I own a gaming community called Unknown Skies gaming (For a little Context) and we are planning a server upgrade. Currently we have a Dell R620 with Dual E5-2690 V2's Running @ 3.3Ghz, has 196GB Ram. The game we host on this rig is called Empyrion Galactic Survival.
The reason for the upgrade is currently the server just isnt high end enough to continue supporting our target playerbase of 100 players, and Performance has dipped due to the game being alpha and the devs are not doing much to improve server side efficiency. Back in 7.0 we could host 150 players on this machine, now it struggles with 60... Yeah big change in 2 years.
After a lot of research... I can clearly see Intel Xeon Gold 6154 CPUs (2 of them) do not outperform even the R9 3950x according to passmark. The price of these used intel servers is stunningly high on the used market... Dual 18 Core XG 6154 Processors with 128gb ram (Dell R740 I think, feel free to correct me) cost right around 10,000$ USD Used give or take 1000$ or so... And get stomped on by an 800$ Single Socket CPU... Thats new and has a warranty... I get that it doesnt support as much memory... But Dang...
So I looked into threadripper... HOLY SHAT!! The 3970x hits 60k+ in passmark... And the ENTIRE system with a custom cooling loop is less than 6 Grand? Thats nuts to me! Amazing Deal! Im sad all my servers and rigs are intel hahahahaha.
What we need, What im aiming for, and my thought process - Feel free to leave thoughts and suggestions..
AMD Threadripper 3970x (Because High Per thread throughput matters due to shit code, and more players on a playfield means more cpu usage on that thread, Lots of threads matter as every playfield opens a new PlayfieldServer.exe and is its own instance so the more spread out players are, the more cores you need to spread out workload. 32 cores 64 threads... NICE)
Corsair Vengeance LPX 256 GB (8 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (Each player uses around 1-3gb ram, 2 on average, goal was 100 Players)
ASRock TRX40 TAICHI ATX sTRX4 Motherboard (Thought this was a solid selection given the options I saw)
EVGA 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply SHOULD be sufficient with a closed loop water cooler, all SSD's and not requiring a gaming GPU (Plan on a 1050ti / 1050 at most)
Case im using is a modified 4U rackmount case with 3x 120mm fans going in the front, radiator behind those. Could NOT find one that I didnt have to modify. Went with El-cheapo option cause imma be drilling it and modding it internally - Rosewill Server Chassis Server Case Rackmount Case for Bitcoin Mining 4U off ebay I think it will work, and if not I have a file server that would LOVE the home LMAO. So it was well worth the Chance.
Water cooling Solution I settled on was a Thermaltake Floe TR4 Edition. I thought about using a Custom Cooling loop, but by the time I priced everything out the way I would do it... It came out to like 500$ ish LMAO. The above cooler From what I can tell should be sufficient, and should fit in the case i chose. Tight fit, but should fit.
Im excitedly looking forward to the build :) Anyone have any experience with any of this and care to chime in?
submitted by Q1) What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.**
A1) This will be a dedicated NAS system for my home network. As such, I'm looking to have it:
- Host ##TB's of 720, 1080 & up resolution Movies and TV Shows I'm about to begin ripping from a MASSIVE DVD & Blueray collection I have.
- My kids are big on Minecraft. I understand it's possible to host your own "worlds" (or whatever they call the maps you can build) on your own "server". I think it would be pretty neat to offer them (& their friends - if can be done 'safely/securely') their own partition on one of my NAS HDD's.
- I also have accounts with a couple diff VPN companies... I understand it's possible (?) to sync said VPN's with a NAS, this might be a more relative topic on the next point/purpose...
- I'd like to be able to remotely link to this NAS for when I travel overseas and want to stream at my temp location from my house/this NAS.
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Q2) What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?**
* A2) Here's where I make matters more complicated than most others would... I've been an advocate for Bitcoin and crypto-currencies in general since 2013. I invested in a small mining outfit back in 2014 (strictly Bitcoin/ASIC's). One of my buddies is the President of a large-scale mining operation (foreign and domestic) and he convinced me to dabble in the GPU mining-space. I made my first hardware purchase in Q4, 2017 and launched a small-scale GPU-Farm in my house since then. I had the rigs mining up until Q3 of 2018 (not cost-efficient to keep on, especially living in SoFlo) and since then, the hardware's been collecting dust (& pissing off my family members since they lost access to 3X rooms in the house - I won't let anyone go near my gear). One of my New Years Resolutions for 2019 was to clear out the house of all my mining equipment so that's all about to go up on eBay. So "budget" is relative to whatever I "MUST" spend if I can't repurpose any of the parts I already have on hand for this build... (Anyone having something I "need" and is looking to barter for one of the items I'll list later on in here, LMK).
