8-GPU rig in 4U rack case

[x8664amd]

Pretty cool system from the guys over at bitnand.com. A riserless 8-GPU system placed inside a 4U rack server case. This systems comes with a server-grade 2500W power supply.

The whole miner is fully enclosed with front-to-back facing fans for clean airflow.

[huntingthesnark]

yeah, not unlike the Octominer and Onda boards. To be fair I've found this type of layout very effective in terms of airflow, compared to more traditional 4u cases. Trouble is, you'd be crazy to buy one now. Secondhand market is stuffed with similar hardware for bargain prices...

[swogerino]

Looks beautiful but the Psu is a bit overkill for this unless you populate it wth Gtx 1080 ti cards. In fact I think that would be the most effective cost in long term as I am sure bitcoin price will go up. Unfortunately 1080 ti is still very expensive on the market. There are cheap miners being sold on ebay and even with a cheap price no real demand is seen. I see those ads from a long time now. I have bought one from there and I am happy with it.

[vmozara]

Now, the 8-slot case looks like really sweet deal.

My rigs are 7 Vega cards with homemade case, and the costs are:

Motherboard: 150$
Ram: 8gb sodimm: 40$
SSD: 128gb mini sata: $50
Power supply 1200W, breakout board and 17x power cables: 100$
Wooden and aluminum parts for case: $20

total: 360$ + time effort to make the case.
So this nice looking case is just a little bit more than my DIY solution, having much bigger PSU but a little bit less ram and ssd. I wish there was such a deal when I was building the rigs, but now it doesn't make sense for me, only if i was going to build new rigs.

[shater]

Now, the 8-slot case looks like really sweet deal.

My rigs are 7 Vega cards with homemade case, and the costs are:

Motherboard: 150$
Ram: 8gb sodimm: 40$
SSD: 128gb mini sata: $50
Power supply 1200W, breakout board and 17x power cables: 100$
Wooden and aluminum parts for case: $20

total: 360$ + time effort to make the case.
So this nice looking case is just a little bit more than my DIY solution, having much bigger PSU but a little bit less ram and ssd. I wish there was such a deal when I was building the rigs, but now it doesn't make sense for me, only if i was going to build new rigs.

I think ram can be swapped out. Though tbh, if you're mining on Linux, 4GB ram is plenty enough. You don't need anything more than that.

[vincl]

Now, the 8-slot case looks like really sweet deal.

My rigs are 7 Vega cards with homemade case, and the costs are:

Motherboard: 150$
Ram: 8gb sodimm: 40$
SSD: 128gb mini sata: $50
Power supply 1200W, breakout board and 17x power cables: 100$
Wooden and aluminum parts for case: $20

total: 360$ + time effort to make the case.
So this nice looking case is just a little bit more than my DIY solution, having much bigger PSU but a little bit less ram and ssd. I wish there was such a deal when I was building the rigs, but now it doesn't make sense for me, only if i was going to build new rigs.

I think ram can be swapped out. Though tbh, if you're mining on Linux, 4GB ram is plenty enough. You don't need anything more than that.

little bit = almost 3x the costs....

[whitesites]

If you want to maximize your GPU's life, and hash rates of your cards, build an open air rack.  My 8 GPU racks have at least 2 inches of spacing between the cards.  in that case the cards are going to be right next to each other meaning each card is going to be sucking in the heat from the neighboring card.  The result is once the system warms up. all your cards will be hitting max Temps, and hash rates will drop as the card try to keep temps under control.  With something like that you would have to use blower style cards and they don't cool as well or hash as fast as traditional cards.  

If you want to be serious about this.  Build open air rigs, and keep them at floor level where the cooler air is.  

[dagarair]

If you want to maximize your GPU's life, and hash rates of your cards, build an open air rack.  My 8 GPU racks have at least 2 inches of spacing between the cards.  in that case the cards are going to be right next to each other meaning each card is going to be sucking in the heat from the neighboring card.  The result is once the system warms up. all your cards will be hitting max Temps, and hash rates will drop as the card try to keep temps under control.  With something like that you would have to use blower style cards and they don't cool as well or hash as fast as traditional cards.  

