Just wanted to update this thread on my rig status since Phil, Vapour and so many others have helped me immensely in getting this thing launched!
So, I finally got it all hooked up and started with 1 MSI 470 plugged into PCIe slot #1. Since this is my first solo build of any kind, I half expected the thing to either blow up or not start on the first attempt, but to my amazement, it booted up fine... GPU lit up, all fans spinning, subsequent install of both W7 x64 and the MSI/AMD drivers went smoothly.
Downloaded MinerGate to start mining... starting out with this since that is what I have been using and want to make sure I get all the hardware working first before trying other miners and possibly tweaking the GPUs.
Many of you know that I originally had high expectations for CPU mining of XMR with the i7-6800k this system is built on. Well, the first results are lackluster to say the least. This CPU is only achieving about 250-260 H/s on XMR. I realize that I can probably squeeze more out of it by using a better miner like Claymore, but just bench-marking to my old 2600k (140 H/s) using the same MinerGate software is disappointing. In fact, I would almost argue that on a "per thread basis", there is essentially no difference in these CPU, even though they are 6th gen vs 2nd gen. The best performance with the 2600k is using 4 threads, resulting in about 35 H/s per thread. The sweet spot on the 8600k appears to 7 threads, which makes sense given the 2MB of cache needed per for mining, since this CPU has 15MB of cache. So, this results in an essentially flat 36 H/s vs the 2600k. So, all in all, unless i can get a significant bump from using another CPU miner, I might end up re-purposing this CPU/Mobo to build a higher-end personal system down the road.
On the GPU side, my first try was to mine XMR with the 1 470 but for some reason, it was making the software buggy and actually crashed it a couple of times. So, i decided to leave the CPU on XMR and start the GPU on ETH. After solving the DAG, it quickly leveled off at right around 19.4 Mh/s. I know that most people are getting low to mid 20's with these GPUs but most since I'm using MingerGate at this point, I wasn't too shocked to be coming in around 15-20% below that average hash-rate.
So, I let it run like that overnight. Checked it this morning and was still running perfectly with no issues noted. So, this afternoon, I added a 2nd 470. On the first attempt, I plugged it into slot #2, which is a PCIe2 x16/x4 slot, via USB powered x1-x16 riser. Install went fine, GPU lit up and showed up in the device mgr along with the other GPU in slot #1. The weird thing though was that after starting this 2nd GPU on ETH via MinerGate, it was only getting 4 Mh/s. Tried rebooting and same result. Powered off and plugged the riser into slot #1 (2nd full x16 slot). Powered on and GPU#2 was getting pretty much the exact 19.4 Mh/s GPU#1 was getting.
So, that's how I have it running now. I have 2 more USB powered risers due to arrive tomorrow or Tuesday, at which time I will attempt to install my 3rd and 4th 470's. The one thing I'm now a bit worried about is the fact that slot #2 only provided about 25% of the hash-rate as slot 1 & 3. I certainly expect slot #5 (full x16) to work fine via riser, but not sure why slot #2 had that issue... which makes me worry that slot #4 (x1 slot) could also have that problem. Is it possible that all PCIe3 x16 slots have to be occupied before the other 2 slots can achieve full bandwidth/power? Seems weird to me but something in the Mobo's manual does lead me to believe this might be possible.
Anyway, thanks again to everyone! It's a great feeling to finally be up and running!
that 4mh thing is a driver bug and the solve varies board to board gpu to gpu. I am a little tired and I will try to post on ways to fix it. please remind me of all you cards i.e. all 470's exactly the same? or a mix of cards?
