My road to a mining farm

[Jamievs]

Good day all,

I’m Jamievs. I’ve been around on this since May 15th 2013. Some weeks ago I woke up from my sleep and got back into the mining. When I “left” the scene it was all about asics for SHA256 and GPU’s for scrypt. I still have my USB miners sitting on my desk. The world has come a long way since then.

Life changed a lot and now I have the ability to build up a mining farm over time. The idea of this thread is that I hope to inspire more people to join the mining fun and show that everyone can do it. As long as you have patience and are willing to learn. My basic knowledge is alright but I struggle at lots of parts too but I am eager to learn. I hope to gain knowledge and add information about software / hardware / OC'ing / Tweaking / Etcetera and add it to this topic.

As of writing this thread I have two rigs and some stuff ordered that is incoming. Rig 1 is my former game PC. I just traded off my I7 6700k for a EVGA 1600w power supply and ordered a cheap Celeron plus cpu cooler.

Rig 1:


Rig 2:



As you can see it is not much of a farm yet. One of the first lessons I learned is that nvidia and amd don’t go well together (unless you want to go trough a PITA process of tweaking and setting things up). At the same time my 2 rigs are a clusterfuck of wiring and are all out in the open. Time for some change! I have inbound some packages;
1)   3 open rig mining cases
2)   A 1200w + a 1600w PSU
3)   2x ASrock H81 PRO BTC + CPU + CPU cooler + RAM
4)   SSD’s
5)   Cables, 2x 24 pin adapter, risers, etc.
6)   An SRR bought on this forum

The idea is to restructure my rigs completely first and expand bigger and bigger over time.

One rig with AMD, one rig with nvidia and one with cheap GPU’s I can find on the market The latter is my current rig 2. Picked up some cheap GPU’s that ROI within 40 days if I use a resale value of €0,- so I am content with those as long as I have the mobo’s “on the side” to support such purchases.

For now I am awaiting the hardware to be delivered. Meanwhile I am looking into GPU’s (both AMD and Nvidia) and I have no clue which ones to pick. Also I am trying to look into getting more out of my current RX 480’s because by the look of their hashrates I don’t get full benefit of those yet either. Looks like I have to learn how to flash and how to use watttool. Especially on how to use watttool, the best practices and how-to’s I can find are very limited or hard to understand. The terminology gets overwhelming pretty fast too.

Feel free to join me on my search. Maybe we can all learn something and/or share knowledge with each other and help newbies to get started!

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[Redrose]

So I have been quite long in the mining game, and for me, hands down the best GPU is the RX 470. When I will go back to mining soon, by taking wking up my mine and expending it, I will go exclusively with RX 470. Or with RX 570, depending which one is cheaper. And as you may not think, i seems that RX 570 is cheaper, so I will maybe go with this one. But anyway, take one of those ones, which the least memory. A stock RX 470 with 4Gb of RAM is your best horse in the race. The RX 480 is too expensive to be a good plan. Even if it is more powerful, it is not enough to justify a that high price tag.

[Jamievs]

So I have been quite long in the mining game, and for me, hands down the best GPU is the RX 470. When I will go back to mining soon, by taking wking up my mine and expending it, I will go exclusively with RX 470. Or with RX 570, depending which one is cheaper. And as you may not think, i seems that RX 570 is cheaper, so I will maybe go with this one. But anyway, take one of those ones, which the least memory. A stock RX 470 with 4Gb of RAM is your best horse in the race. The RX 480 is too expensive to be a good plan. Even if it is more powerful, it is not enough to justify a that high price tag.

Interesting points. At first glance the only "pro" to go for the 480 over the 470 might be the slightly more power and the higher resale value. I wonder how the hashrates of the 570's / 580 's might work out!

[Redrose]

So I have been quite long in the mining game, and for me, hands down the best GPU is the RX 470. When I will go back to mining soon, by taking wking up my mine and expending it, I will go exclusively with RX 470. Or with RX 570, depending which one is cheaper. And as you may not think, i seems that RX 570 is cheaper, so I will maybe go with this one. But anyway, take one of those ones, which the least memory. A stock RX 470 with 4Gb of RAM is your best horse in the race. The RX 480 is too expensive to be a good plan. Even if it is more powerful, it is not enough to justify a that high price tag.

