Building Cheap Miners : My "Secret"

[RevoZ]

Thank you sundowns for sharing your experiences your rigs looks good and organized

[skyglin]

So could you please share us how much in total you spent, what you are mining, and how about your hashrate? Thanks.

I have about $60k in total equipment.

Right now I am doing ZPOOL mining alts for BTC using NEMOS profit switcher -- so stating a static hash-rate is a bit hard.

I have previous mined XVG as well as mined on Nicehash.

I mine Intense Coin on my CPUs.

Are you making a profit, and how much profit?

It will take several more months to profit past equipment costs -- but I am confident it will do so. I am also *holding* a bunch of my mined coins -- so that holds the potential for large profit compared to simply looking @ daily / monthly figures.

I have made over 1/2 of my equipment cost back so far.

And, of course, it has taken me many months to build this all by myself in my spare time and with my personal funds.

Looks very nice, what's your electricity cost $/kwh?

[medi91]

have you ever had an issues with your z400s not booting with risers connected to the pcie slots? troubleshooting my first z400 rig at the moment and cant get it to boot windows with more than 1 card connected

[sundownz]

have you ever had an issues with your z400s not booting with risers connected to the pcie slots? troubleshooting my first z400 rig at the moment and cant get it to boot windows with more than 1 card connected

I have not had this problem -- when you say "boot" what do you mean exactly ? Is it going to POST at all ? Or no display ?

[sundownz]

So could you please share us how much in total you spent, what you are mining, and how about your hashrate? Thanks.

I have about $60k in total equipment.

Right now I am doing ZPOOL mining alts for BTC using NEMOS profit switcher -- so stating a static hash-rate is a bit hard.

I have previous mined XVG as well as mined on Nicehash.

I mine Intense Coin on my CPUs.

Are you making a profit, and how much profit?

It will take several more months to profit past equipment costs -- but I am confident it will do so. I am also *holding* a bunch of my mined coins -- so that holds the potential for large profit compared to simply looking @ daily / monthly figures.

I have made over 1/2 of my equipment cost back so far.

And, of course, it has taken me many months to build this all by myself in my spare time and with my personal funds.

Looks very nice, what's your electricity cost $/kwh?

It's about 7 cents / KWH at the location with my miners.

[medi91]

have you ever had an issues with your z400s not booting with risers connected to the pcie slots? troubleshooting my first z400 rig at the moment and cant get it to boot windows with more than 1 card connected

I have not had this problem -- when you say "boot" what do you mean exactly ? Is it going to POST at all ? Or no display ?

wow, funny enough turned out too be a bad riser connector lower piece, idk if not seating or shorting or somnething
appreciate the reply

running into another issue now though, cant get them to recognize my p106's lol

did you have to do any bios setting changes to get everything to be recognized?

thanks sundownz

[sundownz]

have you ever had an issues with your z400s not booting with risers connected to the pcie slots? troubleshooting my first z400 rig at the moment and cant get it to boot windows with more than 1 card connected

I have not had this problem -- when you say "boot" what do you mean exactly ? Is it going to POST at all ? Or no display ?

wow, funny enough turned out too be a bad riser connector lower piece, idk if not seating or shorting or somnething
appreciate the reply

running into another issue now though, cant get them to recognize my p106's lol

did you have to do any bios setting changes to get everything to be recognized?

thanks sundownz

Are you using Windows for yours ?

Generally it's just plug in & go on the ones I have configured via Windows. I only have "standard" graphics cards, though, no mining cards.

[medi91]

have you ever had an issues with your z400s not booting with risers connected to the pcie slots? troubleshooting my first z400 rig at the moment and cant get it to boot windows with more than 1 card connected

I have not had this problem -- when you say "boot" what do you mean exactly ? Is it going to POST at all ? Or no display ?

wow, funny enough turned out too be a bad riser connector lower piece, idk if not seating or shorting or somnething
appreciate the reply

running into another issue now though, cant get them to recognize my p106's lol

did you have to do any bios setting changes to get everything to be recognized?

thanks sundownz

Are you using Windows for yours ?

