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

[citronick]

Anyone else has a Powercolor RX 470 ?

Mine is a piece of ****, crashing my rig all the time. I'm not even able to overclock it more the 22 MH.

I'm at job and i can't reboot my PC at the moment ... rig will be down for like 6 hours. Pissing me off

I'm going to ask for a replacement.

EDIT: RMA open, this is will go back home

I think the best card now are Sapphires and Asus, in terms of quality of components and field feedback.

For quite sometime, I have avoided Powercolor and XFX ...

thanks for this, i will keep that in mind for the future.

So far my XFX is running fine

According to the hardware engineer on these youtube videos.  He breaks down the components of graphics cards:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrwObTfqv8u1KO7Fgk-FXHQ/videos

He ranks them as follows:

1 XFX(Black)
2 Asus
3 Sapphire
4 MSI
5 Gigabyte
6 Powercolor

So Far, my preference is MSI RX 470 Gaming X GPU for Quietness, Low temps and ease of strapping and Bois Mods.

MSI has one of the best cooling designs (cool and quietness) and I think many miners can testify to that.

MSI, Asus and Sapphire are also very popular Taiwan brands - and have a cult following in the gaming world.

[Raja_MBZ]

Well my XFX RX 480's are working 24/7 extremely cool and quiet, I haven't got experience of any other brand's RX 480, but surely I'd like to rate this one really positive. As of now, I'm planning to purchase 3 XFX RX 470's.

[GabryRox]

Yes, those are truly amazing results Aries! Although I have to admit, it's a bit frustrating for me using the exact same GPUs and only currently getting 20.7 vs your 28.3 at essentially the same wattage.  I did about 2-3 hours of experimenting yesterday after finally funding a place to download WattTool.  I do really like that app as it's easier to change parameters vs AMD WattMan.

The first thing I tried was your recommended -15 setting. Unfortunately, this ended up crashing my system, but I figure it was probably because I tried implementing that reduction on top of my previous WattMan tweaks of lowering the GPU mV in states 6 & 7.  Once all Wattman settings were reset after reboot, the -15 took fine and put me at about 600W vs the 625 i was at with the state 6 & 7 reductions in place.  I took the further step of micro adjusting this setting in WattTool, depending on the specific card's power hungriness. So, instead of -15 across the board, I am now at something like -18, -13, -14, -17... resulting in about another 10W savings.

I didn't attempt the 1500 strapping yet as I was a bit frustrated after 2-3 hours of downtime, but will take a crack at it after my HDD is finished plotting 2TB BurstCoin, which will probably be tomorrow.  Plus, I did have a couple questions before moving to that so...

1- Does the order matter? Meaning, can I strap-mod my GPUs with the -15 power tweak already applied in WattTool? Or, do I need to set that back to zero before attempting?

2- Regarding the strapping method you used... was it the one in this video by Lee at IMineBlocks?  Just want to make sure since we have the exact same GPUs, I would like to use the same method since it worked great for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP_zSP2H6ho

3- Finally, what additional steps did you take to get your latest results?  I think your last update showed you getting around 23 Mh/s, so this increase to 28+ is amazing.  Seems like you are using a bit more power but getting a huge bump in HR seems well worth it!

Wow, Many Questions.  I have MSI RX 470 Gaming X GPUs on this RIG.  Here are the Stats on each gpu:

RIG001 MSI RX 470 gpu01 80.5% Hynix
RIG001 MSI RX 470 gpu02 79.8% Hynix
RIG001 MSI RX 470 gpu03 73.1% Hynix
RIG001 MSI RX 470 gpu04 65.0% Hynix
RIG001 MSI RX 470 gpu05 64.9% Hynix
RIG001 MSI RX 470 gpu06 73.7% Hynix

Here is what I did.

1) Strapped:  Took the 1500 and copied to the three settings larger than 1500.  Watch this video that shows you how to strap.  I did the same method:  https://youtu.be/OP_zSP2H6ho  This will get you 23.5mhs per gpu

2) On the MSI Afterburner I set the Memory Clock to 2000 and the Core Clock to 1150 and press the check(Apply).  This should get you the 28mhs.

3) Now I go to WattTool and look at the numbers for each gpu individually.  In this case for gpu "0:Radeon (TM) RX 470 Graphics" look at the mV number in "R7" = 1150mV.  I do not want this number less than 1000mV.  This is just my preference.  Look at the Voltage Offset.  Whatever number you put in here it will be multiplied x 6.25 so, 20 x 6.25 = 125.  1150 - 125 = 1025mV(which is above 1000)  so this one would be -20 and then click "Set"  This gpu should now produce much lower watts.

