My New Project: A Diff Kind of Rig

[Skiz]

Going to try something new. An investment/curiosity build. Will post pics as parts come in. Availability is making things a chore at the moment.



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So far:

Veddha V3C frame
Asus Z270A mobo
Intel Pentium G3900
8 GB Patriot DDR4
750 GB HDD. Way more than was necessary but it was the only spare I had laying around.

I'd post the other parts that are either already ordered or I'm attempting to find but where's the fun in that. :P

[IdolEyes787]

I hope I'm not alone in being disappointed that the spoiler wasn't a Stutz Bearcat.

[megabyteme]

So... are you making that in an aquarium or an upside down coffee table :unsure: :P

[dion09529]

I think it is a columbarium.

[IdolEyes787]

I think it is a columbarium.

It holds Peter Falk's ashes? :unsure:

[Skiz]

So if you haven't pegged it yet, I'm building a mining rig. I started dabbling in cryptos only this past May and it's been pretty fun thus far, learning and hobby-wise. I started mining even later (unfortunately) in around October-ish. Like some of you I always remember reading about mining and it only earning you a few pennies a day and that silly notion stuck with me for a long time. But after ETH and BTC really started taking off last year and big improvements in GPUs in the past two years as well, the profitability of mining got more and more intriguing. So after some typical (over)research on my part I decided, why not give it a go?

In the original post up top I had the frame assembled along with mobo and some RAM. In the past week or two I've have some more hardware roll in. Over the last few weeks I've acquired:

EVGA GTX 1080 FTW. This is paired up with my other identical card in my main office PC. Both of these 1080's are set to begin mining anytime the PC is idle.

For the new mining frame it's all 1080 Ti's. I would have loved to grab matching cards but finding even a single card right now is a chore so I'm just buying what I can find, within some parameters and specs:

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I had initially thought I would buy two 750W PSUs and join them to work as one using something called psu2psu (http://www.legitreviews.com/add2psu-daisy-chain-power-supply-adapter-review_1698). This keeps PSU costs down and allows for more connections, but after doing a lot of reading this "solution" had too many potential flaws. It took me almost two weeks to find an EVGA 1600W PSU but it finally arrived a couple days ago and I've been piecing things together since.

I initially bought a popular set of risers. Most risers use an odd Molex > SATA connection method. It's really dumb and the web is littered with people talking about how their adapters melted or caught fire. I don't want to destroy the hardware I just bought or my house. Fuck. That. I wasn't about to invite that sort of trouble into my home. I found some other risers that connect directly to SATA with no need for cheap adapters. I've also opted to spread out the connections. My PSU came with four SATA cables and plenty of connections so there's no reason to overload any of the cables. I'm putting two GPUs per cable and leaving two SATA connectors on each cable empty.

I have five 1080 Ti's running on the rig right now and I'm still on the hunt for GPU #6 and that will finish it off.

Boring electrical details:
I had initially intended to put the entire thing in the garage to take advantage of the cold winter air but I have a single breaker that runs my entire garage and it's 15 Amps. The PSU is capable of pulling a usable 1600W. Each GPU is capable of drawing as much as 300W. 300W x 6 = 1800W. Power limited to 80% each is 240W x 6 = 1440. A 15 Amp breaker will handle 15 x 120 = 1800W. 80% of which is considered usable so 1440W. For a machine that will be drawing that power 24/7, that is riding the line of too much power draw and asking for problems. Especially considering I'll still need to use other outlets out there at various times. The solution: Our house has a small L-shaped storage type room under the basement stairs. The breaker box is right next to it. I got to poking around and found the perfect power source. When we remodeled our kitchen we switched from an electric stove to a gas stove. The old electric stove was on a 220V plug connected to a 40 Amp breaker. That 40 Amp was now unused. I bought two 20 Amp breakers to replace the old 40 Amp and ran about 10 feet of external conduit and wiring to the storage room and placed two electrical boxes next to each other, each connected to a 20 Amp breaker. Now I have enough power for the rig and another currently unused 20 Amp electrical outlet right next to it should I want to build another of these at some point. I am keeping the small window in that room cracked about an inch and that lets in quite a bit of cold air. Even with that door closed, all GPU temps are staying in the 50s-60s.

Current status: Finished except the one GPU I'm going to add.

Veddha V3C frame
Asus Z270A mobo
Intel Pentium G3900
8 GB Patriot DDR4
750 GB HDD
5 x GTX 1080 Ti
EVGA 1600W P2 power supply

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[IdolEyes787]

I'm not a mining expert but I pretty sure you minimally still need one of these and probably a good pickax as well.

