Help setting up a rig with more than 3 gpus

[milfstick]

Hi im wondering if if anyone can help me set up this rig i have asus maximus iv extreme i can get 3 gpus to work but no  more. The board has 6 pcie in total. Im starting to wonder if this board will even suport anymore then 3. Thankyou for any help

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[Wusolini]

While ago I notice similar question. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2454278
Try what guys propose (change some bios settings)

[milfstick]

While ago I notice similar question. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2454278
Try what guys propose (change some bios settings)

IVe read about disabling HD audio, usb. I dont see a 4g anywhere in the bios or any pcie gen options. i found IRQ assignments in the manual but i dont know if im reading it correctly (Can i post an image so you could see)
 http://. Pcie 1 is shared with marvell9182, pciex4 and pciex1. 

[wacko]

Hi im wondering if if anyone can help me set up this rig i have asus maximus iv extreme i can get 3 gpus to work but no  more. The board has 6 pcie in total. Im starting to wonder if this board will even suport anymore then 3. Thankyou for any help

Do you have the latest BIOS (Version 3604)? Did you try all 6 pci-e slots? The general rule is to disable every extra controller in the BIOS and switch the PCI-e speed (revision) to some lower version (from 3.0 to 2.0 or even 1.1/1.0). Some boards have some special options to set like "above 4g decoding", but yours probably don't have those.
Did you disable the extra storage controllers? Looks like you have two of them (marvell and jmicron). Also your board only supports up to pci-e 2.0. And I couldn't find any way to set it to lower rev. in the manual.

[milfstick]

Hi im wondering if if anyone can help me set up this rig i have asus maximus iv extreme i can get 3 gpus to work but no  more. The board has 6 pcie in total. Im starting to wonder if this board will even suport anymore then 3. Thankyou for any help

Do you have the latest BIOS (Version 3604)? Did you try all 6 pci-e slots? The general rule is to disable every extra controller in the BIOS and switch the PCI-e speed (revision) to some lower version (from 3.0 to 2.0 or even 1.1/1.0). Some boards have some special options to set like "above 4g decoding", but yours probably don't have those.

Yes latest bios. Ive mixed and matched pcie configurations still only 3. The board has 4 red pcie slots and 2 small black ones. Currently using slot 1,4,6. Is it an issue only suporting pcie 2 do i need to have a board that is pcie 3?. Probably explains why i dont see any of my vegas in the bios

[wacko]

Yes latest bios. Ive mixed and matched pcie configurations still only 3. The board has 4 red pcie slots and 2 small black ones. Currently using slot 1,4,6.

Yeah, I looked at the board and read the manual. Just to be sure, are all the onboard controllers disabled? Sound, both Jmicron and Marvell storage controllers? NEC USB3 controller? Maybe even try disabling the network controller? (can always connect the system to the network via usb wifi if it actually helps). Looks like there's even a Bluetooth controller on this board, disable it as well if possible.

Is it an issue only suporting pcie 2 do i need to have a board that is pcie 3?

It's all related to the way the board maker arranged the pci-e lanes. Technically no, you don't need pci-e 3.0 to mine with multiple cards, even 2.0 is not required. Asus just made some decisions about how all the slots work on this board, some of this logic might be reconfigured in BIOS by disabling extra controllers and freeing the resources for the slot(s), but it's not always possible. As for the IRQ settings, I don't think they'll help. At least it never helped me in similar situations, I'm not even sure modern operating systems care about those BIOS settings.

[milfstick]

Yes latest bios. Ive mixed and matched pcie configurations still only 3. The board has 4 red pcie slots and 2 small black ones. Currently using slot 1,4,6.

Yeah, I looked at the board and read the manual. Just to be sure, are all the onboard controllers disabled? Sound, both Jmicron and Marvell storage controllers? NEC USB3 controller? Maybe even try disabling the network controller? (can always connect the system to the network via usb wifi if it actually helps). Looks like there's even a Bluetooth controller on this board, disable it as well if possible.

Is it an issue only suporting pcie 2 do i need to have a board that is pcie 3?

It's all related to the way the board maker arranged the pci-e lanes. Technically no, you don't need pci-e 3.0 to mine with multiple cards, even 2.0 is not required. Asus just made some decisions about how all the slots work on this board, some of this logic might be reconfigured in BIOS by disabling extra controllers and freeing the resources for the slot(s), but it's not always possible. As for the IRQ settings, I don't think they'll help. At least it never helped me in similar situations, I'm not even sure modern operating systems care about those BIOS settings.

Ok thanks for giving me the time to help. ill give disabling ago and get back. I thought i would need atleast one storage controller for the hard drive to work.

[wacko]

Ok thanks for giving me the time to help. ill give disabling ago and get back. I thought i would need atleast one storage controller for the hard drive to work.

You should have 3 of them in total. One's intel's, one's marvel and one's jmicron. Keep the intel's enabled (there shouldn't be even an option to disable it in BIOS, I guess) and disable the other two.

By the way, there's a molex connector on your board, above the top pci-e x16. Did you attach a cable from PSU to it?

