Considering a 4-6 GPU build

[yowen]

So I've had the itch to build a new system, but no real identifiable need for one. So I figured why not get into mining? I get to build a new system, I get to learn some new things and perhaps I'll even make some money. I plan on just running Nicehash on my 1050TI tonight just to familiarize myself and expand from there.

So what I'd like to do is identify a motherboard that'll allow me to run up to 6 GPU's, although I'd settle for something that can handle 4. Then I'd start out mining with a pair of 1060's or 1070's. Haven't decided yet, but that's what I'm liking budget wise.

It seems a good motherboard is hard to find and/or tricky to identify. I imagine a full-ATX motherboard is a good starting point for slot availability? From there it'd be awesome to get something that needs DDR3 memory, given the current pricing of DDR4 memory. But I'm sure much of those motherboards have been gobbled up/are hard to come by.

So my question is, can you guys make a few suggestions as to what to be on the lookout for and/or if you know of a decent guide as to what to look for? From some google searches it seems the ones to look out for are either motherboards designed for mining or otherwise there are some gaming motherboards that also look like they'd fit the bill.

Beyond that I was planning on a power supply from a reputable manufacturer, such as Seasonic, something gold rated and perhaps around 1000 Watts.

Alternatively I had considered just upgrading the PSU in my gaming rig for now, as I imagine that'd support a couple of 1060's and perhaps even the 1050? Then see where this takes me from there?

 

[Archaea]

Read some of the other threads in this subforum -- why re-invent the wheel? 60% of the threads in this subforum provide the exact information you are looking for.

Here's an example of a similar thread I created fairly recently.
https://hardforum.com/threads/launc...580-windows-10-based-mining-rig-blog.1946756/

and for another clear source -- check out 1stminingrig.com

Personally,
I strongly recommend, and will only buy the ASUS B250 Mining Expert motherboard going forward for my future rigs. It's the only board that has a bios POST test to verify communication with your cards is working. That's invaluable for troubleshooting a failing riser card. I could have saved myself a ridiculous amount of time troubleshooting by owning only this board.

 

[yowen]

Read some of the other threads in this subforum -- why re-invent the wheel? 60% of the threads in this subforum provide the exact information you are looking for.

and for another clear source -- check out 1stminingrig.com

Personally,
I strongly recommend, and will only buy the ASUS B250 Mining Expert motherboard going forward for my future rigs. It's the only board that has a bios POST test to verify communication with your cards is working. That's invaluable for troubleshooting a failing riser card. I could have saved myself a ridiculous amount of time troubleshooting by owning only this board.

Thanks, as for reading other threads, sure. I was just getting lost in a sea of information as far as motherboards are concerned. I appreciate the tip on the Asus motherboard!

edit: After reading around 1stmining, that's also a great resource so far!

 

[Orddie]

Archaea that MotherBoard will be hard to come by these days. I agree with everything else you said and will add checkout whattomine.com to see whats popular on the network and +/- 10% expected income.

once you start.. don't stop. it will cost you more to stop than to keep going

 

[Archaea]

1070, 1070ti, and 1080ti are the best three cards to mine with IMO.

But they are nearly completely out of stock right now anywhere near MSRP.

I personally wouldn’t buy a 3GB 1060 card, but 1060 6gb cards work fine.

They are a bit overpriced, but I have 12 of these cards in a single biostar tb250btc pro motherboard all powered by a single 1200 watt power supply. It makes about $35 per day.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01IPVSLTC/ref=mp_s_a_1_44?ie=UTF8&qid=1515117216&sr=8-44&refinements=p_85:2470955011&rps=1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=1070&dpPl=1&dpID=51rdJo6WqmL&ref=plSrch


Here’s similar for cheaper with no quantity limits.
https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=ZT-1060GGT
———

1080 is barely better than 1070 and uses more power. So 1070 or 1070ti is considered more desirable, but with prices up on the others but still near MSRP for the 1080, it might be worth considering.

Use nicehash profitability calc to determine how much each card makes in general - it’s a good newbie friendly calculator.

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator

 

[yowen]

So here's what I ended up doing:

ASUS PRIME Z270-P

This should run 7 or 8 GPU's, for now I've ordered 2x 1080's (@ $540), as you mentioned the 1070's and 1070TI's were practically the same price and/or just not even available. Perhaps I'll supplement with the 1060's you linked.

I paired it with 4gb ram and a G4400 pentium.

