The PC in question consists of the following:
-Asus P8Z68-V LX mobo
-i5 2500k quadcore CPU
-8gb Corsair DDR3
-2 SSDs & 1 7200rpm SATA drive
-Win 7 pro 64bit
-Corsair Carbide 400R case
Now, I originally had a Corsair 650watt PSU (I believe bronze) and an evga GTX 560 ti video card in this machine. I started mining a tiny bit with that card using cudaminer. Then I ordered an MSI R9 290 OC (the one with the twin frozr cooler on it) and a Seasonic 860watt Platinum PSU, but newegg sent the wrong PSU (850watt bronze version) so at first what I did is just remove the nvidia video card and put the 290 in it's place. I wasn't sure if the 650watt bronze psu would be able to handle both the cards + my cpu, ram, etc and I didn't want to push it.
So, with just the 290 installed, I played around with cgminer and eventually got to where I could get about 630kh/sec with this code in cgminer:
cgminer --scrypt -o poolwebsite:port -u workername -p password -I 14
But if I tried to go to Intensity 15, my computer would either freeze or blue screen within a second or two of entering the code in cgminer. I consulted another miner who gave me this code to try:
cgminer --scrypt -o poolwebsite:port -u workername -p password -g 1 -w 256 --lookup-gap 2
--thread-concurrency 32765 -I 20 --auto-fan --gpu-fan 60-80 --temp-hysteresis 1 --temp-target=88
--temp-overheat=95 --gpu-engine 1000 --gpu-memclock 1250 --gpu-powertune 20
strangely enough, that allowed me to get an impressive 880kh/sec, and did not instantly crash my PC. however, after a few hours, it would eventually freeze. The temps were not getting above the low 80s so I don't believe it wasn't shutting down from heat.
From doing some reading, I believed that the problem must be either my power supply not really being up to snuff for this, and/or the video card not being able to handle mining while also driving my desktop (and to support this theory, if I did stuff on the desktop it would freeze my faster, usually in 10-20 minutes rather than 3 hours or so.)
The Seasonic 860watt Platinum PSU arrived a day later, so I removed the 650watt and put in the Seasonic 860. I put the nvidia card in the top PCIE slot on my mobo and put the MSI R9 290 card in the bottom PCIE slot (there are only two PCIE slots wide enough for video cards on this mobo.)
First I couldn't get cgminer to "see" the second card (the 290) at all. I tried changing the registry keys to disable UPLS or whatever its called to stop powering off the card, but still the only way I could get Windows and cgminer to acknowledge that there was even a 290 in my freaking PC, was to hook it up to my monitor. As I only have 1, that meant having BOTH VIDEO CARDS attached to the same monitor. I don't have a dummy plug or the necessary supplies to make one, if I need to I will end up trying it but read on.
So I have the nvidia going to the monitor via HDMI cable and the 290 going to the monitor via DVI cable. By doing that, I can now mine on the 290 (I had to add "--gpu-platform 1 -d 0" to my code however) and my nvidia card is "driving" the desktop AND I now have a badass Seasonic 860watt Platinum freaking PSU, so I should be able to rock and roll now, right?
Not quite. If I use the code above that I got from a fellow miner, which yields 880kh/sec on my card, it still makes my computer a bit sluggish and freezes it after a few hours (or like 10-20 minutes if I browse the web or anything like that.) The temps on both cards are fine - the 290 ends up in the low to mid 80s and the nvidia card hovers around 50 (understandable due to being near the 290.) I am very confused. I have heard of plenty of people who have multiple cards and are using some of them to mine, and can game on the other card at the same time. I can't even browse the freaking web lol. What am I doing wrong here? Is the issue somehow related to me having them both connected to the same monitor? That sounds absurd but I don't know what else it could possibly be. I thought that as long as I controlled the heat (which I am doing fine) that I should be able to have the 290 mining at breakneck, balls-the-wall-speed and still be able to use the computer on the nvidia card (and even play games on it if I want to - again assuming they are cooled adequately. I would understand if heat was the issue here but based on the temps it is not.)
Can anyone steer me in the right direction here??
