Primecoin miner - need motherboard

[renaxi]

So here we go, i was looking into making a primecoin miner with 2xINTEL XEON E3-1230 QUAD CORE 3.20GHZ 8MB S-1155 processers, but as im using 2xCPU i'll need an extra ordinary motherboard. So my question, is there any motherboard to a decent price you would recommend?
Could also throw some gpu's in to do alittle bit of scrypt mining.

[lilfiend]

There is no such thing as dual 1155, if you want dual socket you need socket 604, 771, 1336, or 2011 for intel (ok there are a couple even older ones but you get the picture).

[renaxi]

Okey, can you then recommend some very cheap 1155 socket motherboard? my max budget is around 1000-1200$. And of them 550$ is reserved for the cpu's.

[lilfiend]

Do you have to use xeon's? why not get some more efficient haswell CPU's over those ivy bridge CPU's and go consumer grade instead of server grade so you get more CPU/$?

If you MUST go with ivy bridge xeons this motherboard will work but is about 3x what you would pay for a consumer grade motherboard.

Going with a i5-4570s would get you a quad core haswell core at 2.9ghz for 65w [link here and cheapest mobo with 2 full sized PCI-E slots is here]

the haswell cpu uses 15w less than your ivy bridge xeons, and while it has a lower clock speed than the ivy bridge xeons it has a higher IPC (instructions per cycle) so it will do more work at the same speed.

you can see here sandy bridge vs ivy bridge vs haswell clock for clock speed differences. all CPU's tested are running at 3.5GHZ so you can clearly see the differences in speed between the different architectures.

[MisO69]

I wouldn't bother with Xeons. I have some here that I mine with and to tell you the truth, the Core i5 2500k's find more blocks than those xeons. Maybe it was the protoshares miner algo or something..

This is what I plan to build as a primecoin, protoshares mining computer. Asus Z87 mobo, Core i7 4770k, 16Gb ddr3 2400 ram or faster, corsair h100i cooler or better, a good quality power supply. Overclock the cpu to 4.6ghz.  Set the corsair cooler to full blast. have fun. The 16gb ram sounds excessive but from what I read mining bitshares will require that amount.

Oh, and stay away from AMD cpus. The Intel ones work better with mining.

[renaxi]

I know to stay away from AMD cpu's, but why would you go with the I7 4770k? Have you read anywhere that its good for prime mining?

[MisO69]

I did a lot of research just by sitting in the yPool chat and reading what people were saying when testing different miners. The guys with the over clocked Core i7 extreme processors did the best. Followed by the newest Xenons and Opterons. All of which are really expensive. So I thought to build several oc'd 4770Ks because the price is much lower than the others, its the newest 22nm tech. Lower power consumption. Once you add 16gb ram, ssd, power supply and cooling it runs about $1100.00 CAD. Expensive mining rig. I think you would need at least 10 to make a dent in mining primecoin. The difficulty is really high right now. You probably wouldn't see ROI on the gear, but its a computer so it can be used for other things. Like add some 7950 video cards and mine LTC at the same time.

Then after building such a beast you have to ask yourself, do I leave it on 24/7 mining coin or use it for gaming? GAMING!!!

[renaxi]

Already have a gamer computer, that runs serveral bots in the background, tho when i mine i tend to lag alittle, so just thought to look into building a seperate machine. But as you say it wont ROI, that might be true, but i could resell the computer online again as a gaming pc. Prices for such things are insanely high in Denmark.

[rusBruin]

The beauty of prime coin mining is that you don't need to buy any additional hardware because it uses CPU, and you already have it in any PC. Although I was mining prime coin for three straight days with 4770K and got nothing so far.