For a power supply I got a 850W Seasonic Focus Series.

I expect this setup should make $12 to $14 per day.

 

[atp1916]

Strong start yowen


I feel that if you are patient with the GPUs, you will catch the "deals" as they come. Just don't lose patience and drop a hundred+ over MSRP on something. I am hunting for 3 more 1070 Ti's, but i'll be damned if i pay over $500 shipped/tax for them.

As for the 1080 vs. 1070 vs. 1070 Ti.... yeah. 1070s @ 450-475, 1070 Ti's at ~500... 1080s at 520... market is dictating some common sense here at this point. Archaea dropped some good e-hunting locations a few posts up that i wasn't even aware of - so cheers mate

The Asus Mining Expert and its bad riser detection ability is a huge time-saver, that is for sure. I literally just got done spending an hour trouble-shooting a code 43 in W10 and guess what - bad riser! I consider my time worth hundreds per hour, so the board isn't very expensive in that context.

Regardless, i use several Asus H270 Prime Plus/CSM and Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ boards. The Asus H270 board is very nice though. It seems to love hosting 8 NVidia card parties. Literally no issues with it.

 

[Archaea]

I think prices are going one way

Up.


For the next few months at least. See this thread:
https://hardforum.com/threads/nvidi...s-switch-over-to-manufacturing-volta.1951718/


You can't buy any cards at
superbiiz
bandhphoto
rjlindustries
amazon
(and only quanity 1 cards) at Newegg

nowinstock and pricewatch can't even direct you to any cards -- it seems like everythings going out of stock, and prices are really starting to raise --- inventory may well be fading as the guy in the video in the link states, because NVidia fabs have switched over to producing volta. If volta is 2-3 months out - you'll be seeing $1000 1080TI's, and $600, 1070/1070TI, because of the mining demand and short supply in the meantime.

 

[atp1916]

I refuse to dip back into AMD. LOL

What we do need, and i hate to say it... is another bitcoin price dip.

That usually rustles up some used cards.

 

[thebufenator]

Hard to beat RX570's that do cryptonight at 875H/s at low wattage.

With Nvidia you normally can mix all models in one rig if you have to. Which is nice when price shopping

 

[Deleted member 12106]

Heh, I need a new video card and was thinking of picking up a 1080 and let it do some mining to offset the cost. The stock/prices are a little nuts.

 

[yowen]

Archaea dropped some good e-hunting locations a few posts up that i wasn't even aware of - so cheers mate

It was exactly the info I needed to finally make my purchase decisions, I was suffering from something of an information overload. This helped me pinpoint a combination that I think will do the trick!

 

[yowen]

Heh, I need a new video card and was thinking of picking up a 1080 and let it do some mining to offset the cost. The stock/prices are a little nuts.

I went to look at the ones I bought yesterday and it's already not available anymore at the $540 price I paid yesterday.

 

[IronMan_74]

So here's what I ended up doing:

ASUS PRIME Z270-P

This should run 7 or 8 GPU's, for now I've ordered 2x 1080's (@ $540), as you mentioned the 1070's and 1070TI's were practically the same price and/or just not even available. Perhaps I'll supplement with the 1060's you linked.

I paired it with 4gb ram and a G4400 pentium.

For a power supply I got a 850W Seasonic Focus Series.

I expect this setup should make $12 to $14 per day.

good luck with your 1080's! i am also picking up 2x1080 today, found mine on facebook swap from 2 different parties, am getting them each for $450. while the 1070/1070ti may have better performance per watt at $450 i couldn't pass that up. They will help round out my rig thats currently running a RX 480, 1060 6gig, and a GTX 970. Should bring me up to an average of $20/day!

 

[stealthballer123]

Craiglist 7950s are a super bargain for building up hash rates, picked up 2 last week for 60 a pop and they both mine at 580 4gb hashrates.
I am building a 7950 mining machine if I can find a couple more for that price.
I really think these might be hidden gems for a little while longer.

 

[yowen]

Craiglist 7950s are a super bargain for building up hash rates, picked up 2 last week for 60 a pop and they both mine at 580 4gb hashrates.
I am building a 7950 mining machine if I can find a couple more for that price.
I really think these might be hidden gems for a little while longer.

Very interesting, my concern though is that AMD cards seem to be a bit harder to manage/require more troubleshooting than Nvidia cards. The issue may even be compounded when running a system with a mix of AMD and Nvidia.

