Rig with very different GPUs (970, 1070 and Fury 9)

[BadAstroZA]

So, I have a number of GPUs lying around for various reasons and thankfully live somewhere with pretty cheap electricity. So while these are not necessarily the cheapest in terms of hash<->electricity costs, I am in a position where I could build a rig out of:

- EVGA GeForce GTX 970
- AMD R9 Fury
- 2x Gigabyte GTX 1070

If I got a motherboard with 5 or 6 PCIe slots, I'd still have room for a couple more cards.

Is there any problem with building a rig with such different GPUs installed?

Thanks

[Vann]

As long as the motherboard supports the number of cards you're trying to use and the drivers also support the cards, it should work without a problem. I currently have a rig with three diffrent types of AMD GPU's, RX 580/480, HD 7850 and a Nvidia GTX 1080. You also need to figure out which GPU index when configuring the settings for each card in the miner. Having the cards all the same is simpler.

[BadAstroZA]

Thanks - I am seeing this as a possible issue now, as it might be tough to get such a variety of cards working.

I will likely move the Fury to my main desktop and build an NVIDIA-only rig, starting with 4x GTX 1070s and 1x GTX 970.

Do I need to find specific motherboards for 6x NVIDIA cards, or is it a safe assumption that motherboards which support 6x AMD GPUs will likely support 6x NVIDIA GPUs as well?

Eventually this will most likely be 6x NVIDIA GTX 1070s, so I'd like to start buying parts for a rig with this in mind.

[Vann]

Thanks - I am seeing this as a possible issue now, as it might be tough to get such a variety of cards working.

I will likely move the Fury to my main desktop and build an NVIDIA-only rig, starting with 4x GTX 1070s and 1x GTX 970.

Do I need to find specific motherboards for 6x NVIDIA cards, or is it a safe assumption that motherboards which support 6x AMD GPUs will likely support 6x NVIDIA GPUs as well?

Eventually this will most likely be 6x NVIDIA GTX 1070s, so I'd like to start buying parts for a rig with this in mind.

How many cards the motherboard suppports is limited by the number of PCI-E slots and how the motherboard allows the slots to be configured. I don't have a six card Nvidia rig but AFAIK, no particular motherboard is required for Nvidia cards vs AMD. Just make sure the motherboard is known to support the number of cards you want to use. In fact it's easier to get multiple Nvida cards mining on the same rig than it is for AMD cards. No Bios mods, driver patches or hard crashes. Just install the latest Nvidia driver and it should work.

[BadAstroZA]

OK great - yes, all of the motherboards I have been considering support 6 or more AMD cards, so that's good news. It's hard to find a lot of info about NVIDIA mining as there's so much focus on the much cheaper AMD cards.

Looks like I might actually settle on the Asus Z270-P motherboard.

[Vann]

OK great - yes, all of the motherboards I have been considering support 6 or more AMD cards, so that's good news. It's hard to find a lot of info about NVIDIA mining as there's so much focus on the much cheaper AMD cards.

Looks like I might actually settle on the Asus Z270-P motherboard.

I would go with the Asus Z270-A / AR motherboard. That's the board BBT used in his 1060 video and he' built a nine card RX 580 rig with two diffrent brands of cards on that board using M.2 to PCI-E expansion cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ-EAunoAqY

[senseless]

I have a system i'm building now with 2x RX570s, one is a sapphire pulse the other a sapphire nitro, both 4gb. I can mine on either for hours no problem, if I put them both together the system crashes within 15 seconds of starting to mine. Maybe it's a problem with my setup, but I'm using the same setup for another build without any issues. Dunno, you could try it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1958217.0

[BadAstroZA]

OK great - yes, all of the motherboards I have been considering support 6 or more AMD cards, so that's good news. It's hard to find a lot of info about NVIDIA mining as there's so much focus on the much cheaper AMD cards.

Looks like I might actually settle on the Asus Z270-P motherboard.

I would go with the Asus Z270-A / AR motherboard. That's the board BBT used in his 1060 video and he' built a nine card RX 580 rig with two diffrent brands of cards on that board using M.2 to PCI-E expansion cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ-EAunoAqY

Wow that's really cool - thanks for the suggestion.

For power supplies, is it better to go with one large 1200w or two smaller 750w PSUs?

[mdizzlebizzle]

OK great - yes, all of the motherboards I have been considering support 6 or more AMD cards, so that's good news. It's hard to find a lot of info about NVIDIA mining as there's so much focus on the much cheaper AMD cards.

Looks like I might actually settle on the Asus Z270-P motherboard.

I would go with the Asus Z270-A / AR motherboard. That's the board BBT used in his 1060 video and he' built a nine card RX 580 rig with two diffrent brands of cards on that board using M.2 to PCI-E expansion cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ-EAunoAqY

Wow that's really cool - thanks for the suggestion.

For power supplies, is it better to go with one large 1200w or two smaller 750w PSUs?

If anything, I'd go with an atx psu to power the mobo and a server psu to power your risers and gpus.

[BadAstroZA]

OK, going with the ASUS - PRIME Z270-AR motherboard.

As for the PSUs, I'm not at all familiar with server PSUs. Any recommendations?

Here's what I have ordered:
4x NVIDIA Asus DUAL GTX 1070-O8G GPUs  (will get two more soon)
1x NVIDIA EVGA GTX 970
ASUS - PRIME Z270-AR motherboard
Crucial 4GB  2133MHz DDR4
Kingston 120GB SSD
6x USB 3.0 PCI-E 1X To 16X Extender Riser card adapter power cables

Still need:
Intel Celeron 9300 CPU  (struggling to find stock)
Some kind of rack/mount for all this!

(Any reason not to just get the Celeron 9330?)

That motherboard can handle up to 9 (!) GPUs at once - I would need to buy M.2. Expansion PCIe Adaptors though, but I'll wait before introducing that kind of complexity.