Setup Monero Mining Rig - Help Pls

[Mattthev]

Hi,
I'm new to mining. Can you please help me setup mining rig?

I've bought HP DX 2400MT with some Core 2 DUO CPU... When it arrive I will check it, I want 45nm CPU for better cooling.
https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/HP-Compaq-dx2400-Microtower-PC/3658372

• CPU: 45nm Core 2 DUO or maybe QUAD
• RAM: It has 4GB, do I need more?
• HDD: 320GB
• GPU: I'm trying to buy HD 7850, R9 270x and cheap 7770 for start.
  My plan is to change them after, to at least 3x 7850 or better.
• PSU: It has 300w, but I want buy new Zalman ZM700-LX
  Is this enough for 3x 7850 or 3x R9 270x?
• Cooling: I have some 12cm Arctic fans.
  Also I don't know what is CPU cooler, so I will buy some old heatsink if it's not good.
  I'm trying to buy some OC cards with better cooling than reference, I will only put some Arctic MX2 on it, maybe MX4 for the more powerful ones.
• OS: It has Win 7 64bit, is it good or update to Win 10?
• Mining SW: Claymore? I'm using now XMR Stak NVIDIA there is also AMD version, will try anyway.

Will the PSU be enough? Any advices for me?
Is USB 3.0 power riser good or should I use ribbon?
I'm mining with 860m on my laptop now on Minergate XMR+FCN and also with this rig I want too, any advices?

Thank you for any help

[RentGPU]

Hi,
I'm new to mining. Can you please help me setup mining rig?

I've bought HP DX 2400MT with some Core 2 DUO CPU... When it arrive I will check it, I want 45nm CPU for better cooling.
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01399523

• CPU: 45nm Core 2 DUO or maybe QUAD
• RAM: It has 4GB, do I need more?
• HDD: 320GB
• GPU: I'm trying to buy HD 7850, R9 270x and cheap 7770 for start.
  My plan is to change them after, to at least 3x 7850 or better.
• PSU: It has 300w, but I want buy new Zalman ZM700-LX
  Is this enough for 3x 7850 or 3x R9 270x?
• Cooling: I have some 12cm Arctic fans.
  Also I don't know what is CPU cooler, so I will buy some old heatsink if it's not good.
  I'm trying to buy some OC cards with better cooling than reference, I will only put some Arctic MX2 on it, maybe MX4 for the more powerful ones.
• OS: It has Win 7 64bit, is it good or update to Win 10?
• Mining SW: Claymore? I'm using now XMR Stak NVIDIA there is also AMD version, will try anyway.

Will the PSU be enough? Any advices for me?
Is USB 3.0 power riser good or should I use ribbon?
I'm mining with 860m on my laptop now on Minergate XMR+FCN and also with this rig I want too, any advices?

Thank you for any help

If you will buy new gpus anyway why don't you just buy the rx series , why hd and r9s they are not power efficient i don't recommend them if your electricity price isn't very cheap, you can buy 3 rx 470 4gb and 700 watt psu will do fine , maybe a mobo with 3 x 16x pcie and forget this raisers , just mount your gpus directly onboard , any cheap cpu will do fine , and 4gb of ram is ok.
Also: you don't need all that hdd space

[Mattthev]

If you will buy new gpus anyway why don't you just buy the rx series , why hd and r9s they are not power efficient i don't recommend them if your electricity price isn't very cheap, you can buy 3 rx 470 4gb and 700 watt psu will do fine , maybe a mobo with 3 x 16x pcie and forget this raisers , just mount your gpus directly onboard , any cheap cpu will do fine , and 4gb of ram is ok.
Also: you don't need all that hdd space

Thank you, well I don't pay for electricity, it's in the rent no limited for me, it's students flat. Yeah I could buy some new cards, but it cost a lot for start. I have money to buy them, but I just wanna try it with some older and cheaper setup and if it's gonna work for me I will buy new ones.
I've read that it isn't good having more GPU in x16 PCIE on mobo because of heat.
The 320GB HDD is already in the PC, I have no idea if it's SATA ATA or whatever will see once it arrive.
PC I've bought

Also what you think about mining merged cryptocurrencies? XMR+FCN

Thanks.

