My second ZEC + XMR+ ETH thread builds info links thoughts and photos.

[QuintLeo]

my summer power cost is 18 cents a kwatt.  well 16.7 and add 1.3 for extra ac. so 18 cents

I use 2600 watts  or 2.6 kwatts x 24 x 30  x 18 cents  that is 336 usd per month in the summer.  for winter I will drop to 166.

 I am earning  about 842 before power or 500 after power for august.

 Part of the reason I moved - "summer" power rate where I was at in Iowa was 15-16 cents/KWH range for 3 months of the year, depending on how much the power company was gouging for their "energy surcharge" that month.

[philipma1957]

Okay I am going to try to salvage my bad 4 card mobo biostar.  

I shorted two pcie slots thrying to jam the four cards into the large thor case from rosewill.

I grabbed some risers and will see if I can rescue this board or at least get to be a three card board.

Will post some mor eon it over the week end.


I finally stabilized the solar array with the 6 s-9's and 1 s-7 .

I had to put the miners behind a second and third router.

I now not longer drop a board in hash on any of the rigs.

This board drop was one in were the power was used but the board disappears on the miners gui and on the pool.

I have seen this happen with more then one style of miner and more then one pool.  If I take the miner from the solar array drive it back to my house and fire it up all boards show as does the hash on gui and pool.

Well back to this four card build.

[squatz1]

Posting to follow on this thread, the build looks wonderful and all and I hope I can get into this soon!

[ps_jb]

Guys,

I finally got 2 rx 480 cards. Before on MB BTC Pro I had 4x R9 390 cards, old drivers (15.2 or CDM), Win 7.

I took one card out and add two 480 cards (it was 8 hours ago) - so from that time I re-install all drivers to new one, I connected, disconnected etc all cards one-by-one

The summary:

- I cannot make rig running 5 cards
- couple of times I could get 4 cards running
- after several iterations my monitor works only with 1 card, though I can operate the rig through TewmViewer

Question - is only solution to re-install Windows?

If so - what is the best way to have 5 cards visible and operational?

[LoneRangir]

Which chipset is on your motherboard?  I read something earlier that the Z170 motherboards cannot support more than 4 GPUs.  I'll see if I can find it and add the link to this post.

Edit:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1592305.0

[Raja_MBZ]

Would you mind telling that which motherboard are you using to place all 4 RX 480 on it? I'd definitely like to know that how much watts PSU you're using with it and what's your room temperature as well.

[LoneRangir]

Would you mind telling that which motherboard are you using to place all 4 RX 480 on it? I'd definitely like to know that how much watts PSU you're using with it and what's your room temperature as well.

I am using the same motherboard that Phil mentions on post 1 of this thread.  Post 1 also links to our older thread that has alot of other information, too.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1584973.msg15913928#msg15913928

I personally use an 850W EVGA G2 for my 4 card rig, and a Thermaltake 750W for my 3 card rig (soon to be 4 card).  According to my Kill-A-Watt meter, the 4 card rig uses between 600W and 650, depending on settings.

[ps_jb]

Which chipset is on your motherboard?  I read something earlier that the Z170 motherboards cannot support more than 4 GPUs.  I'll see if I can find it and add the link to this post.

Edit:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1592305.0

Here is MB I'm using:

ASRock Motherboard ATX DDR3 1066 LGA 1150 H81 PRO BTC

So from 4pm till 4.30am I tried:

1) Remove all drivers. Reinstall them
2) Clean Win 7 Pro installation

Achieve:

1) I could run 3 cards - 2 RX 480 and 1 R9 390

Any attempt to plug 4th card results in black screen before passing BIOS post

So now I even not sure that I can come back to my original 4 r9 390

Help is needed!

[philipma1957]

Which chipset is on your motherboard?  I read something earlier that the Z170 motherboards cannot support more than 4 GPUs.  I'll see if I can find it and add the link to this post.

Edit:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1592305.0

Here is MB I'm using:

ASRock Motherboard ATX DDR3 1066 LGA 1150 H81 PRO BTC

So from 4pm till 4.30am I tried:

1) Remove all drivers. Reinstall them
2) Clean Win 7 Pro installation

Achieve:

1) I could run 3 cards - 2 RX 480 and 1 R9 390

Any attempt to plug 4th card results in black screen before passing BIOS post

So now I even not sure that I can come back to my original 4 r9 390

Help is needed!