4) Go to the next gpu and evaluate the number and make the changes in the Voltage Offset based upon the mV number in "R7."  Each gpu will be different.

Good Luck

Let me know if you have more questions.  

 

Thanks a million Aries! I really appreciate you taking the time to writing all that out and providing the screen shots too!  This will help me immensely!  I hope to take a crack at this tomorrow as today was way too long a work day.  I suspect I won't be able to get 28 out of my cards since they were clearly slower than yours out of the box, but I would gladly take anything above 26 at similar power draw. Thanks again for all the support!

[GabryRox]

Anyone else has a Powercolor RX 470 ?

Mine is a piece of ****, crashing my rig all the time. I'm not even able to overclock it more the 22 MH.

I'm at job and i can't reboot my PC at the moment ... rig will be down for like 6 hours. Pissing me off

I'm going to ask for a replacement.

EDIT: RMA open, this is will go back home

I think the best card now are Sapphires and Asus, in terms of quality of components and field feedback.

For quite sometime, I have avoided Powercolor and XFX ...

thanks for this, i will keep that in mind for the future.

So far my XFX is running fine

According to the hardware engineer on these youtube videos.  He breaks down the components of graphics cards:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrwObTfqv8u1KO7Fgk-FXHQ/videos

He ranks them as follows:

1 XFX(Black)
2 Asus
3 Sapphire
4 MSI
5 Gigabyte
6 Powercolor

So Far, my preference is MSI RX 470 Gaming X GPU for Quietness, Low temps and ease of strapping and Bois Mods.

MSI has one of the best cooling designs (cool and quietness) and I think many miners can testify to that.

MSI, Asus and Sapphire are also very popular Taiwan brands - and have a cult following in the gaming world.

I have to agree on at least that part of the MSI cards... VERY quiet and 3 of my 4 seem to run extremely cool so far (and the 4th not too bad). I also really love the design... they just have a very cool look, which works well for my open air rig.  Now if I can just get them running faster life will be even better

I also just ordered 2 Saphhire Nitro+ RX 470 8GB. They seem to be highly recommended for mining due to their effective memory clock being 8000 as compared to the 6700 of the MSI 4GB & 8GB for that matter.  Plus, they are $10 off until Wed at NewEgg so had to pull the trigger lol.  So, the plan is to try 1 of these in the 5th and final slot on my current rig so I can compare it directly with my MSI's.

[vg54dett]

Hello guys,

I would be glad to get your advices about two problems I often have to face :

1) WALLET question : I'm currently mining ETH to an adress from the Ethereum Wallet (the official one, for windows).
I found it very annoying to use, you have to download a new version about each week, and download chain data which take a ultra long time with me (I don't know if this is normal).
In the end, If I'm away for few days, when I get back home I have to fight hours or days to get my balance updated and ready to transfer ETH from this wallet.
Do you know another wallet lighter and simple ?

In the BTC world, I was happy to leave Bitcoin core, to replace with the simple and easy electrum.
Do we have something like that for Ethereum ?

2) I was used to manage a very stable R9 290 RIG, that never crashed more than one time a month.
I have now some 6x RX470 rigs 4GO (sapphire reference style) , which are very quiet , but I keep facing crashes on all rigs.
I am on windows 7 , and I met the problem with claymore 4.7. I updated to claymore 7.2 but it's the same.
What get me mad is that I get crashes with overclock as much as stock , or underclock/undervolt.
Nothing seems to get me more stable.
Are the RX470 known to cause crashes (unexpected reboot) ?
Would you guys give me some advice about things to try or investigate ?

EDIT : I often see the warning about AMD dispay driver recovered. It sometimes leads to crach but not always. And I didn't find a way to get rid of this error.

Thank you very much

[AriesIV10]

I would like to connect my mining PSU to the computer mother board.  I am looking for an ATX 24 pin connector/converter to connect to my Power Supply that only has PCIE connectors to the motherboard. 

I know that I have seen one of these in the past.  Anyone know where to find one?

[LoneRangir]

I find that Jaxx wallet us pretty similar to Electrum.

[HerbPean]

Just a heads up, further testing pointed to the Asus card and not the Power Color.

That card cost me another one since i had to do so much manipulation. I was dead tired yesterday and did a stupid mistake.

