Topic: Building Cheap Miners : My "Secret" - page 10. (Read 60219 times)

If it ain' broke don't try to fix it !

Typically most of the issues I have run into with PC Errors after a rig has been running stable for some time are due to hard drive's failing. Typically we will just rebuild the rig fresh when this happens from time to time, then it's good for quite awhile (haven't rebuilt any a second time yet that failed from this).

It's been basically a full week now after replacing that hard drive -- the system hasn't shut off or had any errors since.

So, I suppose, the motherboard wasn't even bad at all so I will hang onto it as another spare.

I've been running Z400s since May 2017 -- so, yes, it works well and reliability has been great. Out of 70 machines total I've had 3 hard drive failures as they are refurbs... otherwise no issues with the Z400s themselves.

I have used up to 6 cards with PCI-E splitters in these machines as well -- a few of them running for several months so far.

Hello! Looks good!  Thank you for sharing it! But will it work? And will this idea save costs? 5 can I use video cards this way?  But anyway, thank you!!

What are the opinions on Intel's new NUC's with 128MB of eDRAM for mining Cryptonight_V7.

Intel Coffee Lake NUCs will have eDRAM
https://www.fudzilla.com/news/46662-intel-coffee-lake-nucs-will-have-edram

I tried the Gigabyte BRIX before but with the constant throttling because of poor cooling it was not worth it.

The Intel® Core™ i7-8559U Processor is priced at $431: https://ark.intel.com/products/137979/Intel-Core-i7-8559U-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_50-GHz

I believe that price along with only 4 cores (8 with HT) will limit it to only 40 threads (5x mining threads for each of the 8 cores (real and HT)) which only uses 80MB of the 128MB eDRAM will not make it a good product at all for mining.

Glad that you enjoyed the thread!

So... the plot thickens.

I changed the motherboard out -- seemed okay for ~2 days.

BAM -- same exact 4-beep code.

I was a bit frustrated but noted the hard drive was a 13-year old Maxtor... while no errors specifically showed hard drive... HP documents say ANY bad hardware can cause the 4-beep failure.

Changed hard drive to brand-new unit, re-installed all software, and now it's been on since last Thursday.

So... maybe just that old hard drive the whole time!

This is the 3rd refurb that I have replaced the hard drive on... but this first one that caused this type of issue.

Good project for cheaper mining and high hashrate also. I hope to build like yours after i finished with a bounty project ico and i hope to get some the capital from it to start build a rig like that. Thank you for information, and very inspire project.

What model number are those Dell machines?

I can get those Dell machines for free. I brought 2 old server cases from my work and 2 intact dell machines.
Modified server cases a bit to have plenty of space for 5 cards. Works like charm and is stack-able.

I will keep the post updated -- as of today I have 70 of the Z400 workstations running (8 more will be coming online to finish my current mining plans).

My oldest one is from May 2017 -- so far just the one has this type of issue.

But, I will be sure to update if any more issues pop up in the interest of accuracy / objectivity.

Great idea, thanks for sharing but if I in Vietnam, How can I buy this?

I have seen similar issues with systems that are powered 24/7 that really aren't meant to be. If the capacitors for the on-board regulators are not of high quality then over time they swell up and sometimes even leak their guts.

I have a Windows 7 desktop computer that runs 24/7 as my home DVR. It is running the Free Windows Media Center. I have had to replace the motherboard once already because of bulging capacitors. Then the replacement motherboard began to have issues. Since I now knew the problem was capacitors I replaced the ones I found bulging which fixed the problem.

Going back to my failing Z400 the reason it failed was when it got powered down the capacitors had pressure reduced because of no power. The constant pressure then no pressure is what caused it to open up and thus lose it's value causing incorrect power on the motherboard.

Because of this issue you may need more than a few Z400 spare motherboards. If a time comes when you have to power off your Z400 miners a number of them may not power up again without issues.

I tracked my issue down -- and it ended up being one of the GPUs in the system.

After some other swapping of hardware re-including that GPU would actually result in the 4-beep code immediately upon pressing power on.

