Pictures of your mining rigs!

[JBangers]

https://i.imgur.com/HMqD035.jpg?1

[Trillium]

Got some really cheap Dell Optiplex PC's to add to my prime mining network at home. They were really cheap, apparently because 3 of 4 of them had dead PSU's. So just plug in another one right? Wrong. Dell and HP small form factor / slimline desktops use a quasi-proprietary mini 24-pin motherboard power connector that is about 1 cm smaller than a normal ATX motherboard connector. Sure, there are some adapter on ebay for about $15 from China or USA... but none in my country.

The solution was clear to me:





So I did that three times each for the three cables. Saved myself $30 on ebay + 1 month wait.

The next problem was that a normal PSU is twice the size of the Dell original. Also these cases get REALLY hot (50-60 deg C) when under 100% load for a long time, and with the original Dell PSU's they're even worse. The one with the working Dell PSU has the entire inside of the case at 50+ degrees C after 1 hour at load... not good for the components. The cooling in those Dell PSU really is terrible, you get what you pay for I guess.



And so it looked pretty silly with 3 big PSU power 3 small desktops, so I figure I will remove the cases entirely... FPGA stack style.

Taking shape!



Here's the 'installed' system on top of my bookshelf. Each has a USB to boot off.





Because installing windows for every machine takes too much time // I can't linux btw :S // I am investigating using VMWare ESXi 5.1 virtualization on them. But this is a learning curve in itself... and I have had to completely alter one of my servers just to run try and run them.

Oh yeah, each desktop is a core2duo @ 2.93 and with 3 or 4 GB ram.

EDIT: Oh yeah the three larger PSU are really old (~2002 or earlier). I'll be replacing all of them with new ones soon.

[networkgeek24]

What are you planning to mine with the old Dells? We throw 15-20 of these away every month.

[Cablez]

@Trillium  you do know that there is a primecoin gpu miner coming out soon right?

[Trongersoll]

What are the Pennies for?

[miter_myles]

What are the Pennies for?

I'm guessing to weigh down the base of the CD/DVD case so it doesn't fall over given the cords coming off the side...

[Trongersoll]

What are the Pennies for?

I'm guessing to weigh down the base of the CD/DVD case so it doesn't fall over given the cords coming off the side...

Oh, i thought maybe it was some penny to BTC transmutation device.

[Trillium]

@Trillium  you do know that there is a primecoin gpu miner coming out soon right?

That might or might not pan out like you think it will. There are some fundamental mathematical reasons why GPU mining is difficult for primes. I expect that eventually mtrlt will succeed but the performance gains will not be as extreme as when SHA-256 (bitcoin) was going from CPU to GPU.

As long as the GPU miner doesn't come out publicly within 7 days I should break even on what I paid for these (but probably not recover the cost of my time spent on them lol). Also, I have all the old cases and parts, I could sell these as 'faulty / for parts' without PSUs on eBay for more than I paid. That being said, racing out and buying a rack full of new servers would be a bad idea, if you can't use them for anything else.

What are you planning to mine with the old Dells? We throw 15-20 of these away every month.

Profitable mining always depends on a balance of performance, efficiency, and initial expenditure. These old Dells have the last two which makes up for the first (performance). Core2Duo CPU's are the lowest I would consider using for mining now.

[Cablez]

As long as the GPU miner doesn't come out publicly within 7 days I should break even on what I paid for these (but probably not recover the cost of my time spent on them lol). Also, I have all the old cases and parts, I could sell these as 'faulty / for parts' without PSUs on eBay for more than I paid. That being said, racing out and buying a rack full of new servers would be a bad idea, if you can't use them for anything else.

This is where I was really going.  It was a cool little project to be sure and congrats. I wish I had the time to tinker again.

[Beans]

What are the Pennies for?

I'm guessing to weigh down the base of the CD/DVD case so it doesn't fall over given the cords coming off the side...

Yeah, I broke a couple of the fan blades of my Jally so it vibrates more then normal now.

[Beans]

What are you planning to mine with the old Dells? We throw 15-20 of these away every month.

You could do this.

[1l1l11ll1l]

Can I play the big fan game too?  

• []https://i.imgur.com/trZWTJul.jpg[/]
• []https://i.imgur.com/pcyPEj6l.jpg[/]
• []https://i.imgur.com/MyA74jcl.jpg[/]
• []https://i.imgur.com/IlFVpr1l.jpg[/
• []https://i.imgur.com/5IoBlTFl.jpg[]
• []https://i.imgur.com/c42Jb8ul.jpg[]
• []https://i.imgur.com/Ko6RY4hl.jpg[]
  • [URL=https://i.imgur.com/LQ8rwzG.jpg][]https://i.imgur.com/LQ8rwzGl.jpg[][/URL]
  It needs to run off a car battery jump-starter (600 A peak current) because none of my bench PSU could handle it. It needs about 200 watts or more. Even my small desktop PC ATX PSUs were no match.
  