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Q3) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.**
A3) IMMEDIATELY! :)
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Q4) What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc\)**
A4) Well I had a half-assed idea approximately 1 year ago that it might be wise to build a bunch of 'gaming rigs' to sell on eBay with my intended repurposed mining hardware so I went on a shopping spree for like 6 months. That said; I've got a plethora of various other components that aren't even unboxed yet. 90% of the items I've purchased for this additional project were items that were marked down via MIR (mail-in-rebates) & what-not...
AFAIK, there are only 3X items I absolutely do not have which I 'MUST' find. Those would be - 1) Motherboard which accepts "ECC RAM". 2) CPU for said MOBO. 3) Said "ECC RAM".\*
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Q5) Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?**
A5) I'm located in Southwest Florida. No Microcenter's here. Best Buy is pretty much my only option although I am a member of Newegg, Amazon & Costco if that makes any difference?
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Q6) If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? Brands and models are appreciated.**
A6) In an attempt to better clean up this Q&A, I'm going to list the items I have on-hand at the end of this questionnaire in-case passers-by feel like this might be a TLDR.* (Scroll to the bottom & you'll see what I mean).
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Q7) Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?**
A7) I don't think that's necessary for my intended purpose although - I'm not against it if that helps & FWIW, I'm pretty skilled @ this task already (it's not rocket science).
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Q8) Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)**
A8) As stated in A4; ECC RAM is non-negotiable... RAID seems like a logical application here as well.
- This will predominantly be receiving commands from MacOS computers. I don't think that matters really but figured it couldn't hurt to let you guys know.\*
- I'd also be quite fond of implementing "PFSENSE" (or something of that caliber) applied to this system so I could give my Netgear Nighthawks less stress in that arena, plus my limited understanding of PFSENSE is that it's ability to act as a firewall runs circles around anything that comes with consumer-grade Wi-Fi routers (like my Nighthawks). Just the same, I'm open to building a second rig just for the firewall.\*
- Another desirable feature would be that it draws as little electricity from the wall as possible. (I'm EXTREMELY skilled in this arena. I have "Kill-A-Watts" to test/gauge on, as well as an intimate understanding of the differences between Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium rated PSU's. As well as having already measured each of the PSU's I have on-hand and taken note of the 'target TDP draw' ("Peak Power Efficiency Draw") each one offers when primed with X amount of GPU's when I used them for their original purpose.\*
- Last, but not least, sound (as in noise created from the rig). I'd like to prop this device up on my entertainment center in the living room. I've (almost) all of the top-shelf consumer grade products one could dream of regarding fans and other thermal-related artifacts.
- Almost forgot; this will be hosting to devices on the KODI platform (unless you guys have better alternative suggestions?)
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Q9) Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?**
A9) Definitely! Desired theme would be WHITE. If that doesn't work for whatever reason, black or gray would suffice. Regarding "Case Size". Nah, that's not too important although I don't foresee a mini-ITX build making sense if I'm going to be cramming double digit amounts of TB in the system, Internal HDD's sounds better than a bunch of externals plugged in all the USB ports.
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Q10) Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?**
A10) I don't know. If I do need a copy of Windows, I don't have one so that's something I'll have to consider I guess. I doubt that's a necessity though.
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**Extra info or particulars:*\*
AND NOW TO THE FUN-STUFF... Here's a list of everything (PARTS PARTS PARTS) I have on-hand and ready to deploy into the wild &/or negotiate a trade/barter with:
CASES - Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Arctic White (Model# Crypto-Currency-9011048-WW) - (Probably my top pick for this build).
Cooler Master HAF XB EVO (This is probably my top 1st or 2nd pick for this build, the thing is a monster!).