Interesting points. At first glance the only "pro" to go for the 480 over the 470 might be the slightly more power and the higher resale value. I wonder how the hashrates of the 570's / 580 's might work out!

Well, since I have posted my post, I did research on the RX 570 and RX 580, and while they do not offer a that great boost in Ethereum solo mining, they offer a considerable increase in term of dual mining. So finally if the price tag is not very different between those, I suggest you to buy the new ones. And this is what I will do in two weeks I think.

[Jamievs]

Well, since I have posted my post, I did research on the RX 570 and RX 580, and while they do not offer a that great boost in Ethereum solo mining, they offer a considerable increase in term of dual mining. So finally if the price tag is not very different between those, I suggest you to buy the new ones. And this is what I will do in two weeks I think.

I've come to the same conclusion.

580 Stock: the 580 does 22mh / 670 mhs (https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/66b8n6/rx_580_gets_22_mhs_at_stock_settings/)
580 Clocked: while clocked they 580should be able to go 30.5mh / 1130 mhs ( ). (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1881008.0)

for the 570 I can't find any stock / clocked speeds so far.

[TheBottomTurtle]

This thread will take a while to get through simply because it has so much amazing information.  It's basically a huge discussion of exactly what you're doing.  It's worth the read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1806061.0

-TBT

[Redrose]

This thread will take a while to get through simply because it has so much amazing information.  It's basically a huge discussion of exactly what you're doing.  It's worth the read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1806061.0

-TBT

This will be more interesting once he has the cards to get the configurations, the bioses and so. Until that point, I think he do not need to go throught it all and can just ask it here.

[philipma1957]

This thread will take a while to get through simply because it has so much amazing information.  It's basically a huge discussion of exactly what you're doing.  It's worth the read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1806061.0

-TBT

This will be more interesting once he has the cards to get the configurations, the bioses and so. Until that point, I think he do not need to go throught it all and can just ask it here.

Well that is a major farm on a small piece of property. It is over 100 gpus.


@ the op  how many rigs is your goal?

Three six card rigs? total of 18 cards?

In the winter i was as high as 11 four card rigs and 1 panda miner a grand total of 52 cards.  At that point the heat becomes an issue.  I could have enough power for 100 cards but my wife would try to kill me if I do that.
I wind my mine down  as the hot weather approaches for heat issues and New Jersey power rates Jump up from 12.5 to 16.7 cents four months of the year.
I am down to 8 nvidia and 8 amd cards  using 6 mobos.  lots of room to add cards but that won't happen until OCT.

I have 4 soon to be 7 nvidia 1080 ti's
I have 1 -------------- nvidia 1080
I have 2--------------- nvidia 1070's
I have 1 -------------- nvidia  1060

I have 8 amd rx 480's

I plan to get rid of the nvidia 1060 the 2 1070's and the 1 nvidia 1080

keep the 7 nvidia 1080 ti's
keep the 8 rx 480's

[Bostast]

This thread will take a while to get through simply because it has so much amazing information.  It's basically a huge discussion of exactly what you're doing.  It's worth the read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1806061.0

-TBT

This will be more interesting once he has the cards to get the configurations, the bioses and so. Until that point, I think he do not need to go throught it all and can just ask it here.

Well that is a major farm on a small piece of property. It is over 100 gpus.


@ the op  how many rigs is your goal?

Three six card rigs? total of 18 cards?

In the winter i was as high as 11 four card rigs and 1 panda miner a grand total of 52 cards.  At that point the heat becomes an issue.  I could have enough power for 100 cards but my wife would try to kill me if I do that.
I wind my mine down  as the hot weather approaches for heat issues and New Jersey power rates Jump up from 12.5 to 16.7 cents four months of the year.
I am down to 8 nvidia and 8 amd cards  using 6 mobos.  lots of room to add cards but that won't happen until OCT.

