My new mining rig - quad 7970 - Going for 3Gh/s

[pontiacg5]

Expect x10 to x30 in the next 12 month

My point is that this just doesn't seem to be a great investment. All the time people on this board are putting into mining questions and only some are actually mining, the time investment alone is prohibitive for me even considering getting in. Money is no object for me, but I can't buy the expensive rigs (Avalon and BFL) - certainly not going to give them my money with such a poor track record...there are better investments.

I'm not expecting GPU mining to be profitable for much longer

No kidding....

Grinandbearit - I've got about $2500 in this one, not counting the stainless sheet or any labor/machine time going into making it. I did all that on my own, so I consider that free. My time is worthless I guess haha  

If you had put that $2500 into Bitcoins a couple weeks ago when it declined so much...your would have doubled your money by today's price. Then you just sit and wait for Bitcoins to hit $500 each...or more...if you firmly believe it will.  Think of the babysitting you do with your rig...Bitcoins in a wallet require no commitment. 90% silver or 1/10th gold coins don't either. Perfect time to buy precious metals is now. Mining seems to be a humongous waste of time.

You'd probably be right, but building this rig was pretty fun and I don't much mind babysitting it. Heck, that's mostly what my job consists of any more, babysitting a bunch of computers lol. One more, once I get it going good, shouldn't be much of a burden. I also want to make myself known as a custom computer case manufacturer, and what better way than building my own functioning rigs? (I've got more in the works too, including a 3630k/firepro v5900/64! Gb)

So you'd be right, I wouldn't really recommend anyone invest in mining unless power is free and you don't mind switching to another cryptocurrency rather soon.

I'm still debating a preorder with BFL, but I'm not just handing my money over with no protection. Being as I'm so close I might be able to use local courts to my advantage if I needed to, but I'm going to talk with a lawyer or two about that first. I have a feeling if they wanted to they could hide all their assets from any civil litigation, but I'm no lawyer so I'll quit talking now haha..

Thanks for the comments guys!

[scruffbot]

Awesome build. I love the custom case.

[shep80]

Case work looks fantastic!

[pontiacg5]

Thanks guys! 

[jfedor]

That is some serious-looking hardware!

[Chi11ed]

Small idea, try just use cardboard( to test it) and close your box up a bit better. So the only real airflow is the fans. im thinking the top fans will make a bit of a vacuum and pull the air out while the side fans will be building up pressure. At the moment, there is just too many holes so they are pulling a good bit of air that is just sitting around the edges, not from between the cards. Basically make some pressure in there as i don't think the fans are quite working too well being so far from the heat with so many gaps. Either being closer, or making the case closed will have the side fans forcing the air in between the cards a bit more and out the top as its the only logical way to go.

Should not take you more that a hour with some scissors, tape and cardboard and you will know very quickly if it will help.

Wont hurt seeing as you have such a beaut of a case there.

[pontiacg5]

Small idea, try just use cardboard( to test it) and close your box up a bit better. So the only real airflow is the fans. im thinking the top fans will make a bit of a vacuum and pull the air out while the side fans will be building up pressure. At the moment, there is just too many holes so they are pulling a good bit of air that is just sitting around the edges, not from between the cards. Basically make some pressure in there as i don't think the fans are quite working too well being so far from the heat with so many gaps. Either being closer, or making the case closed will have the side fans forcing the air in between the cards a bit more and out the top as its the only logical way to go.

Should not take you more that a hour with some scissors, tape and cardboard and you will know very quickly if it will help.

Wont hurt seeing as you have such a beaut of a case there.

I've tried what you are suggesting, although I only used masking tape. Unfortunately that made the whole system overheat much quicker. My original plan was to cut acrylic sheets to fit and fill those large end holes, but after seeing how bad the masking tape holed things up I decided to leave it open. It's a bummer, because I was going to use cardboard to cut a template that matched the motherboard almost identically. Would of looked cool!

My new idea for cooling is going to use a bit of ducting though, cut out on the laser cutter. I don't see how I could ever keep these things cool without somehow isolating the intake and outlets. I'm still trying to figure out the best material to use, in case anyone has any suggestions

I remember using some sort of very thin congregated plastic on a 3d printer I built a while back, almost like those plastic signs you see on street corners everywhere. I'm thinking that stuff would work rather well.

Thanks for the comments guys! 

[FiatKiller]

fan-tastic  lol

[Chi11ed]

haha, adding a good bit to the price, but you could go water cooling. Gautenteed then to not have heat issues. I can say that i did that on one of my older rigs with 2 x 5970's and it worked like a charm. Wish i didnt sell that setup >_<

[ThatDGuy]

Really awesome looking setup! Nice work!

