Topic: Project: Stealth Mining Rig (Read 10001 times)

It only took me 10 months, but I built a 10Ghash/s stealth miner. It draws less than 300W.

LOL

You pick out the details that are going to be the most difficult. That gif be highly relevant.

Just so I understand fully, your plan is now to design a custom computer case, build it, populate it with mining hardware and then sneak it into work and make it look like one of the regular servers? 

How will you remove it when you're done?  Just wait till after work hours and sneak it out again?

Please do keep us updated, I'm excited to see where this goes.

Your sketches look good, you probably just want intake fans at the end of the gpus pushing air in, outlets at the top would be perfect for the gigabyte windforce cards as they mostly exhaust upwards.

Ok Thanks everybody for replying to this thread.
The critics are also very welcome and I understand the implications and the ethical thoughts.
I also fully understand the the final outcome is really low for the risk (which is also pretty small, as there is no one else managing the server and no one else knowing what they are actually doing, no understanding about dns, dhcp, etc... so no nerds around).
But however, it is quiet an interesting project, and isnt it the little things that satisfy you.

So I am probably going to design a case from scratch made of light material and well-thought ventilation.

I will keep you updated on the case... if there is any interest.
And also once I put it in the room I will inform you :-)

So far - wish you a nice day everybody

It seems like every few weeks we get someone on here looking to steal electricity from their employer to mine Bitcoins.  Not only is this ethically wrong and also illegal, it will most likely get you fired.  And for what, a few measly bitcoins? 

People have been fired for this.  People have had their lives ruined by this.  Please think long and hard about the risk/reward ratio here.  Realistically, even with 4 7970s, you'll make about .1BTC a day (difficulty is going up, so this number will be going down, not staying constant).  So in a 30 day month, that's 3BTC (maximum).  The next month will be less, and so on.

Is risking losing your job really worth an extra $300 a month?  Wouldn't it be easier to just ask for a raise?   

Not to mention that what you're trying to do is infeasible anyway.  No way in hell you're gonna get 4x7970s properly cooled and quiet in a server enclosure.  Even if they're full tower ATX size cases, it's still gonna be tough.  On top of that, any given server will not have a big enough PSU to support those GPUs.  What are you gonna do, switch out the PSUs with beefier ones?  And most servers have 1 single PCI-E port if they even have any.  So are you going to install a second motherboard in the existing server enclosure to support your graphics cards?  Impossible to fit. 

The hardware isn't there to do what you want to do, and you'll get fired in the end anyway. 

Think about this: you're looking at a spending over $1000 in hardware to try and scam your employer.  Does that sound like a good idea?  Does that sound like it will end well?

But if you do go through with it and manage to pull it off, keep us updated, because mining rig setups are interesting.

Yeah it would probably be best to get ask; better to be asking for permission rather than forgiveness

Yeah just be carefull mate. I read somewhere that someone at an IT company just got busted for doing something like this. Just saying. Best of luck to you though if you know what your doing!

Looks powerful :-)

\

Since you say noise isn't an issue; Just get two Delta TFB1212GHE on the intake and either tape over any airholes that are before the area in the GPUs are located, or make a nice duct with some plastic folders and electrical tape.

They'll be plenty cool enough if you're replacing the entire volume of the case every second.



To give you an idea of the power: it can propell itself along quite easily
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7e3eZVitGc

You will never earn back your investment if you plop down $1,100 for a ModMiner (including shipping). Hardware break-even point is 337 days, and that doesn't include a network that is massively growing. The network could double, and your break-even point shifts to almost 3 years. A FPGA is the worst thing you could do right now.

ModMiner Quad is legit.

840mhash @ only 40 watts, 1069$

http://modminerquadstore.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=50

Where do I get those FCPGA's?

If not taking the moral question in consideration...

* Watercooled rigg = to expensive, atleast 100$ per card
* Lots of fans in combination with stock cooled cards = to much noice
* ASICS = no where to be found atm

Which leaves u to FCPGA mining, higher $/ Kh/s but consumes alot less power = less heat = less noice = less likely to be revealed.
Buy a bunch of them and place them inside a ATX chassie, and voila!

Yea, it isn't always better to ask forgiveness than permission, especially after cgminer crashes your company dns server in the middle of the work day 

It's probably not a good idea to mine with any mission critical servers.  It would be better to build your own stealth rig and host it at the same facility, with management's permission of course.

Soooo by "server" you don't really mean "server". You mean you grabbed your 6 year old Dell and threw Linux on it, and now it's your "dedicated email server"? And now you want to throw a few 7950s in them, and hope your boss doesn't notice? Nice.

Openly Admitting:
So I got a couple of servers @work (smtp, dns, etc). I want to extend the services those computers do to mining.
I also do not want anybody get suspicious about them having 3-4 GPU's sitting inside. So I want to make them look normal and mine with them.

