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Topic: Building Cheap Miners : My "Secret" - page 31. (Read 60219 times)

SQ1
newbie
Activity: 8
Merit: 0
January 21, 2018, 07:53:00 PM

I couldn't find any CPU that would work on an ATX mother board, am I mistaken?


Yeah you are mistaken. There are plenty aval that will work on any Z97 or H97 mobo provided the BIOS is up to date and supports those CPU's per manufacturer.

If one had like 50 Z97/H97 mobos, they could make a killing. Unfortunately you need mobo, ram, HDD/flash drive and PSU. But I can still stomp that $250 Brix deal into the dust with what ive found.

What did you find that beats the Brix deal? I cant find one that's anywhere close to 249.
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 21, 2018, 02:41:21 PM
So last night I got home around 2AM and noticed that the DL580 I had just left wasn't showing up in the zcash pool.  I thought the breaker tripped again because I couldn't reach out and remote control it so I went to sleep because I wasn't going back to fix it.  I get back to the server late this morning and find it still running.  I hadn't checked the tracker for ITNS and it showed the server working all night long.  Somehow this box was still doing work in the EWBF miner but it wasn't registering with flypool even though it was submitting results?  I restart the client and it's now registering as an active worker.  No changes to the config file, just a restart.  Is this common or was this a fluke?

I'm currently getting about 1.25KH/s on the CPU's with CPU usage set to 92.  This gives me 30T which so far has given me the best bang for KH/s w/o impacting the GPU side.  The chips have 32MB L2 and 96MB L3.  I tried setting # of cores to half of L2 but that was only 650H/s or so.

jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 21, 2018, 03:21:49 AM
Currently on Server '16.  

This thing draws some juice.  In order to test the load w/ only one killawatt, I had all 4 power plugs plugged into a strip.  Under full load it tripped the built in breaker in the strip.  I've got the server back on 2 120v circuits to run but now I need another killawatt to really know how much power things thing is consuming.

240v upgrades soon.  I already have some 16a PDUs but I'm trying to hold off with them until I start deploying in the container so I don't do things twice.
full member
Activity: 350
Merit: 100
January 21, 2018, 03:16:24 AM
After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, what should have been a painless procedure that has swallowed the better part of a day to figure out is finally complete.  The DL580 G7 is rocking the E7 8837's.  All in all, it required what should have been easy.  A BIOS update.  Thanks HP. 

Spinx, what settings are you using for the miner?  I'm currently seeing about 1K/s w/ the default config from launching it and letting it figure itself out.

Good to hear it was finally figured out!

What OS did you end up running?
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 21, 2018, 02:22:41 AM
After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, what should have been a painless procedure that has swallowed the better part of a day to figure out is finally complete.  The DL580 G7 is rocking the E7 8837's.  All in all, it required what should have been easy.  A BIOS update.  Thanks HP. 

Spinx, what settings are you using for the miner?  I'm currently seeing about 1K/s w/ the default config from launching it and letting it figure itself out.
full member
Activity: 350
Merit: 100
January 21, 2018, 01:14:08 AM
Are you guys running Windows Server or will Win Enterprise work fine with these server builds? Curious.
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 21, 2018, 12:49:15 AM
The DL580 is back under it's own power and running 4 1060s.  Even with the drive controller disabled and the array physically disconnected, I'm pulling 1085W with all 4 PSU's plugged in.  If I unplug 2 PSUs, it drops to about 1025W w/ the 1060's +175/500.  Stock vcore so power usage only went up 25W or so w/ OC.  That's not exactly efficient.  LOL  Box currently has X7542s so no AES and only like 240H/s for a total of 1280W of power draw with EWBF cuda miner going too.  The penalty draw for the 4 CPU's and 8 memory cartridges has to be supplemented by CPU work and currently, with the CPUs I have, I do no work.  If the 8837's I have that don't boot can do 1600H/s like stated prior, that would definitely help offset the increased energy cost.  I have 4 1060's in a Z97 setup that I'll throw the meter on tonight or tomorrow to see what it's pulling to compare.