  I made a bag thing out of a painters dropsheet to show how much air it moves.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihvaFVsB4G8
  

Have you tried the same experiment with just one of the fans? AFAIK the fact that there are 12 shouldnt be that much of an improvement due to teh first fan being the only fan that intakes air - how about thrying it with them paralell instead of in series

I have 15 of these delta 120s - 252CFM - lovely for shifting air BUT too loud for continuos use (unless its in a server room) i have 12 pulling air in my server cab and 3 to 'play' with

"Arranging fans in series - stacked on top of each other, so one blows straight into the other - gives  no improvement in free-air performance, but doubles the pressure increase in a sealed box, and better and better performance compared to parallel fans as the system resistance gets higher and higher. Incidentally, this means that those goofy monster processor heatsinks with layered low-profile fans are a waste of money, since fans strapped onto a heatsink are very nearly in the free-air situation, and putting two layers of them there does close to nothing to the airflow."  Source

So an array of fans next to each other would move much more air, but the static pressure would be far less (Would fill up the bag quicker, but the bag would be saggy), this is why the bag balloon too a bit to fill up, but then looked like it was about to burst

[Trillium]

Yeah the pressure was immense. Thinking of it from the point of view of molecules of air, its not surprising that the pressure is high. Its statistically unlikely for many to find their way past 14 sets of high velocity fan blades in a row.

[GodHatesFigs]

Wow, people are still GPU mining?

[lano1106]

I'm a late adopter. I just got in BTC about the same time of the cyprus crisis when the BTC went parabolic up to the roof.

I jump in maybe mid April. I bought 2 7970.

Today, just a few months from when I started mining, I have a handful of 10 ports hubs filleds with BEs.

This is just unbelievable how fast things change.

Beside my GF that do not like to see electronics coming in the basement, I'm having a blast with BTC mining even if I'm not sure that I'll fully repay all the equipement with what I'm doing while mining.

[Unacceptable]

I'm a late adopter. I just got in BTC about the same time of the cyprus crisis when the BTC went parabolic up to the roof.

I jump in maybe mid April. I bought 2 7970.

Today, just a few months from when I started mining, I have a handful of 10 ports hubs filleds with BEs.

This is just unbelievable how fast things change.

Beside my GF that do not like to see electronics coming in the basement, I'm having a blast with BTC mining even if I'm not sure that I'll fully repay all the equipement with what I'm doing while mining.

Good for you    If it makes you happy......& you know your not gonna make ROI,have fun then 

Alot of good stuff coming,keep reading the Custom hardware/Group buy sections,stay up to date & SAVE YOUR BTC/USD..........you MAY get lucky & get in on the train ride 

For now,its a trainWRECK unfortunatly 

[Jay_Pal]

Got some really cheap Dell Optiplex PC's to add to my prime mining network at home. They were really cheap, apparently because 3 of 4 of them had dead PSU's. So just plug in another one right? Wrong. Dell and HP small form factor / slimline desktops use a quasi-proprietary mini 24-pin motherboard power connector that is about 1 cm smaller than a normal ATX motherboard connector. Sure, there are some adapter on ebay for about $15 from China or USA... but none in my country.

The solution was clear to me:

https://i.imgur.com/RgiS1mXl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Rh8Aq8Pl.jpg


So I did that three times each for the three cables. Saved myself $30 on ebay + 1 month wait.

The next problem was that a normal PSU is twice the size of the Dell original. Also these cases get REALLY hot (50-60 deg C) when under 100% load for a long time, and with the original Dell PSU's they're even worse. The one with the working Dell PSU has the entire inside of the case at 50+ degrees C after 1 hour at load... not good for the components. The cooling in those Dell PSU really is terrible, you get what you pay for I guess.

https://i.imgur.com/jHZJaKOl.jpg

And so it looked pretty silly with 3 big PSU power 3 small desktops, so I figure I will remove the cases entirely... FPGA stack style.

Taking shape!

https://i.imgur.com/GQChDGal.jpg

Here's the 'installed' system on top of my bookshelf. Each has a USB to boot off.

https://i.imgur.com/roa04MTl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/boURlSEl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6EEQTJYl.jpg

Because installing windows for every machine takes too much time // I can't linux btw :S // I am investigating using VMWare ESXi 5.1 virtualization on them. But this is a learning curve in itself... and I have had to completely alter one of my servers just to run try and run them.

Oh yeah, each desktop is a core2duo @ 2.93 and with 3 or 4 GB ram.

EDIT: Oh yeah the three larger PSU are really old (~2002 or earlier). I'll be replacing all of them with new ones soon.

Lovely rack!!!

[jungle_dave]

I'm a late adopter. I just got in BTC about the same time of the cyprus crisis when the BTC went parabolic up to the roof.

I jump in maybe mid April. I bought 2 7970.

Today, just a few months from when I started mining, I have a handful of 10 ports hubs filleds with BEs.

This is just unbelievable how fast things change.

Beside my GF that do not like to see electronics coming in the basement, I'm having a blast with BTC mining even if I'm not sure that I'll fully repay all the equipement with what I'm doing while mining.

There might be an option for you and yes allot of people are GPU/CPU mining out there but not necessarily for  bitcoin. You could try mining for "scrypt" based coins and there are allot to choose from. Some people have even set up pools that mine the most profitable coin at the moment so it is possible.
Check out this post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=259649.1020

It mines altcoins  and pays in converted bitcoin...

[atomicchaos]

Wow, people are still GPU mining?

Why wouldn't they be? I make over 2 BTC daily after converting the alts I mine to Bitcoins. While everyone else was spending money on ordering ASICs, I created a SCRYPT farm. I figure why take my army into the arms race for ASICs, I'll wait until the armies are weakened and build my army for much less money.

[pink]

Why wouldn't they be?

Because they pay for electricity
Btw pretty impressive farm, can you share your electricity specs?
(load, price and so on)

Also.. that room should be pretty hot!