I have 4 soon to be 7 nvidia 1080 ti's
I have 1 -------------- nvidia 1080
I have 2--------------- nvidia 1070's
I have 1 -------------- nvidia  1060

I have 8 amd rx 480's

I plan to get rid of the nvidia 1060 the 2 1070's and the 1 nvidia 1080

keep the 7 nvidia 1080 ti's
keep the 8 rx 480's

Even at the 17c/kwh, it is still profitable to mine. I think you do not like the heat.

[Redrose]

This thread will take a while to get through simply because it has so much amazing information.  It's basically a huge discussion of exactly what you're doing.  It's worth the read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1806061.0

-TBT

This will be more interesting once he has the cards to get the configurations, the bioses and so. Until that point, I think he do not need to go throught it all and can just ask it here.

Well that is a major farm on a small piece of property. It is over 100 gpus.


@ the op  how many rigs is your goal?

Three six card rigs? total of 18 cards?

In the winter i was as high as 11 four card rigs and 1 panda miner a grand total of 52 cards.  At that point the heat becomes an issue.  I could have enough power for 100 cards but my wife would try to kill me if I do that.
I wind my mine down  as the hot weather approaches for heat issues and New Jersey power rates Jump up from 12.5 to 16.7 cents four months of the year.
I am down to 8 nvidia and 8 amd cards  using 6 mobos.  lots of room to add cards but that won't happen until OCT.

I have 4 soon to be 7 nvidia 1080 ti's
I have 1 -------------- nvidia 1080
I have 2--------------- nvidia 1070's
I have 1 -------------- nvidia  1060

I have 8 amd rx 480's

I plan to get rid of the nvidia 1060 the 2 1070's and the 1 nvidia 1080

keep the 7 nvidia 1080 ti's
keep the 8 rx 480's

Even at the 17c/kwh, it is still profitable to mine. I think you do not like the heat.

Yes, that is what he specified. That is true that in some cases mining might produce an amount of heat really problematic. My true dream would be to heat me entirely with GPUs, putting them in the basement, and which columns, I would be sending the heat to the house just above and heat it. This is something I think I will try at big scale at Winter 2018.

[Jamievs]

Interesting reactions all!

@TBT: Thanks for the link. That farm is big! For sure will be an interesting read. Thanks alot

@ philipma1957: for now the goal is nine rigs with each 6 cards, but I am taking baby steps to get there because I am sure new challanges will rise every other rig. After that I will evaulate what my options are. Overall the idea is to build the rigs with a healthy spread between AMD and nvidia algo's and use GPU's that will retain it's market value most (So 8gb cards over 4gb, etc).

My first step is 3 rigs with 6 cards. One rig with AMD, one with nvidia and one with old 7950 / 7970 I can find on our country's version of ebay. The ones I have running now I picked up from someone who had no idea he had money in hands, I payed about $60 each and they do nicely in the eqiuhash algorithm. Another reason I am going for 3 first is 1) Learning to set up a 6 gpu rig per brand 2) most important; power. After 3, maybe 4, I have to let someone do some work on our fusebox to supply the garage (I am working from my garage) with extra power. There is about a 220v * 15A = 3.300 w limit I have to keep aware of. So far the 2* 7950 and 1*7950 produce an insane amount of heat compared to the 1080 and 3*  RX 480 I have.

This is how I currently sit: https://postimg.org/image/4hjblckgl/2daec593/ . On the right is rig 2, on the left rig 1. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow the frames will come in making stuff a lot cleaner not to mention safer!

On the GPU's: I am not sure to do with the RX480's. Sell them and replace them with 580's or just keep them and fill the rig up with 480's. I read some stuff about driver conflict if you start modding the bios, especially because the 580's appear to need the latest drivers.

[mr.hump]

...This is how I currently sit...

Nice rig, man!!!
I dream about such amount of GPU's))
Just started mining 24 hours ago with my 1070 and making plans for future to buy 1 more 1070 and 6 rx470. But i have a problem - here in my country prices are very high and salaries are very low)) But i will figure out how to solve this i think!

