Building Cheap Miners : My "Secret"

[CryptoFin24]

Looks great Spinx!

Thanks!

Nice system.

I am trying Hive OS on my DL580 G7 with 4x E7-4830's and 4x GTX 750. It is up and running but something must be wrong with my configuration for the CPUs. I am getting some affinity errors on a few CPU cores and those cores only produce 11 H/s instead of the 33 H/s on cores where affinity works. I have disabled hyper-threading in the BIOS so the 32 cores shown are real CPU cores.

Could you post the CPU configuration that you used with Hive OS. Hopefully that will fix my problem.

Also is the rack that the DL580 and GPUs are mounted in a commercial rack or home made?

If home made can you provide assembly instructions.

Thanks

Reason i left hiveOS was that i never got it stable. Constant freeze and reboots, but it has a lot more features, on paper its far superior to SMOS.

I dont have the configs left i think, but please have a look at my post here on settings for E7-8837 with xmr-stak: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1955358.msg28646698#msg28646698

The rack inside the server cabinet is custom built, bought the alu-profiles from my local hardware shop for ~75 euro, a bit expensive but very easy to build. I will look for a drawing, i only made one on paper

Any idea how to get 11 gpus working? I seriously wasted like all nights in a week to try to solve this. Changing hardware and waiting for multiple 15 min reboots is not something i like to do again.

Maybe you have one or more bad card. I have in my rig one RX 480 that I have underclocking because it freeze and reboot all rig.

Or maybe you need underclocking some card then you can run smoot.

 

[CryptoFin24]

Why Cryptonight on 1070ti's? There are double-tripple more $ on Equihash or NeoScrypt.

@sundownz
Have you overview on cpu and hashrate and wattage from each of your cpu's? And in which plattform they are.

Have 2 HP Proliant DL385 G7's everything is working perfect except I cannot for the life of my figure out have to get them to
connect to the network. Lan or Wan just trying to run an OS from a thumbdrive to mine with the CPU's no luck with anything
Ubuntu or any of the standard ones. Been through every bios setting, anyone have any idea why I can not get this thing on
the network, I am sure it is something simple and stupid, have years of experience with computer, linux and trouble shooting
but right now I am out of ideas. Any help is appreciated.

Are you plugged into the iLo port or an actual network port?  If you noticed there are FIVE Ethernet jacks on the back of the server.  iLo port is also Ethernet but it will not get you on the network.  It is access to the subsystem that runs before the server actually boots an OS which gives you full control for monitoring, remote deployment etc.  Looking from the back, you should be plugged into the furthest network jack to the right, labeled #1.

Also, that box is going to pull more wattage than produce hash.  Only 61xx series Opterons with no AES in that box.

Thank you for the reply, I already figured it out, I was trying to run HIVE OS to mine off a thumb drive assuming they were using ubuntu as a base os, apperently not or at least not the full version, HIVE OS apperently doesn't have a nic driver for the DL385 as soon as I loaded Ubuntu Desktop I pulled an ip. Also I am not to worried about the watts its pulls, I am mining cryptonight at 800+ h/s with the dual 6220 cpus and running 4 1070tis of a usb splitter powered by the free extra 750watt psu it came with for another 2.1 k/sols. Thing hardly pulls 700watts at the wall.

Sorry I guess I worded that poorly the CPU's are doing cryptonight and I just ment that I was also running 4 GPU's , they do happen to be doing equihash, ZEN at the moment. Also I was getting 760-800 with XMR Stak in Ubuntu 16.04 but sadly had to switch back to Window 10 to get the USB splitter to work and so far have only been able to get 650-700 out of the CPU's but haven't had much time to play with them yet.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AssC-hMtXiaLisBa6r0RX0nwIifJiA       Sorry, not exactly sure how to post an image, hope that link works.

Hello,

I want to try the same system > Hp Proliant DL385 with two 6234 CPU + 4 or 6 GPUs

Do you need a usb splitter for install 4 GPUs? Because it DL385 have to 6 pcie ports.

Do you have any recomedation for start, config and run it Rig?

Thanks

[MinersRus]

Well I'm going to be mining on Vega 56's again.

In early February I sold my two Vega 56's on eBay for $1575 (which I got bought new at MSRP $399.99 each). My total purchase price was $810 with shipping. After eBay and PayPal fees, shipping and insurance costs I cleared $1410 from the sale or a profit of $600.