As for craigslist, I did start poking around on there, I saw someone selling a Titan for $200 and a Titan X for $600, are those worth it?

 

[stealthballer123]

I was shocked how little trouble I have had mixing amd and nvidia cards.
I do like the single power plug on 580s versus the older cards, but the bigger memory interface makes it worth dealing with for now.

I don't know how the older nvidia stuff performs outside my 970s hash a little less than 580 4gbs with about the same power draw.

750tis mine well(for what they are) and I think that titan is the high end of that architecture, might be worth a look, the power draw may be way too high. If I had 200 bucks I would probably take a flyer on that one and resell it if it didn't work out.

 

[RazorWind]

Very interesting, my concern though is that AMD cards seem to be a bit harder to manage/require more troubleshooting than Nvidia cards. The issue may even be compounded when running a system with a mix of AMD and Nvidia.

As for craigslist, I did start poking around on there, I saw someone selling a Titan for $200 and a Titan X for $600, are those worth it?

Just tried the mixed AMD/Nvidia thing last week.

It's a pain. You can get it like 90% working, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get full control over power and voltage for either set of cards while I had them mixed. Afterburner works the best of the various overclocking tools, but even if you enable voltage adjustments, I couldn't get it to work with a mixed setup.

It's much better to just run two separate rigs for your separate sets of cards, IMHO, or liquidate the AMD cards and run all Nvidia.

Edit: This is not to say it doesn't work. it totally does, and the basic "plug everything in, start up NHLM" is totally doable. You just end up running hotter than you need to, which for a small operation, where the rig is just sitting in your house, is undesirable.

 

[stealthballer123]

That's weird, I have had zero problems on two different chipsets and versions of windows.

I run the amd cards on their own miner with the nvidia cards on their own. Using awesome miner.

 

[Archaea]

not a fan of mixing amd and NVidia cards. I did it with 8 1060 and 2 RX580...it worked - most of the time, but driver updates often seem to reset undervolt overclock settings on the other card. it just adds complication. not worth - unless you are running just a few cards.

nicehash 2.0 doesn't work with AMD - so you end up running two instances of nice hash -- but then at one point - you couldn't run two different instances of nicehash - not sure if they fixed that or not. 2.0 wouldn't start if 1.8 with my AMD were running.
afterburner doesn't work with AMD's newer drivers. so you can't control your NVidia cards if AMD is installed.


skip the headaches.

 

[yowen]

750tis mine well(for what they are) and I think that titan is the high end of that architecture, might be worth a look, the power draw may be way too high. If I had 200 bucks I would probably take a flyer on that one and resell it if it didn't work out.

Looked at the ad again, they actually want $250 for it. For $25 more I can just get a 6gb 1060 and have the advantage of the latest architecture/efficiency.

 

[RazorWind]

Does Awesome Miner have voltage/power control built in?

That, to me, seems like something that's really missing from a lot of the mining applications. If they just handled that themselves, so you don't need afterburner, and could set it in a batch file, that'd be awfully nice.

That's weird, I have had zero problems on two different chipsets and versions of windows.

I run the amd cards on their own miner with the nvidia cards on their own. Using awesome miner.

The need to run two separate pieces of software is also a headache, if not a serious problem. Nicehash Legacy Miner, at least, does have the ability to manage multiple teams of cards on its own.

 

[yowen]

Nicehash Legacy Miner, at least, does have the ability to manage multiple teams of cards on its own.

Even if I'm running all Nvidia cards, would you still recommend running legacy miner?

 

[IronMan_74]

Does Awesome Miner have voltage/power control built in?

That, to me, seems like something that's really missing from a lot of the mining applications. If they just handled that themselves, so you don't need afterburner, and could

The need to run two separate pieces of software is also a headache, if not a serious problem. Nicehash Legacy Miner, at least, does have the ability to manage multiple teams of cards on its own.

it does but not on the free version, it will integrate with MSI afternburner but you need the $170 version or above to do it :/

 

[RazorWind]

Even if I'm running all Nvidia cards, would you still recommend running legacy miner?

Anecdotally, some folks seem to think it pays a little better than the new one (which is nvidia only for some reason). If you have enough hardware, you could split your GPUs into two teams (of say, two cards each) and then run both side by side for a few days, and look at which one makes more money.

For my part, I just run the new one one my all-nvidia machines, and Legacy on my machines that have AMD cards.