So far good to go for 24 hours.

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UPDATE (6-22-18):

You may be right, actually, MinersRus! Another day of running and the 4-beeps repeated.

I am going to order a few spare motherboards on e-bay to keep on hand. That is the only thing left it could be.

*** WARNING for all Dell R815 owners ***

DO NOT flash to the latest 3.4.1 BIOS as it will probably brick your system.

I found this out the hard way.

The new 3.4.1 BIOS and other system firmware updates ISO was released 06-12-2018 and available on the DELL site so I downloaded it and burned the ISO onto a DVD and then booted from it. Updates were going smoothly when all of a sudden the monitor screen went blank. I waited for hours but all I had was a blank screen. I forcibly had to power off. When I then powered-on the fans spun up and down but no BIOS screen was ever seen either on the built in VGA port or on the GTX 750 discrete card. The front display status (when holding right button for 5 seconds) states "No Post Code".

The R815 in question had quad Opteron 6238 Engineering Samples (ZS262445TCG45) in it. It was working great on the 3.2.2 BIOS but had older other firmware in it which was my main reason for updating it. The 3.4.1 Bios Update is a Microcode Update (probably for Meltdown/Spector) and I am not sure if having the Engineering Samples in it was why it got bricked.

Needless to say I am not updating any of my other R815's.

FYI: The R815's with quad Opteron 6238 Engineering Samples hash at 1700 H/s. I have three R815 systems with them and two other R815's with quad Opteron 6234's that produce 1570 H/s. In each of these systems I have added a single GTX 750 which adds 230-240 H/s.

I only have two Z400's mining with Vega 56's so my sample size is small. One Z400 with two Vega's and the other with one Vega.

During an internet outage I powered down all my miners including the Z400's. When the outage passed I powered on all miners and started them mining.

All systems came back on except for the Z400 with the single Vega. It too had the "Red Power Button" flashing and four beeps. In researching, this error is supposed to be GPU initialization failure. I tried everything (replace power supply, ran memory tests, swapped to known good GPU) and the problem persisted.

I ended up putting the Vega 56 in another system which works fine with the power supply from the failing Z400.

So the issue defiantly is with the Z400 motherboard. I ended up scrapping the Z400.

I am fighting an odd issue in one of my Z400s.

It turns itself off periodically and the beep code indicates "power failure" -- four beeps.

First time I have seen this and it NOT be a power supply (changed PSU already).

So I removed two out of three 1070Ti cards -- running it on just one for at least 24 hours to see if the issues persists. Then I will add cards back one at a time if it does NOT persist on the single card.

I also re-pasted the chipset heat-sink as that seemed to be running a bit hot (just in case).

If all else fails it may be my first case of actual Z400 hardware failing (maybe motherboard).

How is everyone else ?

I am still building away... I've grabbed up some 1070Ti lately. And still working on getting all the other stuff I bought online -- been super slow at it.

In any event... it's getting HOT in my mining area -- it was 102 today in there.

Although, I haven't seen it more than 8 degrees over the outdoors temps so I'm going to say it's not too bad.

My building has a basement... so I want to figure out how to draw more air up from there as that air is much cooler. As of now I measure a 0.0 MPH windspeed coming up from the basement.

There are two exhaust fans down there (opposite side of the building as the mining room)… perhaps if I can reverse them to intake I can get some of that cooler air to come up and over, across the building, and into the bitcoin area (which now has intake / exhaust fans).

Sure, ansible seems to be the way to go and there is a lot of info widely available for that.  It even sounds like ansible can be used to manage windows servers. 

I was more interested in first-hand experience from anyone in this thread.  Like I said above... I am mostly interested in "FLEXIBILITY" to mine whatever I want to mine. 

Sometimes that means mining under Windows and sometimes that means mining under Linux.  Given the equipment I have, it looks like I would be looking to build 4 dual-boot (Linux/windows) systems and then managing them all through ansible. 

If anyone has specific links to info on similar setups, it would be great.  I've seen some configuration guides so far but I'm looking more to see what the comprehensive setup and final product looks like for managing something like this.