Cooler Master Elite 130 - Mini ITX - Black
Cooler Master MasterBox 5 MID-Tower - Black & White
Raidmax Sigma-TWS - ATX - White
MasterBox Lite 5 - ATX - Black w/ diff. Colored accent attachments (included with purchase)
NZXT S340 Elite Matte White Steel/Tempered Glass Edition
EVGA DG-76 Alpine White - Mid Tower w/ window
EVGA DG-73 Black - Mid Tower w/ window (I have like 3 of these)
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CPU's - ***7TH GEN OR BELOW INTEL's ("Code Name Class mentioned next to each one)**\*
Pentium G4400 (Skylake @54W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "ECC CAPABLE" Celeron G3930 (Kaby Lake @ 51W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "ECC CAPABLE" :) i5 6402P (Skylake @65W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :(
i5 6600k (Skylake @ 91W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :(
i7 6700 (Skylake @ 65W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :(
i7 7700k (Kaby Lake @ 95W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :(
***8TH GEN INTEL's **\*
i3-8350K (Coffee Lake @91W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "ECC FRIENDLY" :) I5-8600K (Coffee Lake @95W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :(
***AMD RYZEN's **\*
Ryzen 3 2200G
Ryzen 5 1600
Ryzen 7 1700X
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MOTHERBOARDS -
***7TH GEN AND BELOW INTEL BASED MOBO'S - **\*
MSI Z170A-SLI
ASUS PRIME Z270-A
ASUS PRIME Z270-P
ASUS PRIME Z270-K
EVGA Z270 Stinger
GIGABYTE GA-Z270XP-SLI
MSI B150M ARCTIC
MSI B250M MICRO ATX (PRO OPT. BOOST EDITION)
***8TH GEN INTEL BASED MOBO'S - **\*
EVGA Z370 FTW
GIGABYTE Z370XP SLI (Rev. 1.0)
MSI Z370 SLI PLUS
***AMD RYZEN BASED MOBO'S - **\*
ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F GAMING
MSI B350 TOMAHAWK
MSI X370 GAMING PRO
ASROCK AB350M PRO4
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RAM -
Way too many to list, nothing but 4 & 8GB DDR4 sticks and unfortunately, none are ECC so it's not even worth mentioning/listing these unless someone reading this is willing to barter. At which time I'd be obliged to send an itemized list or see if I have what they're/you're specifically looking for.\*
______________________ THERMAL APPLICATIONS/FANS - JUST FANS - BeQuiet - Pure Wings 2 (80mm)
Pure Wings 2 (120mm)
Pure Wings 2 (140mm)
Silent Wings 3 PWM (120mm)
NOCTUA - PoopBrown - NF-A20 PWM (200mm) Specifically for the BIG "CoolerMaster HAF XB EVO" Case
GREY - NF-P12 Redux - 1700RPM (120mm) PWM
Corsair -
Air Series AF120LED (120mm)
CPU COOLING SYSTEMS - NOCTUA - NT-HH 1.4ml Thermal Compound
NH-D15 6 Heatpipe system (this thing is the tits)
EVGA (Extremely crappy coding in the software here, I'm like 99.99% these will be problematic if I were to try and use in any OS outside of Windows, because they barely ever work in the intended Windows as it is).
CLC 240 (240mm Water-cooled system
CRYORIG -
Cryorig C7 Cu (Low-Profile Copper Edition*)
A few other oversized CPU cooling systems I forget off the top of my head but a CPU cooler is a CPU cooler after comparing to the previous 3 models I mentioned.
I almost exclusively am using these amazing "Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pads" as an alternative to thermal paste for my CPU's. They're not cheap but they literally last forever.
NZXT - Sentry Mesh Fan Controller
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POWER SUPPLIES (PSU's) - BeQuiet 550W Straight Power 11 (GOLD)
EVGA -
750P2 (750W, Platinum)
850P2 (850W, Platinum)
750T2 (750W, TITANIUM - yeah baby, yeah)
ROSEWILL -
Quark 750W Platinum
Quark 650W Platinum
SEASONIC -
Focus 750W Platinum
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STORAGE - HGST Ultrastar 3TB - 64mb Cache - 7200RPM Sata III (3.5)
4X Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD's
2X Team Group L5 LITE 3D 2.5" SSD's 480GB
2X WD 10TB Essential EXT (I'm cool with shucking)
+ 6X various other external HDD's (from 4-8TB) - (Seagate, WD & G-Drives)
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Other accessories worth mentioning -
PCI-E to 4X USB hub-adapter (I have a dozen or so of these - might not be sufficient enough &/or needed but again, 'worth mentioning' in case I somehow ever run out of SATA & USB ports and have extra external USB HDD's. Although, I'm sure there would be better suited components if I get to that point that probably won't cost all that much).
