1 rig with 10 cards VS. 2 rigs with 5 cards

[Purpleberry]

Hey guys,

I have a rig at home , so do some friends and we asked ourselves if it were in any way better to have one BIG mining rig by combining all of them rather than having separate rigs running.

Any experience with that?

to be noted: none of us are in a mining pool. This is just purely hardware related. Since I big rig would maybe have more power during the benchmark and hence make more money ?

Thanks for any suggestions and help !

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[Leass]

Hey guys,

I have a rig at home , so do some friends and we asked ourselves if it were in any way better to have one BIG mining rig by combining all of them rather than having separate rigs running.

Any experience with that?

to be noted: none of us are in a mining pool. This is just purely hardware related. Since I big rig would maybe have more power during the benchmark and hence make more money ?

Thanks for any suggestions and help !

It depends, when You're mining solo 1 big rig will probably be better because You can mine directly to local wallet without setting up fancy things. But hashrate won't change (1 big rig will have accumulated hashrate of 2 smaller), if it does it'll get worse because of driver's issues, more problems at troubleshooting (more hashrate at downtime if something goes wrong).

[raiderosik]

Hey guys,

I have a rig at home , so do some friends and we asked ourselves if it were in any way better to have one BIG mining rig by combining all of them rather than having separate rigs running.

Any experience with that?

to be noted: none of us are in a mining pool. This is just purely hardware related. Since I big rig would maybe have more power during the benchmark and hence make more money ?

Thanks for any suggestions and help !

Setup for 1 big rig can be a bit more expensive then making 2 rigs for 5 cards(even 6 i think)
as @Purpleberry said, the power of 1big rig will be the same as 2x small rigs so its all up to you.
In my opinion any maintenance of smaller rig give you oportunity to mine on the second  rig while you are fixing problem on the first.
So for me 2Small rig > 1 Big rig
Small = 6 or less cards

Cheers!

[Za1n]

I prefer smaller rigs as well for the easier sourcing of parts and just general ease of administration. Like mentioned above, I consider a smaller rig to be the 6-7 GPU variety with one PSU powering it all. While the big rigs do have the WOW factor they also have their share of technical and administrative issues as well.

I have built a grand total of two > 7 GPU rigs and I think I will stop there as while they are nice to show off to friends they are a big pain in the rear to do just about anything with. The savings really isn't there either as usually the motherboards that support more than 7 GPUs are fairly expensive and since most rigs are built with a $50 CPU and a $25 stick of RAM, the extra cost really isn't much savings anyway.

Also as the poster above me said, if a rig does go down, this way you only have 5 GPUs out of commission instead of all 10 being down at the same time.

[philipma1957]

if you are small scale:

  1x 10 card rig is  bad on a huge list of reasons
  2x   5 card rigs is good on a huge list of reason.



if you are large scale  say 5x  10 card rigs  vs  10x 5 card rigs    the scales tip towards bigger rigs.


I do many 3 card rigs  as I can go riser free and they don't run that hot.

I can use  atx psu's that don't scream.
I can mine 3 different coins.   with a 3+3+4 rig set up   and only 1 coin with a 10 card setup.

Bigger  scale mining  with lots of rigs and cards the multi-coin advantage goes away.


Also remember that

 a 95 dollar mobo
 a 110 dollar  psu
 a 25  dollar stick of ram
a 10   dollar usb stick
a 10 dollar riser
a 50 dollar cpu  
total 300  is pretty cheap  I know you can do less     but that can run 4 cards easy   and last  for 3 year or 4 years.  I have many mobos  2-3 years old mining.

small mini farms  I like small rigs

[vapourminer]

I can mine 3 different coins.   with a 3+3+4 rig set up   and only 1 coin with a 10 card setup.

you can mine different coins on the same rig, just use the miners "select gpu" commands and point one miners cards at one coin, and the other miners card at the other coins. i use ewbf and claymore on my rig, the amd cards use claymore for xmr, and ewbf uses the nvidia card to mine zcash. you could run 2 instances of the same miner too, doesnt have to be different ones. say mine both etc and eth on the same rig for example, using 2 instances of claymore with some cards selected for eth, the others selected for etc.

thats using win7, if you use smos/nvoc or something dunno if you can do that. its certainly easier to just mine one coin per rig though. the order of card identification is all over the place in different miners, even versions of the same miner.