I wondered that myself but wasn't sure about asking.  Especially since it can be as loud as needed, why is 'stealth' such an issue?  Seems contradictory, but to each his (or her) own 

Just out of interest why do you want a "stealth" rig?!

if your room is clean enough, i suggest that position all the fans blowing air into the case, and causing the air have no where to go other than GPU air exhaust outlet at the back. keep the GPU cool always with fresh air from outside. few more fans on top of the GPU, the back of the GPU also give out alot of heat.

the point is air is just like everything else, they are lazy as sheat. they will find the easiest exit ( least resistant ) if u got air from the front, and exhaust on top the casing, those cold air will just exit there.

hope my weird logic give u some idea.

Stealth cases...

1: Large oven-top microwave. Gut it, it can hold 2 Mobo's and up to 14 (single-gpu) cards, 4 PSU's... Has kick-ass venting on most models.

2: Medium/large in-window AC unit. Gut it, it can hold same as above...

3: Fireplace insert. Can hold same as above... Heat can be ducted in to the house in winter, exhausted out the chimney in the summer. (Might want to provide supplemental "fresh-outside air" for the supply.)

4: Mini-Fridge. Gut it, add a vent and add a silent bathroom-blower-fan. Can fit 1-3 mobo's, depending on the size of the unit.

5: Dryer machine. Gut it, you can fit up to 6x mobo's inside. Needs a good green-house or oven blower to vent it. Set it up next to the real dryer, and blow exhaust into the dryer to save on drying bills. (Use that 240v line for more efficiency.) Add your water-in for your hot-water tank into the exhaust, and save money on hot water too.

6: File cabinet (tall). Can hold 4x to 5x individual setups, in a convenient pull-out access setup.

Get some sidewinder deltas and you shouldn't have to worry about the case too much - they push 3-4 cubic feet of air a second! That's probably close to the volume of the case!

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/de12tfexhisp.html

This is not the one I have. I only chose it to ask for the position of the fans. The case is still not settled yet.
I like the second case recommendation you made.

So another topic:

I have a friend who is going to make me a custom closed case out of aluminium (or another material in case there are better ones).
He is kinda professional in it, so If I give all the exact measurements of the final sketch, he is able to do that nicely.

For this I made a first raw sketch as so:

Red circles Where the fan's are going to be connected
Blue square Mainboard


Red circles Where the fan's are going to be connected
Blue square Mainboard
Purple thingy Graphics cards

And of course fan-holes above the card, so that the hot air can go out!

As I want it to be as small as possible I still have a few questions.

• How far do the cards need to be separated from each other?
• How far do the cards need to be separated from the psu (which will be at the top left in the picture)
• What do you think about the fan positions?
• The cards will be attached via riser-cables, what is the maximum length of such a cable, because the card-fixer (where they will be screwed tight are going to be fixed (in height) above the mainboard)

So obviously this is a first raw sektch made with mspaint, but it will be improved over the next week as questions arise and are solved.

Hmm... why is there a GPU missing? And 90c is a lot hotter than I like to keep my cards. I've heard 80c thrown around as a good rule of thumb for keeping your cards from getting damaged. But then again, most of my involvement in the mining scene was in early 2011. (Not rich, unfortunately. Stopped mining for most of 2011 and all of 2012 for various reasons.)

It will be a challenge, but affording the cards themselves it the biggest challenge which you seem to have met.  I don't particularly like that case, I would really recommend something from the "Lian-Li Lancool" line or even better, a Antec Twelve Hundred V3 would be perfect.  A friend of mine used 3 of these cases to run a series of computers that was used as a homemade HPC lab (the 4 AMD GPUs were running full on 24/7).  It was housed in a closet, but even with the door open it was relatively quiet.  Water cooling would have been a requirement except a square was cut out of the side window, in which a block of aluminum was milled specifically for the setup and a 200mm fan drew away heat up and out of the closet.

I know there are people on this board that have access to such milling machines, but if you are in a location where there are designers or a college/school of design, they will likely be happy to help with your project (or maybe the people that live around me are just kind of hippyish in that way =p).  Other metals can be used of course, however the aluminum was a no-cost option for us as it was being used as a doorstop/scrap from a larger project.  Good luck!

Aside from hardware tricks you should go undervolting your cards.
It will reduce temperatures dramatically.

(Depending on energy and BTC price, it will increase profit too.)

The case door fans push a lot of air into the card intake, and the front fans push a lot of air into the case.



I totally agree with you that it looks like it shouldn't work, but it does work just fine.  YMMV, and as noted, I wouldn't do it with AMD cards, but I've known people who packed 4 6990s into the same case and kept them perfectly cool while running.