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Needless to say, I have at least 1X of everything mentioned above. In most all cases, I have multiples of these items but obviously won't be needing 2X CPU's, Cases, etc...
Naturally, I have GPU's. Specifically;
At least 1X of every. Single. NVIDIA GTX 1070 TI (Yes, I have every variation of the 1070 ti made by MSI, EVGA and Zotac. The only brand I don't have is the Gigabyte line. My partners have terrible experience with those so I didn't even bother. I'm clearly not going to be needing a GPU for this build but again, I'm cool with discussing the idea of a barter if anyone reading this is in the market for one.
I also have some GTX 1080 TI's but those are already spoken for, sorry.
It's my understanding that select CPU's I have on this list are ECC Friendly and AFAIK, only 1 of my MOBO's claims to be ECC Friendly (The ASROCK AB350M PRO4), but for the life of me, I can't find any corresponding forums that confirm this and/or direct me to a listing where I can buy compatible RAM. Just the same, if I go w/ the ASROCK MOBO, that means I'd be using one of the Ryzens. Those are DEF. power hungry little buggers. Not a deal-breaker, just hoping to find something a little more conservative in terms of TDP.
In closing, I don't really need someone to hold my hand with the build part as much as figuring out which motherboard, CPU and RAM to get. Then I'm DEFINITELY going to need some guidance on what OS is best for my desired purpose. If building 2X Rigs makes sense, I'm totally open to that as well... Rig 1 = EPIC NAS SYSTEM Rig 2 = EPIC PFSENSE (or the like) DEDICATED FIREWALL
Oh, I almost forgot... The current routers I'm using are...
1X Netgear Nighthawk 6900P (Modem + Router)
1X Netgear Nighthawk X6S (AC 4000 I believe - Router dedicated towards my personal devices - no IoT &/or Guests allowed on this one)
1X TP-Link Archer C5 (Router). Total overkill after implementing the Nighthawks but this old beast somehow has the best range, plus it has 2X USB ports so for now, it's dedicated towards my IoT devices.
---- I also have a few other Wi-Fi routers (Apple Airport Extreme & some inferior Netgear's but I can only allocate so many WiFi Routers to so many WiFi channels w/out pissing off my neighbors) On that note, I have managed to convince my neighbors to let me in their house/WiFi configuration so we all have our hardware locked on specific, non-competing frequencies/channels so everyone's happy. :)
Please spare me the insults as I insulted myself throughout this entire venture. Part of why I did this was because when I was a kid, I used to fantasize about building a 'DREAM PC' but could never afford such. To compensate for this deficiency, I would actually print out the latest and greatest hardware components on a word document, print the lists up & tape to wall (for motivation). I was C++ certified at the age of 14 and built my first PC when I was 7. At the age of 15 I abandoned all hope in the sector and moved on to other aspirations. This entire ordeal was largely based off me finally fulfilling a childhood fantasy. On that note = mission accomplished. Now if I'm actually able to fulfill my desires on this post, I'm definitely going to feel less shitty about blowing so much money on all this stuff over the last couple years.
TIA for assisting in any way possible. Gotta love the internets!
THE END. :)
EDIT/UPDATE (5 hours after OP) - My inbox is being inundated with various people asking for prices and other reasonable questions about my hardware being up for sale. Not to be redundant but rather to expound on my previous remarks about 'being interested in a bartetrade' with any of you here...
I did say I was going to sell my gear on eBay in the near future, I also said I wanted to trade/barter for anything relative to helping me accomplish my OP's mission(s). I'm not desperate for the $$$ but I'm also not one of those people that likes to rip other people off. That said; I value my time and money invested in this hardware and I'm only willing to unload it all once I've established I have ZERO need for any of it here in my home first. Hence my writing this lengthy thread in an attempt to repurpose at least a grand or two I've already spent.
One of the most commonly asked questions I anticipate receiving from interested bodies is going to be "How hard were you on your hardware?" Contrary to what anyone else would have probably done in my scenario which is say they were light on it whether they were or weren't, I documented my handling of the hardware, and have no problem sharing such documentation with verified, interested buyers (WHEN THE TIME COMES) to offer you guys peace of mind.
