Closed Air GPU mining rigs?

[adaseb]

Wondering if anybody here has managed to make a closed air mining rig.

The main benefit would be that its easier to direct the air exhaust and second reason would be it wouldn't make your room look like something out of the movie "hackers". I'm sure we all got parents, wives, girlfriends who all complained about the look of our ghetto rigs and "What do the guests think?"

I know you can buy those expensive 6-8 GPU 4U rackable cases, however they are VERY expensive and they are VERY loud.

Wondering if someone has managed to modify a full-size regular computer case and manage to run 4 GPUs or so all inside the case with decent temperature and noise.

Most likely the trade-off would be that we wouldn't be able to use all 5-7 slots of the motherboards but for some with the Summer heat approaching it might not be a bad alternative.

[leowonderful]

If anyone would ever do something like this, I recommend that you use blower coolers on your GPUs for cooling and maxing out the number of fans in a case. Gets pretty toasty if you have four open fan GPUs inside, and also remember to have more intake than exhaust or vice versa so there aren't stale air pockets inside.

[jwarren81]

I was looking to do something like this with my old CoolerMaster Centurion 590 and I had found this part to convert 5.25 bays to hold GPUs:  http://www.bplus.com.tw/Adapter/PE4F.html

It was the only thing I could find, but was cost prohibitive.  I have been thinking about using MakerBeam's and the usual USB risers to accomplish the same thing, but haven't had the time to investigate further.

Jake

[adaseb]

Since the USB Risers have mounting holes you can mount them somewhere on the board. That adapter is too expensive.

Im going to go to a local computer store and see how much extra room the full-sized computer cases have. With 2 GPUs inside the PCIe slots, I think its possible to find room to mount 2 USB risers somewhere.

[U253]

Planning to do exactly the same thing.

Cooling may be the major problem. You can see this from Nvidia https://developer.nvidia.com/devbox, even four titan x can be filled into a regular ATX box (corsair 540), so lower TDP card should be fine.

I ask senior member here (Philipma1957), he tried to put 4X480 on the board biostar Z170GT7 open air(with four full PCIE, double slots spaced), I was told they were running stably and only thing you need to do is removing the GPU backplate. Double slots=4cm, while the AMD ref 480 is also 4cm, so you want to make a little space between them.

So just find a decent air flow case.

hope this will help.

[U253]

also if you find some 10 or more slots case, you can add an extra GPU using the riser?

[Amph]

the haf-xb is the best, or the corsair air 540 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=361613.0

[Amph]

the haf-xb is the best, or the corsair air 540 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=361613.0

I did the haf and it really wasn't, iean you are essentially making a half hanging rig and they are still tight and blowing on each other. (That and the damn thing is massive.)

are you sure i can't see how it's different than a open frame, they look very similar, i have now an open frame with the same space between the gpu and all my gpu are at 70° maximum(70% tdp) with 26° ambient temperature

[addias]

I think cooling will be your biggest issue. Make sure that you invest in some good fans like Noctura. Also, look online on how to manage airflow in your PC. I had to rearrange wires to promote better airflow in my PC.

[arielbit]

distribute...

i have a pc in each rooms (upstairs). a pc downstairs and a pc for surveillance...all are with a GPU or two (all are mining).

putting them in cases and letting them standing next to each other is useless, they are better off without cases

setup servers(different kinds), computerize/tech up your home and put GPUs in them to mine...by distributing them around you distribute the heat..

this is where the bigger and badder GPU's have an advantage, take ZEC for example, 2x 1080 ti setup can give you 1400 sols.


note: the more GPU you can put at each PC the better.

tip: do you have a problem in specific areas where humidity is a bit high? where mold and mildew grows?...put a mining rig in that area

[klondike_bar]

Yeah I have and am doing so again. What I had was 5 750ti in one tower. No issues, now I'm doing 480/470 mix with Max 4 cards (most likely 3) and putting lots of fans in them. The wife would freak over my beast of hanging cards or my giant server.

750ti was pretty low power draw, less than even a 470 iirc.  larger cards will overheat a case more.

I have 2x 480 (8gb) in a corsair spec-01 case, and even at slight undervolting and TDP limiting, the case gets quite warm and they sit around 70C with 60% fans.  If they were open-air, theyd probably be at 60C with 40% fans

[PanneKopp]

It is a little hard to find a case with 8 PCI-Slots,
but it is working



2 x 120mm fans in front and bottom work fine
with 2 x RX470 + 2 x RX480, even in summer


 

[grrrgrrr]

My rig runs 4 EVGA hybrid 1080s in Corsair Air 540. At full load the cards run at 60~70C.
The case is designed for airflow. I also use a fan controller to balance between noise/cooling. It (white color) looks decent too.

If you want to build 4 way sli, definitely go water cooling/hybrid. The cards will sit extremely tight together. If you go air cooling they'll choke.

[U253]

My rig runs 4 EVGA hybrid 1080s in Corsair Air 540. At full load the cards run at 60~70C.
The case is designed for airflow. I also use a fan controller to balance between noise/cooling. It (white color) looks decent too.

If you want to build 4 way sli, definitely go water cooling/hybrid. The cards will sit extremely tight together. If you go air cooling they'll choke.

Good to know the hybrid works so well. Just burned one of my two 1070 in a mid atx case. I know the upper one is hotter than the bottom one (~73 vs 60 degrees), but though that's still in a reasonable range.

[Elder III]

Open Air frame cases all the way here... My solution was to get my wife interested in mining.  She's practical enough to recognize the money potential and she knew she was marrying a geek many years ago. We now even have a rig mining next to our bed....  


I do have a full tower case for my main PC that has a pair of GTX 1080 Ti's in it (one of which mines around the clock). I would not want to put more then that in it unless you have a very large EATX tower. I tried that route back in the early days of Bitcoin mining on GPUs and it was a constant battle with heat.

[2dogs]

Very interested in this also.

Need a case to help control the dust issues mainly.

How do you work around putting in those huge power supplies, like in the 1600W range?

[thebigjdoe]

The roswill server case with drop in bracket keeps 6 cool for around $160.

[2dogs]

Very interested in this also.

Need a case to help control the dust issues mainly.

How do you work around putting in those huge power supplies, like in the 1600W range?

That's going to be too much if you are going 1600w of heat in a case you'll have trouble.

What would be the max, like 750W?

[miner417]

For a while I had 1 MSI Armor 480 4g and 2x Visiontek 470 4gbs reference cards in an Enthroo Pro full tower case. I had the Armor on top and the 2 visions below. Ambient temp was about 70-73 F. Cards sat about 75C with fans around 70%. 1 200 in the front as intake, the fan that came with it. 1 rosewill 120 Fan on the HDD bay inside to push air. 1 140 on the back as exhaust, fan that came with it, and 2x Corsair 140 AF series on top for exhaust. My HDD bays are completely full as well, 5x HDD's and 1 SSD. It kept decently cool for everything I had in there, but the noise from those fans was so bad.

[vapourminer]

i have a single sapphire nitro r9 390 triple fan in my daily driver, its in a nzxt h2 case. 2 120 front, 1 120 bottom, dual stacked 120s rear (corsair h75 aio) and a 140 top. at night when i let the 390 go full tilt dual mining eth/dcr, the card is fine at 65% fan at 65*C but the case fans ramp something crazy. very noisy.only run it full tilt at night. daytime i set the powerlimit at -40%  so its pretty quiet,

figure one 300 watt 390 is about the same at 2 470s or 480s. have fun.