Hope the RMAs goes well.

I lost so much time with that Asus ...

[philipma1957]

Just a heads up, further testing pointed to the Asus card and not the Power Color.

That card cost me another one since i had to do so much manipulation. I was dead tired yesterday and did a stupid mistake.

Hope the RMAs goes well.

I lost so much time with that Asus ...

Sorry to read this.

Yeah I never like asus or gigabyte gpus.

Powercolor
Msi
Sapphire
Xfx

Pretty good luck

[GabryRox]

BIG shout-out to Aries for providing the detailed instructions for maximizing effectiveness of the MSI 470s!

I just modded 1 of my 4 GPUs based on your instructions and amazingly, am now getting a whopping 28.4 Mh/s from it, at the same power draw from when it was getting 20.7!  You were spot on on your speed predictions at each step... i got to 23.5 after the 1500 strapping, then 28.4 after setting 2000 & 1150 in afterburner! I actually forgot to go in and reset my previous WattTool adjustments, so my custom negative power offsets per each card were still in place when I made these mods, but it still worked just perfectly!

It was so great to launch Claymore and see that 28.4 number pop up for the modded GPU, so thanks again for these great tips!  Probably should be a sticky topic somewhere since that's a HUGE gain from out of the box!

2 quick questions regarding modding my other 3 GPUs...

1- How long should I wait to make sure the modded GPU is stable?  If it was going to brick, would it have done it immediately? Or, is there a recommended waiting time to make sure of stability before flashing the other GPUs?

2- In the strapping process, I made a copy of the card's bios then modded it as instructed and saved as a new file to flash with.  My question is, can I skip this part of the process for the other 3 and just continue to use the modded bios copy from the original modded card?  Basically I am asking if the settings in the bios will be exactly the same for every GPU?  They are all the exact same model so I am assuming yes, but want to make sure before proceeding.

Thanks again!

[citronick]

BIG shout-out to Aries for providing the detailed instructions for maximizing effectiveness of the MSI 470s!

I just modded 1 of my 4 GPUs based on your instructions and amazingly, am now getting a whopping 28.4 Mh/s from it, at the same power draw from when it was getting 20.7!  You were spot on on your speed predictions at each step... i got to 23.5 after the 1500 strapping, then 28.4 after setting 2000 & 1150 in afterburner! I actually forgot to go in and reset my previous WattTool adjustments, so my custom negative power offsets per each card were still in place when I made these mods, but it still worked just perfectly!

It was so great to launch Claymore and see that 28.4 number pop up for the modded GPU, so thanks again for these great tips!  Probably should be a sticky topic somewhere since that's a HUGE gain from out of the box!

2 quick questions regarding modding my other 3 GPUs...

1- How long should I wait to make sure the modded GPU is stable?  If it was going to brick, would it have done it immediately? Or, is there a recommended waiting time to make sure of stability before flashing the other GPUs?

2- In the strapping process, I made a copy of the card's bios then modded it as instructed and saved as a new file to flash with.  My question is, can I skip this part of the process for the other 3 and just continue to use the modded bios copy from the original modded card?  Basically I am asking if the settings in the bios will be exactly the same for every GPU?  They are all the exact same model so I am assuming yes, but want to make sure before proceeding.

Thanks again!

470 Sapphire Nitros?

[GabryRox]

Nope... MSI 470 4GB     But i had posted earlier that I have 2 470 Sapphire Nitro 8GB on the way from NewEgg.  Now after seeing these results, that may have been a bad purchase since they were $30 more than the MSIs I am using (although 8GB vs 4GB).  I honestly thought I would only be able to get my MSIs up to ~25 Mh/s, which is why I wanted to try the Nitros, which have a much higher effective memory clock (8000 vs 6700).  Call me crazy but even with that factor in their favor, I have a hard time believing they will be able achieve 32+ Mh/s after modding (which is what they would need to do to offset the 15% higher cost vs the MSIs) but who knows... several users are indicating that these are much more like a 480 but with less power draw.  Bottom line, I will open 1 and install it in my 5th slot and see what it will do. If it's not notably better than the MSI, i will probably just return the 2nd one.

[AriesIV10]

BIG shout-out to Aries for providing the detailed instructions for maximizing effectiveness of the MSI 470s!