TY for shareing your story, will keep an eye on this post)
Have a nice day, guys!

[Jamievs]

...This is how I currently sit...

Nice rig, man!!!
I dream about such amount of GPU's))
Just started mining 24 hours ago with my 1070 and making plans for future to buy 1 more 1070 and 6 rx470. But i have a problem - here in my country prices are very high and salaries are very low)) But i will figure out how to solve this i think!

TY for shareing your story, will keep an eye on this post)
Have a nice day, guys!

Thanks for the kind reply. You can always start with cheaper 2nd hand gear that ROI's fast, sell off the gear and buy better stuff with the profit you made + the resale value of the 2nd hand gear! If you don't have the cash on hand just build op slowly. You'll get there!

Anyway, as I mentioned in my opening post, my rig 1 used to be a gaming PC. This is the initial hardware:

MOBO: MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon
RAM: HyperX 16 GB DDR4-2666 Kit
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4000 1151 BOX
GPU: EVGA8GB D5X GTX 1080 Founders Edition
PSU: Corsair AX860

Above has been working fine for days along with 3x RX 480 running at stock settings. Since I no longer game the CPU is massive overkill so I traded it for a EVGA 1600w PSU. Yesterday my Intel Celeron G3900 came in and as usual I had it swapped in minutes. But the rig is very unstable now. With all 4 GPU's connected it would hard reset within a minute of starting with dual mining. With 3 GPU's connected all lasts longer but it still crashes way too often. The idea was to swap to a celeron because it uses less power and I would make profit getting the PSU out of it, but what is happening now makes no sense to me. Anyone has any clue how that is remotely possible?

[szafa]

Happy day wish you my minning experience.

[no1blue]

Hi all

I am new here. I am planing to invest in mining.

Could you give me some advise on where to start.
I got about 2000USD to start. My price of electricity is about 0.1USD/kWh.

Thank you.

[Redrose]

Hi all

I am new here. I am planing to invest in mining.

Could you give me some advise on where to start.
I got about 2000USD to start. My price of electricity is about 0.1USD/kWh.

Thank you.

For 2000$ I suggest you this configuration :

-Intel Celeron 40$
-ASRock H81 Pro BTC 80$
-SSD 120 Go 40$
-Any gold PSU equal or over 850W ~90-120$
-6x the cheapest RX 570 available (currently MSI Armor) 6x ~170-200$
-6 1x to 16x USB risers 60$
TOTAL : 1410$

For the rest of your money, just start another rig, but with less than 6 GPUs.

[Jamievs]

Above has been working fine for days along with 3x RX 480 running at stock settings. Since I no longer game the CPU is massive overkill so I traded it for a EVGA 1600w PSU. Yesterday my Intel Celeron G3900 came in and as usual I had it swapped in minutes. But the rig is very unstable now. With all 4 GPU's connected it would hard reset within a minute of starting with dual mining. With 3 GPU's connected all lasts longer but it still crashes way too often. The idea was to swap to a celeron because it uses less power and I would make profit getting the PSU out of it, but what is happening now makes no sense to me. Anyone has any clue how that is remotely possible?

I managed to fix the problem my re-flashing the mobo (with same version) with the new CPU in it. I guess during the flashing everything calibrated again and now it is running stable again for the past 12 hours.

Based on reactions on this forum about 570's/580;s I am about to order https://www.newegg.com/global/nl/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131714&ignorebbr=1 x 5 (5 is the order limit  ). Reason I am leaning towards this card is that it has limited OC functions (for now) but it runs with 27.8mhs / 800 mhs stable for dual mining based on stock settings. Sounds great for a new rig. That way it seems like I have decent stock results so I focus on learning other stuff first.

Fairly exciting. Never ordered anything from USA before.

[no1blue]

Hi all

I am new here. I am planing to invest in mining.

Could you give me some advise on where to start.
I got about 2000USD to start. My price of electricity is about 0.1USD/kWh.

Thank you.

