Topic: 2015-2016 LGA1151 (mother board for 6 gpu Rig) Recommendations (Read 11627 times)

Yes. They can.

I am trying to get a board to run 6 GPU, and here i can only find this models: ASROCK Z97X KILLER; ASROCK Z97 EXTREME4.
This two motherboard can work easily with 6 GPU?
Thanks

For anyone else out there with this issue, update your bios using one of the 3 methods outlined in this great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze4Dg11W3hU

I used @BIOS and it was easy

GIGABYTE Z170-Gaming K3 with latest BIOS

Most would not mix AMD dual gpu cards which each show up as 2 gpus and Nvidia cards which is why you reached 10 in windows 10.  The driver for a single type of gpu in windows 10 is 8 gpus.

Is that in Windows with 10 GPU?

GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 Rev.4 and rev.5 have 6 PCIE slots and work perfect!!! Used by me with 4 X 7990 and two 970 GTX! All 10 GPU work perfect.

Reset bios to default settings, when set only TOLUD option. Try to boot.
If it does not help? then try to do the same with only one GPU.

This board has created many problems for me I hate the creators of this miracle .

yeah i had the same one , POS chipset i had six new boards of those sent them all back to new egg fuck that.  What sucks is the 6100 i3 is a freaking awesome proccessor for $99 and we cant use it, it has hyperthreading four proccessors show up and its fast easily clocks for 4.0GHZ on the stock cooler.

Had to spend all six boards and six proccessors back due to this mess up by intel and ordered the MSI gaming 5 boards with we dual core pentiums what a shame.

I have MSI Z170A krait gaming 3x with 7 PCie , but I can't run more than 4 GPU 

on my asrock extreme4 i have TLOUD option ... but in Auto all work fine but i can install only 4 GPU ... when i set TLOUD on 2,5 or 3,5 Gb on my debud display of Mobo error 5d or 55 (Memoy Error) ... i have installed 16 GB DDR4 2600Mhz (2x8) Gb.... what is the problem? thanks to all

Thats not even an option on most of those boards , never saw it on  the MSI and Gigabyte 2011-3 and 1151 z170  boards i have

Set Max TOLUD = 3,5 Gb instead Auto in BIOS.

but the problem is for z170 chipset or CPU Skylake at this point? thanks

hi thanks for this clarificarion thread ... i have z170 asrock extreme 4 .. and win10 recognize 6 gpu but 3 of them are in conflict (code 12) ... i can run and work only whit 4 gpu i need change my mobo ... for 6 or 8 gpu how mobo need buy for one happy mining and no problem? thanks for help

This article alone won't help you fully uncover the whole problem (it's not even directly aimed at this exact issue of miners, just a general analysis):
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-100-series-hsio-chipset,30210.html
I think the author was on the right track in understanding the SkyLake platform's possible connectivity issues after piecing some important things together but he left the matter alone before a real final conclusion was formed.

I think the real problem is some undisclosed further limitation about how these HSIO lanes can be allocated to PCI-E or other devices:



As you can see, some HSIO lanes are fully or loosely pre-allocated by Intel. Some lanes can be configured as:
- USB only
- PCI-E only
- either PCI-E or USB
- either PCI-E or SATA
- Now look at that Gbe !!!

The weirdest thing on this graph for me is the limitation regarding the (built-in?) Gbe network controller's HSIO lane allocation. I would think it should either act like any other PCI-E device (freely allocated at any open PCI-E capable lane) or have it's unique fix preset like the USB or SATA controllers do (like USB#1 can only go to Lane#1 and SATA#7 can only go to Lane#20, etc). What kind of logic might be hiding behind that?

---> Take note about how you must pick 4 neighboring lanes starting at N*4+1 (like 5,6,7,8 but not 6,7,8,9) for PCI-E 4x devices.
Another strange thing here is how you can theoretically have as much as 5 separate 4x devices (if you are willing to sacrifice all SATA and Gbe but otherwise it's still 4 with 1 Gbe and 1+ SATA), yet only 3 of these kind of 4x devices are allowed to be used simultaneously.

At some point I though I figured this out: I can operate 3 PCI-E cards because I had 5 PCI-E 4x blocks, 1 allocated for SATA and 1 for Gbe (and/or some SATA at the same time), thus leaving me with 3 free PCI-E 4x blocks, all of which are capable of operating a single PCI-E device regardless if that is 1x, 2x or 4x
But... I also had an integrated USB3.1 and a sound controller which are both PCI-E devices! So, this 4x block = 1 device can't be true. Well, unless I was actually operating 2 cards on the PCH and the third one was in the 16x slot and it's wired directly to the CPU (not micro-managed by the PCH - but I think it is because the Z170 motherboards can be configured in 8+8 modes whereas H170 boards are limited to a single 16x slot but this could be an artificial limitation imposed at firmware leve but this would also explain why Z170 seems to handle 4 cards and H170 only 3 cards: it's 2 vs. 1 cards on the "direct" CPU 16 lines and always only 2 on the PCH).

And now, if you thought you almost figured this out as much as it's possible..., look at how SATA#0 and #1 can walk around the table! What does that supposed mean? At this point I am beginning to question if this table exists to shows the fixed limitations (more than the USB ones, that is) or it's merely an example which illustrates several possible (and probably recommended) alternatives at a single graph. So, my weak speculation is destroyed here.


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If you are into some experimentation (either by virtue or out of necessity), it would be interesting to hear about any of these C232 or C236 workstation boards (yon don't need Xeon CPU and ECC memory, just plug in your cheap Pentium and regular non-ECC sticks if you wish):
http://asrock.com/mb/Intel/E3V5%20WS/index.us.asp (5 slots for moderate price)
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/C236A-WORKSTATION.html#hero-overview (6 slots, expensive)
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5806#ov (6 slots, expensive!)

I'm using windows 10, as I have told before I have successfuly build several rigs before, like 30 of them with no problems whatsoever ( using the asrock h97 anniversary, until my last batch and the recent out of stock situation), it seems that there is some bios issue preventing the z170 chipset from successfuly handling more than 4 gpu , but i havent found a workaround yet ( to be honest iwasnt able to even find someone developing a solution for that)

Hey thank you so much for answering, I'm having almost the same issues with my  MSI z170-A pro. But what I find really interesting is the fact that the last batch of asrocks h97 anniversary that I bough (six of them from some amazon vendor called outlet pc or something like that), were presenting the same faulty sata behavior, but they did it  when I put the 6th gpu on the system. windows sometimes didn't want to boot and  the solid state disk wasn`t able to pass the seatools tests as long as you had the 6 gpu connected and the system managed to boot. If  i did unplug one gpu or put the solid state disk on another mother board of the same model but a previous batch  the disk did pass all the tests.

So i really like to know what causes those faulty sata behaviors, or how to stop them and at the same time keep using the 6 gpu

I wonder if genesis mining use those regulars MB or if they use some custom made Motherboards and uefis.

Ill give it a try, however i just cannot wrap my head around the fact that the z170 chipset has more pciE lanes compared to the h80 or h97, in every single connectivity feature the z170 is superior to the h97, and somehow the former performs much worse than the later.
I guess that it is a hardware issue, but mostly a uefi issue, so maybe a custom rom or manufaturer update will solve this, however i wasnt able to fin any information of anyone trying to  develop a custom rom for that purpose. And the bios updates do nothing regarding the 6 gpu compatibility issue.