My biggest fear is I'll get a bunch of rigs ready to go and then have no cards to fill them.  : |

member
Activity: 434
Merit: 52
January 20, 2018, 11:28:38 PM

Are all of you running on Windows? Because I'm on Lubuntu, and now have 4 of the i5 version and all are running stable at 359mh/s with no drop...

I moved it to linux mint, haven't done the turbo thing yet though but the i7 is hasing at 250 lol. wtf.

Huh. My lowest running i5 has dropped only 7-8 (to 352). One is still running at 100%, and I haven't even moved them to the basement yet...
full member
Activity: 350
Merit: 100
January 20, 2018, 09:44:21 PM
nsummy I am WAY jealous of those numbers. But for around $310 total and drawing 43W for 360h/s, I'm content enough (though if I buy any more, I would hold out for the i7s for SURE).


Yeah those numbers are nice. I can't get those on windows, it will bounce to 550, then rapidly just drop down to 250. Very weird.


I also tried installing linux but it was an epic fail. I have no clue how to deploy xmr-stak on linux. I'm sure someone would have gotten a laugh seeing me trying to navigate through it all knowing zero about linux lol.

Ah well.

Try commenting out the memory thing (I posted about it previously, can't remember it this second but it's one of the steps suggested in the guide). That solved that same problem for mine.

EDIT TO ADD: here it is: this may be a linux or Iris specific thing, but (at least on the i5) doing the suggested change to sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf dropped my start from 359 to 320, and eventually my hashrate dropped to 180. Commenting it out brought everything back to 359 and stable, so I suggest testing it if you want, but it doesn't seem necessary (if you are still getting locked RAM messages, I was able to get rid of them by sudo running the miner, but I don't think they had an effect on hashrate)


I'm going to try out your suggestion.  VyperBTC and I have been exchanging a few messages and we are both experiencing the same issue with hashrate dropping.  It starts out fine, but eventually it will drop to the upper 200s.  At first I thought maybe the processor was too hot and throttling, but restarting the miner fixes it so I don't think that is the issue.  

I've tried it but it didn't help unfortunately. I'm not sure how it would effect performance programming a script to close out and sudo start the xmr-stak every 15-30min. That's not getting to the root of the issue, it's just a bandage to get around the actual issue of why the hell is it happening lol

Well at least my problem isn't happening every 15 minutes.  More like letting it run for 15 hours then it happens Smiley  Actually though I just thought of something.  Did you ever go into the bios and enable turbo mode?  I think without that, the processor does actually throttle and that might explain why it happens so quickly for you.

No i didn't - the only thing i did was enable power on if power loss. I'll change that and see if it helps, thanks!

Are all of you running on Windows? Because I'm on Lubuntu, and now have 4 of the i5 version and all are running stable at 359mh/s with no drop...

I moved it to linux mint, haven't done the turbo thing yet though but the i7 is hasing at 250 lol. wtf.
member
Activity: 434
Merit: 52
January 20, 2018, 09:16:32 PM
nsummy I am WAY jealous of those numbers. But for around $310 total and drawing 43W for 360h/s, I'm content enough (though if I buy any more, I would hold out for the i7s for SURE).


Yeah those numbers are nice. I can't get those on windows, it will bounce to 550, then rapidly just drop down to 250. Very weird.


I also tried installing linux but it was an epic fail. I have no clue how to deploy xmr-stak on linux. I'm sure someone would have gotten a laugh seeing me trying to navigate through it all knowing zero about linux lol.

Ah well.

Try commenting out the memory thing (I posted about it previously, can't remember it this second but it's one of the steps suggested in the guide). That solved that same problem for mine.