[RentGPU]

If you will buy new gpus anyway why don't you just buy the rx series , why hd and r9s they are not power efficient i don't recommend them if your electricity price isn't very cheap, you can buy 3 rx 470 4gb and 700 watt psu will do fine , maybe a mobo with 3 x 16x pcie and forget this raisers , just mount your gpus directly onboard , any cheap cpu will do fine , and 4gb of ram is ok.
Also: you don't need all that hdd space

Thank you, well I don't pay for electricity, it's in the rent no limited for me, it's students flat. Yeah I could buy some new cards, but it cost a lot for start. I have money to buy them, but I just wanna try it with some older and cheaper setup and if it's gonna work for me I will buy new ones.
I've read that it isn't good having more GPU in x16 PCIE on mobo because of heat.
The 320GB HDD is already in the PC, I have no idea if it's SATA ATA or whatever will see once it arrive.
PC I've bought

Also what you think about mining merged cryptocurrencies? XMR+FCN

Thanks.

If you are sure of that free electricity then those gpus will be ok for a start , i am mounting 4 gpu on a single mobo all directly on 16x with temps 57,61,61,60 it's normal temps without any outside fans or A/C just the card builtin fans set to 55% , it's more stable than raisers i tried both now i am only mining this way without raisers , about mining you can fireup this cards on zcash i think r9s are getting decent hashrate now with claymore miner unless you want to specially mine monero for a future spaculations

[Elder III]

A 700 watt PSU is not sufficient for those older and more power hungry GPUs. If you bought 3x Rx 470s then a good quality 700 watt PSU would be ok. The R9 270X is rated at 180 watts each so that would definitely be a no go. 7850s would probably work at 130 watts each, but that would be the limit I would try.

[Mattthev]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your advices.
So what would you recommend me as sufficient PSU?
I'm about to buy 3x R9 380 or 2x R9 380 and one 270x or 7850.
Will this Chieftec 750W PSU be enough for 3x R9 380? In CZ we have this one for very good price. Or I need 850W? I found this cheap MS-Tech 850W PSU but it doesn't have very good reviews. MS Tech also have 950W PSU for almost same price, but that seems pretty weird...
Or should I buy better and more expensive one? I had really good experience with Seasonic but only 500W. Or something like Corsair?
Thank you very much.

EDIT: Maybe this ZALMAN 850W, little bit expensive but still good price and seems pretty nice build quality, they also have 3 year warranty.

[Elder III]

Chieftec is by and large poor quality and unlikely to provide it's rated watts (or die quickly if worked hard).  I don't know about MS-Tech, but usually cheap price is a bad sign for a PSU. Zalman makes some decent products and I think that model would be a safe buy. For a rig that is going to be mining 24/7 you will save money in the long run by buying a Gold or Platinum rated PSU. The efficiency isn't as big of a deal for general use with a few hours gaming, but for 24/7 mining under heavy loads the extra efficiency does make a difference.

[shakeandbake]

My experience:

For XMR cpu mining is far and away more profitable in large part due to stability. GPU mining had the benefit of flexibility in that you can switch coins; however, CPU mining has the stability rivaling an ASICS. My 32 cpu opteron c7000 blade chassis has been running 24/7 under max load since August 2016. Zero crashes. My GPU rigs I restart weekly.

Hi,
I'm new to mining. Can you please help me setup mining rig?

I've bought HP DX 2400MT with some Core 2 DUO CPU... When it arrive I will check it, I want 45nm CPU for better cooling.
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01399523

• CPU: 45nm Core 2 DUO or maybe QUAD
• RAM: It has 4GB, do I need more?
• HDD: 320GB
• GPU: I'm trying to buy HD 7850, R9 270x and cheap 7770 for start.
  My plan is to change them after, to at least 3x 7850 or better.
• PSU: It has 300w, but I want buy new Zalman ZM700-LX
  Is this enough for 3x 7850 or 3x R9 270x?
• Cooling: I have some 12cm Arctic fans.
  Also I don't know what is CPU cooler, so I will buy some old heatsink if it's not good.
  I'm trying to buy some OC cards with better cooling than reference, I will only put some Arctic MX2 on it, maybe MX4 for the more powerful ones.
• OS: It has Win 7 64bit, is it good or update to Win 10?
• Mining SW: Claymore? I'm using now XMR Stak NVIDIA there is also AMD version, will try anyway.

Will the PSU be enough? Any advices for me?
Is USB 3.0 power riser good or should I use ribbon?
I'm mining with 860m on my laptop now on Minergate XMR+FCN and also with this rig I want too, any advices?

Thank you for any help

[Mattthev]

My experience:

For XMR cpu mining is far and away more profitable in large part due to stability. GPU mining had the benefit of flexibility in that you can switch coins; however, CPU mining has the stability rivaling an ASICS. My 32 cpu opteron c7000 blade chassis has been running 24/7 under max load since August 2016. Zero crashes. My GPU rigs I restart weekly.

