Building Cheap Miners : My "Secret"

[ronnylov]

Its kind of annoying having dual 1400W Gold class PSU in the server but no PCIe power connectors from the PSUs.
So there is breakout-boards that can solve this so I can use existing PSUs?

My server is Supermicro 2042-6RF.

From the quick look I did, I don't think you have PSU's that can use breakout boards.  The Liteon's in the Dells and the HP ones are readily available on Ebay.  From what I saw of the connectors, technically I guess you could MacGyver something by soldering leads to the pins of the PSU but you would still have to buy cabling.

Picking up an HP1200w PSU and breakout board with cables is normally ~100 or so on ebay.

Thanks! I will check Ebay if I need powering some more GPUs.

[1715701310]

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[1715701310]

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[jakkwb]

Ok, so attempting to add 3rd GPU to my Z600. Existing two are on the motherboard in slots, so 3rd one goes on riser. Plug in, power up, getting 5 or 6 beep code from HP, no video. Tried diff riser, same thing. Any ideas?

[tadeus1]

Seems video problem. Does it work with 1 or 2 gpu on the mb?
Try with only 1 gpu, then 2 , etc.

See if this helps

The Diagnostic LED blinks red 5 times and the system beeps 5 times (once per second), then a 2-second pause follows:
This indicates a pre-video memory error.
To resolve the issue, complete the following steps:
1) Ensure that the memory modules are loaded correctly.
2) Reseat the memory modules.
3) Replace the memory modules one at a time to find the faulty module.
4) Replace the third-party modules with HP memory.
5) Replace the system board.

The Diagnostic LED blinks red 6 times and the system beeps 6 times (once per second), then a 2-second pause follows:
This indicates a pre-video graphic card error.
To resolve the issue, complete the following steps:
1) Reseat the graphics card.
2) Replace the graphic card.
3) Replace the system board.

[jakkwb]

Thanks for the advice. Unplugged and reseated everything, it came up and is working.

[itmanvn]

On the picture only 2 1070?! You also mining with cpu, you know how much wattage with cpu only mining? Or the complete system?

I take picture when setting thing up, its not done yet. I tried cpu mining but miner(Claymore CryptoNote CPU Miner v3.9) report that the CPU(Xeon W3565) does not support AES-NI - slower mining! Mining IntenseCoin speed only 65 h/s for 8 core CPU  , so I mining GPU only.

[PharmEcis]

On the picture only 2 1070?! You also mining with cpu, you know how much wattage with cpu only mining? Or the complete system?

I take picture when setting thing up, its not done yet. I tried cpu mining but miner(Claymore CryptoNote CPU Miner v3.9) report that the CPU(Xeon W3565) does not support AES-NI - slower mining! Mining IntenseCoin speed only 65 h/s for 8 core CPU  , so I mining GPU only.

Not all Xeon's support the AES-NI instruction set.  You will need to upgrade that CPU for mining.

https://ark.intel.com/products/39721/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3565-8M-Cache-3_20-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

Scroll to bottom, you will see it says AES NO.

Ark should be your first stop whenever looking for intel processors for mining. 

[itmanvn]

On the picture only 2 1070?! You also mining with cpu, you know how much wattage with cpu only mining? Or the complete system?

I take picture when setting thing up, its not done yet. I tried cpu mining but miner(Claymore CryptoNote CPU Miner v3.9) report that the CPU(Xeon W3565) does not support AES-NI - slower mining! Mining IntenseCoin speed only 65 h/s for 8 core CPU  , so I mining GPU only.

Not all Xeon's support the AES-NI instruction set.  You will need to upgrade that CPU for mining.

https://ark.intel.com/products/39721/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3565-8M-Cache-3_20-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

Scroll to bottom, you will see it says AES NO.

Ark should be your first stop whenever looking for intel processors for mining. 

Thanks mate!, first lesson learned 

[sundownz]

On the picture only 2 1070?! You also mining with cpu, you know how much wattage with cpu only mining? Or the complete system?