I have photo's and video's of the venture from A-Z. I am also obliged to provide (redacted) electricity bill statements where you can correlate my photo's (power draw on each rig), and also accurately deduct the excess power my house consumed with our other household appliances. Even taking into consideration how much (more) I spent in electricity from keeping my house at a constant, cool 70-72F year-round (via my Nest thermostat). Even without the rigs, I keep my AC @ 70 when I'm home and for the last 1.5-2 years, I just so happened to spend 85% of my time here at my house. When I would travel, I'd keep it at 72 for my wife & kids.
Additionally; I had each GPU 'custom' oveunderclocke'd (MSI Afterburner for all GPU's but the EVGA's).*
I doubt everyone reading this is aware so this is for those that don't.... EVGA had the brilliant idea of implementing what they call "ICX technology" in their latest NVIDIA GTX GPU's. The short(est) explanation of this "feature" goes as follows:
EVGA GPU's w/ "ICX 9 & above" have EXTRA HEAT/THERMAL SENSORS. Unlike every other GTX 1070 ti on the market, the one's with this feature actually have each of 2/2 on-board fans connected
to individual thermal sensors. Which means - if you were to use the MSI Afterburner program on one of these EVGA's and create a custom fan curve for it, you'd only be able to get 1/2 of the fans to function the way intended. The other fan simply would not engage as the MSI Afterburner software wasn't designed/coded to recognize/ communicate with an added sensor (let alone sensor'S). This, in-turn, would likely result in whoever's using it the unintended way having a GPU defect on them within the first few months I'd imagine... Perhaps if they had the TDP power settings dumbed down as much as I did (60-63%), they might get a year or two out of it since it wouldn't run as near as hot, but I doubt any longer than that since cutting off 50% of the cooling system on one of these can't be ignored too long, surely capacitors would start to blow and who knows what else...
(Warning = RANT) Another interesting side-note about the EVGA's and their "Precision-X" OveUnderclocking software is that it's designed to only recognize 4X GPU's on a single system. For miners, that's just not cool. My favorite builds had 8X and for the motherboards that weren't capable of maintaining stable sessions on 8, I set up with 6X. Only my EVGA Rigs had 3 or 4X GPU's dedicated to a single motherboard. Furthermore, and as stated in an earlier paragraph, (& this is just my opinion) = EVGA SOFTWARE SUCKS! Precision X wasn't friendly with every motherboard/CPU I threw at it and their extension software for the CLC Close-Loop-Cooling/ CPU water-coolers simply didn't work on anything, even integrating into their own Precision-X software. The amount of time it took me to finally find compatible matches with that stuff was beyond maddening. (END RANT).
Which leads me to my other comments on the matter. That's what I had every single 1070 ti set at for TDP = 60-63%. Dropping the power load that much allowed me to bring down (on average) each 1070 ti to a constant 110-115W (mind you, this is only possible w/ "Titanium" rated PSU's, Platinum comes pretty damn close to the Titanium though) while mining Ethereum and was still able to maintain a bottom of 30 MH/s and a ceiling of 32 MH/s. Increasing the TDP to 80, 90, 100% or more only increased my hashrates (yields) negligibly, like 35-36 MH/s TOPS, which also meant each one was not only pulling 160-180W+ (Vs. the aforementioned 115'ish range), it also meant my rigs were creating a significantly greater amount of heat! Fortunately for the GPU's and my own personal habits, I live in South Florida where it's hot as balls typically, last winter was nothing like this one. Increasing my yields by 10-15% didn't justify increasing the heat production in my house by >30%, nor the added electricity costs from subjecting my AC handlers to that much of an extra work-load. For anyone reading this that doesn't know/understand what I'm talking about - after spending no less than 2-3 hours with each. and. every. one. I didn't play with the settings on just one and universally apply the settings to the rest. I found the 'prime' settings and documented them with a label-maker and notepad. Here's the math in a more transparent manner:
*** I NEVER LET MY GPU's BREACH 61C, EVER. Only my 8X GPU rigs saw 60-61 & it was the ones I had in the center of the build (naturally). I have REALLY high power fans (used on BTC ASIC MINERS) that were sucking air from those GPU's which was the only way I was able to obtain such stellar results while mining with them. **\*
Mining at "acceptable" heat temps (not acceptable to me, but most of the internet would disagree = 70C) and overclocking accordingly brings in X amount of yields per unit. =
'Tweaking' (underclocking) the GPU's to my parameters reduced my yield per unit from -10-15%, but it SAVED me well over 30-35% in direct electricity consumption, and an unknown amount of passive electricity consumption via creating approximately 20%+ less heat for my AC handler to combat.