[philipma1957]

I can mine 3 different coins.   with a 3+3+4 rig set up   and only 1 coin with a 10 card setup.

you can mine different coins on the same rig, just use the miners "select gpu" commands and point one miners cards at one coin, and the other miners card at the other coins. i use ewbf and claymore on my rig, the amd cards use claymore for xmr, and ewbf uses the nvidia card to mine zcash. you could run 2 instances of the same miner too, doesnt have to be different ones. say mine both etc and eth on the same rig for example, using 2 instances of claymore with some cards selected for eth, the others selected for etc.

thats using win7, if you use smos/nvoc or something dunno if you can do that. its certainly easier to just mine one coin per rig though. the order of card identification is all over the place in different miners, even versions of the same miner.

it is a p.i.t.a  to try multiple pools on one rig it can be done and I do it on win 10  but smos and nvoc linux builds are harder.

I also  like the separation  of rigs to track profits.
___________________________________________________________________
3 smos rigs coin goes to a trezor  this is a deal number 1 with a friend
https://www.nicehash.com/miner/146UJM5kgzLVUV23CXCf33KQKHckoX1gx3

this is three 2 card rigs
six 1080 ti's
______________________________________________________________________

2 nvoc rigs   goes to a blockchain.info wallet  this is a deal number 2 with a different friend
https://www.nicehash.com/miner/16yLHLoeyuCLPMXkVpC3gyrRYvwRGwjKJr

this is two three card rigs  six 1080 ti's
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
my gear in house goes to my wallet

this is  2 1080 ti's and 2 1070's my largest rig


http://zpool.ca/?address=1JdC6Xg3ajT3rge3FgPNSYYFpmf53Vbtje




this is  a three card 1080 ti rig

my gear in house goes to my wallet
https://www.nicehash.com/miner/1JdC6Xg3ajT3rge3FgPNSYYFpmf53Vbtje

__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________

17 1080 ti's  2 1070's on 7 rigs

[Vispilio]

for many miners 1 gpu malfunctioning or missing a few shares causes the entire rig to stop, so in terms of maximizing mining time lesser gpu / rig is the better option.

You can find the optimal set up by limiting the per rig gpu at 8 maximum, with 2 reasonably priced PSU's (cumulatively 2600w), ASUS motherboard, etc...

[sundownz]

I prefer to stay at 3-4 cards per rig & use inexpensive hardware... especially PSUs... and if one goes down I only have 3-4 cards that quit mining while I fix it.

This is the way I've been doing it and I'm quite pleased with the results:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1955358.msg19419951#msg19419951

The HP Z400 machines are rock solid. The Dell T5500s are okay but they re-boot themselves fairly often -- I have them setup to just start mining again when they do so but the HP machines are incredibly stable.

I do have a few machines with "consumer grade" hardware and I've had several motherboard failures so I'll be sticking with the Z400s.

** -- Sorry the pics are down @ the moment in the thread link. Images are on my web server and it's down right now.

[Tidsdilatation]

I prefer using smaller rigs since it is more stable. Your uptime will be ALOT better with smaller rigs compared to big rigs

[64dimensions]

Other reasons:

1) When mining a coin for the first time, I've always had a rig crash after x hours. The advantage of multiple rigs is that when transitioning to a new coin, you can run the new coin on the smallest rig.

2) It's not just overclock, but the joint optimization of undervolting, mem clock, the gpu core clock, power draw at the wall and mining software (XMR-stak vs claymore for example). Multiply this hassle times the number of card types.

[jmigdlc99]

A lot of people are saying many small rigs but if you are mining for PROFIT, you should stick to 1 rig only. Why? Because it is more costly to have more rigs due to 1) the cost of buying parts (buying more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc) and 2) the increased electricity costs (paying for more power to more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc).

All that dislike for bigger rigs because its hard to maintain, driver issues, and all that is just whining. Nothing is free and if you want to succeed you really need to put in the effort and spend time tweaking, configuring, and monitoring your rigs.

[Leass]

A lot of people are saying many small rigs but if you are mining for PROFIT, you should stick to 1 rig only. Why? Because it is more costly to have more rigs due to 1) the cost of buying parts (buying more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc) and 2) the increased electricity costs (paying for more power to more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc).

All that dislike for bigger rigs because its hard to maintain, driver issues, and all that is just whining. Nothing is free and if you want to succeed you really need to put in the effort and spend time tweaking, configuring, and monitoring your rigs.

Your points towards 1 big rig is inacccurate and cons for smaller rigs setup as sucked up from finger.
1. Windows will limit Your possibilities to 8 cards per driver (so 8 GPU max)
2. Cost of buying parts - this contention can't stand for itself because OP stated that he want to COMBINE more rigs into one -> he already have more than 1
3. Increased ele. cost - Really? If you are going multiraid configuration, using Ryzen and many meters of fancy leds - yea it could affect it. But those ~50W more for increased stability and possibilities it brings are nothing to count.
Of course, making 3x 2card rigs is POINTLESS. That's loss you are talking about. But having 2x4 card or 1x8 card ... Well I'll be after 2x4 just because if something fails (and it certainly one day would) I wont be 2X profit in back, only 1 X

[Vann]

Larger rigs are harder to setup, mainly because of PCI-E compatibility. Once configured properly, there is nothing inherently unstable about a larger rig compared to a smaller one. Larger rigs remove unnecessary redundancy and are more effcient to run and cool compared to multiple small ones. Larger rigs are also GREAT for solo mining.