I take picture when setting thing up, its not done yet. I tried cpu mining but miner(Claymore CryptoNote CPU Miner v3.9) report that the CPU(Xeon W3565) does not support AES-NI - slower mining! Mining IntenseCoin speed only 65 h/s for 8 core CPU  , so I mining GPU only.

Not all Xeon's support the AES-NI instruction set.  You will need to upgrade that CPU for mining.

https://ark.intel.com/products/39721/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3565-8M-Cache-3_20-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

Scroll to bottom, you will see it says AES NO.

Ark should be your first stop whenever looking for intel processors for mining. 

Thanks mate!, first lesson learned 

The X5660 / X5670 have been my favorites -- ~220 H/S no problem & also cheap.

[Amstellodamois]

I really like this thread. The amount of information shared is refreshing when you compare it to the 1080Ti specific thread.

[spinx]

This is interesting...

"With 20 KH/s hashrate for Cryptonight and 40 KH/s for Cryptonight-lite at just 60 Watts of power usage any GPU feels out of date already, even AMD’s VEGA GPUs with just about 2 KH/s are not interesting for mining these algorithms anymore. So Monero (XMR) is going to become the next major ASIC only coin with the many Cryptonight-based alternatives following when the Giant-N miners start hitting the market, unless of course they fork to another algorithm."

http://cryptomining-blog.com/9538-baikal-giant-n-the-first-cryptonight-asic-miner/

[ronnylov]

This is interesting...

"With 20 KH/s hashrate for Cryptonight and 40 KH/s for Cryptonight-lite at just 60 Watts of power usage any GPU feels out of date already, even AMD’s VEGA GPUs with just about 2 KH/s are not interesting for mining these algorithms anymore. So Monero (XMR) is going to become the next major ASIC only coin with the many Cryptonight-based alternatives following when the Giant-N miners start hitting the market, unless of course they fork to another algorithm."

http://cryptomining-blog.com/9538-baikal-giant-n-the-first-cryptonight-asic-miner/

Important note at the end of the article:
"It already seems that Monero (XMR) could be the first one to fork to a new version of the algorithm that will net be mineable by this new ASIC device and if others coins follow you may actually end up with an expensive piece of hardware that might not be very usable, so be careful if you are considering to buy one or more of these ASIC miners."

[sundownz]

This is interesting...

"With 20 KH/s hashrate for Cryptonight and 40 KH/s for Cryptonight-lite at just 60 Watts of power usage any GPU feels out of date already, even AMD’s VEGA GPUs with just about 2 KH/s are not interesting for mining these algorithms anymore. So Monero (XMR) is going to become the next major ASIC only coin with the many Cryptonight-based alternatives following when the Giant-N miners start hitting the market, unless of course they fork to another algorithm."

http://cryptomining-blog.com/9538-baikal-giant-n-the-first-cryptonight-asic-miner/

Important note at the end of the article:
"It already seems that Monero (XMR) could be the first one to fork to a new version of the algorithm that will net be mineable by this new ASIC device and if others coins follow you may actually end up with an expensive piece of hardware that might not be very usable, so be careful if you are considering to buy one or more of these ASIC miners."

Indeed. I may need to move away from ITNS on my CPUs if they don't fork to a new algo.

[PharmEcis]

Those miners have been in use for months now by Baikal themselves...  They know the forks are coming so they are dumping the HW to recoup costs and all the mining is profit.  If you've been paying attention to things in the Cryptonight world, there has been a lot of complaints of "nicehash" pumping coins...  10:1 says that all the massive network spikes on various coins wasn't Nicehash but these miners.

[Kahooli]

The currently proposed PoW changes wont break this miner if it's FPGA based. It'll require a slight change and recompile of the code. that's it. Same if it's movidius VPU based.

[ManicMiner23]

Hi All.

I would like to ask a question about Z400, I have two rigs based on the z400, the first one is a 3x1070 the second one is a 3x1060. I've started with 3 gpu's per rig because just 3 pci-e slots are gen2. Now I want to use the 4th pci-e slot whch is a gen1 pci-e, but I'm getting problems.

