Litecoin build for noobs: 3x 7950s (1.8 MH/s) in a $10 crate case

[ofeefee]

also I see that you set the msi 7950 to 1087/1050/1400, I read another post of yours and someone underclocked them to 1063/1050/625, so I tried it but card kept getting "sick", or "dead", upped voltage this morning to 1087, and it's stable again for the time being.  I noticed though that cgminer shows my voltage as 1188, and my memclock as 1250.

Is this normal, or do I need to add another switch to cgminer to make it not override?  Or is it just a bug?

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[papaminer]

I just have a question about this:

Put the vinyl cushions on the bottom of one of the crates.  Put the motherboard on top of the cushions.

That vinyl is plastic right? does it tend to melt or something if the mobo is so hot?

[Veldrik]

About to assemble my first rig. I'll call it the TacoMiner, as a tribute.

Last question : can I use a flash drive instead of the SATA HD ? I want to start with a windows system first though, I need to study up before I can use the linux command line interface.

No, you can't use a flash drive for installing windows. You can only do that with linux.

I know this is a really old post - but yes, yes you can install windows from a flash drive, onto a flash drive - depending upon what version of the boot loader you use and if you opt to use VHDs or not etc etc.
Windows 8/server 2012 is easier to setup than windows 7 however for booting from a flash drive though, as you can just use windows 2 go.

[TheAce]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

[Woshie]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

Adjust your clocks and/or voltage. This happens to me when I set the voltage too high.

[TheAce]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

Adjust your clocks and/or voltage. This happens to me when I set the voltage too high.

im just adjusting clocks, but not woltage.. some recomendation for this setup, about woltage?
i have core clock 1045 and mem clock 1400..

[Woshie]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

Adjust your clocks and/or voltage. This happens to me when I set the voltage too high.

im just adjusting clocks, but not woltage.. some recomendation for this setup, about woltage?
i have core clock 1045 and mem clock 1400..

I run 1000/1200 on all my cards, getting ~620kH/s from each one on an average. Voltage set to between 1000mV and 1100mV.
Uninstall afterburner and use Sapphire Trixx instead, even if you don't have Sapphire cards. It works better for some people, might be worth a try.
Just remember to check the "Force constant voltage"-box in the settings, makes them run more stable.

[TheAce]

great, thanks for tip.. i'll try .

[TheAce]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

Adjust your clocks and/or voltage. This happens to me when I set the voltage too high.

im just adjusting clocks, but not woltage.. some recomendation for this setup, about woltage?
i have core clock 1045 and mem clock 1400..

I run 1000/1200 on all my cards, getting ~620kH/s from each one on an average. Voltage set to between 1000mV and 1100mV.
Uninstall afterburner and use Sapphire Trixx instead, even if you don't have Sapphire cards. It works better for some people, might be worth a try.
Just remember to check the "Force constant voltage"-box in the settings, makes them run more stable.

looks like this is working well. i'm running with trixx and your recomendet setup for about 2 days, without problem.
thanks man.

[TheAce]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

Adjust your clocks and/or voltage. This happens to me when I set the voltage too high.

im just adjusting clocks, but not woltage.. some recomendation for this setup, about woltage?
i have core clock 1045 and mem clock 1400..

I run 1000/1200 on all my cards, getting ~620kH/s from each one on an average. Voltage set to between 1000mV and 1100mV.
Uninstall afterburner and use Sapphire Trixx instead, even if you don't have Sapphire cards. It works better for some people, might be worth a try.
Just remember to check the "Force constant voltage"-box in the settings, makes them run more stable.

hmm great, after a while i posted that rig is running smoothly about 2 days it frozed again. so i restarted it and now it is running only about 5-10 minutes and frozes again.. grrrr.. i tried everything and now im starting to think, that is something wrong with 1 pciexpress slot at mobo.. 
one card in slot2 is all the time reseting voltage at trixx from 1100 to 1250. so i switched cards and this porblem is still the same by that card in slot 2. when i take out card from slot 2 rig is running smoothly without a problem.
so i think i need to change mobo

edit: and event log is saying that there is a critical error Krenel-power id 41- did someone had same problem?? i really dont want to change mobo. still hoping, that problem is somewhere else.

[markusvon]

I built my litecoin rig recently:

Mobo: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 AMD 990FX
Ram: Geil Black Dragon 10666 8gb
CPU: AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz
PSU: XFX 1250W Black Edition Pro '80+ Gold'
GPU: 4* MSI 7950s

Base cost £357 (£428 in VAT)
GPUs cost £180 (£220 in VAT) * 4

(I know its not a great photo )
http://cl.ly/image/0N2l2y2O242z

It is in an old pc case that has been hacked apart. A temporary plastic structure has been set up to hold the graphics cards above the mobo using risers to connect to the mobo. The plastic will be converted to a more permanent steal structure soon. The card that is currently horizontal will also be made vertical allow greater avg spacing between the cards.

Current output without voltage tweaking is at 2.270mh/s pulling 1170watts.

I have recently used MSI to lower the voltage 20% it is now running at 2.114mh/s pulling 850watts

Temps etc: http://cl.ly/image/1s0a3N262l1p

Any other upgrades I could do? Not running any overclocking atm. Every time I overclock I seem to get worse performance?

Using Reaper to mine.