EDIT TO ADD: here it is: this may be a linux or Iris specific thing, but (at least on the i5) doing the suggested change to sudo vi /etc/security/limits.conf dropped my start from 359 to 320, and eventually my hashrate dropped to 180. Commenting it out brought everything back to 359 and stable, so I suggest testing it if you want, but it doesn't seem necessary (if you are still getting locked RAM messages, I was able to get rid of them by sudo running the miner, but I don't think they had an effect on hashrate)


I'm going to try out your suggestion.  VyperBTC and I have been exchanging a few messages and we are both experiencing the same issue with hashrate dropping.  It starts out fine, but eventually it will drop to the upper 200s.  At first I thought maybe the processor was too hot and throttling, but restarting the miner fixes it so I don't think that is the issue.  

I've tried it but it didn't help unfortunately. I'm not sure how it would effect performance programming a script to close out and sudo start the xmr-stak every 15-30min. That's not getting to the root of the issue, it's just a bandage to get around the actual issue of why the hell is it happening lol

Well at least my problem isn't happening every 15 minutes.  More like letting it run for 15 hours then it happens Smiley  Actually though I just thought of something.  Did you ever go into the bios and enable turbo mode?  I think without that, the processor does actually throttle and that might explain why it happens so quickly for you.

No i didn't - the only thing i did was enable power on if power loss. I'll change that and see if it helps, thanks!

Are all of you running on Windows? Because I'm on Lubuntu, and now have 4 of the i5 version and all are running stable at 359mh/s with no drop...
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 20, 2018, 08:54:06 PM
Currently have 4 1060s in the DL580 G7, 2 in the case and 2 via risers.  If I hadn't shorted out 2 pairs of wires on the SAS power cable, I'd probably have a few more via risers but at this point, I've basically run out of cards other than a 6950 and a 780.  All my new cards are up.  Now to find more cards! lol)
full member
Activity: 139
Merit: 100
January 20, 2018, 08:16:34 PM
I've tried 2008R2, no go.  I'm currently on Server 2016 using drivers for 2008 and 2012 plus Win 10 64 bit drivers for the Nvidia cards.

Great minds must think alike.  I bought a couple 12V to 5V converters myself.  It's how I'm adapting the power feed that was for the SAS array to drive cards based off the onboard PSUs. Smiley  I'm going to place an order from China as I can get the for a fraction of the cost, just have to deal with the wait.  I ordered enough to cover me for a server or two for now.

Wait, I just realized those are lipo converters from the RC world, you fly too?


I tried Server 2016 and got stuck on the first installation of lan driver, so i ditch that for now, going to try 2012 server tomorrow as it should have official support from the "Service Pack for ProLiant" http://h17007.www1.hpe.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/products/service_pack/spp/index.aspx .

I don't fly, got it from a friend, i believe is from a custom drone project Wink
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 20, 2018, 07:58:36 PM
I've tried 2008R2, no go.  I'm currently on Server 2016 using drivers for 2008 and 2012 plus Win 10 64 bit drivers for the Nvidia cards.

Great minds must think alike.  I bought a couple 12V to 5V converters myself.  It's how I'm adapting the power feed that was for the SAS array to drive cards based off the onboard PSUs. Smiley  I'm going to place an order from China as I can get the for a fraction of the cost, just have to deal with the wait.  I ordered enough to cover me for a server or two for now.

Wait, I just realized those are lipo converters from the RC world, you fly too?
full member
Activity: 139
Merit: 100
January 20, 2018, 07:25:21 PM
Cleared NVRAM and I'm back in business.  My ROM date is from 2011.  Would you mind when you get a chance to check what version yours is?  What OS are you running btw?

I had 3 cards running in the box and one being powered by a riser.  For cooling reasons I'm about to fire the box with 2 risers and 2 in the case.  (I'm short 4 pin molex power for the risers.)  I've been doing some heavy adapting and outside of me blowing a dual 12v rail by accident.  I'm getting to be fairly confident about running a bunch of GPUs in the box but of course, only time will tell!  

I will check BIOS version later, not at the facility right now. First i ran SMOS, but could only get 1 card working. Im planning to install Windows Server 2012 as it supposed to have the best driver support from HP? What about you?