If you want to be serious about this.  Build open air rigs, and keep them at floor level where the cooler air is.  

Boy you are totally wrong.  I have over 700 machines and at first I thought like you.  Testing and research tells you the exact opposite.  Forcing air through at a rapid rate with enclosed units will cool the card.  I have both still but only like 40-50 open air left to convert.  Temp on enclosed rigs are normally 10C cooler IF THE FANS ARE GOOD.

Also on the ground is incorrect, they need to be about 2 ft above ground for optimal cooling.  The reason is at ground level the rotating air (vortex) is present.  At a level higher that is eliminated.

This looks nice but I hope those fans are fast.  Honestly I like Octominer solution best with fans on both entry and exit.

[heatminer]

Looks beautiful but the Psu is a bit overkill for this unless you populate it wth Gtx 1080 ti cards. In fact I think that would be the most effective cost in long term as I am sure bitcoin price will go up. Unfortunately 1080 ti is still very expensive on the market. There are cheap miners being sold on ebay and even with a cheap price no real demand is seen. I see those ads from a long time now. I have bought one from there and I am happy with it.

well it gives you the option to put 1080tis in there. as for ebay you may have been lucky. we've been buying other miner's rigs lately and have been astounded by the lack of care the hardware received.

[shater]

If you want to maximize your GPU's life, and hash rates of your cards, build an open air rack.  My 8 GPU racks have at least 2 inches of spacing between the cards.  in that case the cards are going to be right next to each other meaning each card is going to be sucking in the heat from the neighboring card.  The result is once the system warms up. all your cards will be hitting max Temps, and hash rates will drop as the card try to keep temps under control.  With something like that you would have to use blower style cards and they don't cool as well or hash as fast as traditional cards.  

If you want to be serious about this.  Build open air rigs, and keep them at floor level where the cooler air is.  

Boy you are totally wrong.  I have over 700 machines and at first I thought like you.  Testing and research tells you the exact opposite.  Forcing air through at a rapid rate with enclosed units will cool the card.  I have both still but only like 40-50 open air left to convert.  Temp on enclosed rigs are normally 10C cooler IF THE FANS ARE GOOD.

Also on the ground is incorrect, they need to be about 2 ft above ground for optimal cooling.  The reason is at ground level the rotating air (vortex) is present.  At a level higher that is eliminated.

This looks nice but I hope those fans are fast.  Honestly I like Octominer solution best with fans on both entry and exit.

Agreed, the enclosed casing forces air to ram through the GPU. Surprisingly, enclosed case like this got much better cooling performance than open-air rigs.

[gsrcrxsi314]

how much PCIe bandwidth to each slot? the full x16 lanes? or is it gimped to x1? does it run at full PCIe 3.0? or again gimped to lesser like 2.0 or 1.1?

how about the CPU specs? available to upgrade to something with more cajones?

does this actually fit in a standard 19" server rack? or is it too wide like all the other guys selling "4U server" setups? what about rails?

[huntingthesnark]

If you want to maximize your GPU's life, and hash rates of your cards, build an open air rack.  My 8 GPU racks have at least 2 inches of spacing between the cards.  in that case the cards are going to be right next to each other meaning each card is going to be sucking in the heat from the neighboring card.  The result is once the system warms up. all your cards will be hitting max Temps, and hash rates will drop as the card try to keep temps under control.  With something like that you would have to use blower style cards and they don't cool as well or hash as fast as traditional cards.  

If you want to be serious about this.  Build open air rigs, and keep them at floor level where the cooler air is.  

Boy you are totally wrong.  I have over 700 machines and at first I thought like you.  Testing and research tells you the exact opposite.  Forcing air through at a rapid rate with enclosed units will cool the card.  I have both still but only like 40-50 open air left to convert.  Temp on enclosed rigs are normally 10C cooler IF THE FANS ARE GOOD.

