GTX 1050 ti Mining Rig

[mfrittman]

I ordered 12 GTX 1050ti's a couple weeks ago, and 6 of them arrived.  They are a bit different than what I have used in the past.  They have no 6-pin or 8-pin power, so they get all their power from the PCIE slots themselves.

I have a few concerns how to use them in a mining rig.

First, I have an Onda D1800 bitcoin mining board.  That is one of those boards that has 6 full length PCIE slots spaced far apart enough for a card to fit in each slot.  I was able to boot with one card.  Then I tried to boot it up with 6 GPU's and saw only one fan spinning.  I didn't get any video.  I'm concerned because these cards can draw up to 75 watts and 6 of them might be too much for the motherboard.

I'm also concerned about moving them to another motherboard, such as the ASUS H81 bitcoin pro, and using risers.  SATA only supplies 55 watts of power to risers, and these cards may demand more.  I suppose I could undervolt them.

Does anyone have experience in making these cards work? 
 

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[0xcosmos]

get 6 pin risers
biostar tb 350pro 13 gpu motherboard
a 1000 watt power supply and that is all you need

[MagicSmoker]

Read this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2690585.0

And note that the onboard VGA port is used by default and that all 3 Molex and all 3 SATA power connectors on the board must be supplied with power. You should be fine with a 650W or bigger ATX power supply.

[mfrittman]

get 6 pin risers
biostar tb 350pro 13 gpu motherboard
a 1000 watt power supply and that is all you need

I've already purchased two 750 watt gold power supplies, the Onda board, an Asus 6-port motherboard, and two copies of Windows 10.  Your suggestion is a good one if I build another, though I suppose I'd have to switch to Linux to avoid the GPU limit.

And note...that all 3 Molex...on the board must be supplied with power.

Heh.  These boards don't come with manuals.  I supplied the three SATA inputs with power, but the three Molex connectors are labeled "POUT."  I thought that meant "power out."  Thanks.  I'll try that.

[MagicSmoker]

And note...that all 3 Molex...on the board must be supplied with power.

Heh.  These boards don't come with manuals.  I supplied the three SATA inputs with power, but the three Molex connectors are labeled "POUT."  I thought that meant "power out."  Thanks.  I'll try that.

Yeah, I had to learn all this stuff the hard way too on account of the lack of documentation and the Aliexpress listing expressly stating not to use the onboard video when it should have said you /have to use/ the onboard video... 

Oh, and these boards absolutely require 1.35V DDR3L SODIMM (laptop) memory. I had success with a 4GB stick of Crucial DDR3L-1600, but Windows 10 is quite sluggish with that little amount of memory while mining. Then again, not sure you can expect more out of a Celeron mobile CPU that draws 15W.

[mfrittman]

I had originally ordered desktop memory myself.  Fortunately, I had one piece of laptop memory sitting in my desk drawer from an old computer that died.  I stuck it in the DIMM slot of the motherboard and it worked.

[QuintLeo]

The easy cure to the "SATA power for risers" limit is DON'T USE SATA TO POWER RISERS.

The other option is to make sure you have a RELIABLE method to drop the TDP of the cards under 50 watts (remember that the voltage conversion circuitry on the riser will ALSO eat a few watts) - which means don't run Windows on the machine since ALL of the available software that can set TDP on Windows has been known to get "stuck" on occasion.

 MOLEX or PCI-E powered risers should work fine - and since you aren't using the PCI-E power connectors to power cards, you should have plenty available for SAFE riser power usage.

[mfrittman]

Thanks for your help.  It actually is a nice little mining rig on the Onda board, and it is hashing away right now.  I liked not having to deal with risers on this build.

[QuintLeo]

And 1050 ti cards are low enough power that the semi-tight spacing shouldn't be an issue at all with cooling on the Onda-type "mining motherboards".