I say all this extra stuff not just for anyone interested in mining with their GPU's, but really to answer (in-depth) the apparent questions you people are asking me in PM's. Something else that should help justify my claims of being so conservative should be the fact I only have/used "Platinum and Titanium" rated PSU's. Heat production, power efficiency and longevity of the hardware were ALWAYS my top priority.* . I truly thought Crypto would continue to gain and/or recover and bounce back faster than it did. If this project had maintained positive income for 12 months+, I'd have expanded one of our sites to also cater to GPU mining on a gnarly scale.
Once I have my NAS (& possibly 2nd rig for the firewall) successfully built, I'll be willing/able to entertain selling you guys some/all of the remaining hardware prior to launching on eBay. If there's something you're specifically looking for that I listed having, feel free to PM me with that/those specific item(s). Don't count on an immediate response but what you can count on is me honoring my word in offering whoever asks first right of refusal when the time comes for me to sell this stuff. Fortunately for me, PM's are time-stamped so that's how I'll gauge everyone's place in line. I hope this extra edit answers most of the questions you guys wanted to have answered and if not, sorry I guess. I'll do my best to bring light to anything I've missed out on after I realize whatever that error was/is. The only way anyone is getting first dibs on my hardware otherwise is if they either offer compelling insight into my original questions, or have something I need to trade w/.
THE END (Round#2)
Wanted to write a short write up on my journey of Crypto mining for some of the newer people and people who want to get into it. Not trying to discourage anyone from starting, but want to show the progression of a newbie.
So I am a good with computers and learned of Bitcoin when it was about $7 a coin. Laughed at the idea of some computer doing some math and getting some BS currency. Million dollar mistake on my part, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Anyways, Learned about ethereum in May. Bought some at around $180 and bought all the way up to $330. Now to the mining rig. Ran all of the calculations and with a 180 hashrate and 900 watts I was gonna get 6-7 Eth per month. Shit was gonna be profitable in under 3 months. I was gonna be a fucking crypto allstar and be rich as fuck!
Bought all of my parts literally the day before they were nonexistent. Literally bought the last RX480's from Amazon. Here is a list of my parts.
Asrock board Pentium dual core processor 4 Gb of ram 128 gb SSD 1200 watt Rosewill PSU 6 Sata to Molex PCI Risers (Junk) 6 RX480's - 2 Asus Strix, 4 Gigabyte Total cost - Roughly $2,500 (Pennies compared to my future ROI)
Please keep in mind that I am not posting every single miner issue that I ran into such as fucking with Wattman for a few weeks before learning about Trixx and Afterburner.
I've built computers before, so that part wasn't hard. Set everything up and get windows 10 running.
Problem 1 - Computer doesn't see all of the cards. Had to run the drivers a few times and tweak some shit, but got all 6 cards seen.
Miner hurdle (See what I did there) but off to the races. Let's get this bitch running so I can begin planning my retirement.
Get Claymore running, Got Trixx to overclock. Ran my cards at -96, 1200, 2200 fans at 85% (Cause I'm cool like that.) Major stability issues from the start. 1 card (Asus) would crash all the time. Didn't know about the watch dog feature in claymore that would restart my rig when a card crashed. Great feature but my computer would go into this state of having power, but not loading the operating system. Even if it did restart, most of the time claymore would get stuck right before setting the dag's and would just lock up. (Claymore program is awesome by the way, this was my rigs fault)
Could not get this fucking Asus card to stop crashing, even on stock settings. Sent the bitch back RMA style. Asus said something was wrong and sent me a new one.
Awesome, lets get this bitch running. I need to start looking at sick houses in Costa Rica to move to once I am rich as Fuck!
New card makes things better for a few days. Not 100% stable but better. Go to vegas for a driving thing (Race cars - Future rich guy stuff) and this mechanical demon starts crashing every few hours. Luckily I had Google remote desktop installed so I could log on and restart it or change settings in Trixx. Had to have my GF unplug it and plug it in a few times.
Get back home, fuck with this thing but still random crashes on random cards. Decide it is the PCI risers. Contact seller who will send me some more for free. Slow boat from china took two weeks to get them. They arrive but still some of them are bad. Can't seem to piece together 6 good ones.