With the price of XMR now at $166 a lot of my miners barely pay for the power they use. I believe that is why I see prices on eBay falling on Vega 56's.

So today I bought three Vega 56's for $1604 and got $100 eBay bucks in doing so (that I can spend next month).

Taking the $1604 and subtracting the $600 in profit results in a real cost of $1004 for three Vega 56's. If I count that $100 eBay bucks against the purchase then the cost is $904 or $301.33 each.

These Vega's were used for mining but the seller stated that he kept the fans running high and the AC low. These cards also still carry the full AMD warranty.

At least using these Vega's mining XMR will still be profitable on the systems they are in.

[PharmEcis]

You can turn of the P410i controller in the firmware and it will decrease boot time.

You technically don't need the micro SATA adapter.  If your box came w/ the optical drive and cable, you can actually cut the connector in half to separate the data from the power.  That was my solution on box #1 due to THIS BOX MUST RUN NOW syndrome...

I've stopped spending money at this moment in time.  I'm pushing harder to learn trading.  More reward for less effort.  I have plenty of chassis' to add GPUs so I will continue to do that but no more CPU rigs for me at this time. 

Eventually all my rigs will turn to speculation only.

[MinersRus]

You can turn of the P410i controller in the firmware and it will decrease boot time.

You technically don't need the micro SATA adapter.  If your box came w/ the optical drive and cable, you can actually cut the connector in half to separate the data from the power.  That was my solution on box #1 due to THIS BOX MUST RUN NOW syndrome...

I've stopped spending money at this moment in time.  I'm pushing harder to learn trading.  More reward for less effort.  I have plenty of chassis' to add GPUs so I will continue to do that but no more CPU rigs for me at this time.  

Eventually all my rigs will turn to speculation only.

I am also not going to be adding any more systems. I plan to keep three of the five DL580's and sell two of them to recover their initial cost and make some profit on those two. The two for sale will have 128gb ram, 4x E7-8837 processors and at least six 146GB SAS drives.

I plan to also sell the two R815's for the same reason. My original Dell T3610 systems will also be for sale along with the SuperMicro 24 Bay 2026TT-DLRF 2x X8DTT-HEF+ I picked up reacently.

The three DL580's and the Supermicro CSE-745 Dual Opteron 6348 will be kept and fully loaded with GPU's for mining.

The reason I am keeping the systems mentioned above is the high CPU hash rates and the boatloads of PCIe slots along with excellent power supplies.

All other systems will be sold to recoup initial cost and maybe even some profit.

You technically don't need the micro SATA adapter.  If your box came w/ the optical drive and cable, you can actually cut the connector in half to separate the data from the power.  That was my solution on box #1 due to THIS BOX MUST RUN NOW syndrome...

Thanks. That is what I will do. The cheap 8gb usb stick that I am running HiveOS on just crapped out last night. I had to reload HiveOS on another stick to get the system up and running again. The cool thing about HiveOS is all I had to do to be up and running again was recopy the original HiveOS download to the usb stick, boot system from usb stick and then enter my rig number and password. I will be using HiveOS on my other two DL580's.

[grendel25]

Great discussions and info in this thread!

Just wanted to share my DL580 G7 build, wanted to run 11 cards, but settled with 9 after hours and hours of struggle.

Mining etherium at ~ 255MH/s. Ran Cryptonight at 1650H/s with 4x E7-8837, but stopped since i switch to SimpleMiner from hiveOS (had to prioritize gpu stability).

So 4X E7-8837 at 130 watts each is around 520 watts, correct?  Maybe not too much to worry about if electricity is cheap or free but I just wonder if there are still better price-to-hashrate-to-power options.  I mean $20 for the 8837 is really awesome but then there are strong processors at 65 Watts instead of 130 Watts that are more expensive but might pay for themselves in power costs over the course of a year.

I've been trying to decide on a configuration for my next mining build that would include stronger CPU hash capability.

Thank you for your contributions here.  I really enjoy this thread.

[MinersRus]

Great discussions and info in this thread!

Just wanted to share my DL580 G7 build, wanted to run 11 cards, but settled with 9 after hours and hours of struggle.

Mining etherium at ~ 255MH/s. Ran Cryptonight at 1650H/s with 4x E7-8837, but stopped since i switch to SimpleMiner from hiveOS (had to prioritize gpu stability).

So 4X E7-8837 at 130 watts each is around 520 watts, correct?  Maybe not too much to worry about if electricity is cheap or free but I just wonder if there are still better price-to-hashrate-to-power options.  I mean $20 for the 8837 is really awesome but then there are strong processors at 65 Watts instead of 130 Watts that are more expensive but might pay for themselves in power costs over the course of a year.

