Any suggestions on my current setup?

[Snowpea]

I learned about mining a few months ago, but never felt the need to get into it even though i was interested because i didn't have the hardware for it.  But then, last week, i found a batch of 8 5830s locally for $60 a piece, and that price was too hard for me to resist.  I spent the weekend rigging together a bunch of old machines in the apt (i don't have to pay for elec) and this is my current setup. 

Because i didn't want to put too much capital into it, i used whatever mobos/psus i had around.  Some of the machines have external psus powering the second card.  Some of the rigs only run a single card, or at most 2 gpus. 
Card/Mhash
5830 322   phoenix: VECTORS VECTORS4 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 BFI_INT -k phatk   56   1040/300
5830 322   phoenix: VECTORS VECTORS4 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 BFI_INT -k phatk   56   1040/300
5830 324   phoenix: VECTORS VECTORS4 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 BFI_INT -k phatk   60   1040/300
6950 400   -v -f30 -w128                                                                                             62   890/200
5830 325   phoenix: VECTORS VECTORS4 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 BFI_INT -k phatk   62   1040/300
5830 325   phoenix: VECTORS VECTORS4 FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 BFI_INT -k phatk   62   1040/300
5830 291   -v -f 30 -w 128                                                                                           61   1000/200
5830 291   -v -f 30 -w 128                                                                                           68   1000/200
5830 310   -v -w 256 -r 2 -f1                                                                                        66   1040/200
5830 291   -v -f 30 -w 128                                                                                           73   1030/200
5750 169   -w 256 -v -f 20                                                                                            62   870/1000

Total comes out to about 3.3 GH/s

Anyone have any suggestions on how i can improve it?  Are these the hash ratings that i should be seeing for these cards? are there better clocks/flags i should be running?

[mokahless]

Awesome. Just make sure those external power supplies can handle the GPUs and that the internal ones you are using on the motherboard can handle the load on the PCI-e rails from the GPUs.

I don't have any experience with the 5000 series but I run -v 2 -w 128 on CGminer. It's very good but I think there are better settings. I run those settings to get about 95MH/s on a 6770m 725mhz, 27MH/s on a 6450@700MHz and a somewhat variable 350MH/s on an unlocked 6950@880MHz.

What kind of cases you have?

[Snowpea]

cases? you don't really want to know.... I think i have.. some old dell dimensions.. and some other generic branded stuff that i happened to have on hand.  the ventilation isn't very good but i'm getting decent temps because i have fans blowing directly onto the cards.

[crankmonkey]

wow thats a great find, how did you find them like that?
craigslist or something

[Snowpea]

yep, i got em on craigslist.  anyone have suggestions on how i can improve my mhash?  without having to invest too much

[pyroim]

over clock some more if you are already using the external fans to cool down the rigs, (front to back in case ONLY leave the sides ON it helps air flow)
 remove power supplies from the cases ( extra heat)
downclock / disable cores on processors , again less heat

^____________^ from here up its for getting rid of heat and increasing the longevity and the overclocking ceiling

possibly a linux based rig is more suitible, also check your SDK version i dont recall exact version but i think it was 2.1 thats GREAT for 5xxx series and the newere version is NOT


 other than that check your PSU's and make sure they are all rated properly, newegg actually has a PSU calc that can help you out with some of the number crunching if youre not handy with it yourself


lucky you on the "free" energy but watch out if they meter you, you may just get a nice bump in rental!but i dont know about the fine print of your contract

[Snowpea]

over clock some more if you are already using the external fans to cool down the rigs, (front to back in case ONLY leave the sides ON it helps air flow)
 remove power supplies from the cases ( extra heat)
downclock / disable cores on processors , again less heat

^____________^ from here up its for getting rid of heat and increasing the longevity and the overclocking ceiling

possibly a linux based rig is more suitible, also check your SDK version i dont recall exact version but i think it was 2.1 thats GREAT for 5xxx series and the newere version is NOT


 other than that check your PSU's and make sure they are all rated properly, newegg actually has a PSU calc that can help you out with some of the number crunching if youre not handy with it yourself


lucky you on the "free" energy but watch out if they meter you, you may just get a nice bump in rental!but i dont know about the fine print of your contract

hmm, those are some interesting suggestions.

I have noticed quite a bit of heat being given off by some of the processors, when i don't believe they do much at all when it comes to mining, although mining machines do tend to have ~30% cpu utilization?  How low can they go?

yeah, i've considered putting linux on them, but currently i like the ease of use with logmein to fix miner issues while at work or elsewhere.  They have a nice firefox addon or java based web viewer that i can use just about anywhere.

As for the SDK... yeah, i think i'm using the newest, like 2.4 ~ 2.6...  Will i see a substantial increase in hash speed if i roll back to 2.1?

elec is the only thing i don't worry about, they don't even meter the individual apts.

[SirTarbill]

Be aware that free electricity doen't exist: somebody is paying for it and a ~2500w load 24/7 (my estimate for your 11 cards) is quite noticeable.
I would try to lower this risk: undervolt your cards to 0.95~1.00v and keep stock speeds. Your rigs will be much more efficient. You will heavily reduce noise and heat, which means longer lifespan for components, specially fans.

[pyroim]

was just a fair warning for the electricity! ones around me have large meter boxes with equal monitors per apts.

however it couldnt hurt to look over that contract i assume you have, look under supplied utilities (posible.)
 could save you a headache along the way, now remember if you are going to do large scale cooling its going to ADD wattage
large cooling units almost use twice elect to cool half the load! which you already stated you are not concerned about!

but defiantly look at that contract

[Gladamas]

I run a 5870 and a 5830, I found that CGMiner works a lot better than Pheonix or poclbm. I use: -w 128 -g 3

I found this to be the optimal setting. If you want to be able to use your computer without your screen glitching out, I would recommend (intensity) -I 6 or so (on CGMiner). Otherwise -I 9 works best (any higher and it over-stresses and reduces the hash rate of the card.)

Also if your cards are not a reference model then I would not recommend overclocking it very much.

[mem]

yep, i got em on craigslist.  anyone have suggestions on how i can improve my mhash?  without having to invest too much

Good idea, I just scoured the aussie craiglist for radeon but unfortunately nothing (yet....).

Id also reccomend cgminer for automatic fan speed and gpu speed control (based on target temp).

I have a single 5970 (more on the way) that churns a steady 740mH with a target temp of 69c (oc'ed to 821mhz).

It could be worth checking out BAMT - it runs of a usb key (saves more power and dead easy to install). Remote control is supported quite well.
If nothing else, test a single machine on BAMT with a usb key - not happy, reboot and yank usb key

[Snowpea]

that's a good idea, can i configure all BAMT machines to point to some kind of proxy so that i can switch all my miners to a diff pool easily?