4x 7970 warercooled rig not booting

[joshv06]

Hey guys, I'm having a problem with my rig, trying to get some input.

Basically, I was mining as usual, and noticed the mhash rate on some of the cards drop to about half their normal rate, I thought this was just a driver issue to rolled back the drivers. Then I began to noticed wild flickering, not regualr mining flickering on 1 or 2 screens, but all 3 on my eyefinity setup. Then I began to see artifacts and the computer shut down.

The whole thing is watercooled, I'm sure its not a heat issue, temps never pass 60 when mining.

A video of my rig can be found on YouTube searching "butterfly labs mining rig", by Joshv06.

The computer:

Shows video/ bios post with all cards unlugged, using onboard video
Randomly boots with 3 or less cards plugged in
When a card is plugged in, the screen turns off, then turns on to a black screen

I believe it is a PSU issue, possibly the motherboard. I don't know. Please let me know if you have any ideas, I want to get a replacement part tomorrow ans get it up and running.


Thanks

[Gator-hex]

Power Supply Failure would be the first thing I'd look at.

They last about 3 years, but less if you run them above 50% load.

Don't forget to clean the dust in your power supplies people. It has fan and heatsink just like the PC.

[dogie]

Hey guys, I'm having a problem with my rig, trying to get some input.

Basically, I was mining as usual, and noticed the mhash rate on some of the cards drop to about half their normal rate, I thought this was just a driver issue to rolled back the drivers. Then I began to noticed wild flickering, not regualr mining flickering on 1 or 2 screens, but all 3 on my eyefinity setup. Then I began to see artifacts and the computer shut down.

The whole thing is watercooled, I'm sure its not a heat issue, temps never pass 60 when mining.

A video of my rig can be found on YouTube searching "butterfly labs mining rig", by Joshv06.

The computer:

Shows video/ bios post with all cards unlugged, using onboard video
Randomly boots with 3 or less cards plugged in
When a card is plugged in, the screen turns off, then turns on to a black screen

I believe it is a PSU issue, possibly the motherboard. I don't know. Please let me know if you have any ideas, I want to get a replacement part tomorrow ans get it up and running.


Thanks

If it was motherboard, you'd have no post what so ever. They're really temperamental when it comes to malfunctions - apart from direct damage on slots, ports etc. Very unlikely to be GPUs.

DO CHECK FOR LEAKS, what you've described is symptomatic of a leak.

Failing a leak, PSU is crying. Borrow one, or take it out of your other machine and and see if you can get it stable with 1 card on load. If so, PSU. Alternatively, see if you can find a PSU tested, must be on Amazon for $10.

[joshv06]

Thanks for the replies. The computer booted up with the new PSU and all 4 video cards. It worked for a couple of minutes but then froze. I rebooted it, only to find that my 2nd card is not being detected.

[joshv06]

Now the computer will boot only with the Igpu, or the last card. Booting with first and last, boots to a black screen after bios. The 2nd card/slot are "dead" Hasn't worked for the past couple of hours, I don't think it plans to. 3rd boots to nothing. Any ideas? I doubt all of the cards are dying at the same time. I checked all the temps/vrm temps. They're all cool.

[dogie]

Now the computer will boot only with the Igpu, or the last card. Booting with first and last, boots to a black screen after bios. The 2nd card/slot are "dead" Hasn't worked for the past couple of hours, I don't think it plans to. 3rd boots to nothing. Any ideas? I doubt all of the cards are dying at the same time. I checked all the temps/vrm temps. They're all cool.

So motherboard onboard, no GPUs works fine? And with just 1 card?

If that works, keep trying with 1 card in each different slot. If this still doesn't then the power delivery on your motherboard is dying. If no problems with the 1 card, try a different one in a known working slot until you've tested them all.

If only one of the slots doesn't work, then mobo just being annoying but is likely on its way out.

[k9quaint]

Try taking the rig out of your swimming pool, letting it dry off, and then seeing if it will boot?

[Viceroy]

Now the computer will boot only with the Igpu, or the last card. Booting with first and last, boots to a black screen after bios. The 2nd card/slot are "dead" Hasn't worked for the past couple of hours, I don't think it plans to. 3rd boots to nothing. Any ideas? I doubt all of the cards are dying at the same time. I checked all the temps/vrm temps. They're all cool.

So motherboard onboard, no GPUs works fine? And with just 1 card?

If that works, keep trying with 1 card in each different slot. If this still doesn't then the power delivery on your motherboard is dying. If no problems with the 1 card, try a different one in a known working slot until you've tested them all.

If only one of the slots doesn't work, then mobo just being annoying but is likely on its way out.

This plus if you are running 4 GPU you are loading the PSU perhaps beyond it's ability.  After the above if you are no closer to conclusion try a different power supply.  This one runs 6 GPU's on 3 cards without a hiccup:  http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3893/corsair_ax1200_1200w_power_supply_review/index.html

[Ryu.Hayabusa]

When I was building a rig for a client that had 4x GTX 590 (dual GPU, 8 total), I encountered similar issues such as cards (or one of 2 GPUs on a card) disappearing, the screen flickering/freezing, and low performance on 1-2 GPUs (this was for Folding@Home).

First thing to always check is the seating of the cards, I don't know what kind of interconnects you are using, but PCI-E slots are quite picky about the actual position in the slot, being slightly off can cause one to drop off.  If everything is seating properly, you can try to take one card off the water loop and try it alone (wont overheat for about 3 min running).  If it posts in the first slot, try the next 3, if all post, then you can try again to re-install the cards or you can try each card individually that same way to ensure its not the actual cards that are causing the problem.  I would also recommend trying different 2, 3, and 4 card combinations, as I also had weird issues where one card liked a specific slot.

The screen freezing and flickering could be your miner settings, as the testing I've done the past few days on my single 5870 has shown me that too high of values on thread_concurrency, gpu_threads, or intensity will cause flickering/freezing.  On the rig I was building for that client, that issue was mostly caused by the motherboard and chipset I/O voltages being too low.  I'm not sure what motherboard you have, so maybe I can help more with suggesting what to increase if you can reply back with that.

Also, I noticed from your youtube video that your running an Enermax 1350w.  Some boards will not post at all (or will post intermittently) since that PSUs Power Good Signal is quite high.  This may not apply to newer boards, or Enermax may have fixed that (not sure), but it was definitely an issue with EVGA x58 motherboards.

Other things to try would be loading factory defaults in bios, updating to the latest bios (if any), re-installing Windows (or whatever you're using).

That's about all I can think of at the moment, I'll probably have more suggestions once I know what motherboard you are working with.

[Cereal]

Did you also check VRM temperatures? Since you use watercooling there might be too little airflow over other components like mem & vrm's.

Use GPU-Z to get some more info.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/