I've been trying to decide on a configuration for my next mining build that would include stronger CPU hash capability.

Thank you for your contributions here.  I really enjoy this thread.

Actually I was able to buy 20x E7-8837's for $218 or $10.90 each. So a set of 4 cost me $43.60. I have bought five DL580's and will keep three for mining and sell the other two for profit. HiveOS has a limit of three free rigs.

You are correct in that more modern processors do use lower power and produce about the same hash rate in four core what these 8 cores do. The problem is that is a single processor. If you want two processor then you need a workstation class computer. Go to four processors puts you into server class systems. And modern versions of workstations and servers are magnitudes higher in price that of the HP DL580 servers that I and others here have purchased.

Why I purchased three DL580's for mining is that each has 11 PCIe slots, 4x 1200 watt power supplies (the server balances the load for efficiency and redundancy). The added hashing (1650 H/s on Cryptonight) using the 4x E7-8837 processors is a bonus.

[MinersRus]

You can turn of the P410i controller in the firmware and it will decrease boot time.

I've looked in the BIOS and did not see anywhere to disable the P410i controller.

When you say "in the firmware" do you mean in the actual array setup?

You technically don't need the micro SATA adapter.  If your box came w/ the optical drive and cable, you can actually cut the connector in half to separate the data from the power.  That was my solution on box #1 due to THIS BOX MUST RUN NOW syndrome...

My box did come with the cable for the optical drive. However looking at the end the power portion will not fit the power connector on a 2.5" SSD. So I went to Fry's and bought the cable you mentioned earlier (Frys.com #6245160, Model #F03-168) but it does not fit at all. The power side of the Fry's cable is much too big. It measures 15mm whereas the HP Optical Cable PN 594765-001 power side measures 10mm.

Of course Fry's had only one in stock and it was a previous return so the cable inside may not even be the correct one.

I also checked the other two DL580's I have and they all have the same red optical connector.

EDIT: Online searches on the HP Optical Drive Cable PN 594765-001 turns up a lot of incorrect cables. This part number 6017B0240701 is also on the cable and does link to the CD Optical Cable. Too bad there are no specs to see what I need exactly.

https://www.techbuyer.com/6017b0240701-hp-proliant-dl980-g7-dvd-rom-cable-71996
http://www.l7inc.us/Search.php?start=105700&MFG=HP

EDIT2: This is the cable I need:

Slimline 13 pin SATA Male to 22 Pin SATA Female Cable Adapter-III
http://www.microsatacables.com/slimline-13-pin-sata-male-to-22-pin-sata-female-cable-adapteriii-adpc22pfwv13pm-iii

This is a standard 22 pin Female SATA connector to a 13 pin Slimline SATA Male connector.  The cable is SATA III  and could be used for changing out an optical DVD drive in a computer to a standard 2.5 Inch 5 Volt drive. The approximately 6.5 inch Cable is a combination cable of both 5V power and DATA.

EDIT3 - This is even a better option as these cables fit the SATA connector on the DL580 G7. This allow you to directly hook up a 2.5" SSD to the DL580 G7.

(5-pack) 7+15 Pin SATA HDD Extension Cable Data+Power Male to Female, 19" / 50cm
https://www.ebay.com/itm/5-pack-7-15-Pin-SATA-HDD-Extension-Cable-Data-Power-Male-to-Female-19-50cm/232257234671

Note: There is a Internal solid state drive expansion bay inside the DL580 G7. It is located on the right side just behind the power supplies. The above cable connects the 2.5" SSD to the connector below the jumble of cables near the SPI board/VGA Power plugs. See pages 54 and 55 of the HP DL580 G7 Server Users Guide.

[jk1980]

Any idea what hash rate these z400s in the newegg link in the OP get by themselves (I understand it'll be very low)? Also, would these z400s be solid for keeping wallets on as well as light internet use?

[sundownz]

Any idea what hash rate these z400s in the newegg link in the OP get by themselves (I understand it'll be very low)? Also, would these z400s be solid for keeping wallets on as well as light internet use?

I have no idea what the stock graphics cards do... but the stock CPUs are also generally very poor for mining as they don't have AES.

As for using these daily -- they are quite good for daily use / office use. I have bought several for use around my work office.

