Timelaps video of my 40 Mhash/s Scrypt Crypto Mine Construction

[b333n]

Hey guys,

Last winter in Dec. 2013, I created a fairly large Scrypt crypto mine, consisting of 56x Radeon r280x GPU, built on 14 low end pc, everything packed on 4x 10$ low budget tray racks.

I recorded the build process and now finally had time to create a lil time laps video of the construction. Really relaxing to watch, IMHO.

The video can be seen here on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFWF4niGQOo

Some facts about the mine:
- Power consumption around 16 KW/h
- Hardware costs: arount 25k US$
- GPU temperature, after January when it got above zero degree celsius outside, always over 90°
- Temperature of the room was so hot, when you went there, you needed to let out the hot air first, before you can stay in there, even with just a tshirt.

Some hardware spec:
- 56x Sapphire r280x GPU
- 14x AMD Sempron PC with 4 Gigs RAM, no disks
- 4x GPU per PC, with PCI-e extenders
- 1x650 Watt and 1x850 Watt PSU per PC (there were no 1.2kWatt PSU around anymore, a year ago, cause all of you wanted them I guess )
- PXE boot setup to start the 14 diskless clients
- 2x32A and 1x16A power distributor boxes
- 2x big ass fans (12 inch?) per PC

I just wanted to share this with you guys, have fun watching my vid. hope you like it

Cheers,
b3n

[PVmining]

Hey guys,
Last winter in Dec. 2013...

nice video. on youtube you wrote mining start dec 2014 - would be a good idea to edit this before we all call you crazy  

[b333n]

xD yeah thanx, of course not 2014   Changed it to 2013. I mean, who still mines alts now, right?

BTW, somewhere I wanted to notice that:

after 4-5 month of mining, when I shut down the mine, 49 of 56 GPU were so mined out, at least 1 or both fans fell off, made loud noise or even worse.. I've sent them back "for repair" .. and.. xD .. the shop replaced me the cards for the initial money I paid, (after 6 months nonstop mining), because "the card is not available anymore and can not be replaced" .. ok, so I took the money.

This paid the electricity bill, kinda. 

All in all was a fun time, didn't pay off so far, financially. But hey:

2015: BTC TO THE MOON!

right?

[djm34]

nice timelapse

[b333n]

thanx, buddy.

[marcoman22]

Mining in Dec 2013 must be fun . Its always good to see those GPU rigs over today's Asics. Nice video.

[coinits]

Very nice. Thanks for this. You don't mine for future speculation? You could mine XMR with the cards and BURST with the harddrives at the same time. Not as much heat nor energy consumption. It is what I do with my two rigs. I'll never shut them down

[NattyLiteCoin]

Sick video. Thanks for sharing.

[b333n]

Glad you like it, wanted to finish and share it long time ago, just stumbled upon the footage.

cointis, actually I broke down the mine months ago, cause I wanted to get rid of the cards and sell them for a good price, and yeah.. mining wasnt profitable anymore, and I kinda already lost too much money in total, so it was a sunk-cost decision. And also I rented the room just for that, so I also wanted to get rid of the room to not spend more and more for something that maybe once will give me back some bucks that I invested..
so, nothing with mining XMR for me..,

BTW Merry X-Mas, everyone!!! Happy mining and speculating and such!

[adaseb]

Its a cool video. Basically reminds me of my first mining rig build a year ago. I had those exact same boxes also.

Too bad its not profitable anymore/

[qs.lab]

Its a cool video. Basically reminds me of my first mining rig build a year ago. I had those exact same boxes also.

Too bad its not profitable anymore/

waw!

[BiTJack]

Awesome Timelaps! But really sad all that stuff went to junk nothing more. 

[b333n]

I added another vid, this time less artistic, just raw footage of the whole thing after about 4 months of mining...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhWlipfnYuA

Now I can delete that footage and get a lot of space back on my MacBook

Cheers

[induktor]

Hi!, i am the one that comment on your first youtube video, from southamerica.