[milfstick]

Ok thanks for giving me the time to help. ill give disabling ago and get back. I thought i would need atleast one storage controller for the hard drive to work.

You should have 3 of them in total. One's intel's, one's marvel and one's jmicron. Keep the intel's enabled (there shouldn't be even an option to disable it in BIOS, I guess) and disable the other two.

By the way, there's a molex connector on your board, above the top pci-e x16. Did you attach a cable from PSU to it?

Ok the only way i can get to see 3 gpu is if i have 2 of them connected straight into the board slot 1 and 4 (No risers) and the other is with a riser slot 6. No i have tryed the top molex power connector. im using silverstone 1500w to power the 3 gpus and a hx1050 to power risers when trying all 4 gpus...let me try again with the molex connected

[milfstick]

No luck even with the molex connected and controllers disabled i even disabled the lan. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for your help mate

[wacko]

No luck even with the molex connected and controllers disabled i even disabled the lan. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for your help mate

It sucks, I remember running 5 GPUs off some old socket 775 gigabyte p35 board just fine.. why they designed newer boards the way that you can't even run 4 cards with 6 slots is beyond my understanding. This stuff is frustrating, sorry it didn't work for you.

im using silverstone 1500w to power the 3 gpus and a hx1050 to power risers when trying all 4 gpus...

By the way, not that it matters in this case (I guess it doesn't), but I think one should power the riser and the card with the same PSU. At least that's what I've heard from other users, the ones more experienced in all things electrical than I am. It's like a card shouldn't be powered by different power sources, even some small difference on 12V rails might cause instability or something. I've never dug deep into this so maybe it's not a hard rule, but I'm following this one for my rigs.

[milfstick]

No luck even with the molex connected and controllers disabled i even disabled the lan. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for your help mate

It sucks, I remember running 5 GPUs off some old socket 775 gigabyte p35 board just fine.. why they designed newer boards the way that you can't even run 4 cards with 6 slots is beyond my understanding. This stuff is frustrating, sorry it didn't work for you.

im using silverstone 1500w to power the 3 gpus and a hx1050 to power risers when trying all 4 gpus...

By the way, not that it matters in this case (I guess it doesn't), but I think one should power the riser and the card with the same PSU. At least that's what I've heard from other users, the ones more experienced in all things electrical than I am. It's like a card shouldn't be powered by different power sources, even some small difference on 12V rails might cause instability or something. I've never dug deep into this so maybe it's not a hard rule, but I'm following this one for my rigs.

Its got me beat. Ive been thinking about getting another board i just dont want the same thing to happen because its a big out lay. Can you recommend a board cpu combo just for mining. I have 2 more vega64s (6 all up) on order thinking i would be able to use my current setup. Is 4 gb of ram enough to run a or more gpu rig?

[wacko]

Its got me beat. Ive been thinking about getting another board i just dont want the same thing to happen because its a big out lay. Can you recommend a board cpu combo just for mining.

Asus Z270 boards are a solid choice in general. Z270p runs up to 8 cards easily (6 directly from gpu slots and 2 with m2=>pci-e adapters). Might probably run more with splitters. Z270A, Z270E and Z270F run up to 9 cards without splitters. For CPU's I usually use the cheapest 4-thread processor, which is g4560.

I have 2 more vega64s (6 all up) on order thinking i would be able to use my current setup. Is 4 gb of ram enough to run a or more gpu rig?

Vega's are tricky cards to mine with, they want a lot of memory, either real or virtual (or both). I don't personally have any Vega's, so not sure, but there's a possibility that you'll need more than 4gb for them. And/or an ssd of a decent size (120+ gb) for all that virtual memory they'll need. There's quite a few Vega threads on this forum, you'll definitely wanna do some research.

[milfstick]

Its got me beat. Ive been thinking about getting another board i just dont want the same thing to happen because its a big out lay. Can you recommend a board cpu combo just for mining.

Asus Z270 boards are a solid choice in general. Z270p runs up to 8 cards easily (6 directly from gpu slots and 2 with m2=>pci-e adapters). Might probably run more with splitters. Z270A, Z270E and Z270F run up to 9 cards without splitters. For CPU's I usually use the cheapest 4-thread processor, which is g4560.

I have 2 more vega64s (6 all up) on order thinking i would be able to use my current setup. Is 4 gb of ram enough to run a or more gpu rig?

Vega's are tricky cards to mine with, they want a lot of memory, either real or virtual (or both). I don't personally have any Vega's, so not sure, but there's a possibility that you'll need more than 4gb for them. And/or an ssd of a decent size (120+ gb) for all that virtual memory they'll need. There's quite a few Vega threads on this forum, you'll definitely wanna do some research.

Atleast z270s theres alot videos regarding setups ect and i see the options everyone is talking about above 4g decoding and being able to change pcie gen. Thing is its a whole new setup ram cpu and mb the only thing i can use from my old system is the hd, pwr supply and monitor just to keep the cost down. Im stuck with the vegas64s being already payed for. Thanks for helping me man

[CryptoWatcher420]

No luck even with the molex connected and controllers disabled i even disabled the lan. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for your help mate

It sucks, I remember running 5 GPUs off some old socket 775 gigabyte p35 board just fine.. why they designed newer boards the way that you can't even run 4 cards with 6 slots is beyond my understanding. This stuff is frustrating, sorry it didn't work for you.

im using silverstone 1500w to power the 3 gpus and a hx1050 to power risers when trying all 4 gpus...