[Prelude]

Thanks for posting your build, really appreciate the work you put into making that case! Is that a Plasma CNC table you used? Or water? I'm thinking those cuts look too clean to be Plasma. I've been thinking of purchasing a CNC Plasma table for some stainless work I do.. What material did you build your case with?

Thanks again!

[fahrenheit451]

Beatifull, i love it when people put effort into things, i have this suspicion that better looking rigs give better hashrates

[miningdude]

Wow! Someone is taking this mining thing seriously with the work in that case. So many fans though. I wonder if a bigger more 'open air' type case wouldn't provide better airflow with lower power requirements (unless you're lucky enough to have free electricity).

[wolfgod]

I have 2 computers with 2x 7970 in each.. I have a 1000W power supply an dthe other computer has 1200 W power supply, Can someone help me how much my electricity gonna cost? .30 per/kilowatt ... Is that true that 2 cards my not use the whole power from the computer so lets say 1200W power supply is only draining 600W?

[miningdude]

30 cents a kilowatt!? You might be better off selling the rig and buying/holding bitcoins. You are at a severe disadvantage when compared to folks such as myself who pay 10 cents a kilowatt. And at an even more severe disadvantage against the ASIC's that are starting to ship and can run on very little power. As far as figuring out how much power you use, get a kilowatt unit from amazon and plug in your power strip to it at the wall. Then multiply the watts shown on the display by 0.003 to find your daily electrical cost.

[pontiacg5]

Chi11ed - Unfortunately water cooling isn't so simple with these cards as they deviate from the reference design. I've yet to find a full cover water block that fits this card! Of course I could always make a few, but I can't make radiators or pumps. If I can't keep these cool with air, I'll be moving to water

Prelude - It's actually a waterjet table, though it did have a plasma cutter riding alongside for quite a while (the box to the left of the waterjet head.) Plasma cutting is a messy affair, and getting decent cuts in stainless comes with a pretty steep learning curve. To cut stainless without oxidizing the edge really bad you need a special mix of gas, I believe it's called H35, or 35% hydrogen remainder argon. Very hard to find and expensive! Nitrogen will leave a terrible black burr that's hard as a rock, no file will touch it  

This case was made from 16 gauge 304 stainless sheet, a scrap piece I had around from some previous job. Most the stuff I do is for the food industry, so it's all stainless for me.

Miningdude - Thanks! I did try running them without the fan hoop in the way, with a 24" box fan to circulate air across everything and they still got quite hot unfortunately. Of course removing the fan hoop also means I can't spread the cards apart with the cool little flexible wire ties, so that might work if I put a little more time into it. But, with free electricity I'm not too worried

Wolfgod - Power supplies do work that way to a point, if you are loading the power supply a good bit under it's rated capacity it will not work as efficiently. You may be able to guess at your power draw, but the best way would be something like a kill-o-watt or inline power meter.

Miningdude - Here in Kansas and in an industrial park power runs about 8.5 cents a kilowatt! Luckily I don't even have to pay that  

Buuuut, this thing is running in my office and it got HOT today! With the three hot cards choked down to 500mhz I still was only able to keep my mining going for about 6 hours. It literally decided to quit 6 minutes before I got home from work and I can't get Cgminer to start over RDC  

My riser cables aren't marked as shipped yet either! I paid good money for US shipped cables! WTF!!

Thank you to everyone else for the nice comments on my case!

[kodachrome]

Reading this makes me really wish I didnt sell my HD5970 and buy a HD7970 but not actually mine with either card!  At the time, the value of BTC was low I guess and the cost of electricity high. But still.

[pontiacg5]

Does anyone know if you can start mining using logmein? I haven't used it since I set up a VPN server at work, but it looks like Remote Desktop Connection does funny thing to video drivers that logmein might not.

I'm not sure why I'm asking, I'll just go install the client and try it out lol

[Prelude]

Does anyone know if you can start mining using logmein? I haven't used it since I set up a VPN server at work, but it looks like Remote Desktop Connection does funny thing to video drivers that logmein might not.

I'm not sure why I'm asking, I'll just go install the client and try it out lol

I use Team Viewer 8 to manage all my rigs.

Thanks for the answer, I figured that was too nice for plasma. I also own a custom S/S business, with 99% of my clients/jobs being food industry so it's almost all S/S with a bit of aluminum in my shop. Does water produce burr free cuts? Or does it still need a bit of love after being cut? Going to have to look into getting a 5x10 table soon.

Take care!

[osamabinlala]

Teamviewer works finde you can set up a account to use it with one login. But then use a secured Password