That said, no matter what I try, I keep running into instability with my rig.
My configuration is as follows:
- Windows 10
- 8GB system memory
- Asus H270-Plus
- Intel Pentium G4400
- Ver 007 Risers
- 6x XFX RX 480
- EVGA 1300W PSU
I have 6 cards, but I can't get even 3 cards to run stable. I've left them stock (but they are overclocked out of the box, being non-reference XFX). After running Claymore miner in dual mining mode for ~3 minutes, the 4th card's hash rate goes to 0, the display driver "crashes" (a windows error notification says as much), and Claymore Miner restarts. I have to restart the machine at that point.
Even running only 2 cards at a time, I had the machine blue screen/reboot overnight 7 hours in to the mining session.
The BIOS is stock, and I'm using all of the recommended settings in the Claymore miner thread (env vars).
I've tried Catalyst 16.7.2, 16.7.3, and 17.4.4. AFAIK I cannot try 15.12, as it doesn't support Polaris cards (I tried and it didn't detect my GPU).
I've disabled Intel VT-d and virtualization technology in the BIOS. I've set all PCI-E lanes to Gen1 (I tried Gen2 as well, but nothing changed).
Anyone else here want to share their successful configuration for 4+ RX 480's on Windows 10? I'm all for trying a different OS (ethos, mineros, windows 7, ubuntu) if anyone found that that solved their issues.
I assume virtual memory to at least 16 GB and preferably more? I found Windows 7 to be much more stable than 10 for mining. Too much going on in the background in Windows 10. The problem with Windows 7 is it won't support more than 4 cards out of the box. Here are some things you can do in Windows 10 to help with mining:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baCCjFU-4Bk
Linux is also much more stable than Windows.. You could try smOS, which is a Linux based mining distro with configuration done through a web browser. BBT has a walkthrough video on how to get started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAHWMK78Gag
ethOS is another good option for a Linux based solution built for mining. Ubuntu is good too, but you will have to do all the driver and mining downloads and configuration on your own. There are guides online on what you need to do to get started.