Mining Farm Build Draft

[barkinos98]

Hey guys,
My friend and I are going to be getting 14x R9 290 for a mining farm, and I've got it all figured out except the powersupply and where to acquire the risers (looking at amazon but need somewhere in EU).
It consists of:
-A custom bench-like thing made in my dad's metal shop
-Pentium G3220, Haswell
-MSI Z87 G55 or the Z87 G45 Gaming (Exact same boards except the latter one has better audio and different colors. also is 40TL more ($20))
-4GB of XMS3 ram, not 2GB because windows 8.1 recommends at least 4
-WD 500GB Caviar Blue (or Sandisk Ultra Plus 64GB SSD for $20 more if its enough JUST for the OS and wallets)
-14 of R9 290's of various brands (Powercolor, Sapphire and Asus, depending on which is in stock, will probably mix brands as well)
-lots of cooler master's 20cm megaflow fans
-2x Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid Gold 1050W +Add2PSU ($595)

How does it look, What can I improve on this? Do i need powered and capacitor'd risers or just stock risers would work? Also, PCPartPicker lists the cards at 250W each and the rest totals to 88W, thus giving me 262W to spare from the 2100W to spare, would i have room for a moderate overclock?
This will be run in a discrete location than our homes so sound isnt an issue, and the electricity is something we dont pay (or our families) because of the place we'll run it.


 

[klondike_bar]

my suggetsions:

1a) The mobo only has 3x PCI16x and 4x 1x slots. Its possible you may not be able to get 7 cards per mobo to work
1b) Build a 7 card rig first to test the waters before you build another rig with 7 more cards. (I assume this is how you planned to use 14 R9 290's?)

2) You dont need a premium processor/ram/HDD for this. 500GB or 64GB SDD would be fine (the sdd is quiet/fast but functionally has little or no advantage to a dedicated mining rig)
3) bitfenix has some great 230mm fans with white blades and LEDs that are quiet and push lots of air while looking nice. (theres a good example in the mining rig thread thats been reposted about 10x in the last few pages using a metal casing a 4 GPUs)
4) If you plan to leave the machine on 24/7 you may just want to use the paperclip trick and turn on the PSUs simultaneously by hand. same effect but you save $20
4b) consider getting 3 slightly smaller PSUs - often it will be cheaper than 2 big ones.

[empoweoqwj]

Its great you aren't paying for the electricity. How are miners so innovative

[barkinos98]

my suggetsions:

1a) The mobo only has 3x PCI16x and 4x 1x slots. Its possible you may not be able to get 7 cards per mobo to work
1b) Build a 7 card rig first to test the waters before you build another rig with 7 more cards. (I assume this is how you planned to use 14 R9 290's?)

2) You dont need a premium processor/ram/HDD for this. 500GB or 64GB SDD would be fine (the sdd is quiet/fast but functionally has little or no advantage to a dedicated mining rig)
3) bitfenix has some great 230mm fans with white blades and LEDs that are quiet and push lots of air while looking nice. (theres a good example in the mining rig thread thats been reposted about 10x in the last few pages using a metal casing a 4 GPUs)
4) If you plan to leave the machine on 24/7 you may just want to use the paperclip trick and turn on the PSUs simultaneously by hand. same effect but you save $20
4b) consider getting 3 slightly smaller PSUs - often it will be cheaper than 2 big ones.

Thanks for the input mate!
I'll look into the motherboard thing, I've yet to see a person do it with this motherboard, but in case if the first one won't work I believe I can return it for some in store credit or whatever. Also, the store im using didnt have any 7 PCIE slot'd AMD boards, and those ones are the cheapest for intel ones which do, unfortunately not much stuff can help. Processor is also the cheapest 1150 in store and 4gb ram is just $5 more over the 2GB, why not.
I would love to have bitfenix fans, but thing is its not imported to turkey and getting it shipped from elsewhere is not feasible due to shipping :/ For the PSU, i think I know what you mean, but since it'll be in a seperate location away from us, having it all built into one box with one switch is a bit easier.

