Hi all, and my rigs.

[sarr]

New to this forum, just wanted to say hi to everyone,
I am planning be making some rig building guides and some ideas i use when i plan on mining a coin, or building a rig.

at the moment , im running 4.9 mh/s on all my rigs put together.

id like to get an opinion on my rigs,

my first rig is my gaming rig, which is just a watercooler r9 290x running around 58-60C getting 880khash average.

my second rig is a msi p67A G45 mobo with  intel celeron g1610, 550W ocz bronze powersupply, 2 x 7850 and 1 x 6870, getting around 1.1mhash
temps are 73C for one 7850 72 for 6870 and 49 for the other 7850.


my third rig is a 4 x sapphire 280x with 1200W gold thermaltake psu and budget biostart h61B mining motherboard with intel celeron g1610,running at 3mhash average.
temps are 68-71C on all cards.

soo what do you guys think?

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/22/2gza.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/18/n48a.jpg

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[Sydboy]

Hello Sarr

Am I allow to ask how much did the 4 290x rig cost ? Could any of the costs been decreased ?
How much ram does the beast have ?  I am toying with the idea of getting something but I fear it is to late.
I like GPU because I play games LOL and I can resell it or mine some other coins. My pC could also use a refresh.
But I would not say no to a incredibly cheap ASIC, if such a thing shows its self.

[sarr]

i assume you ment the 4 x 280x rig, each of the 280s was on sale for 220£ and they came with battlefield 4, i sold those on ebay each for 30£ making the cost of the actual card close to 190£, the motherboard was 34£ on sale as well, and the powersupply was 220£ on sale as well, cpu is literraly the cheapest 1155 i could find new (always option to rma, plus if mining goes to sh*t i can sell these parts still with their warranty) , this rig, has 4 gb of ram, while the smaller rig has 2gb of ram. (gaming rig was 8gb but its used more for games than mining)

if needed i can post my settings and overclocks and what not. id love to post my pics, but they keep getting deleted as a "suspicious link", i doubt the costs could be decreased unless you bought used parts, or got some sort of discount, maybe you could get cheaper ram, maybe weaker psu would work too. in total i payed 1350£ for the big rig and it gets 3mhash plus i could still probably add one more 280x if needed.

the rig itself is closer to 1200£ but i've also bought some fans and a big 12" fan to keep it cool. plus i ordered from multiple sites which ment higher postage fee

[sniksen]

That's a nice rig. I'm getting two R9 270 on Friday and two 290s next month. Which of the sapphires you got?

[sarr]

Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Dual-X OC 3072MB (11221-00-20G)

[jumpmanjay]

I wish I could get some cards at a decent price. I ordered a couple 290s, but the ship date keeps getting pushed back. Tempted to get them guaranteed (on ebay), but the prices are so high.


BTW, nice rig. 

[pontiacg5]

290x should do much more than 880, esp. if watercooled. This is also a "gaming" rig with high end cpu, ram, and mobo. I doubt any of that stuff makes much of a difference in the hashrate.





Try 1030/1500 TC 33999...

[sarr]

ive spent over two weeks with different settings and even got table trying out about 15 different thread concurrencies, at various overclocks and worksizes, and g threads and intensities, for some reason my card, is very shit overclocker and while mining i can get 1500 on memory stable , but if i use the pc it will crash even on mem clocks just around 1300, also for some reason, if i use worksize other than 192, hashrate doesn't go anywhere near 800khash, i get 880kh with tc 29000 (26212 also gets this kind of kh) worksize 192, and 1000/1500. but i have tried your config none the less.

results (tc 33999, 1030/1500):
using worksize 128, i get 770khash
using worksize 192, i get 840khash
using worksize 256, i get 730khash (and computer gets very laggy)
using worksize 320, i get 740khash
using worksize 384, i get 730khash
using worksize 448, i get 735khash
using worksize 512, i get 720khash

:\

[pontiacg5]

Very strange!

A worksize higher than 256 is only there to make noobs feel better. It never runs higher than 256! You can check this by looking at the .bin files cgminer makes.

scrypt130302Pitcairnglg2tc5120w256l4.bin
Was a 7870, running tc 5120 at w256! You'll never see a .bin file with w512 in it... Similarly, your hash rates stayed the same after W256  

As pulled, straight from scrypt-readme

Related parameters:
--worksize XX (-w XX)
Has a minor effect, should be a multiple of 64 up to 256 maximum.
SUMMARY: Worth playing with once everything else has been tried but will
probably do nothing.
 

If you are still using the PC while mining you've probably found the best values. You should be able to get more, but it will take a toll on system performance. Day/night clock settings are in order!

It's strange you see better performance at -w 192. I am going to have to play with that when I get home...