 

[draksia]

Anecdotally, some folks seem to think it pays a little better than the new one (which is nvidia only for some reason). If you have enough hardware, you could split your GPUs into two teams (of say, two cards each) and then run both side by side for a few days, and look at which one makes more money.

For my part, I just run the new one one my all-nvidia machines, and Legacy on my machines that have AMD cards.

Right now the most profitable algorithms on Nicehash are only on the Legacy client and not enabled by default, It pays me roughly $10 more a day on 5 x 1070's

 

[Jailer]

1070, 1070ti, and 1080ti are the best three cards to mine with IMO.

But they are nearly completely out of stock right now anywhere near MSRP.

I personally wouldn’t buy a 3GB 1060 card, but 1060 6gb cards work fine.

They are a bit overpriced, but I have 12 of these cards in a single biostar tb250btc pro motherboard all powered by a single 1200 watt power supply. It makes about $35 per day.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01IPVSLTC/ref=mp_s_a_1_44?ie=UTF8&qid=1515117216&sr=8-44&refinements=p_85:2470955011&rps=1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=1070&dpPl=1&dpID=51rdJo6WqmL&ref=plSrch


Here’s similar for cheaper with no quantity limits.
https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=ZT-1060GGT
———

1080 is barely better than 1070 and uses more power. So 1070 or 1070ti is considered more desirable, but with prices up on the others but still near MSRP for the 1080, it might be worth considering.

Use nicehash profitability calc to determine how much each card makes in general - it’s a good newbie friendly calculator.

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator

All OOS stock already but thanks for the heads up!

Did just score this but better get em while they are in stock. Cheapest I've seen a 1070 in a while.

https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AS-T10708G

 

[Parja]

All OOS stock already but thanks for the heads up!

Did just score this but better get em while they are in stock. Cheapest I've seen a 1070 in a while.

https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AS-T10708G

Aaaand out of stock!

 

[Jailer]

Wow, that didn't take long. Glad I got one when I did.

 

[noko]

I was shocked how little trouble I have had mixing amd and nvidia cards.
I do like the single power plug on 580s versus the older cards, but the bigger memory interface makes it worth dealing with for now.

I don't know how the older nvidia stuff performs outside my 970s hash a little less than 580 4gbs with about the same power draw.

750tis mine well(for what they are) and I think that titan is the high end of that architecture, might be worth a look, the power draw may be way too high. If I had 200 bucks I would probably take a flyer on that one and resell it if it didn't work out.

I have two systems with mixed cards, no issues here. Win 10 is a Godsend in that department. One has 2x 1070s and a Nano, the other a 1080Ti and a 290. I will be reconfiguring virtually all my systems to a more unified configuration in the near future but really it has been virtually problem free from that aspect.

Yes AMD is more problematic configuring but right now my AMD cards are kicking the Nvidia cards out into left field. My Vega64 is pulling in now over $16/day, nano ~$9, Vega FE ~$17/day. Even the 290 is close to what my 1070 is pulling in. This actually sways back and forth and does not mean much in the long run. Nice having both options as a note. Any motherboards with pcie slots can work cards, personally I rather have a few X16 real slots with some lesser ones since I like options to use different systems for different stuff. For example I can game with the 1080Ti while the 290 and 4 cores of the 1700x continue to mine and see no real difference in game play. My old FX ASUS Sabertooth has 5 pcie slots, three are being used and I may use a fourth one - no need for a specialize limited board in other words.

Now if I was going to really expand and go with 20 or more cards then I think I would go with the more specialized motherboards for mining.

 

[yowen]

Thought I'd post an update, I finally got the last piece to the puzzle yesterday (that being the motherboard). Getting everything setup was a breeze! I'm sure there is some fine tuning to be done, but so far I've:

• assembled everything (except for video cards)
• booted first try, installed windows
• disabled windows update and automatic driver downloads, shut down
• attached my 1050 TI and 1080 with risers, booted again, the 1080 spun up for a bit but then fans stopped spinning, shut down
• moved the 1080 to a different slot, booted, fans stayed spinning
• downloaded nvidia drivers, ran the install, both cards recognized, reboot
• installed nicehash and afterburner and got to mining!

Now I am having 1 problem, the 1050 TI stopped mining when I checked on it this morning, I stopped mining altogether and restarted, it worked again. But now when I log into nicehash from my work computer, I see it once again is only mining on the 1080, any ideas?

edit: just refreshed the page, it seems to be mining now