Btw i did this mod tonight to be able to power my USB risers with a 2000W server PSU that only delivers 12V, this mod gives me 5V (molex design, need 5V to start the cards...) : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/modding-pcie-riser-photos-1542527 . So far so good.


Credits to @SerialLain



jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 20, 2018, 07:15:12 PM
Cleared NVRAM and I'm back in business.  My ROM date is from 2011.  Would you mind when you get a chance to check what version yours is?  What OS are you running btw?

I had 3 cards running in the box and one being powered by a riser.  For cooling reasons I'm about to fire the box with 2 risers and 2 in the case.  (I'm short 4 pin molex power for the risers.)  I've been doing some heavy adapting and outside of me blowing a dual 12v rail by accident.  I'm getting to be fairly confident about running a bunch of GPUs in the box but of course, only time will tell! 
full member
Activity: 139
Merit: 100
January 20, 2018, 06:43:51 PM
Hi, i didn't really do anything special, just reset the bios to default settings, switched the cpus and booted. I can check board revision, bios version etc tomorrow when i'll have time to indulge myself in the mining operation Smiley

I just attempted the same.  System still wouldn't boot with the 8837's.  I tried 2 old CPU's with 2 of the new, that didn't work either.  Then I left just 2 of the original CPUs and couldn't get it to boot.  I've put the original CPUs back in and now I get a long and short beep indicating a fatal ROM error: system ROM not properly configured.  Screen never comes up.  Now I'm down 4 workers just because I wanted to mine ITNS on the CPUs... Cheesy  I'm hoping I can get this guy back up.  I was powering the cards pretty easily off the factory PSUs after figuring a few things out.

Tuesday I go pickup 28 servers.  Next week is going to be super busy... Cheesy

Sorry to hear that :/ But you did get more than 1 GPU running as i understand? On risers or?
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 20, 2018, 06:31:29 PM
Hi, i didn't really do anything special, just reset the bios to default settings, switched the cpus and booted. I can check board revision, bios version etc tomorrow when i'll have time to indulge myself in the mining operation Smiley

I just attempted the same.  System still wouldn't boot with the 8837's.  I tried 2 old CPU's with 2 of the new, that didn't work either.  Then I left just 2 of the original CPUs and couldn't get it to boot.  I've put the original CPUs back in and now I get a long and short beep indicating a fatal ROM error: system ROM not properly configured.  Screen never comes up.  Now I'm down 4 workers just because I wanted to mine ITNS on the CPUs... Cheesy  I'm hoping I can get this guy back up.  I was powering the cards pretty easily off the factory PSUs after figuring a few things out.

Tuesday I go pickup 28 servers.  Next week is going to be super busy... Cheesy
newbie
Activity: 61
Merit: 0
January 20, 2018, 12:12:01 PM
Thanks OP, was starting to shop for new rig parts, will give your secrets a shot.
jr. member
Activity: 176
Merit: 1
January 20, 2018, 10:42:09 AM
Even Microcenter is getting in on the gouging game.  1070ti's in stock but I'm not going to pay $939.99 + tax for one!  Roll Eyes Angry Angry

I wasn't able to make any headway on my DL580 when it came to getting the better CPUs in but I can say it is currently mining with 3 cards in it.  I have figured out how to adapt some cables and am powering the 3 cards from the onboard power connectors.  I also managed to repurpose the micro sata connector that fed the optical drive to run an SSD.  One of my goals with all the server iron is to remove as much stuff as possible without making the servers get upset.

I've been seriously "ghetto rigging" things since I've been waiting on equipment to show up.  Of course, I spent the better part of yesterday trying to repurpose some older ATX PSUs to get the cards up and running, only to walk out of the location at midnight to find a box containing 2 PSU's that were supposed to be here today.  Sigh, life would have been easier if I had had those! lol
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 512
January 20, 2018, 09:38:27 AM
ANOTHER Z400 UPDATE:

A friend of mine was able to get SIX graphics cards running in his Z400s with the 4x splitter card! I have only tried up to FIVE personally... so very cool to see his experiment with six working!

He shared on Facebook :



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