Mining rig keeps freezing, need some outside opinions

[nick1803]

Rig:

5x Zotac Amp Extreme 1070 ti
1x PNY Dual Fan 1070 ti
2x EVGA G2 Gold 750 using the Add2PSU adapter.  One PSU powers 3 cards and all the risers.  The other PSU powers 3 cards and the mobo/SSD
4gb Ballistix DDR4
Asus Z270-A
Intel Celeron CPU
120GB Adata SSD
Windows 10 64bit
Nicehash Miner



So I initially got this rig without the other 5 Zotac cards so I just set the motherboard on a box and used the single PNY card for a couple of weeks while I waited for the backordered Zotacs.  Once I got a stable OC on the card, I ran the system without issue with the card plugged straight into the motherboard, no riser.  

Last Thursday I got my other 5 cards so I fully assembled the rig.  I got all the components in the frame and all the cards on the risers.  Booted up fine and I got all 6 cards detected by doing the bios mods for this mobo that are on youtube.  Everything looking good I thought.

I put a mild OC on the cards and started mining.  About 12 hours later the machine was frozen, locked up.  I rebooted and halved the mild OC to just +100 core and +200 mem.  Started mining again, froze.  Ok...so I did no overclocks at all, stock speeds.  80% power in MSI afterburner this whole time, FYI.  Started mining again, froze up in just a few hours.  What the heck?  Then I tried one more time, stock speeds but this time 90% power instead of 80...although 80 should be just fine especially with no OC.  Froze after 10 hours.  

I don't get it.  I'm pretty sure my motherboard and RAM are fine, considering the machine ran for a couple weeks with no issue when I just had the single PNY card.  I have 6 extra risers for a new 1050 ti build I have coming this week, should I try swapping out the risers and see?  Anything I'm overlooking here?  

Its so frustrating to see your rig frozen up on your dashboard and you are helpless at work. Sigh

[Bigpiggy01]

What miner are you using and how much windows bloat have you killed off from background processes and is virtual mem set to 16Gb or more?

[nick1803]

What miner are you using and how much windows bloat have you killed off from background processes and is virtual mem set to 16Gb or more?

Using Nicehash miner, sorry I should have included that.  I haven't done much to background processes and I haven't tweaked virtual memory.  I have a 6x 1060 rig that's stable as a rock, I never did anything to the virtual memory on that one either.  Is it worth a shot? 

[MarkAz]

So keep in mind when tweaking the values and applying them to all your cards, it's only going to be as good as your worst card - so it's quite possible you have one bad card in the mix (or picky card), and it doesn't like to run restricted power or OC'd.  I would try applying the settings one card at a time and let them run for 24+ hours - more than likely this will help you identify the offending card.

You could also try one of the Linux systems and see if you have the same issue, to see if it might be driver related or not - if you see the same thing on the Linux side, then you can be pretty confident it's hardware related.

[treanski]

What miner are you using and how much windows bloat have you killed off from background processes and is virtual mem set to 16Gb or more?

Using Nicehash miner, sorry I should have included that.  I haven't done much to background processes and I haven't tweaked virtual memory.  I have a 6x 1060 rig that's stable as a rock, I never did anything to the virtual memory on that one either.  Is it worth a shot? 

how did you connected your risers? use 4pin or 6pin never with sata and you need to increase virtual memory thats one of the most importand things

[SCSI2]

Have you used those risers before? If not - pull them out and wipe the small PCIe 1x gold fingers with isopropyl alcohol or some such. Some batches of risers come unwashed from the "factory" after manual USB3 socket soldering. Flux (rosin) gets everywhere and in my case is the primary cause of all mysterious problems.

[nick1803]

What miner are you using and how much windows bloat have you killed off from background processes and is virtual mem set to 16Gb or more?

Using Nicehash miner, sorry I should have included that.  I haven't done much to background processes and I haven't tweaked virtual memory.  I have a 6x 1060 rig that's stable as a rock, I never did anything to the virtual memory on that one either.  Is it worth a shot? 

how did you connected your risers? use 4pin or 6pin never with sata and you need to increase virtual memory thats one of the most importand things

I have these risers:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077JYBDYT/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use the 6pin to sata adapter.  I power only 2 risers with each sata cable from my PSU, as per the norm.  My 1060 rig uses molex adapters and I never tweaked virtual memory on that PC and its fine.  Do you think these 6 pin adapters are requiring it though?

[X299]

Rig:

5x Zotac Amp Extreme 1070 ti
1x PNY Dual Fan 1070 ti
2x EVGA G2 Gold 750 using the Add2PSU adapter.  One PSU powers 3 cards and all the risers.  The other PSU powers 3 cards and the mobo/SSD
4gb Ballistix DDR4
Asus Z270-A
Intel Celeron CPU
120GB Adata SSD
Windows 10 64bit
Nicehash Miner



So I initially got this rig without the other 5 Zotac cards so I just set the motherboard on a box and used the single PNY card for a couple of weeks while I waited for the backordered Zotacs.  Once I got a stable OC on the card, I ran the system without issue with the card plugged straight into the motherboard, no riser.  