Oh ok. Well, electricity is no problem for me now. Should I restart PC every week? I will use GPUs mostly. I still don't know what CPU is in that PC I hope for 45nm Core 2 DUO, HP says PC can run Core 2 Quad 2.66Ghz, but on mobo specs it says Q9xxx so it could be 3.16GHz. But I'm worry about heat so I think it would be more wise use 65W Core 2 DUO than 95W QUAD. I have i7-870 and that beast is powerful CPU but also good oven.

Chieftec is by and large poor quality and unlikely to provide it's rated watts (or die quickly if worked hard).  I don't know about MS-Tech, but usually cheap price is a bad sign for a PSU. Zalman makes some decent products and I think that model would be a safe buy. For a rig that is going to be mining 24/7 you will save money in the long run by buying a Gold or Platinum rated PSU. The efficiency isn't as big of a deal for general use with a few hours gaming, but for 24/7 mining under heavy loads the extra efficiency does make a difference.

Today I've bought R9 380 Nitro 4GB for 120 USD.
What PSU I need to run 2 of these and 1 less powerful GPU? And what PSU for 3 of these? What do you think?

Thank you guys for advices, very helpful for me.

[Mattthev]

What do you think about this Corsair TX850M PSU It's 80+ gold and has 7 years warranty.

[Elder III]

What do you think about this Corsair TX850M PSU It's 80+ gold and has 7 years warranty.

That Corsair is a good PSU, I would not hesitate to use it myself. However, that PSU only has 4 PCIE connectors and the Sapphire R9 380 4GB Nitro takes 2 6 pin PCIE connectors per GPU, so the max would be just 2 of that video card. The 380 has a tdp of 190 watts, so you may be able to use 3 on a 850 watts PSU; depending on the CPU, hard drive(s), fans etc, you would probably draw ~750 or less at the wall. If you do some undervolting of the GPUs it would be less watts and allow your PSU to operate at a better load (making it last longer).

[Mattthev]

What do you think about this Corsair TX850M PSU It's 80+ gold and has 7 years warranty.

That Corsair is a good PSU, I would not hesitate to use it myself. However, that PSU only has 4 PCIE connectors and the Sapphire R9 380 4GB Nitro takes 2 6 pin PCIE connectors per GPU, so the max would be just 2 of that video card. The 380 has a tdp of 190 watts, so you may be able to use 3 on a 850 watts PSU; depending on the CPU, hard drive(s), fans etc, you would probably draw ~750 or less at the wall. If you do some undervolting of the GPUs it would be less watts and allow your PSU to operate at a better load (making it last longer).

Ok. I could use Molex to 8 pin PCIe or SATA to 8 pin PCIe or you don't recommend me this? There should be 2 SATA and 2 Molex cables with 4 connectors each. I could use one of them to connect third GPU or this is not using anymore? Thank you.

[Elder III]

No, definitely do not ever use a molex or sata to pcie adapter. They are no0t a very good idea for lite use and a very bad idea for mining where you have constant high load on those wires. If you want to use 3 GPUs you need the correct PSU with enough PCIE connectors for all the GPUs. You don't want to fry something and if you cut corners in mining you will kill your hardware, sooner or later.

This one (or one like it) with 6 x 6+2 pin PCIE connectors is what you need. Are you in the UK?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/850w-corsair-rm850x-series-80-plus-gold-full-modular-sli-crossfire-single-rail-708a-plus12v-1x135mm-

[Mattthev]

No, definitely do not ever use a molex or sata to pcie adapter. They are no0t a very good idea for lite use and a very bad idea for mining where you have constant high load on those wires. If you want to use 3 GPUs you need the correct PSU with enough PCIE connectors for all the GPUs. You don't want to fry something and if you cut corners in mining you will kill your hardware, sooner or later.

This one (or one like it) with 6 x 6+2 pin PCIE connectors is what you need. Are you in the UK?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/850w-corsair-rm850x-series-80-plus-gold-full-modular-sli-crossfire-single-rail-708a-plus12v-1x135mm-

I was using these adapters years ago I'm not in the UK, I'm from Czech republic, but I can buy this same PSU for same price here.
I suppose my IT knowledge is no longer actually useful Are Arctic fans still good? I have them for years and they are still pretty good silent, or are you recommending another case fans? What about thermal compound? I have plenty of Arctic MX-2 and little bit of MX-4 are those good enough? Thanks.

[Mattthev]

I'm buying now R9 380x for 120 USD.
So I will have R9 380 and R9 380X, I'm thinking about third GPU of RX 470, 480 or 570... Or can you recommend me some good GPU with same price tag? Thanks.

Sorry for quoting, but I can't figure out how to tag here by username...