[sundownz]

My current update... still building with cards I got before crazy pricing. Finishing all my builds has taken a back-seat to my day-job & also changing pools & configurations on existing systems (*).

I have stopped buying new hardware completely, though, until things sort out...

But I am still making ~3x my power cost overall in mining so not shutting down any time soon.

(*) -- I am switching to Zergpool with Nemosminer on nVidia cards. On CPUs I am going to Zergpool / YescryptR16. On my AMD cards I am currently doing Neoscrypt on Zergpool but I am messing around with x16r with SGminer to see which I prefer.

[MinersRus]

Any idea what hash rate these z400s in the newegg link in the OP get by themselves (I understand it'll be very low)? Also, would these z400s be solid for keeping wallets on as well as light internet use?

I am mining again on a Z400 with a single Vega 56 on Cast_XMR v0.9.2. The Vega 56 is averaging 1942 H/s.
http://www.gandalph3000.com

The CPU is a Xeon E5645 hex core processor with the AES instruction.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/Intel-Xeon%20E5645%20-%20AT80614003597AC%20(BX80614E5645).html

You need a processor from the Xeon 5600 family to mine with as those have the AES instruction.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/TYPE-Xeon%205600.html

I am using XMR-Stak V2.3 and running it only on the CPU. I am running 1x threads on cores (2, 4, 6, 8 and 10). Core 0 is reserved for the Cast-XMR program. These settings use 10MB of the 12MB L3 cache. Again the last 2MB L3 is for Cast-XMR as I certainly don't want to throttle the Vega 56 just to get a few more hashes on the CPU.

https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak

With the above I am averaging 188 H/s on the Xeon E5645.

The top of the line Xeon for the Z400 is the X5687 quad core and it will produce 230 - 250 H/s. I am running my main system, a Dell T5500, with dual Xeon X5687 processors. I am running 1x, 2x, 2x threads on each processor keeping core 0 free on both so that I can use the system while the miner runs full out. I am getting 460 H/s on it.

I will be adding in a second Vega 56 to this system tomorrow and will update the above results.

-------------------------------

Edit: 04/08/2018

Well I did get the 2nd Vega 56 up and running about three days ago. With the Monero XMR hardfork the hashrates did drop slightly and now each Vega 56 gets 1900 H/s. Adding in the CPU hashrate of 188 give me a system hashrate of 3988 H/s.

[MinersRus]

Finally got around to getting the second Vega 56 into the Z400. A little history - before I was aware of this thread I had purchased a couple of Vega 56's at MSRP. So I put them both into the Z400. Upon booting I got an error stating the front fan was not detected. Turns out I had smashed the fan connector on the motherboard with the Vega 56 in the lower slot. As of now I still have to press F1 when I restart/power up. I never had two Vega's in the Z400 running because the spacing looked to small and I had another system to put it in. That system was sold along with my two original Vega's.

So today my first attempt was to use both x16 slots in the Z400 for the two Vega's. There was hardly any spacing between them but I thought I would give it a go. Started Cast_XMR up and it was mining great on both cards. Then the temp started increasing on GPU0, then the fan went to max, then the temp reached 70+ then the card throttled. So that was a no go. The Z400 was under a desk so I wanted to have both cards inside it so the solution was to use a riser on the first Vega and move it up where the riser base rests against the chipset heatsink. Then using tie wraps to attach the Vega to the HD cage and the card bracket to the card cage slot. This allows about 1-2" space between the Vega's. Now both are mining fully at 3840 H/s with temps of 60c and fans at 3200 RPM. I leave the side panel off to help keep the Vega's cool.

[PharmEcis]

Hrm seemed to have missed a question back there.  It's been a crazy last week.

The 8837's are doing anywhere from 1500-1650H/s depending on how loaded with GPUs the box is.  I've found I'm getting consistently better hash rates on GPUs and CPUs by killing a thread or two on the CPU side.

I'll have to check the SAS firmware, maybe I just turned off the OSD for it.

Haven was real sweet for about a day after their hard fork.  Now not so much.  The ASIC wars are going to be interesting in the cryptonight space.