Cheers

[newtothescene]

switch to cgminer for better performance at same temps/speeds

Using Reaper to mine.

Cheers

[markusvon]

Reaper appears to be more stable and gets around the same mh\s. I was running cgminer for a couple of hours before it crashed...

Although cgminer does give a lot more info

[computerparts]

i have a problem with afterburner.. i build this same exact rig as described. but every day about 2-3 times a day my computer frozes and i cant do nothing than restart. still not sure why is this happening, but today i saw that everything is working well . guiminer shows hashing in progress, but pool shows zero.. and when i clicked afterburner icon, computer frozed and was nothing possible to do than just restart.. someone have some idea?? or same problem?

Adjust your clocks and/or voltage. This happens to me when I set the voltage too high.

im just adjusting clocks, but not woltage.. some recomendation for this setup, about woltage?
i have core clock 1045 and mem clock 1400..

Make sure you adjust the woltage of the nuclear wessel while you're at it. 

[Miner_LTC_BTC]

I'm quite new here so first of all I want to say hello

Second thank's for great tutorial Tacotime !

But I'm wondering, is it the most cost effective way to mine litecon?
Why don't change:
1)motherboard to
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157339&Tpk=fm2a85x%20extreme6&IsVirtualParent=1
(ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6)
2)processor to http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113343
(ATI APU A4-4000)
3)hdd to http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239405
(Kingston DataTraveler 111 32GB USB 3.0)
4)graphic card to
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125414&Tpk=gigabyte%207950&IsVirtualParent=1
(Gigabyte 7950 - it's cheaper and it has 3 fans instead of 2)

As you can see all those parts are cheaper than suggested by Tacotime.
Futhermore with ati processor we can (theoretically?) mine litecoin on extra graphic
card built-in processor

So I have three questions:
1)What do you thing about those changes in configuration? (I read something that using ATI CPU decrease efficiency of GPU's but I didn't find any approval of that information)
2)Is it hard/possible to configure that stuff (3 x 7950 + APU) + installation on USB (Ubuntu).
3)Will Gigabyte cards be cooler - each has 3 fan's.

Thank's very much for your reply

P.S. A month ago I built something like Tacotime rig to check if I can mine and it's quite OK. But I am going to enhance my mining power and now it must be as cost efficient as it is possible ;] Maybe I should put my mining rig in China, i heard that they have cheap eletric power .

[fcmatt]

Know that the APUs are slow as crap. Think in terms of 20-30 khash/sec and you just suck up a lot of power to the cpu/apu.
I thought the same thing then realized it was better to get the vid cards nice and stable as it might have been causing crashes
early on when I built it. Now I just dont bother and never went back to it.

[Miner_LTC_BTC]

@fcmatt
I totaly agree what it is slow (I think 20-30 khash/sec is realistic), you should always buy stable components too .
But talking to the point:

1)You buy cheaper components (as I show examples)
2)You aren't forced to mine on APU, you do it only if you want to (I think extra 40 W (?) is worth it, I know it is less efficient that 7950 but it's extra )

So why not buy such a changed rig? Are AMD motherboard chipset or CPU not stable? Or are they really immpossible to configurate well?

Thanks for your answer.

P.S. What about USB instead of HDD, and Gigabyte 7950 instead of MSI Frozen ?

[lazydna]

Reaper appears to be more stable and gets around the same mh\s. I was running cgminer for a couple of hours before it crashed...

Although cgminer does give a lot more info

cgminer saves you money too, don't need 8g ram.

[tacotime]

I'm quite new here so first of all I want to say hello

Second thank's for great tutorial Tacotime !

But I'm wondering, is it the most cost effective way to mine litecon?
Why don't change:
1)motherboard to
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157339&Tpk=fm2a85x%20extreme6&IsVirtualParent=1
(ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6)
2)processor to http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113343
(ATI APU A4-4000)
3)hdd to http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239405
(Kingston DataTraveler 111 32GB USB 3.0)
4)graphic card to
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125414&Tpk=gigabyte%207950&IsVirtualParent=1
(Gigabyte 7950 - it's cheaper and it has 3 fans instead of 2)

As you can see all those parts are cheaper than suggested by Tacotime.
Futhermore with ati processor we can (theoretically?) mine litecoin on extra graphic
card built-in processor

So I have three questions:
1)What do you thing about those changes in configuration? (I read something that using ATI CPU decrease efficiency of GPU's but I didn't find any approval of that information)
2)Is it hard/possible to configure that stuff (3 x 7950 + APU) + installation on USB (Ubuntu).
3)Will Gigabyte cards be cooler - each has 3 fan's.

Thank's very much for your reply

P.S. A month ago I built something like Tacotime rig to check if I can mine and it's quite OK. But I am going to enhance my mining power and now it must be as cost efficient as it is possible ;] Maybe I should put my mining rig in China, i heard that they have cheap eletric power .

Avoid using APU, onboard GPU uses slower DDR3 memory
Gigabyte cards run hotter and have shitter VRM heat management (--> cards way more likely to fry from voltage fluctuations)
USB thumb drive works fine for linux and cgminer but you will lose voltage control (and thus pay about 20% more in electricity costs and will also be more likely to kill your cards with heat)

[tacotime]

some new rig porn



installed a shelf in my garage, these sit up here just hashing away all day

NOTE THE SEXY PARABOLIC DOLLAR STORE WIFI ANTENNA