Topic: Affordable motherboard for GPU mining? - page 2. (Read 30612 times)

What is the benefit using 16 GB memory? I thought 4 GB is enough for all the coin mining so far.

16 Gig total ram is pretty cheap any more, can find it under $70 on Newegg even pushing faster ram speeds.

 It's probably overkill for current mining, but can be nice to have it for later repurposing of the machine(s).

It mostly depends on the algo you want to mine. You can probably get by with increasing the virtual memory but for
the incremental cost of 4 GB RAM per GPU I think it's worh it. And it's not a step function, shit won't happen when you
cross the line. But if I'm thinking of adding a 3rd GPU to a rig with 8GB RAM I'd also be thinking about more RAM.

It's just a guildeline I follow, not trying to force anyone to agree. I have a couple more:

The CPU should have as many cores as there are GPUs so each GPU has a dedicated CPU core serving it.
A dual core Celeron would be sufficient with 2 GPUs.

And I always use powered risers on PCIE-x1 slots unless it's a board specifically designed for mining with extra power inputs on the bus.

I find these guidelines simple to undertsand for non-techies. Geeks, of course, would do their own engineering and wouldn't
be asking the question in the first place. YMMV.

The memory size of 4GB is fine. I will use the 1066 memory. If they are not avalilable, I will under clock the 1600MHz to 800MHz.

 Unfortunately, most of my "old" motherboards are microATX with one PCI-E slot, otherwise they'd probably work well.

why the overkill with ram? i'm usually fine with 8 giga of ram i can't see the reason to go nuts with it, they also start to be expensive at 16 gb

Shouldn't be a problem but I'd recommend more RAM. I usually budget the same amount of extra RAM
as the total of all the GPUs. So if those are 4 GB GPUs you should get 16 GB RAM.

Regarding the thread title I couldn't resist...

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRX.cfm

That looks pretty sweet. You turned this into a very useful mining rig. The setup looks great and speaking of the affordability of the parts, looks like a great way to build a cheap and effective mining rig. By sharing this, I'm now inspired and ready to build another cool mining rig. Once set up, I will use it to mine ETH and DASH. 

I'm looking to build a small 3 GPU rig using  the following hardware?

1 x Sempron 2650 or 3850
1 x 4GB PC-1333Mhz
1 x Gigabyte GA-AM1M-S2H
1 x 32-60 SSD
3 x EVGA GTX 950  02G-P4-2957-RX
3 x PCIe x1 to x16 risers
1 x 100-B1-0600-KR

This is a side project for my dad so long ROI 6 - 9 months isn't an issue.

anyone know if you can run this many GPU's on an AM1 board and have it see all of them?

here is a free rig
why is that . it was left over from ltc mining before the gridseed asics got hot.

It uses an asrock h77  mobo
an openrig frame
an old seasonic bronze psu
2 4gb sticks of ram
an intel 2500t cpu >  very low power
an old sapphire hd7970 3gb ram
an big ass really good quiet air cooler

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835242030R

so I fired it up and I am making coin with it.

of course the siren of more power has called and I added an r7 370 to it.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-1-gpu-now-11gpus-5rigs-for-ethereum-45-days-of-mining-photos-thoughts-1429151

Interesting information. Thanks for sharing this mate. I thought that only new gen motherboards could be used for this task, but now I know that old ones can be used for the same thing as long as it has the required PCI-E slots. Setting up a really cheap GPU mining rig can be really cheap these days. 

The old motherboards worked well. But I mainly use the Asrock boards with 6 PCIE slots as I want to use as many cards as possible in my system.

Best mobo is the one you already have. Ugliest ghettorig I have does 150MH ETH with 3 PCIe slots and old amd phenom X2 cpu, 2 x 295x2 + 290. I also have two S775 rigs doing 60MH each, 2x390 and 3x7970.

For the old motherboards, there are too few PCIE slots. So you need more CPU, hard disks and memory.

Everyone wants to use current gen mobos but that will increase roi time too much.

Ive been researching mobos and im really only interested in lga 775 generation mobo, you can get them much cheaper.  You have to build smaller rigs as they usually only come at most with 1 pcie x16 and 2 pcie x1.  Its challenging to find a proper mobo at the lowest price but I came across the hp compaq 5800 and its a ssf board but this is what ive found.  Plenty of supply online, seems to have normal 775 cpu cooler mount holes, 3 pci-e slots, there is only case fan connection and cpu fan connection is there but connector not soldered to the board.  I have found them for around 12 bucks, core 2 duos cost 2-4 bucks, ram 12 bucks + hdd ~ 20 bucks or so.  So for 50 bucks you could have a 3 gpu rig up and running + psu.  That is IF the cpu cooler will mount on this board but im fairly confident it will, other ssf and desktops use propriety cpu mounting and power connection, hp compaq and dell have done this.  For example my dell ssf gx520 board uses this  propriety cpu cooler, basically it has 2 holes drilled on the board and the cooler is attached to the case and then snaps over the chip.  If that fails get a normal oem 775 board that you know wont dick you around with propriety bs, that will be like 50 bucks or so which is still cheaper than current gen.

Anyway something to kick around

The Asrock H81 is good. Does anybody have experience with the latest H97 boards for mining?

I have used the H81 pro BTC. It is also pretty good. If I need to expand my mining farm, I will use it again.

Of those motherboards, the H61 and H81 pro BTC are the most popular. I have good experience with H61.

Nice! Good info.

following

Hey thanks for this list mate! I was looking for a reference of the best (and affordable) motherboards for GPU mining. Luckily, I already ordered one (H61 Pro BTC) and am planning to get another one to expand my GPU mining setup. It is very cool to mine and watch your profits grow with GPUs like Radeon. I am going to be mining ETH for this.