Yeah mixing the 390 with the 480 has issues

Pull the Amd driver put in two 390 and no other gpu

Then load Amd 15.12

Boot it see if two 390 show up if they do
Shut down add third 390
Boot twice third should show if third one shows

Shut down add fourth 390
Boot twice and all 390 show

I hope. This helps.



Back to me I added two more gpus.

I am at 20 gpus

Two four card rigs
Six two card rigs

[ps_jb]

Phil,

I actually did smth like you wrote by trial and error method.

Also first card should be in a big PCI slot. And then every other should be added one-by-one

And on the fifth card I applied mod to Win 7 to have a 5 cards

So I finally mining with 5 cards

Thank you!

[ps_jb]

To all,

I'm mining with two RX 480 1288MHz cards

In dual mining I'm getting ~22.5MHs on ETH and ~420 on SIA

Is it OK? Am I right that there is no good way to overclock these cards (smth like MSI AfterBurner)?

[philipma1957]

To all,

I'm mining with two RX 480 1288MHz cards

In dual mining I'm getting ~22.5MHs on ETH and ~420 on SIA

Is it OK? Am I right that there is no good way to overclock these cards (smth like MSI AfterBurner)?

What is your memory on the cards 4gb or 8 gb..

The best way to overclock is use Amd wattman in the Amd settings.

Are you using  16.7.2 with the rx 480s

[LoneRangir]

The best way to overclock is use Amd wattman in the Amd settings.

Have you ever tried modifying the ROM?  I've been reading more and more about it, but it seems as though they'll only run on linux because it won't be signed.  Is that correct?

[ps_jb]

[

What is your memory on the cards 4gb or 8 gb..

The best way to overclock is use Amd wattman in the Amd settings.

Are you using  16.7.2 with the rx 480s

These cards are 8Gb

Wattman is total crap - only 2 parameters are available and they do not affect on mining at all

I'm using last drivers 16.8.2

The idea on MODs is quite interesting - but I also have 3x R9 390 cards - so I dont want to mess with BIOS now

Also mod does not work well with dual mining, and looking how ETH/ETC is going down having a back up is crucial

[LoneRangir]

Wattman is total crap - only 2 parameters are available and they do not affect on mining at all

I tend to agree with this statement. 

However, I finally had a marginal success with it last night.  I set the memory voltage down to 0.870mV and bumped the frequency up to 2150MHz.  Dropping the voltage gave me some margin on power, and the increased memory throughput raised the hash rate from 24.5 MH/s up to 25.8 - 26.3 MH/s.  A little victory, I'll take it.

Wattman is just a huge power equation.  If you drop the voltage, it just tries to raise the core clock rate up to utilize the extra margin.  Hashing needs increased memory bandwidth, though, not core bandwidth.  Ethash is memory-bound.

I would love to try out the Polaris Editor and tweak things manually, rather than have Wattman figure things out, but I'm almost positive that means moving over to Linux because the ROM won't be signed.

If anyone could confirm or refute this last claim, I'd be happy either way!

[ps_jb]

I tend to agree with this statement. 

Yes!

However, I finally had a marginal success with it last night.  I set the memory voltage down to 0.870mV and bumped the frequency up to 2150MHz.  Dropping the voltage gave me some margin on power, and the increased memory throughput raised the hash rate from 24.5 MH/s up to 25.8 - 26.3 MH/s.  A little victory, I'll take it.

Just tried - my speed dropped from 22.4 to 19.6, so I reset to original values

[LoneRangir]

Your core clock must have went up instead. What is your power reduction set to? Mine is -25%

[ps_jb]

Your core clock must have went up instead. What is your power reduction set to? Mine is -25%

Actually nothing works inside of Wattman with mine drivers 16.8.2

I can set any Power values and after pressing Apply they just went to stock "0"

I gave up with with shitty "powerful GPU tool" and left with stock value. Pity - but at least getting 22.4MHs ETH and 460MHs SIA with it

[LoneRangir]

Now that I've upgraded to 16.8.2, I don't get any benefit from the setting I laid out below, too 

I'll revert back to 16.7.2 and see if I can get back the extra hashrate.

[ps_jb]

Now that I've upgraded to 16.8.2, I don't get any benefit from the setting I laid out below, too 

I'll revert back to 16.7.2 and see if I can get back the extra hashrate.

Please let us know on your settings and minig results