[afridi90]

I have even cheaper:
I bought several Dell T5500,100$ each. They have plenty of Ram, 4 PCIe and 875W PSU. The case comes with a HDD support plate where you can put a GC.
with some risers and adapters you're setup for less than 150$

how much hash rate do you get

[MinersRus]

I have even cheaper:
I bought several Dell T5500,100$ each. They have plenty of Ram, 4 PCIe and 875W PSU. The case comes with a HDD support plate where you can put a GC.
with some risers and adapters you're setup for less than 150$

how much hash rate do you get

From an earlier post of mine:

The top of the line Xeon for the Z400 is the X5687 quad core and it will produce 230 - 250 H/s. I am running my main system, a Dell T5500, with dual Xeon X5687 processors. I am running 1x, 2x, 2x threads on each processor keeping core 0 free on both so that I can use the system while the miner runs full out. I am getting 460 H/s on it.

[MinersRus]

Monero XMR hard forked about 5 hours ago.

My XMR pool is Nanopool. Their overall hash rate has dropped from about 60 MH/s down to right now 25MH/s. A 59% reduction.

https://xmr.nanopool.org/stats

In the near future the difficulty should drop and my miners will be more profitable.

All of my miners Cast_XMR v0.9.2, XMR-Stak 2.4.2, HiveOS 0.5-41 transitioned seamlessly.  

[MinersRus]

Monero (XRM) has had massive Hashrate drop since fork.

as of 7:45 AM CDT on 4/7/2018:
Difficulty 127.092 G +3.69% in 24 hours
Hashrate 141.213 Mhash/s -85.49% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability 0.5736 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

https://bitinfocharts.com/monero

In the upcoming days the Difficulty will start to drop and Profitability will start to rise to adjust to the new global Hashrate.

[PharmEcis]

And as profitability goes up, the diff will too as everyone floods it.  It's exactly what happened to Haven.  For a moment in time there, 1KH/s was $20/day on Haven!

[MinersRus]

And as profitability goes up, the diff will too as everyone floods it.  It's exactly what happened to Haven.  For a moment in time there, 1KH/s was $20/day on Haven!

I expect a spike to $3-4 for 1KH/s per day over the next week and then slowly go down to settle around $2-$2.50 for 1KH/s per day. That is certainly an improvement from the 0.56 for 1KH/s per day it was just a couple of days ago.

Since ASIC's are now useless and a whole lot of botnet miners are orphaned I don't see the hash rate going alot higher from the current global rate of 145 MH/s:

Difficulty   114.616 G -7.87% in 24 hours
Hashrate   144.596 Mhash/s -81.33% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   0.6414 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

https://bitinfocharts.com/monero

Even if the current hash rate doubled to 300 MH/s it would still be significantly less than the 1.1 GH/s it was before the fork. At 300 MH/s Profitability should be 2.05 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s or 366% better than pre-fork.

I can certainly live with that.

---------------

Edit 1: 17:50 CDT 04/07/2018 - Difficulty getting easier and Profitability increasing

Difficulty   93.383 G -27.17% in 24 hours
Hashrate   156.719 Mhash/s -72.85% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   0.7847 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Edit 2: 22:20 CDT 04/07/2018

Difficulty   76.866 G -42.22% in 24 hours
Hashrate   167.254 Mhash/s -55.67% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   0.9408 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Edit 3: 08:24 CDT 04/08/2018

Difficulty   49.093 G -60.68% in 24 hours
Hashrate   190.917 Mhash/s +29.52% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   1.4867 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Edit 4: 12:57 CDT 04/08/2018

Difficulty   38.306 G -64.46% in 24 hours
Hashrate   226.997 Mhash/s +51.65% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   1.9081 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Looks like it will settle around $2-$2.50 for 1KH/s per day without the higher earlier spike since many farms have now moved to mining Monero.

Edit 5: 20:00 CDT 04/08/2018

Difficulty   32.073 G -62.05% in 24 hours
Hashrate   272.847 Mhash/s +68.03% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   2.3169 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Hopefully the Hashrate increases will start to slow down soon

Edit 6: 15:53 CDT 04/09/2018

Difficulty   41.794 G +21.26% in 24 hours
Hashrate   424.229 Mhash/s +72.64% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   1.658 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Well it is beginning to look like you were right in that the flood of farms now mining Monero keep coming. I have yet to see the Hashrate acceleration even decline. I thought 300 MH/s would be the top now I hope 500 MH/s can hold.

Edit 7: 17:44 CDT 04/14/2018

Difficulty   53.898 G +0.54% in 24 hours
Hashrate   459.753 Mhash/s +4.81% in 24 hours
Monero Mining Profitability   1.5033 USD/Day for 1 KHash/s

Thank goodness the 500 MH/s did hold. There was a brief period where it was exceeded but it now has settled into the 450-475 MH/s range