Will I be able to dual-purpose a mining rig for productivity/coding work?

[theDoubleH]

I'm putting a together a new office PC and was wondering if I could throw a couple 7950s in there for LTC mining, since I don't pay for office power. I will run Ubuntu, work in Matlab, R, and Python, and of course web browsing and office software.

I'll get a nice CPU and more RAM than needed for just mining of course, but I was wondering if there were any pitfalls I haven't thought of. I occasionally run large scale simulations that take lots of CPU work but I don't do any GPU calculations in my work. Should be fine right?

If I get a CPU with integrated graphics is it possible to use the integrated graphics for screen output even with GPUs plugged in? Any other suggestions or things to look out for? Thanks.

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[cp1]

Yes it's all possible, just be careful -- if your company pays for the electricity they won't be happy if they find out.

[empoweoqwj]

Yes it's all possible, just be careful -- if your company pays for the electricity they won't be happy if they find out.

Yeah that's right. Technically sound. Against the terms of your work contract, almost definitely. Might even be considered theft depending which country you live in. Be careful.

[theDoubleH]

I'm a scientist at a huge University. People run all sorts of (personal use) servers from their offices, and have their computers run Folding@Home, etc. when they're not using them. It's not inconceivable that I would be doing GPU calculations 24/7 given my research (I do plenty of personal research projects my supervisors don't know about, it's very hands off). I'm mostly paid from my own grants anyway (well, 50/50).

I see your warnings, maybe I was underestimating the institutional risks. If there's a risk of losing my job I wouldn't do it, of course. But still... even if someone with power found out (very unlikely) the worst I can imagine is "cut it out." They would first think to whether it was using my time, or space, or the U's bandwidth. I don't think any connection would be made to power costs, no one really considers the power a computer uses as significant, given all the other equipment we work with.

Am I still being naive? I guess a better question is, would the IT dept. notice anything network-wise? On Windows they force you to run certain AV, force updates to install immediately, that sort of thing, or your internet gets cut. Maybe a relevant comparison is students running miners in their dorm rooms. Have any confrontations been reported on that front?

[ISAWHIM]

You MAY not be able to use your integrated graphics chip, with a video-card plugged-in. That will depend on the motherboard.

If you don't go crazy overclocking, and set a modest "interval" for mining, than you should be able to do modest multi-tasking. Just be aware that consuming your CPU, will slow-down your GPU processing. Since it will use some RAM, and requires CPU threads to "respond", in time. (You may see a lot of stale-work, or just a non-constant hash-rate.)

However, once you stop doing other things, the GPU will fly like normal.

My only concern is if the "university" funds were used to purchase the computer/software... That "makes anything produced on the computer", "property of the university"... (Including work, study, or mining-funds.) That is a standard clause/agreement, so that you couldn't sue them for "your work", and take ownership of "your work", that was created with the "tools" they provided.

I am sure it will not be an issue, unless someone decides to be a jerk, and rat you out... and another jerk decides to "pull legality", to make himself a few bucks from your efforts. (That wouldn't be an actual issue, as you can freely "say it is research", as the bitcoin page even says, "this is an experiment"... and move any funds instantly to a private account. As opposed to keeping them on a wallet, on that computer.)

I say, hash away.

However, if you did like a guy that I read about, throwing together 400 of a universities "old computers" for a giant mining network... Then I am sure you would get more than just a "warning". But one little computer making a modest $5-$10 a day... I doubt they will be up to the fight, if it even shows on the radar at all.

[notaek]

What I do is lower the intensity of the card that is outputting to display while I use my computer.  I only lose 100 khashes and my computer runs fine.

[Valle]

I'd suggest lowering powertune to at least -10 to make it silent and lower intensity to be able work in parallel.

[cp1]

if these computers are being purchased from a grant, then it's not worth the risk.  it sounds like you're non tenured on soft money, and getting caught using NSF or NIH or even university equipment for financial gain and not to mention your grant overhead goes toward power.  it's one thing to run folding at home, but once you're trying to make money off of the computing power it's a bad idea.  imagine if you rented out computation time to other universities and just pocketed the money.

[theDoubleH]

Thanks for the technical tips. Once I put it together I'll have to do some tweaking I guess.

The PC is completely out-of-pocket. I don't get any equipment money. Just a desk and an uncomfortable chair in an office with no windows If the PC was coming from a grant I wouldn't even be considering this.

It's all rather silly in the end when you consider the amount of money involved. Almost not worth the effort to even think about it. But I thought it would be something fun to experiment with and then when the 4850 dies in my gaming PC I'll have an easy upgrade opportunity.