I just modded 1 of my 4 GPUs based on your instructions and amazingly, am now getting a whopping 28.4 Mh/s from it, at the same power draw from when it was getting 20.7!  You were spot on on your speed predictions at each step... i got to 23.5 after the 1500 strapping, then 28.4 after setting 2000 & 1150 in afterburner! I actually forgot to go in and reset my previous WattTool adjustments, so my custom negative power offsets per each card were still in place when I made these mods, but it still worked just perfectly!

It was so great to launch Claymore and see that 28.4 number pop up for the modded GPU, so thanks again for these great tips!  Probably should be a sticky topic somewhere since that's a HUGE gain from out of the box!

2 quick questions regarding modding my other 3 GPUs...

1- How long should I wait to make sure the modded GPU is stable?  If it was going to brick, would it have done it immediately? Or, is there a recommended waiting time to make sure of stability before flashing the other GPUs?

2- In the strapping process, I made a copy of the card's bios then modded it as instructed and saved as a new file to flash with.  My question is, can I skip this part of the process for the other 3 and just continue to use the modded bios copy from the original modded card?  Basically I am asking if the settings in the bios will be exactly the same for every GPU?  They are all the exact same model so I am assuming yes, but want to make sure before proceeding.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the Shout!  One warning:  Do Not Use the same Bios for each gpu.  You have to go through the whole process again with each of the gpu's.  They have different characteristics and capabilities.  

As for how long to wait.  With these I just let them run for about 10 min each.  If they are holding 28.4, I go onto the next gpu.

Thanks Again, I appreciate it. 

[AriesIV10]

BIG shout-out to Aries for providing the detailed instructions for maximizing effectiveness of the MSI 470s!

I just modded 1 of my 4 GPUs based on your instructions and amazingly, am now getting a whopping 28.4 Mh/s from it, at the same power draw from when it was getting 20.7!  You were spot on on your speed predictions at each step... i got to 23.5 after the 1500 strapping, then 28.4 after setting 2000 & 1150 in afterburner! I actually forgot to go in and reset my previous WattTool adjustments, so my custom negative power offsets per each card were still in place when I made these mods, but it still worked just perfectly!

It was so great to launch Claymore and see that 28.4 number pop up for the modded GPU, so thanks again for these great tips!  Probably should be a sticky topic somewhere since that's a HUGE gain from out of the box!

2 quick questions regarding modding my other 3 GPUs...

1- How long should I wait to make sure the modded GPU is stable?  If it was going to brick, would it have done it immediately? Or, is there a recommended waiting time to make sure of stability before flashing the other GPUs?

2- In the strapping process, I made a copy of the card's bios then modded it as instructed and saved as a new file to flash with.  My question is, can I skip this part of the process for the other 3 and just continue to use the modded bios copy from the original modded card?  Basically I am asking if the settings in the bios will be exactly the same for every GPU?  They are all the exact same model so I am assuming yes, but want to make sure before proceeding.

Thanks again!

470 Sapphire Nitros?

Here are the links in Youtube for the Sapphire Nitros:

Low Energy 29+ RX480 8G Sapphire Nitro+ Ethereum Mh/s + Downvolt Bios Mod Jukebox AMD(Hynix)
https://youtu.be/rqJIR4FirjM

Low Energy RX470 4G 28+ Mh/s Sapphire Nitro+ OC HYNIX VRAM Boysie's Bios Mod Ethereum Mining(Hynix)
https://youtu.be/Z3yYYIzzTM8

Elpida RX470 4G Sapphire Nitro+ Bios Rom Mod Flash Ethereum Mining (ELPIDA-New)
https://youtu.be/ajQQQ2JQicE

30-31 MH/s RX480 8G AMD Sapphire Nitro+ Bios Mod Ethereum Mining XFX MSI Monero
https://youtu.be/Mwb67g4skGM

Make sure you move the switch to the right position at the right time in the process.

Next:

I use 1945 Memory Clock and 1130 Core Clock for the Sapphire Nitro 470 which will get you 27.3Mhs.
I use 2080 Memory Clock and 1125 Core Clock for the Sapphire Nitro 480 which will get you 29.2Mhs.

[vg54dett]

I find that Jaxx wallet us pretty similar to Electrum.

Thank you , it seems to be a good choice !

[vg54dett]

I'm using my 2000w server psu to power the 12 PCIe connectors in my two 6gpu rigs (each Rx470 has 1 PCIe plug on the top)

But there is not all the power took from the strong server psu, a big part of the power is took from the weaker computer psu powering the motherboard.

Do you know if there is a way to get more power from PCIe connectors and less from the motherboard/powered risers ?