For 2000$ I suggest you this configuration :

-Intel Celeron 40$
-ASRock H81 Pro BTC 80$
-SSD 120 Go 40$
-Any gold PSU equal or over 850W ~90-120$
-6x the cheapest RX 570 available (currently MSI Armor) 6x ~170-200$
-6 1x to 16x USB risers 60$
TOTAL : 1410$

For the rest of your money, just start another rig, but with less than 6 GPUs.

Thank you for your advise.

I am really waver between buying an ASIC or start 6xGPU rig

[Jamievs]

Hi all

I am new here. I am planing to invest in mining.

Could you give me some advise on where to start.
I got about 2000USD to start. My price of electricity is about 0.1USD/kWh.

Thank you.

For 2000$ I suggest you this configuration :

-Intel Celeron 40$
-ASRock H81 Pro BTC 80$
-SSD 120 Go 40$
-Any gold PSU equal or over 850W ~90-120$
-6x the cheapest RX 570 available (currently MSI Armor) 6x ~170-200$
-6 1x to 16x USB risers 60$
TOTAL : 1410$

For the rest of your money, just start another rig, but with less than 6 GPUs.

Dont forget about some ram though  .


So.. I ordered everything. While people at different companies are now busy with picking my orders and putting them on transport it is time to prepare for installation.

I ordered the ASRock H81 Pro BTC (and also 6x RX 580   ) and I have some questions about it

1) If I use powered risers, do I use the molex connectors on the board. Common sense tells me not to since I user powered risers but I get mixed results when searching about this on google.
2) How do I install windows? On other boards I read about installing windows (10) in UEFI mode. Do I have to do that for this board too? Seems easy to make an USB flash drive installation for either mode.
3) Do you guys just plug in all 6 GPU's when you fire it up for the first time or do you add one and install it over time?

[h311m4n]

Hi all

I am new here. I am planing to invest in mining.

Could you give me some advise on where to start.
I got about 2000USD to start. My price of electricity is about 0.1USD/kWh.

Thank you.

For 2000$ I suggest you this configuration :

-Intel Celeron 40$
-ASRock H81 Pro BTC 80$
-SSD 120 Go 40$
-Any gold PSU equal or over 850W ~90-120$
-6x the cheapest RX 570 available (currently MSI Armor) 6x ~170-200$
-6 1x to 16x USB risers 60$
TOTAL : 1410$

For the rest of your money, just start another rig, but with less than 6 GPUs.

Dont forget about some ram though  .


So.. I ordered everything. While people at different companies are now busy with picking my orders and putting them on transport it is time to prepare for installation.

I ordered the ASRock H81 Pro BTC (and also 6x RX 580   ) and I have some questions about it

1) If I use powered risers, do I use the molex connectors on the board. Common sense tells me not to since I user powered risers but I get mixed results when searching about this on google.
2) How do I install windows? On other boards I read about installing windows (10) in UEFI mode. Do I have to do that for this board too? Seems easy to make an USB flash drive installation for either mode.
3) Do you guys just plug in all 6 GPU's when you fire it up for the first time or do you add one and install it over time?

1. Some people say you don't need to. My experience is you do have to, even with powered risers (at least on my BTC pro boards, I get a warning on boot if I don't)
2. Install from a USB stick like you would any other windows
3. I would suggest plugging in one GPU until Windows is installed. Once it is, tweak your Windows properly (deactivate all 3d effects, useless services, windows defender etc.). By then Windows will have installed a driver for your card. Remove it using DDU, shutdown, plug in your cards, fire the rig up and install the driver through the device manager by pointing to the display driver folder. Your cards will install one by one.

Note: you will have to use a recent driver for your RX5xx, which means you'll have to patch the driver to tweak your cards with bios mods, otherwise, you'll get "code 43" errors. Also, it seems people are having a difficult time getting more than 5 of these RX5xx series working (because of driver or patched, I don't know, it's just what I've read). This is also the reason I got some more 470s and not 570s, I'm going to let others deal with the hassle of new-sort-of-untested hardware until things work in a plug and play fashion