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Hope that helps.:)

[Skiz]

Fucking hell. I knew I forgot something. :glagpinch:

I've also opted to power limit the rig to 60% for the next few days. I've been doing a ton of reading on how to power risers. I mentioned above that I didn't want to get into a situation where I was creating a fire hazard but it seems I neglected to factor in what a 3-pin SATA connection was able to handle. I haven't had any problems but I don't want to either.

More boring electrical chatter:
A typical SATA connector has 3 12v pins that are fairly thin and only rated to handle up 1.5A each for a total of 4.5A. The PCIe specification allows for the card to draw up to 5.5A from the slot which is way more than what a single SATA connector can handle. If you have a dual SATA to 6 pin it will now split the current evenly between 6 of those 1.5A pins that can handle up to 9A total, which would be no problem for the max current that can be drawn by the card from the slot. I'm unsure however if I can safely run two GPUs on a single SATA cable by utilizing all four connections. I keep going over and over it and I'm getting spurious results so I'm opting for something else entirely. I looked at what other cables I have unused and saw the PERIF cable with three Molex connections. It's a 6-pin connection on the power supply and can support a hefty draw of power. I'm using 008S risers so they're versatile. They can be connected via SATA, 6-pin, or Molex. I've connected a Molex to two risers. I contacted EVGA and they're going to send me two more free of charge. So two riser per cable with three cables will power all six card with plenty of safety headroom to spare.

[megabyteme]

As someone looking at building a pc for use with VR in the nearish future-- and seeing the inflated prices of gpus... :censored:

[Gribley]

This is why I can`t get a new bloody GFX card any time soon... damn you manic miners.

Would say the rig looks great but that is like saying a wood burning stove is elegant engineering... does what it does and makes a lot of heat so I guess it`ll cut down on energy bills in that respect, toasty room :)

[Skiz]

As someone looking at building a pc for use with VR in the nearish future-- and seeing the inflated prices of gpus... :censored:

Buy from EVGA.

https://www.evga.com/products/productlist.aspx?type=0&family=GeForce+10+Series+Family&chipset=GTX+1080+Ti

They aren't a typical retailer so their prices are always at MSRP. Click the auto-notify button on a few cards and be ready to buy as soon as you get the email. I've bought 3 cards from them in the past 10 days or so using that method. For other brands, they'll catch up to demand eventually.


This is why I can`t get a new bloody GFX card any time soon... damn you manic miners.

Would say the rig looks great but that is like saying a wood burning stove is elegant engineering... does what it does and makes a lot of heat so I guess it`ll cut down on energy bills in that respect, toasty room :)

I've purchase 6 cards in about ten days. I bet you can find one. ;)

Sign up for alerts: https://www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/nvidia/

[Gribley]

Thanks for the link, those prices depress me (based on just a few weeks ago) but thanks for it anyway :)

Good continued luck with the scaffold project meanwhile, I`ll show patience and stashing my nibblecoins until I can afford a whole bit.

[megabyteme]

I was silently wishing for cryptocurrency to collapse after seeing prices get so insane. Yay!!! If I'm patient, I can get one at full retail instead of more!! :yay:

[IdolEyes787]

I've purchase 6 cards in about ten days. I bet you can find one. ;)

Like his quest to own a Porsche 911, I don't believe that not being able to find one is the main thing holding Meg back.

Fucking rich people. Right, Meg?

[shaina]

I've purchase 6 cards in about ten days. I bet you can find one. ;)

Like his quest to own a Porsche 911, I don't believe that not being able to find one is the main thing holding Meg back.

Fucking rich people. Right, Meg?

:lol:

[megabyteme]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XHC55vY5_Q

[MacGyverSG1]

I'm glad I don't game anymore. Last card I bought was a GTX 750 Ti when it first came out (didn't want to use HD4000 anymore). The price of video cards these days is crazy with the price gouging. I think the next generation NVIDIA GPUs will be out before prices settle down. Could be why it's hard to find 1080 Ti right now. I don't know if GDDR is expensive right now like DDR is, but until production facilities complete their transition, prices aren't going anywhere. Maybe in a year or so prices will settle down. We'll have to see if cryptocurrency survives. Hopefully no major natural disasters will interrupt RAM production either. I remember in the 90's when an earthquake would cause prices for RAM to spike. Maybe production facilities are better built and prepared for such occasions now.

The rig looks cool (or hot). Good luck with the experiment.