[sarr]

the thing is, id be willing to use settings to get more khash, even if it made pc unusable, but increasing or decreasing mem or core clocks has negative effect only, and nothing else works, and ive tried TC up to 61000something


ive also tried flashing to different bios, and for eg. asus bios lets me go higher with voltage but it doesnt affect the khash or stability. gigabyte bioses always lock my voltage, and all other ones ive tried seem to have no effect what so ever. also the r9 i have is XFX Core Radeon R9 290x 1000M Boost 4gb

[pontiacg5]

the thing is, id be willing to use settings to get more khash, even if it made pc unusable, but increasing or decreasing mem or core clocks has negative effect only, and nothing else works, and ive tried TC up to 61000something

Here, I'll repost this I posted elsewhere. This is how I found the sweet spot of my particular 290x, hopefully it's some help to you! Unfortunately different cards and PC's will make a difference, so we all can't run the same settings.

"I can pull 980kh/s from a 290x sapphire  

Can't recall exactly, but I think I was around 33999TC, 1040/1500? I found the sweet core/mem ratio, then noticed that increasing TC from 12x would bump the hashrate so I skipped around at +/-10-50 intervals. Every so often, it would take more core clock to bring it back to the "golden ratio." A few mhz at a time, nothing big. I keep it locked at 1500, though it will run up to 1700. I have managed to pull 1.004mh/s, but it crashed out after a few hours. Could have been the core clock bringing it down though, because I want to say I was up around 1060-1080  

This is water cooled though. The fan goes funny, can't use gpu_use_sync_objects if you don't have a fan plugged in. Sounds weird, but just plugging it in and removing it is enough to start mining.

Not worth all that extra paid over the regular 290!!!"

So, in other words I'd throw down all the "common" settings; lookup-gap 2, worksize 256, tc 12X shader count, maybe powertune 20 and work from there. You'll see patterns start, they seem easy to follow on this card. Don't change more than one thing at a time, unless you can keep track of what you've done. 290x's don't like to "leave" cgminer clean either, so restart often and delete the .bin files I mentioned in my last post between every config change!

[khhogger]

Howdy all,

Love that water-cooled solution--except that just adds cost and extends the payback period...

Not sure if this holds true for the 290/290x, but I have 7990's and 7950's, and I've found that running 2 threads on intensity 13 seems to be almost as good as running 1 thread on 20, with TC of 8192 vs higher thread counts ... the major difference being that running on 13 seems to make the card 'behave' better. 

I've played with the clocks and honestly, for me, I'd rather take it easy on these 'irreplaceable' cards than to push these cards to be absolute limit.

[pontiacg5]

Howdy all,

Love that water-cooled solution--except that just adds cost and extends the payback period...

Not sure if this holds true for the 290/290x, but I have 7990's and 7950's, and I've found that running 2 threads on intensity 13 seems to be almost as good as running 1 thread on 20, with TC of 8192 vs higher thread counts ... the major difference being that running on 13 seems to make the card 'behave' better. 

I've played with the clocks and honestly, for me, I'd rather take it easy on these 'irreplaceable' cards than to push these cards to be absolute limit.

As it's not a predominantly mining machine your point is kinda moot. Fools still spend $500+ on a GPU they never plan to make a single dollar with! I wanted a silent yet powerful PC as I've had mining rigs running through my house for a long time that are finally moving, the quiet will be nice 

The 290 doesn't run as good with two threads as it does one plus I've never met a 7950 that likes -g 2 better than -g 1. I can see the manners of the PC will be better with lower intensities. I've never really "used" a PC with mining 7950s, so I can't speak from experience!

[sarr]

my watercooled machine is my gaming machine, and i tend to travel with it and well, you try to get r9 290x cool on air in a mini itx case

[hashfun]

my watercooled machine is my gaming machine, and i tend to travel with it and well, you try to get r9 290x cool on air in a mini itx case

270x is also very good its speed arround 370Khs

[MoFan]

Very nice configuration. Unfortunately,I m a newbie and i can't afford this kind of hardware.

[khhogger]

As it's not a predominantly mining machine your point is kinda moot. Fools still spend $500+ on a GPU they never plan to make a single dollar with! I wanted a silent yet powerful PC as I've had mining rigs running through my house for a long time that are finally moving, the quiet will be nice  

The 290 doesn't run as good with two threads as it does one plus I've never met a 7950 that likes -g 2 better than -g 1. I can see the manners of the PC will be better with lower intensities. I've never really "used" a PC with mining 7950s, so I can't speak from experience!

+1 on the "fools".  I've cashed out enough fiat to cover my rigs, so I suppose I'm playing with "house" money here on out.

Indeed, neither the 7990 or 7950 get better results with -g 2.  They just seem to run a little cooler (and hence quieter).  I've had a 7950 clip out at -I 20 on just a slight overclock, but never on -g 2 -I 13.

I would LOVE to watercool these 7990's--they are wasted because they suck air-cooled, no matter how many fans at whatever angle I throw at it.  I've never been able to push them past 1400kh for very long without worrying about thermal shutdown, even on an open-air rig, risers, etc.  I bet watercooled, they can probably break 1700kh.

Totally agree on the noise, but keeping the fans around 70%, it's just "white noise" in my bedroom.  Plus, it's winter here, so unlike most people with their spot heaters, I actually *make* money heating my room.

Good to know about the 290's.  Given that 290's are relatively easier to get, that'll probably me my next purchase.

Thanks.

[dadennis]

I just bought my first "rig" Pretty limited for the moment, but I think I will be investing a bit more money as soon as I have it