Generally it's just plug in & go on the ones I have configured via Windows. I only have "standard" graphics cards, though, no mining cards.

Hmm...gotcha thanks for the info maybe I got a lemon
Testing out windows 10 on this rig.

They just don't seem to be recognizing then at all

Will test with smos today

Thanks for creating this thread and giving me the idea of old.workstatioms

[downshift]

Thanks so much for all the pictures and tips.  I happen to have a z400 at work I can salvage and this will save me a lot of guesswork!

Would it be at all possible to run just two 1080ti gpus installed inside the case on the mb (and 1 external)?

[sundownz]

Thanks so much for all the pictures and tips.  I happen to have a z400 at work I can salvage and this will save me a lot of guesswork!

Would it be at all possible to run just two 1080ti gpus installed inside the case on the mb (and 1 external)?

Two 1080Ti will not fit inside. Only short cards (no longer than the Gigabyte 1060 from my pics) will fit in the bottom slot.

Also the cards would essentially be touching one another due to thickness (if they would fit at all).

In summary -- only ONE big card can be used internally. Even two small cards isn't a terribly good idea for cooling purposes.

[sundownz]

In other news... I built a new PC to use @ home and brought my old home PC in to be a miner. It crashes with 4x 1060 cards installed and it has a pretty recent motherboard (MSI Z170A Gaming M3) -- when the top PCI-E x1 slot is used the system will lock after a few hours so I have to settle with 3 cards in that one... this makes the 2nd "consumer grade" motherboard I've had with a slot issue.

Again making my case (to myself anyway) to stick to these Workstation grade HP Z400 machines which have given me ZERO issues.

[cryptofriendz]

Thats awesome, I'll look into the  Dell T5500.

[sundownz]

Hey guys,

I did some cost vs. hash power analysis of all my system types...

4x 1060
3x 1070
3x 1070 Ti
3x 1080

I do have one system with a single 1080 Ti that I'll throw in the mix later.

This is JUST *cost* per "work unit" (whatever that is per algo) -- not factoring in power cost.

Basically... the 1060 systems clean house EVEN when I figure in the cost of the computer itself in nearly every category in terms of up-front costs per work unit.

And a surprise... the 1070 Ti is a *better* value than the regular 1070 at current pricing on almost all algos (except Equihash). I listed the price I used per card which is the best I can find at this time per card type.

Now... I didn't agonize over optimized every card. I simply gave them all the same 85% power rate and some basic overclocking... I did this for my reference mostly as I wanted to be sure building with 1060s is what I wanted to keep doing (and it is).

[n00bsaibot]

Great data mate, just exactly what I was looking for!

[crocozino]

thanx for sharing you photos
an interesting find, the price for the whole system is about the same as good mainboard from asus like Z270A
but the most thing is bad with this setup it take plenty of space, just plenty.

[btcgolong]

Thats awesome, I'll look into the  Dell T5500.

Can't find any...look nice though

[sundownz]

Thats awesome, I'll look into the  Dell T5500.

Can't find any...look nice though

If you want to go the T5500 route e-bay still has some:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-T5500-Intel-Xeon-2-00GHz-4GB-1-25TB-ATI-FireMV-2260-Raid-Win-7Pro/321951000482?hash=item4af5c667a2:g:A6kAAOSw3KFWccFe

I have been doing mostly the Z400s myself.

[andmcqueen]

thanx for sharing you photos
an interesting find, the price for the whole system is about the same as good mainboard from asus like Z270A
but the most thing is bad with this setup it take plenty of space, just plenty.

Still, the price is too good to talk about such cons of whole system, imho.

[sundownz]

thanx for sharing you photos
an interesting find, the price for the whole system is about the same as good mainboard from asus like Z270A
but the most thing is bad with this setup it take plenty of space, just plenty.

In my case I have a LOT of space so it works perfect =)

[slate_main]

Really great post, I have been looking at those PCI-e 4 splitter / risers to expand my current rig.