[citronick]

I find that Jaxx wallet us pretty similar to Electrum.

Thank you , it seems to be a good choice !

I use Coinbase and Jaxx.

I started using EXODUS wallet recently.... I think we have a winner.

[GabryRox]

BIG shout-out to Aries for providing the detailed instructions for maximizing effectiveness of the MSI 470s!

I just modded 1 of my 4 GPUs based on your instructions and amazingly, am now getting a whopping 28.4 Mh/s from it, at the same power draw from when it was getting 20.7!  You were spot on on your speed predictions at each step... i got to 23.5 after the 1500 strapping, then 28.4 after setting 2000 & 1150 in afterburner! I actually forgot to go in and reset my previous WattTool adjustments, so my custom negative power offsets per each card were still in place when I made these mods, but it still worked just perfectly!

It was so great to launch Claymore and see that 28.4 number pop up for the modded GPU, so thanks again for these great tips!  Probably should be a sticky topic somewhere since that's a HUGE gain from out of the box!

2 quick questions regarding modding my other 3 GPUs...

1- How long should I wait to make sure the modded GPU is stable?  If it was going to brick, would it have done it immediately? Or, is there a recommended waiting time to make sure of stability before flashing the other GPUs?

2- In the strapping process, I made a copy of the card's bios then modded it as instructed and saved as a new file to flash with.  My question is, can I skip this part of the process for the other 3 and just continue to use the modded bios copy from the original modded card?  Basically I am asking if the settings in the bios will be exactly the same for every GPU?  They are all the exact same model so I am assuming yes, but want to make sure before proceeding.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the Shout!  One warning:  Do Not Use the same Bios for each gpu.  You have to go through the whole process again with each of the gpu's.  They have different characteristics and capabilities.  

As for how long to wait.  With these I just let them run for about 10 min each.  If they are holding 28.4, I go onto the next gpu.

Thanks Again, I appreciate it. 

Thanks for the extra tips... I went ahead and modded GPU #2 shortly after and it ran perfectly at 28.4 for about an hour.  #3 appeared ok at first but but crashed after about 5 minutes, so I reduced the amount of power offset in WattTool by a couple and it was working fine for 30+ minutes so I went to #4.  This one caused me some problems though... crashed my system about 2-3 minutes after starting Claymore. So, like #3, made the power offset # lower. Ran for 5 minutes, crashed my system. It was getting late and I didn't want the rig offline overnight, so I ended up reducing the power offset of all 4 cards by bit as well as going to 1950, 1950, 1900 & 1850 on the clock speeds and Core clock up to 1175 on the latter 2. This ended up cutting my total HR from 113 to 108 and not as power efficient but it has now been running steady for 9 straight hours, so I'm happy with that.  I expect that if I spend a few more hours fine tuning each card, I can improve somewhat, but even as it stands, it's still a very nice 30% bump in HR from where I was at 2 days ago!

There are 2 things that really frustrate me in all of this... first, the fact that WattMan/Afterburner settings are reset after every reboot. Very annoying and time-consuming. Is there any way to fix this?

In addition, I am going crazy over tracking which card is which, since all 4 are identical models. Luckily I made some notes a few days ago that compare what device #'s they show up as in AfterBurner and Claymore, but those are different from the true system device #s and with new tools like GPU-Z, etc., it seems like a huge pain to try to determine which card is which. Does anyone have trick for tracking this effectively?

[GabryRox]

Just wanted to mention that NewEgg has the Rosewill Quark Series 1200W Platinum PSU on special for just $120 after rebate (newegg credit i think). I have been using the 1KW model of this for about a month and found it to be excellent quality, performance and very low fan noise. This seems like a great PSU for a 6-card build, so I will be picking one up before this sale ends. Thought that others on this thread might be interested in this deal.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182354&cm_re=1200w_power_supply-_-17-182-354-_-Product

[philipma1957]

Just wanted to mention that NewEgg has the Rosewill Quark Series 1200W Platinum PSU on special for just $120 after rebate (newegg credit i think). I have been using the 1KW model of this for about a month and found it to be excellent quality, performance and very low fan noise. This seems like a great PSU for a 6-card build, so I will be picking one up before this sale ends. Thought that others on this thread might be interested in this deal.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182354&cm_re=1200w_power_supply-_-17-182-354-_-Product

it has 4 pcie jacks.  so you will need splitters to run 6 cards.

it is a quality psu for four cards  ton of overhead and 120 is a solid price after rebate