Did some research online (Ethereum Forum and Reddit) and decided to get some new style of risers V007 6 Pin to Sata ($70) and they take a month to get here. Plug them all in and they seem to be working much better. Decent stability, But I ain't got time for fucking stock bios. Let's ramp these bitches up and get 32 MHs per card at 600 watts from the wall!
Actually flashing the bios was pretty easy. Thank you 6 pound 9 ounce baby jesus! Long story short had some major stability issues and bounced around with some different timing straps before finding the right ones. (Uber 3.1 for Samsung memory)
So now that we've got some good hash speeds and decent stability let's ramp this private ATM up a little bit by dual mining some Decred. Get dual mining up and running. go to sleep. Wake up the next morning expecting to see myself on the top 100 forbes list. look at my mining rig stats on my phone and see that it died roughly and hour after I went to sleep. Walked toward my rig on the red carpet I had just installed and saw that it was off. Flicked on the light to check it out. No light, WTF? Well I'll be god damned, no power in this whole fucking room. Checked my breakers and sure enough this metal motherfucker tripped my breaker.
No worries though. I'm smart as fuck. I'll just undervolt the shit out of it to get the power down. No way in hell I am just mining ether. I'm going balls to the wall!
As you can expect I had many days of stability issues and tripped breakers. But fuck it, I have homeowners insurance. Burning it to the ground will be covered. (Didn't happen)
My surge protector must be maxed out. Let's buy a bigger one ($25). Same issues.
Fuck Decred, I'll mine SIA, less power. Damn I'm smart.
Rig is more stable with Sia and no tripped breakers. Family medical emergency, have to fly north for a few days. But my rig has been fairly stable and I've got remote desktop if anything goes wrong.
Arrive at airport, check mining stats, rig is down. No worries remote desktop. FUCK, not responsive, no way to remote into the rig and no way to remotely power it off and on.
Lost 4 days of mining. But no worries the difficulty is only, Holy shit that's high! But the price of Ether will make up for it. Ether crashed to the $200's. Oh well, maybe a 10 room house in Costa instead of a 12. No sweat.
Get back to my house and this whore of a machine is just sitting there in a computer coma. It's on but it's not. LED lights glaring at me like "Fuck you human, I ain't doing your stupid math problems!" Fuck you machine, I'm your master. You will do my math problems and you will fucking like it.
My AMD Drivers seem to disappear and the computer goes into a coma like state. Someone on Reddit suggested using the 16.9.2 drivers. Installed and they worked better.
Still random crashing. This shitty PSU must be maxed out. Fuck you PSU, I'm getting you a little brother (EVGA 750 gold $120.)
What do you mean you have to jerry rig a second PSU so it starts without being connected to a motherboard? 2 more hours of my life wasted.
But finally some stability. On my way to being fucking rich. I start looking at people in bentley's and can only laugh. You dumb fuck, I'm gonna be way richer then you. Gonna get a Bugatti for each day of the week.
Damn this difficulty is a bitch. Fuck you Genesis Mining and your pallets of GPU's. You're killing me smalls!
But anyway, on my way to rolling around in my fuck you money!
Fuck you dag file 135, you're killing my future millions. Fuck you dag 138, you dropped me to 167 mhs.
Thank god AMD was there to save my ass with their dope ass blockchain drivers.
download, run DDU, Restart, install drivers, restart, run pixel patch, restart. Perfect, I'm in the money now! I can taste the caviar and champagne already.
Now my cards only run 4 Mhs each. WTF? Try a bunch of the other new drivers. Same shit. Roll back to 16.9.2 and they run fine, just at 167 instead of 180.
Someone on a forum said he had the same issue and did a fresh install of windows 10 and it worked.
So I'll just reformat my SSD (Windows wouldn't do a fresh install within the operating system. Fuck you Bill Gates! Gonna buy you once I get this thing running at 180.)
Format SSD, plug back in, throw in my gangster ass boot USB drive. Ramdisk error. Fuck you Bill Gates! Reformat SSD multiple times, lots of forum reading. Install windows from another computer through command prompt (I'm a coder now as well.) This shit has got to work, I did it in command prompt bitches!
Same fucking error. Now down to an 8 bedroom house in Costa and only 6 Bugattis.
Let's try unplugging my 6 cards and see if that works. Thank you 6 pound 9 ounce baby jesus. Windows installed.
New drivers work and I'm back at 180! Raking in the cash now.
