you go with Nvidia, they are more power efficient. 600W isn't enough for 3 decent cards. Two bigger cards would
be better. Make sure you have enough PCIe power connectors on the PSU and don't rely on Molex to PCIe adapters unless
you've calculated your power requirements precisely, with enough headroom to OC if that is part of your plan. Two 1060s
would probably work well, two 1070s is probably too much.

[PovertyByte]

I was not talking about a standard HP PSU, I mean I have a real PSU just sitting around that is over 600 watts. It's wattage is some odd number rather than one of the convenient rounded ones.

I suggest you go with Nvidia, they are more power efficient. 600W isn't enough for 3 decent cards. Two bigger cards would
be better. Make sure you have enough PCIe power connectors on the PSU and don't rely on Molex to PCIe adapters unless
you've calculated your power requirements precisely, with enough headroom to OC if that is part of your plan. Two 1060s
would probably work well, two 1070s is probably too much.

http://powersupplycalculator.net/

Using power supply calculator, it estimates 530 watts load with GTX 960's since there are no 1060's on there yet, same TDP. The load would exclude the CPU that is a 95 watt TDP. It did recommend a PSU at 731 watts. That would be 72% load on the PSU, where most recommendations are to not exceed 80%. Looking more closely I would be exceeding 80% with the PSU without even rounding down the PSU to account for degredation. Guess I failed to simply eye the wattage without math.

Running 3 GPU's pushing 90 watts each and removing the CPU load wattage would work. But this would assume that rig remains dedicated to Ethereum lets say and I stay away from dual mining. Another option is if I do some 2 PSU setup where the basic HP PSU powers the mobo, CPU, HDD, and fans while this 600 PSU covers just the GPU's (including PCIe powered risers)

[joblo]

I was not talking about a standard HP PSU, I mean I have a real PSU just sitting around that is over 600 watts. It's wattage is some odd number rather than one of the convenient rounded ones.

I suggest you go with Nvidia, they are more power efficient. 600W isn't enough for 3 decent cards. Two bigger cards would
be better. Make sure you have enough PCIe power connectors on the PSU and don't rely on Molex to PCIe adapters unless
you've calculated your power requirements precisely, with enough headroom to OC if that is part of your plan. Two 1060s
would probably work well, two 1070s is probably too much.

http://powersupplycalculator.net/

Using power supply calculator, it estimates 530 watts load with GTX 960's since there are no 1060's on there yet, same TDP. The load would exclude the CPU that is a 95 watt TDP. It did recommend a PSU at 731 watts. That would be 72% load on the PSU, where most recommendations are to not exceed 80%. Looking more closely I would be exceeding 80% with the PSU without even rounding down the PSU to account for degredation. Guess I failed to simply eye the wattage without math.

Running 3 GPU's pushing 90 watts each and removing the CPU load wattage would work. But this would assume that rig remains dedicated to Ethereum lets say and I stay away from dual mining. Another option is if I do some 2 PSU setup where the basic HP PSU powers the mobo, CPU, HDD, and fans while this 600 PSU covers just the GPU's (including PCIe powered risers)

If you go with 2 PSUs you should make sure to use powered risers in all slots, including the x16. There may be other issues
but I'll let someone who's done it comment further.

[Tmdz]

...I have an extra PSU that can handle 3 cards that are optimized for efficieny, but certainly not 3 cards pushed for gaming OC's...

Which means you don't have a PSU that will do you any good in the current scheme of things.


You've got to understand 1 thing:

Old stuff is slow compared to new stuff. You'd "save" a lot, but you'd also make next to nothing.

Many people have gotten  150 watt TDP cards to mine at under 110 watts, sometimes 90. That is different from someone running 3 cards all of them overclocked and pushing the full TDP or above.  I'm holding my stance that this PSU would be fully capable of running 3x well tweaked RX 480's well within the ideal PSU utilization range and I could be even safer by using RX 470's or GTX 1060's which have lower power draws to account for the PSU degradation from its previous use

The real question is would an LGA 775 based motherboard and CPU from 2009 actually hold back GPU performance?

I can look up the very CPU and people still game on it although overclocked now. Despite proper GHz there is some amount of bottleneck present so there may be some diminished hashing. I could plug up my 1070 into it and see for myself if the hash rate is the same.

LGA 775 mobo will not hold back mining performance, I currently use lga 775 and core 2 duos for my mining rigs.  I also game on a lga 775 quadcore machine that is stock clocks and I really don't notice a bottle neck, well the games have stunning visuals and great fps.  I have 2 cards in a lga 775 "daily driver" machine, I keep one mining and the other is for gaming..still works great.

Don't listen to some of these people, they just have the idea stuck in their heads that old hardware is junk.  Not true.

For mining the computer cpu does NOT do the work, the gpu does all the hard work and the main system will just be chilling out waiting to send a little data packet to the pool when it finds a share. 

[PovertyByte]

The PSU is the Corsair HX620w

It only has 2 PCIe 6+2 cables.

Besides GPU's the only investment is the PCIe risers and a workbench or materials to make a custom one. Only other thing I would have done with this HP was dedicate it to lower end requirement games with my old GPU in it to save storage space and registry clutter on my main computer. The HP locked bios holds it back from performing well as others still running this. It's why I would rather buy someones old computer on reddit hardware swap for low end games instead and turn this into a miner.

I won't be able to buy GPU's until September so I can decide later what to do with this

LGA 775 mobo will not hold back mining performance, I currently use lga 775 and core 2 duos for my mining rigs.  I also game on a lga 775 quadcore machine that is stock clocks and I really don't notice a bottle neck, well the games have stunning visuals and great fps.  I have 2 cards in a lga 775 "daily driver" machine, I keep one mining and the other is for gaming..still works great.

Don't listen to some of these people, they just have the idea stuck in their heads that old hardware is junk.  Not true.

For mining the computer cpu does NOT do the work, the gpu does all the hard work and the main system will just be chilling out waiting to send a little data packet to the pool when it finds a share. 

The CPU in this HP is a Q6600, 2.4 ghz quad core. I've looked it up before. Running with good GPU's it loses 10 fps on newer games compared to people with the same GPU on i5 and i7's even though the GHz is met. It's usable of course and running a good GPU will still play smoothly but the legacy is ceeping up

[QuintLeo]

I suggest you go with Nvidia, they are more power efficient. 600W isn't enough for 3 decent cards.

 Not on Ethereum mining - RX470/RX480 are a TOSSUP with the best efficiency out of any NVidia cards to date, but cost a LOT less per MH.

 600 is viable for 3 of those cards and a low-power rest-of-the-rig, if it's a HIGH QUALITY 600+ (Seasonic X-series 650 I'd be VERY comfortable with running that sort of a rig).

 Corsair 620 should be PLENTY for the 2 cards it CAN power and saves the cost and potential problems with risers.


 Q6600 is SEVERE overkill for running a mining machine, as any quad-core CPU (except perhaps an ARM from a smartphone) would be.