[barkinos98]

Bump...
Its still quite like the first post with the exception of Spotswood stackable cases, a bit cheaper MSI board and dividing 4 cards into 3 rig (each will have 4), windows and MSI boards tend to shut down the 7th slot apparently :/

[tehspirit]

You were able to run 6x radeon 290 in MSI Z87 G55 without a problem? Which OS? Drivers? Risers 16x 1x only?

[barkinos98]

Hey man,
I still havent bought the board but because i find the G45 Gaming looks better for $20, but its the same thing i assume.
I was planning to run 2 on the board until the risers come in, but i should have 6 of 290's working when the risers come. For the OS, i was thinking to try my luck with windows 8.1, then slowly go down to 8, 7 and then as a last-resort a linux distro.

Drivers, I was thinking the newest available. Also, i decided to change the boards into 4770K's with CLCs so i can the CPU only ProtoShares.

[nitrominer77]

I'm having a hell of a time trying to get the BAMT 1.2 eth0 drivers updated for the Z87 intel chipset... Tried for an hour and couldn't get it to work..

I too am going to try and run 7 R9 290's on an asrock z87 fatality board. Have you thought about windows idling the GPU's because they aren't hooked to a monitor?

I'm thinking BAMT is going to be the only way to do it. If only I could get the ethernet drivers installed....

[Gazza1]

You need 16GB of ram to build a 7 card rig.  You need 8GB to build a 6 card rig.  If you don't have enough ram some of the cards will not start mining.

They don't actually use the ram per say, but they need it for allocating.

I also wouldn't put my money on the G55 being able to do 7 cards.  It will do 6.  It's possible they changed it with the Z87 but with Z77 the GD55 did 6 cards and the GD65 & MPOWER boards did 7 cards

Definitely get the SSD, small ones can be had some 50-60 bucks and they are a major relief when you are constantly doing things within your miners.  Hard drives are such a pain in the ass.  When you look at the cost of the whole rig, the extra speed for that kind of relief is just a small percentage.

Get a PSU that has 5 or 7 year warranty.  You also don't need add2psu.  You can make your own little adapters for $1

Don't bother with the large coolermaster fans or any PC fans.  Just get a regular box fan.

Yes use powered risers for every card.

I assume you have a 20amp breaker to run this on?  A typical 15amp isn't large enough for one of those rigs.  Unless you are running 240v you'll need to hookup that rig to an outlet from either a garage, kitchen, or bathroom.  Don't change the breaker size in your breaker box.  You can run a cord from a large outlet that is fine.  Use a 12 gauge cord for 25ft.  Anything longer make it a 10 gauge cord.  You'll also need special 20amp surge protectors.

[repairguy]

You need 16GB of ram to build a 7 card rig.  You need 8GB to build a 6 card rig.  If you don't have enough ram some of the cards will not start mining.

They don't actually use the ram per say, but they need it for allocating.

I also wouldn't put my money on the G55 being able to do 7 cards.  It will do 6.  It's possible they changed it with the Z87 but with Z77 the GD55 did 6 cards and the GD65 & MPOWER boards did 7 cards

Definitely get the SSD, small ones can be had some 50-60 bucks and they are a major relief when you are constantly doing things within your miners.  Hard drives are such a pain in the ass.  When you look at the cost of the whole rig, the extra speed for that kind of relief is just a small percentage.

Get a PSU that has 5 or 7 year warranty.  You also don't need add2psu.  You can make your own little adapters for $1

Don't bother with the large coolermaster fans or any PC fans.  Just get a regular box fan.

Yes use powered risers for every card.

I assume you have a 20amp breaker to run this on?  A typical 15amp isn't large enough for one of those rigs.  Unless you are running 240v you'll need to hookup that rig to an outlet from either a garage, kitchen, or bathroom.  Don't change the breaker size in your breaker box.  You can run a cord from a large outlet that is fine.  Use a 12 gauge cord for 25ft.  Anything longer make it a 10 gauge cord.  You'll also need special 20amp surge protectors.

I have ran a 6 card rig with 2gb and it worked just fine. So...