[philipma1957]

A lot of people are saying many small rigs but if you are mining for PROFIT, you should stick to 1 rig only. Why? Because it is more costly to have more rigs due to 1) the cost of buying parts (buying more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc) and 2) the increased electricity costs (paying for more power to more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc).

All that dislike for bigger rigs because its hard to maintain, driver issues, and all that is just whining. Nothing is free and if you want to succeed you really need to put in the effort and spend time tweaking, configuring, and monitoring your rigs.

wrong  if you have 1 rig of 10 cards.

correct if you have 5 rigs of 10 cards.

[philipma1957]

A lot of people are saying many small rigs but if you are mining for PROFIT, you should stick to 1 rig only. Why? Because it is more costly to have more rigs due to 1) the cost of buying parts (buying more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc) and 2) the increased electricity costs (paying for more power to more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc).

All that dislike for bigger rigs because its hard to maintain, driver issues, and all that is just whining. Nothing is free and if you want to succeed you really need to put in the effort and spend time tweaking, configuring, and monitoring your rigs.

Your points towards 1 big rig is inacccurate and cons for smaller rigs setup as sucked up from finger.
1. Windows will limit Your possibilities to 8 cards per driver (so 8 GPU max)
2. Cost of buying parts - this contention can't stand for itself because OP stated that he want to COMBINE more rigs into one -> he already have more than 1
3. Increased ele. cost - Really? If you are going multiraid configuration, using Ryzen and many meters of fancy leds - yea it could affect it. But those ~50W more for increased stability and possibilities it brings are nothing to count.
Of course, making 3x 2card rigs is POINTLESS. That's loss you are talking about. But having 2x4 card or 1x8 card ... Well I'll be after 2x4 just because if something fails (and it certainly one day would) I wont be 2X profit in back, only 1 X

once again  to all inclusive.
I have spaces in a few offices  with restrictions.  as follows 1000 watts or less and fairly quiet.  these offices provide me free power for ½  the coins.   the rigs are fully paid for before I install them.

so this one setup cost me 6 bucks a month for smos fees. 

so 360 - 420 a month - 6 =  354-414 ½ to the other guy  that is 177 to 207  a month for me

here look at this

[Leass]

A lot of people are saying many small rigs but if you are mining for PROFIT, you should stick to 1 rig only. Why? Because it is more costly to have more rigs due to 1) the cost of buying parts (buying more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc) and 2) the increased electricity costs (paying for more power to more ssds, psus, motherboards, etc).

All that dislike for bigger rigs because its hard to maintain, driver issues, and all that is just whining. Nothing is free and if you want to succeed you really need to put in the effort and spend time tweaking, configuring, and monitoring your rigs.

Your points towards 1 big rig is inacccurate and cons for smaller rigs setup as sucked up from finger.
1. Windows will limit Your possibilities to 8 cards per driver (so 8 GPU max)
2. Cost of buying parts - this contention can't stand for itself because OP stated that he want to COMBINE more rigs into one -> he already have more than 1
3. Increased ele. cost - Really? If you are going multiraid configuration, using Ryzen and many meters of fancy leds - yea it could affect it. But those ~50W more for increased stability and possibilities it brings are nothing to count.
Of course, making 3x 2card rigs is POINTLESS. That's loss you are talking about. But having 2x4 card or 1x8 card ... Well I'll be after 2x4 just because if something fails (and it certainly one day would) I wont be 2X profit in back, only 1 X

once again  to all inclusive.
I have spaces in a few offices  with restrictions.  as follows 1000 watts or less and fairly quiet.  these offices provide me free power for ½  the coins.   the rigs are fully paid for before I install them.

so this one setup cost me 6 bucks a month for smos fees. 

so 360 - 420 a month - 6 =  354-414 ½ to the other guy  that is 177 to 207  a month for me

here look at this

Yeah, that statement was unfortunate, I didn't mean that it's completely pointless, but when it comes to space optimalization and equipment combining (with clean situation - you have space where you keep your rigs, number doesn't matter) it's pointless to split 6-8 cards into 3-4 rigs, because auxillary parts will cost you about 1 or 2 cards in total, bringing nothing that one 6-8 GPU rig couldn't do.