Last Thursday I got my other 5 cards so I fully assembled the rig.  I got all the components in the frame and all the cards on the risers.  Booted up fine and I got all 6 cards detected by doing the bios mods for this mobo that are on youtube.  Everything looking good I thought.

I put a mild OC on the cards and started mining.  About 12 hours later the machine was frozen, locked up.  I rebooted and halved the mild OC to just +100 core and +200 mem.  Started mining again, froze.  Ok...so I did no overclocks at all, stock speeds.  80% power in MSI afterburner this whole time, FYI.  Started mining again, froze up in just a few hours.  What the heck?  Then I tried one more time, stock speeds but this time 90% power instead of 80...although 80 should be just fine especially with no OC.  Froze after 10 hours.  

I don't get it.  I'm pretty sure my motherboard and RAM are fine, considering the machine ran for a couple weeks with no issue when I just had the single PNY card.  I have 6 extra risers for a new 1050 ti build I have coming this week, should I try swapping out the risers and see?  Anything I'm overlooking here?  

Its so frustrating to see your rig frozen up on your dashboard and you are helpless at work. Sigh

Power limit decreases to 75%, then it will go well.

[treanski]

never use fucking sata i already said it...not with adapters not any other way, only 4pin or 6pin molex
since i stopped using sata for powering risers 99% of my problems are gone

[fanatic26]

Windows 10 64bit
Nicehash Miner

Found your problems. You are using an unstable OS and mining to a company that takes a cut for no good reason because people are too lazy to manage their own wallets.

[nick1803]

About to head home and tinker, any last thoughts?

I think I will swap out all my risers with this other set I have and increase the virtual memory size.  Also I will check every connection to make sure its seated properly.

[gt_addict]

About to head home and tinker, any last thoughts?

I think I will swap out all my risers with this other set I have and increase the virtual memory size.  Also I will check every connection to make sure its seated properly.

Thats probably best. Personally i would run a gpu and its riser on the same psu. Then you at keast know that the both i puts are receiving the exact same voltage.

[bigjee]

About to head home and tinker, any last thoughts?

I think I will swap out all my risers with this other set I have and increase the virtual memory size.  Also I will check every connection to make sure its seated properly.

Yup. As others have pointed out find the bad card/riser/psu.
Before you test that please remove any overclocks on your gpus as that can add to system instability.
Install one card at a time directly to the mobo. Check all cards this way.
Then start adding risers to each card and test.

On the software side starting with a DDU and a driver reinstall would help eliminate software related issues.

FYI, what celeron are you using. Is it a 3900 (just keep in mind the system can be laggy since its not the most powerful).
 

[tangonaboat]

Use simplemining os, it is well worth $2/rig just the time you’ll save from not having to install drivers for everything

[philipma1957]

did you use msi afterburner to tweak the tdp on the cards?


it polls every 1 second  to show the info

the setting is in microseconds

1000

change to

15000

a lots less work on the cpu

cheap easy free under 1 minute to do it.

[tinfoilMining]

Always power GPU and its riser from same PSU.

[klintistwood]

i don't know if this is available under windows but in the nvidia suite there is something called nvidia-smi, it gives a detailed overview of what's happening with your cards and you can see how much they use (in terms of power), how much they are used by the system, temps, fans, ... With this you can see if one of the card is not responding and try to swap cables, cards, ... If not, then the usual debugging of mining for a couple of hours with card, then another one, ...until it starts crashing again.

[flipflop.0]

I had problems with random freezes and it turned out to be related to the power draw. You can try using the same PSU for the GPUs and their associated risers to it. If it does not help, I'd go with checking all the cables and using treanski's advice.

never use fucking sata i already said it...not with adapters not any other way, only 4pin or 6pin molex
since i stopped using sata for powering risers 99% of my problems are gone

Getting rid of random freezes is a real pain, took me two days going step by step to rule out possible problems.

[nick1803]

I had problems with random freezes and it turned out to be related to the power draw. You can try using the same PSU for the GPUs and their associated risers to it. If it does not help, I'd go with checking all the cables and using treanski's advice.

never use fucking sata i already said it...not with adapters not any other way, only 4pin or 6pin molex
since i stopped using sata for powering risers 99% of my problems are gone

Getting rid of random freezes is a real pain, took me two days going step by step to rule out possible problems.

I think you may be on to something with the power aspect.

So last night I swapped out all my risers and changed virtual memory to 16gb.  I started mining and went to sleep.  I woke up and the machine was frozen up again.  The 1070 ti Zotac AMP EXTREME cards require two 8 pin connections, so I was forced to buy these adapters:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07611QXG4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I ran those adapters for 4 cards.  I unplugged all four of those cards and just ran the two cards that I am running without adapters, nearly 9 hours of up time so far.  It has not locked up today.  I think 1 or more of those splitters might be bad.  

[SCSI2]

Could be bad/flaky RAM chips. Swap in a known good memory or find a way to test it in place.