I find it very difficult to believe those cards were not suffocating. Nvidia or not, any card sandwiched together like that takes in heat from the card directly below it. I can't see how those cards were getting any fresh intake at all.

Actually, that case did work just fine to keep those cards cool.  It wasn't great, which is why I eventually moved to 3 card designs, but the biggest issues is that while nVidia cards have a nice step at the intake to deal with being crammed together, AMD cards don't, so don't cool nearly as well in that configuration.

The case door fans draw air IN - the cards suck air from that area, so blowing cool air into them helps a lot.

It works, but I don't use 4 cards in that configuration anymore for good reasons.

I think I would have the side fans pull in fresh air (pressurizing the case, making the GPU fans do less work).

If you can wait, I would consider using ASIC for a stealth mining rig. A mini ITX board should leave lots of room for 4 of klondike 64 boards. I have not investigated how much case modificatuion would be required to mount them though.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/klondike-16-chip-asic-open-source-board-preliminary-190731

200W should be more stealthy than 800W

360mm rad isn't enough for 4 cards. You would need 480mm minimum and a damn good one at that. And water cooling gets expensive real quick.

No. Not unless you want to turn your case into an easy bake oven. 3 cards max. Each spaced evenly. Case must have good airflow and wire management. Your sketch is a perfect example of what not to do. The cards are not spaced at all and won't receive any fresh air due to:

1. being sandwiched together.
2. cable obstruction.

Those HAF X cards let you put a full 360mm RAD in the top, and keep it inside the case. Maybe go the WC route and do that?

So as far as my theory goes, I made up this (unprofessional) little sketch.





What do you think? Could it stand 4 cards this way?
Any better spread of the fans?

If you try, you can cool 4 cards on air fully contained in a case.

http://blog.cryptohaze.com/2012/02/quad-gpu-builds-with-case-part-2.html

That said, I don't recommend it, and have since moved to 3 cards per system with 1 space between them for better cooling.  This is easier to power, easier to cool, and keeps cards significantly cooler.  This is the "standard build" now for the boxes I've got in a data center.

Go with full-card waterblocks. You can easily dump the ~0.8-1 kW of heat coming out of 4x 7970s with fullcover blocks and sufficient radiator to support it. Chances are you won't be able to mount the radiator within the case though.

I am in the same boat, have had trouble finding a case with 12 or more slots in the back to space out the cards.  And if I did, some of the slots still wouldn't be able to hold a card with the mobo / risers getting in the way of where it would need to sit to fit into the backpane.  If you do get it set up right I would love to see it, or at least know which case you used to make it happen!  I am just using the crate rig method right now but would limit it to 2 or 3 cards if I needed it to hide in a regular case.

It does not have to be quiet. It can be loud as hell. I just need it to have a stable cool temp in the closed case.

I would say don't attempt this. Removing 800W of heat is hard enough, to get it quiet on air almost impossible.

I'm using a Cooler Master HAF X case with 3x 7950 with good results. I think you might be able to fit 4x 7970 in there with creative use of risers. You would want to remove the dust covers from the various grills to improve airflow.

No water needed....just buy these:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195004.0o

Totally stealth....

That just made my day :-)

Yeah, the bad news, it's going to be 4x 7970.
The good news, sound is not a problem as the pc would be in another room (not air conditioned).

Are there any recommendations on the case for a closed one?

Probably water cooling. For reference, I have 3 6990s on an open-air rig sitting directly below a large AC unit and it takes two Ultra Kaze fans blowing directly on the chips to keep them at 80 degrees Celsius. I don't think 4 cards would last very long in an enclosed case, personally, but they might do alright if you spread them out, give each one its own fan, and somehow turn the whole case into a veritable jet-intake without giving up that "regular computer" look.

Thing is, you probably won't be able to spread them out that much. PCI risers only give you about 6 inches, which sounds like a lot but really, in practice, isn't so much. Especially since you have to keep slack in them to keep from pulling them out of their slots, and since you can't twist them more than maybe 30 degrees at most without losing significant length.

P.S.
If your cards are anything like my 6990s, even if you manage to make the case look *normal* while incorporating awesome ventilation, the sound's going to give it away. And the heat. "Hey, why does your computer sound and feel like a hair dryer? You wouldn't happen to be mining, would you?"

Yeah. For stealth, water cooling all the way.

I want to set up a closed-case btc mining rig that looks like an ordinary computer.
Is it even possible such a thing would survice with 4 GPU cards going crazy inside?

I know it is not that easy from what I read so far, but it should be possible, right?

My Plan so far is to separate the graphics card.
One should normally go into the pci slot and the other 3 will be connected via risers and placed at different locations inside the case.


What is your feeling about it? Do I need a water cooling system for that or will air be enough when there are many?