By the way, not that it matters in this case (I guess it doesn't), but I think one should power the riser and the card with the same PSU. At least that's what I've heard from other users, the ones more experienced in all things electrical than I am. It's like a card shouldn't be powered by different power sources, even some small difference on 12V rails might cause instability or something. I've never dug deep into this so maybe it's not a hard rule, but I'm following this one for my rigs.

Its got me beat. Ive been thinking about getting another board i just dont want the same thing to happen because its a big out lay. Can you recommend a board cpu combo just for mining. I have 2 more vega64s (6 all up) on order thinking i would be able to use my current setup. Is 4 gb of ram enough to run a or more gpu rig?

get a new board, asrock H81 pro btc R2.0 and to be safe 8gb of ram for the mobo, the less you have for the mobo the more you have to set for the virtual memory which uses HARD DRIVE space which does affect performance

[wacko]

get a new board, asrock H81 pro btc R2.0 and to be safe 8gb of ram for the mobo, the less you have for the mobo the more you have to set for the virtual memory which uses HARD DRIVE space which does affect performance

As far as I know it doesn't affect the actual hashrates. The only difference between using lots of ram vs virtual memory (swap) is the time it takes to start the miner. After that the hashrate is not affected. Multi-gpu rigs usually need at least 16-32 Gb of memory for mining, and most people just create the swap file this big instead of putting so much ram into the mining rigs.

It never affected my hashrate. Most of my dedicated mining rigs (all of them, actually) run with just 4 gb of RAM and large swaps on ssd's. But I've had a couple of systems with lots of actual RAM mining as well, including a desktop system with 32 GB of RAM, and a server with 96 GB of ram. I've never noticed any difference in hashrates between these and the dedicated mining rigs.

It is however recommended for Vega cards to have as much RAM as you can. Does it affect the hashrate with Vega's? I've seen conflicting reports on this and still not 100% sure.

[milfstick]

No luck even with the molex connected and controllers disabled i even disabled the lan. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for your help mate

It sucks, I remember running 5 GPUs off some old socket 775 gigabyte p35 board just fine.. why they designed newer boards the way that you can't even run 4 cards with 6 slots is beyond my understanding. This stuff is frustrating, sorry it didn't work for you.

im using silverstone 1500w to power the 3 gpus and a hx1050 to power risers when trying all 4 gpus...

By the way, not that it matters in this case (I guess it doesn't), but I think one should power the riser and the card with the same PSU. At least that's what I've heard from other users, the ones more experienced in all things electrical than I am. It's like a card shouldn't be powered by different power sources, even some small difference on 12V rails might cause instability or something. I've never dug deep into this so maybe it's not a hard rule, but I'm following this one for my rigs.

Its got me beat. Ive been thinking about getting another board i just dont want the same thing to happen because its a big out lay. Can you recommend a board cpu combo just for mining. I have 2 more vega64s (6 all up) on order thinking i would be able to use my current setup. Is 4 gb of ram enough to run a or more gpu rig?

get a new board, asrock H81 pro btc R2.0 and to be safe 8gb of ram for the mobo, the less you have for the mobo the more you have to set for the virtual memory which uses HARD DRIVE space which does affect performance

Thanks for your reply. Ive been googling asrock btc vs asus z270 for mining so far most people say the btc are plug and play not much to worry about in the bios where the z270 you need to make some changes, Then i read a article from nicehash about the z270 and all they did was update bios enable 4g decoding and windows 10 saw all 7 gps (They used nvidia) . Ill be using amd gpus as listed above. 

[milfstick]

Is it ok to use a 2 thread cpu like a celeron G3930 ?

[wacko]

Ive been googling asrock btc vs asus z270 for mining so far most people say the btc are plug and play not much to worry about in the bios where the z270 you need to make some changes, Then i read a article from nicehash about the z270 and all they did was update bios enable 4g decoding and windows 10 saw all 7 gps (They used nvidia) . Ill be using amd gpus as listed above. 

It's just a simple PC BIOS, takes literally 1-2 minutes to set everything for z270. Definitely not something you should base your decision on. The thing I don't like about those "btc" boards is that they're kind of like asics, it's mining-specific hardware so it's harder to sell if you want to stop mining and move on. Any z270 board is just a decent motherboard suitable for any kind of PC.

Is it ok to use a 2 thread cpu like a celeron G3930 ?

It is for the most part. G4560 is just a better deal, you get twice as many threads for only a little bit more money. But totally not necessary, I've got two z270p boards running 8 gpu each with celeron g3900 and g3930 cpus. But for later builds I'm only using 4560 or higher CPUs. Doesn't really matter though.

[milfstick]

Goodo thanks Wacko.. No dought ill be in touch being a neebie to this mining. Im currently using nicehash just for the simplicity and you get payed in btc. As i get more knowledge im going to want to learn how to get the most out of mining coins.