I thought that I would start small but with room for expansion. So the logical step was to get a case for the future GPU's as well as drop some of my old GPU's into it at first. Does anyone have any thoughts about this case: KADA-6-1-GPU-Mining-Rig-Open-Air-Frame I'll be scanning the forum for suggestions of mother boards also. Thank you.
Is building your own frame out of the question? The frame you linked seems to be of solid construction (and it includes the risers which is nice), though you can build your own for a fraction of that price. How many GPUs are you looking to utilize initially?
@Enjei, although I'm not incompetent at building things, I'm more of a software guy nowadays and haven't worked in the data centers with racks and servers for many years. Plus my tools are limited since my move. I have 3 old gaming GPU's to initially put in a frame, was planning to fill the 6 slots with better ones when possible after doing some more research. Can possibly salvage the hard drives and memory from these 2 alienware's although I'll have to get a motherboard 'cuz I think they're fried. So thus starts my little project...
You'll never break even if you spend $200+ on a simple frame which holds 6 cards. $5 worth of wood will do the trick. Once you have your prototype ready find a jail and let the wood shop there clone it many times for little money. BTW, those powered risers are just $5 a piece, shipped rom CN.
@LastNinja, I see. I was kinda torn between buying DCR while it is still cheap and trying to mine some with my spare parts. Good advice all around from both of you. Another question, what should I look for in a GPU for mining, I've been looking around and noticed that some say large amounts of memory is not as important as shaders. What else should I be looking for as far as specs go? Thanks again.
Look at MH/watt and MH/price (substitute the appropriate unit, GH/s, KH/s where necessary). Keep in mind alot of power figures floating around are inaccurate. See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-power-supply-balance,3979-4.html for an example on how to measure correctly. Lets take his example of an HIS 290X, under load the average is 243W for the card itself, with peaks of upto 428W! (each PCI-e 6pin power connector can provide 75W, each 8pin 150W and the board itself can provide upto 75W, according to the specification). Some hash/s figures have been submitted here: http://www.mininghwcomparison.com/list/index.php?brand=amd For the 290X we see 2GH/s and 1.8GH/s. If we use the average power figure and make a safe assumption of 1.9GH/s for the 290X it works out to 7.819MH/watt. A similar card on newegg costs $309.99 USD after rebate, minus shipping (6.129MH/$1USD); they've been mostly replaced by the 3xx series. You also have to factor in the power consumption of the board/cpu and possibly peripherals if you choose to use them. Where I live the energy price is roughly $0.118 USD/KWh for residential and $0.07 - $0.08 USD/KWh for commercial (plus fixed charge of ~ $0.65 USD per day apply to both, simply for being connected to the grid). If you assume a board with good power regulation and low power CPU uses on average 70W while providing work to the card(s). Something to keep in mind is that there's some discrepancy in CPU usage between Win/Linux and the version of cgminer. Running this single card would in terms of pure energy cost me: $26.59 USD per month on residential supply. Between $15.75 - $18.02 USD per month on commercial supply. If we add two identical extra cards at the same price/power figures. $68.05 USD per month on residential supply. Between $40.27 - $46.02 USD per month on commerical supply. Your energy prices may be (vastly) different. These are all things I would take into account before selecting card(s) to purchase. This is just an example, I may have some figures wrong and there are alot of assumptions (possibly bad ones). I suggest doing your homework thoroughly, if you're going to build a rig; build it right the first time, you'll save yourself alot of headaches in the long run.
I was thinking a bit the same as you did. Build a mining rig with a lot of old stuff you already have lying around. So i used the old mobo/ram/psu and processor of an old gaming pc. Build the frame from some wood, which was actually not that hard. The only thing i had to buy was some risers and GPU's. (the gpu's i bought arent the best ones possible because this is more of an hobby for me. Im not really thinking this is going to make me rich one day, if i make a little profit ill be happy) I noticed the psu from the old pc wasnt strong enough, so instead of buying a new one i screwed one out of an other old pc and used it as a second one. I spend a total of about 120 euro's (about 140 dollar) on it . Like i said it was just for the fun for me. You have to keep in mind that when you do want to make this profitable you have to either invest a lot in hardware and have a lot of luck ofc. If you are building this rig for the fun of it just like me, i would say Go for it! Here some pics of what my rig looks like (it was sill under construction at that time)
Good job. I'm now also building minig rig with elemets stayed from mining BTC. It will be inside aluminium open-frame with two PS's in parallel, 2x750W. I hope next week will be up and I can show pictures also.
Thanks for sharing those pics @thijsjuhhh, nice little setup. I'm doing this for fun myself with thoughts of possibly expanding. I got me a box case with plenty of room to build on. When it gets here, I'll share some pics too when I get started. I was going to get an open case, but had second thoughts about that since I have 2 curious cats who might suffer
Compliments on the lovely selection of wine bottles in the background! Slovenians really do have nice wines!
And now here it is my working mining rig OFAl4-MkI . As you could see it's aluminium open-frame construction, it can acommodate 2 power supplies at the bottom of frame. Now there is only one because only one GPU is currently installed. Maximum capacity is 3+1 GPU's with appropriate power supply (supplies) and risers. Rig system parameters: Mother board: ASrock H81 Pro BTC, BIOS ver. 1.90 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.00 GHz RAM: one stick KINGSTON KVR13N9S6/2 2GB (next week one more stick will be installed) HDD: ancient Hitachi 160 GB PS: XFX PRO 750W 80PLUS Bronze (will be replaced with Antec HighCurrent PRO 750W, 80PLUS Gold) GPU: Sapphire R9 280X VAPOR-X Driver: Catalyst 15.7.1 Hashing parameters: Average speed with CGminer 3.7.2 Decred: 1.410 Gh/s at CoineMine.pl pool GPU clock: default setting 1.070 MHZ Mem clock: default setting 1.550 Mhz Vddc: default setting 1.2V GPU temp: 65°C Fan speed: 40% (1.900 rpm)
@Johnshpon3, Nice and clean machine. Thanks for sharing. As for me, I got the "Thermaltake Core X9 E-ATX Stackable Tt LCS Cube Chassis" and was trying to gut my old systems, and put the parts in here, but hit a snag. Will probably just get a new motherboard (with the 6 pcie slots) and new ddr3 ram since my old systems use ddr2.
Well, I've manage to wrangle up the parts and get a mining rig set up with 1 GPU (so far). Here is my part list (in summary) ASRock Motherboard ATX DDR3 1066 LGA 1150 H81 PRO BTC Thermaltake x9 Core Cube case Intel Celeron G1820 Processor Kingston RAM 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Kingston 240 GB SSD SuperNova 750 Bronze Power Supply Panda 300 Mbps USB Wifi R9 280x GPU I gotta admit, I wasn't prepared for the size of this card: Here is what is looks like now: I removed the CD drive bays at the top, so I think I can get some brackets across the top and put this current card as well as 5 others at the top window with some riser cables. I may need some erector set type brackets.
We can build whatever brackets you need from sheetmetal and rivets. I probably have all that in the garage, but if anything, you may want to buy pretty looking aluminium. LOL congratulations on being my first post.
Let me know what kind of aluminum I need to buy bro. Here is what the top looks like without the lid: The GPU's will fit, and I'll get 6 of them in there. I already have 3 riser cables, just need 3 more riser cables and 5 more GPU's The reason I'm putting the GPU's up here is that by the time I get to the 4th GPU, I'll need to install another power supply at the bottom of the case.