With those speeds my Asus cards crashed. Had to dial down the hashrate to 177.5 for them to be stable. So now going to use some commands in claymore to run the Asus cards at lower speeds while letting my other cards mine harder.
I wrote this to let people know that mining isn't all Bugatti's and caviar. These machines are fickle little cunts that do what they want. No system is the same. So when you post on a forum, people will give you advice on what may work. But what works for them, may not work on your rig. In the end it's up to you to figure it out.
I have spent countless hours after work and on weekends working on this bitch. Hell I've probably spent a few hours just staring at it and thinking about all of the ways I could destroy it slowly.
While I love Etheruem and do value the knowledge gained, I would have made more money just buying Eth and holding.
The guys you see on youtube building sick rigs with crazy specs have been at it for a while. They have worked through the process and know how to solve all of the problems. You have not and will have to work them out on your own.
My whore of a rig will pay for itself soon. But I would suggest that if you want to start building a new mining rig. Check the difficulty chart and make sure you have tons of free time to fuck with it.
I'd post my wallet address for donations since I just saved you $2,600. But I am afraid hackers will steal my monies :)
Hope you enjoyed my mining life story from the past few months.
submitted by I finally decided it was time to add an SSD to my little fanless HTPC build based on an ASrock Q1900B-ITX. But I forgot it only had 2 ports when I sat down to do it! So, I disconnected the optical drive for now. But I'm wondering what's the best way to approach adding it back in. I could use a SATA or even IDE adapter to connect a drive to a free rear USB port. Is there any reason I can't still use the case power for the drive? I wonder if there's a way to attach a drive to the unused internal USB header (I forgot to add a front USB to my homebuilt case. Next build). Are there any other ideas for this like using the PCI-E slot for an adapter? I looked on Newegg, but only saw something for bitcoin mining.
All help appreciated, except telling me to get a less lame motherboard. I love fanless builds.
submitted by The AsRock H110 BTC+ may not be the best motherboard for mining if you’re a beginner, but if you’re looking for a more advanced platform – you can’t go wrong with the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+. This item ASRock H81 PRO BTC ATX Bitcoin Mining Motherboard Intel Socket 1150 DDR3. ASUS B250 MINING EXPERT LGA1151 DDR4 HDMI B250 ATX Motherboard for Cryptocurrency Mining (BTC) with 19 PCIe Slots and USB 3.1 Gen1. ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ LGA 1151 Intel H110 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel for Cryptocurrency Mining (BTC) Motherboard. Memory Standard: DDR4 2400/ 2133 non-ECC, un-buffered memory* * 7th Gen Intel CPU supports DDR4 up to 2400; 6th Gen Intel CPU supports DDR4 up to 2133. Number of Memory Slots: 2×288pin Audio Chipset: Realtek ALC887 PCI Express 3.0 x16: 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (PCIE2: x16 mode ... ASRock Super Alloy; Supports 7th and 6th Generation Intel Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium / Celeron Processors * 8th Gen Intel Core™ desktop processors are supported with Intel 300 Series chipset motherboards only; Supports DDR4 2400/2133; 1 PCIe 3.0 x16, 12 PCIe 2.0 x1; Graphics Output: DVI-D; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC887 Audio Codec), ELNA Audio Caps; 4 SATA3, 1 M.2 (SATA3); 4 USB 3.1 ... AsRock is a company that manufactures the most popular and known mining motherboards in the market. One of the first products they launched was the AsRock H81 PRO BTC. However, at the moment, the company is offering different mining boards. The new X370 Pro BTC+ is an innovative product because it gives AMD CPUs and APUs a place in the cryptocurrency mining space.
A full and detailed video of my 13 GPU mining rig build. In this video I cover the entire process of building and setting up and mega cryptocoin miner using ... The best Motherboards for Mining Bitcoin, Ethereum and more 1. ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ The ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ is the best mining motherboard on the market today, thanks to its brilliant build ... Take a look at the monstrosity that is the Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard for Bitcoin and Crypto Currency Mining for currencies like Zcash, Dash, Ethereum and others. Bitcoin Mining Hardware ... while the additional power connectors provide advanced system stability while mining. ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ is ready to mine right out of box, no need to do any ... Build a Desktop Arcade Machine with Raspberry Pi 3 and Retropie: Super Turbo Pro Edition - Duration: 27:15. Ryan Bates Recommended for you
