Rig crashes, ati display driver crashes. Miner locks up

[bowen151]

Rig.

Open air frame
p8z77-v pro
3770k cpu (only 1155 cpu I had spare, a g1610 is arriving today or tomorrow for this rig, i know, i know.)
2 GB generic RAM
128GB SSD
3 x 7970 ( 2 are xfx core edition, 1 is xfx DD model) hashes at 600 each(+/-50) for SHA with relative ease and seems to only break 700 with some major OC'ing. Never breaks 700Khps for scrypt though, never. The top is around 650Khps per card.
1000w 80plus gold fractal PSU

CCC is 13.4 and SDK is 2.6
7970 clocks: default with the fans ramped up
                  slightly OC'd core with mem core downclocked
                  heavily OC'd with mem core overclocked a la scrypt miner (higher hashing yes, but no stability at all, same results!)
                  Tried a lot of the combinations listed for the xfx 7970s here, worried that some of my parts could be causing this, could it be hardware?

Networking through powerline ethernet adapters.

Sometimes upon loading windows it will lock up alltogether on the "starting windows" screen

Initializing any settings with CGMINER will result in the whole rig locking up, I have to hard reset.
Using bitminter client is OK for about a day, then I notice things like 2 cards providing shares as normal and one card lags in performance by around 30%.
Sometimes the engine start button will result in the whole system locking up also, its a very temperamental system it seems

Downclocking and swapping out a 1x riser for a 16x riser cable on one of the 7970s leaves me with more instability, DVI plug must be in for the display driver to function correctly it seems no matter which risers and slot I populate, OC settings are "forgotten" when there is no plug in the DVI socket. Teamviewer shows a black screen when trying to hit it from a remote location, or simply rejects the connection all together from any outside source, however my pool stats are increasing at a rate of about 70% my total power which is similar to the 3rd card issues, the card itself should be fine as I tested it pretty well as it was a replacement for a brand new one I received a few weeks prior to the problems, furmark3d looks smooth on all of them, no artifacts or stuttering.

this is my 3rd build of this OS with pretty much the same results every time, can anyone offer any suggestions? Go linux and bitch about how I cant get that to work either lol? Thanks guys, I appreciate any comments and help you can offer me. If I can't get these stability issues Im thinking about parting out the whole rig to buy into more asic

[jesse11]

You should overclock your CPU and increase the Vcore, use small increments and make sure it's stable by running CineBENCH 11.5 benchmark as is will tax your CPU. You may download it here..
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/cinebench_11_5.html

[bowen151]

Why?

Tried the settings in my OP at default CPU clocks and OC'd clocks anyway and there was no difference. Of course I had it overclocked , its a K series CPU afterall.

What effect would that have on the system as a whole though, why would OC'ing the CPU help me?

[jesse11]

Your overclocked 7970's will put more of a strain on the CPU and if you don't have the Vcore set for that you will have a BSOD. So run your CPU up to 4.2GHz-4.5GHz so it can handle the hardworking cards. Hope you have a good Heatsink on the CPU.

[ssateneth]

Don't overclock your CPU. No point, just wastes electricity and more heat. If you want to overclock anything, do it to your GPU core, but I would recommend against any sort of gpu core voltage increases. Bitcoin mining (and any other coin) is starting to approach "not profitable". If you increase voltage, any hashrate gains you see from higher overclocks will be lost from higher electric bill.

Person above me ... wtf?

I use slow celeron g530 (2.4GHz) and g1610 (2.6GHz) without overclocking with 6 radeon 7970. CPU usage is always very low, <3%. Hashrate is also as expected, if not slightly higher, per MHz per shader. With GPU cores from 1090 to 1140 and memory underclock to 150, I get hashrates from 653-682, all the while undervolting to 1.05v

[jesse11]

He's running a 3770k cpu and should up his Vcore on the CPU to stop his BSOD problem. OP give it a shot, and yes older rigs will run on less power.

[bowen151]

Its not a BSOD jesse, it "locks up" remains unresponsive and the image that was on the monitor is stuck, no BSOD.

Thanks for the information ssateneth I was thinking that myself, forgot to mention im on free power and im invested in ASICs already. This is my last rig that I made, it was pieced together from new rig leftovers and pieces from my personal machine, it seemed like I had enough laying around for 2GH so I thought why not plug it in and get every ounce of coin I can before the difficulty hikes.

I dont really want to OC these cards too much as I would like to keep them in the best possible condition for resale if I cant get the stability issue fixed.

If I can get them to operate for a reasonable length of time (4 days plus) id be happy though, OC'ing while "more profitable" as you say may cost more in the long run so the benefit is negligible to me really, not worth it to me right now, although if I get the thing stable then it may be due to the free power.

[rovchris]

If you are using a riser cable - that is not in 16* pcie slot - they hang.

I had to replace all my Motherboards with a quad PCIe boards to get 4 cards to remain stable and use 16* riser cables

Its not a problem with smaller GPUS's.

For some reason they require the 16* slot.

Unplug the card that is on the 1* riser and it will be stable.

[bowen151]

This board has 3 of the x16 slots

The card that was using a 1x riser was swapped to a 16x riser, and regarding PCIE slots, 1x and 16x also tried.

Im seriously thinking its the board or one of the 7970s, but theres that driver issue thats in the back of my mind, why do I need the monitor plugged in for it to operate the display driver, this is drivers issue right? Needing dummy plugs, something is jsut not right. Im going to pull the SSd and build it again later today.

Ssateneth do you think it could be limitation on that motherboard, would I need to check the prescence pins or is that not needed because im only using 3 cards?

When I rebuild the software which driver/CCC combo should I use, and in which order should I install them in, ive read that can somehow have an effect, doing them in the wrong order. Wow I am selling this bitch if she dosent put out tonight lol actually I could turn it into a gamers machine after selling one of the 7970s, get a nice case and bumping up the RAM quality. But id rather have it churning coin TBH.

I'll try a few things later and also, take it off the powerline adapters to rule out any network/ mining work issues.

[rovchris]

You could try this.

Connect one card - install driver - shut down machine.

Plug in second card - install driver - shut down machine.

Third card same thing.

You jogged my memory there and I do recollect while building them I had to do this on one of my nodes.