Ouch!, I can see several fans not spinning and others wobbling badly!

That pretty much can destroy the cards if you use them like that, I learn how to disassemble the fans and oil them properly (after breaking the first two hehe), and usually I had to disassemble 4 or 5 cards per week to oil the fans bearings, because always one of the fans where wobbling, stuck or about to get stuck.

I also programmed temperature limits, if the card touches 70C , the miner disables the card permanently, I also limit fan speed to 75% PWM to limit wear, but, in hot summer... geez, no way to prevent it!, I had a lot of days above 30C (outside) about 45C ambient inside the farm room.

in those extreme temperatures almost half the GPUs turned off, I waited until night and restart them, I know it is time consuming had to do that remotely every single day, but it was the only way to keep everything working.

After mining operations where cancelled by my investors, from the 64 GPUs, only 4 had issues, 3 of them due to dust in the VRM regulators, I disassemble the cards clean, replace pads an thermal compound and back to working condition and one , had the fans totally destroyed (the electronics give up) the card works but no fans so I decide to do a mod this card, and installed server fans screwed outside the case, and made a small electronics adapting network (because pwm signal was inverted), and it was so much success among my friends, that end up modifying a lot of cards like that!, i sell almost all of those modified cards now, I think I only have one 7950 left somewhere

[qs.lab]

I added another vid, this time less artistic, just raw footage of the whole thing after about 4 months of mining...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhWlipfnYuA

Now I can delete that footage and get a lot of space back on my MacBook

Cheers

dont andestend))

[tekke]

Nice video, and good amount of power back in dec 13. I still have 8  7970 running ,the income is very low, but I pay under 4 USD a month in electricity for my whole house

[coinits]

I added another vid, this time less artistic, just raw footage of the whole thing after about 4 months of mining...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhWlipfnYuA

Now I can delete that footage and get a lot of space back on my MacBook

Cheers

dont andestend))

He uploaded the raw footage to YouTube so he can delete off of his computer to free up space.

[b333n]

@induktor, yes, that's true and I know. I really abused that poor cards..

But I knew the shop will take back the cards (2 yrs product warranty xD) and pay me back the money for them, cause they can't repair em and they have no replacement cards, so they decided to pay back the full buy price. I figured that, with the first card that started to make noises, when I gave it back. And they were soooo sorry they needed to just give me back money and can't give me another card. And for me that meant: MINE as much as I can, break the mine down, give back the cards, get full refund

If I wouldn't have know that already, I would have cared better for the cards. And would have also tried to fix the broken fans. But so I didn't wanna modify them and loose product warranty because I "touched" em.
But actually all cards, even the one's that lost a fan (or two ), mined until the end with 100% accuracy, and did not get damaged. Was surprised myself how much those chip can take. After 95° deg they turned off, to prevent damage I guess. But they were still working, when I turned them back on... until they reached 95° deg again. Actually over a long period most of the cards were mining on around 85°-90° deg without a problem. So, I reached 70° only in my dreams.


@tekke

under 4 USD a month in electricity for my whole house

OMFG, that's cheap. I paid around 4k USD/month for electricity alone, for mine.


@coinits
thanx for explaining it to our russian fellow.

 

[Amph]

not worth it, but great video indeed, i would preferred nvidia though, 970 are the best right now, or maybe wait for the 960

[b333n]

not worth it, but great video indeed, i would preferred nvidia though, 970 are the best right now, or maybe wait for the 960

Back in Dec. 2013 Nvidia was not that strong in mining with gpuminer .. and I was too lazy to write an own miner using CUDA to run fast on Nvidia cards. Didn't really follow the scene anymore since 6 months, but it seems like somebody else took the time to write a CUDA version that now kicks AMD's ass, right?

So TBH, this was actually the first time I EVER did buy something of AMD/ATI...