The tow rigs on a setup of 3xgpus were mining rock solid for 1 month. Now I've tested to add a 4th card on the 1070gtx rig, the rig crashes after 2-3 hours of mining activity, I've reinstalled nvidia drivers and almost all the software, tested with different miners, and I'm always getting the same problem.

At the beginning of my build I get problems also when I was using the gen1 pci-e so I would like to ask for help because with all the profits going down I want to increase density on this two rigs, so any one found this problems in Z400 workstations and have you found a solution?. Or maybe is better to buy a 4x or 2x pcie multiplier to connect 2 gpu's on every pci-e gen2 slot?

The psu is a 900w modular psu, with enough cabling to wire the gpus and the risers, so I've discard also a problem with the psu. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[sundownz]

Hi All.

I would like to ask a question about Z400, I have two rigs based on the z400, the first one is a 3x1070 the second one is a 3x1060. I've started with 3 gpu's per rig because just 3 pci-e slots are gen2. Now I want to use the 4th pci-e slot whch is a gen1 pci-e, but I'm getting problems.

The tow rigs on a setup of 3xgpus were mining rock solid for 1 month. Now I've tested to add a 4th card on the 1070gtx rig, the rig crashes after 2-3 hours of mining activity, I've reinstalled nvidia drivers and almost all the software, tested with different miners, and I'm always getting the same problem.

At the beginning of my build I get problems also when I was using the gen1 pci-e so I would like to ask for help because with all the profits going down I want to increase density on this two rigs, so any one found this problems in Z400 workstations and have you found a solution?. Or maybe is better to buy a 4x or 2x pcie multiplier to connect 2 gpu's on every pci-e gen2 slot?

The psu is a 900w modular psu, with enough cabling to wire the gpus and the risers, so I've discard also a problem with the psu. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I have not had any issues using all four slots on the Z400s with GPUs.

A large portion of my systems are 4x Geforce 1060 -- with one card in the bottom x16 slot and risers on the other three. As pictured:





----------

The splitters also do seem to work fine as I have a few systems with 6x 1060 or 1x 1060 / 5x 1050Ti using splitters.

[itmanvn]

I have not had any issues using all four slots on the Z400s with GPUs.

A large portion of my systems are 4x Geforce 1060 -- with one card in the bottom x16 slot and risers on the other three. As pictured:

https://thumb.ibb.co/bSmqxx/0316180942_resized.jpg

https://thumb.ibb.co/cvKojc/0316180942a_resized.jpg

----------

The splitters also do seem to work fine as I have a few systems with 6x 1060 or 1x 1060 / 5x 1050Ti using splitters.

What splitters are you using on that system? and link to buy  

Mine are 4x GTX 1070, all 4 risers, no problems  

https://image.ibb.co/dfSG4c/IMG_6725.jpg

[sundownz]

I have not had any issues using all four slots on the Z400s with GPUs.

A large portion of my systems are 4x Geforce 1060 -- with one card in the bottom x16 slot and risers on the other three. As pictured:

----------

The splitters also do seem to work fine as I have a few systems with 6x 1060 or 1x 1060 / 5x 1050Ti using splitters.

What splitters are you using on that system? and link to buy  

Mine are 4x GTX 1070, all 4 risers, no problems  

I have used two types -- this type I've had in operation the longest:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073W9KCFC/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use the bottom PCI-E slot for a video card -- just like the 4 card systems -- and the top two slots for one splitter each (two cards per splitter) -- and the third slot down has the riser plugged right into it.

I can get a few pics if you need.

[ManicMiner23]

Thanks for all the answers to the gen1 pci-e question.

Knowing that is possible to run 4, even 6 gpu's on the z400, I will do more tests to find what is the cause that makes the system to crash after some hours.

Thanks.

[itmanvn]

I have used two types -- this type I've had in operation the longest:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073W9KCFC/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use the bottom PCI-E slot for a video card -- just like the 4 card systems -- and the top two slots for one splitter each (two cards per splitter) -- and the third slot down has the riser plugged right into it.

I can get a few pics if you need.

Thank you, I found it in my local store 

Just upgraded my Z400 mining rig's CPU to X5650, mining IntenseCoin at 250H/s