Also on the ground is incorrect, they need to be about 2 ft above ground for optimal cooling.  The reason is at ground level the rotating air (vortex) is present.  At a level higher that is eliminated.

This looks nice but I hope those fans are fast.  Honestly I like Octominer solution best with fans on both entry and exit.

Agreed, the enclosed casing forces air to ram through the GPU. Surprisingly, enclosed case like this got much better cooling performance than open-air rigs.

Absolutely right. It's astonishing what a set of Nidec or Delta fans in a case like this will cool, even at high ambient. Tight spacing is important in forced air rigs - your highest temps will be on the ends where there's a gap. Kinda counter-intuitive...

[x8664amd]

how much PCIe bandwidth to each slot? the full x16 lanes? or is it gimped to x1? does it run at full PCIe 3.0? or again gimped to lesser like 2.0 or 1.1?

how about the CPU specs? available to upgrade to something with more cajones?

does this actually fit in a standard 19" server rack? or is it too wide like all the other guys selling "4U server" setups? what about rails?

The number of x16 PCIe lanes available is limited by the chipset. These are not all full x16 lanes afaik.

CPU is a mobile Celeron unit, which should be plenty sufficient for mining purposes. CPU isn't the bottleneck in a mining system.

Yes, this is standard 4U rack size. This will fit in a standard 19" server rack. You can even see all the mounting points at the front.

[gsrcrxsi314]

Having tabs and mounting points doesn’t automatically mean it’s the right width.

None of it matters if rails aren’t available for it. Are they?

[adaseb]

I bought a bunch of cheap 4U old server chassis cases last summer that I am still playing around with. Basically its the same dimensions as this.

The most GPUs I could fit without them being too close and with a regular sized PSU is 6 GPUs. I wouldn't be able to do 8 GPUs like the above unless I got a slimmer or an external PSU.

So this seems like a nice setup and well designed.

[NiklasFalk]

If the external width is 485mm, measuring on screen, that means c-c for the cards of about 42mm, 2.1 times normal PCI-PCI distance.
If you have fanless miner card where the cooler flange fills the gap to the next card (and fin direction is designed for that type of airflow), fine, but dual fan GPUs does not even fit (or it's fans will only suck the backplate of its neighbor).

With 60mm c-c you could place dual fan 8GPU on risers in a deep 19" case (mobo and PSU needs to be placed in front of the GPUS and careful design of the airflow is needed). There were some designed like this mentioned before.

Redesigned my now only open air rig to have 80mm c-c and turned off the circulating fan in the basement, now up to 57C but it's very silent now. Living near a server case, not that appealing...

[lokki7799]

Does Bitnand offer international shipping? I like this 4U case.

[Marvell2]

proccessor is too weak, ram can probaby be sweapped out but an i3 or higer is best for rigs now due to algos like mtp

[tokexchain]

proccessor is too weak, ram can probaby be sweapped out but an i3 or higer is best for rigs now due to algos like mtp

The processor does not matter as the GPUS are the main reason for this rig, you could probably still mine on the CPU, one extra hash is one extra hash, right?

It only has to do one job, is not a media centre or gaming PC... Nice looking unit anyway, looks well made too. Would be good if there were a choice of PSUs if you did not want to utilize or need all that power.

[dragonmike]

proccessor is too weak, ram can probaby be sweapped out but an i3 or higer is best for rigs now due to algos like mtp

The processor does not matter as the GPUS are the main reason for this rig, you could probably still mine on the CPU, one extra hash is one extra hash, right?

It only has to do one job, is not a media centre or gaming PC... Nice looking unit anyway, looks well made too. Would be good if there were a choice of PSUs if you did not want to utilize or need all that power.

You didn't read what Marvell2 wrote. Yes, this CPU is too weak for algos like mtp (and its very likely soon-to-come offsprings).

The box does look good indeed, but nowadays if you want something future proof, you'll need to get more than a Celery and at least 8GB of ram.