Nvidia Mining rig

[d3rrial]

Hey there, I'm d3rrial. I'm now going to build a Nvidia GTX 750Ti based mining rig. I've been building my own gaming PCs for a long long time now, but up to this point I have not had a specialized mining Rig yet, which will now change The rig will pull roughly 900kh/s scrypt @ less than 200W power consumption total, which is pretty impressive for Nvidia.

Due to some delivery scheduling mismatches, quite a few parts of my rig are still missing, at the moment I have only
3 GTX 750Tis,
1 ASrock H81 Pro BTC,
1 Intel Celeron G1820,
2 2GB Corsair Dominator (old-reused ones),
1 60GB SSD (old-reused)
and a HDMI display (this is hopefully gonna be really cool, wait until I have started building it, I'll post as many pictures as I can.)

Parts that are missing:
Corsair RM450,
Openrigs Vitalia case,
Windows 8.1 (if anyone got a cheap key, feel free to PM me).
A few risers are also missing, so is the temporary case, but we'll get there

I have chosen the MSI Twin Frozr GTX 750Tis because: They look pretty awesome and they're supposedly very cool and very quiet The H81 Pro BTC goes without saying and the Intel processor was the cheapest I could find. I had good experiences with Corsair PSUs in the past, so I went ahead and ordered the cheapest fully modular one. The HDMI display (7", the pink thing in the picture) will later contain the miner status and all relevant information.

So here's a picture of the boxes:

More pictures will follow as I get in the parts to start building the rig

This is my first ever buildlog, so it would be appreciated if constructive criticism would be issued. Thank you!

PS: I have now been awake for more than 50 hours, I went from the return flight from my holiday from costa rica straight to the office to pick up all the packages, to making this build-log post, so please be aware that this is all being done while I am very very tired

 

[Feronix]

Interesting... Will follow

 

[WYP]

Nice, i look forward to seeing future updates.

 

[d3rrial]

Thanks

Unfortunatly the soonest I'll be able to update the thread is tomorrow evening (central european time), that's when I get back from work, hopefully with the PSU, the risers and the temporary case

Edit: If you want more pictures on what I currently have, I can also do that. Just not start to assemble yet

Edit 2:

Not an update, just an expansion: These are all the parts for the rig that are currently in my posession:

You may notice a copy of Windows 8.1 and a new SSD lying around there: I stupidly bought these (way too expensive) even tho I had a 60GB SSD that I don't use and I could get Win 8 much cheaper elsewhere and have it work reliably, so I'm gonna send these two things back, but the rest is as it is and will go into my rig (except the 8GB USB drive, thats for installing the OS, or running BAMT / SMOS when they start to support Cudaminer correctly

 

[Wraith]

I'm a real noob at all this Mining stuff but wouldn't a dedicated ASCI card mine more? I know that ASCI is 300x better at than GPU and you can also get dedicated external mining units from Butterfly for like $274.00

 

[wassupdoc]

^Yup, and why use 750Tis? They're not all that great for mining

 

[RadeonHDx]

I'm a real noob at all this Mining stuff but wouldn't a dedicated ASCI card mine more? I know that ASCI is 300x better at than GPU and you can also get dedicated external mining units from Butterfly for like $274.00

These miners are build for mining on bitcoin only, they are completely useless for scrypt mining or gaming.

^Yup, and why use 750Tis? They're not all that great for mining

He's using 750TI's because they have one of, if not the best performance/watt when it comes to mining.

 

[cooperman]

^Yup, and why use 750Tis? They're not all that great for mining

Because of this asshat--> http://www.pcper.com/news/General-T...-Performance-Increases-Maxwell-and-GTX-750-Ti

Anyway i dont think you can use ASCI on anything outher than bitcoin (which definitely isn't worth mining with video cards) dogecoin/feathercoin can be profitable.

 

[d3rrial]

OK small Update:

My PSU has arrived, I've started assembling the rig in a temporary state (only 1 gpu, no case, due to missing risers)

Here are the results:

All parts in their packaging

MSI GTX 750Ti OC Twin Frozr Close-Up

750Ti Backside

H81 Pro BTC with G1820 CPU and Corsair Dominator RAM

RAM Close-Up

With installed GPU

Corsair RM450 Close-Up

Entire system without I/O


During initial setup it turned out that the 7" Display I orderd alongside the rig to use as monitoring device for reading out temperatures and hashrates and the minerstatus in general was dead on arrival, no signal, can't even turn the thing on. Don't know what happened. Probably because it is cheap china stuff, it didn't come with a manual, no nothing >_<.

Windows 8.1 was set up, worked nicely ran CUDAMiner for about 30 Minutes and got 260kh/s without overclocking or changing the TDP, out of the box. Very impressive in my opinion.
And all of this while the system was EXTREMLY quiet. I couldn't hear even the slightest sound and that was very disturbing as I felt the urge to constantly look and see if the fans were all spinning (which they were).

All in all I'm kind of happy with this first trial and I will see what I can make happen when the risers and the power switch arrive... Short-Circuit booting this thing with a knife isn't the most elegant solution

I'll update the thread whenever I get the new parts

 

[cooperman]

Its not going to live long if you keep puting it on carpet...

 

[d3rrial]

Its not going to live long if you keep puting it on carpet...

It's not on the carpet It was on the foam it came with at all times and when I started running it, I put it on cardboard

 

[EddWills95]

Nice one mate considering the power needed (lack thereof), i might consider it myself.

Just as something to have running on the smaller alt-coins.

 

[d3rrial]

Nice one mate considering the power needed (lack thereof), i might consider it myself.

Just as something to have running on the smaller alt-coins.

Currently its only running middlecoin, but when it's done (and the coin is fixed up properly) it'll mine Auroracoin.
Tomorrow evening next update hopefully. If no new hardware is added, the update will be about software / tweaking / overclocking.

 

[Seb.F]

Interested in how these maxwell cards perform. Will be keeping my eye on it. Have been mining a while now myself and have a nice little arsenal, all be in AMD... who I cannot stand unfortunately.

 

[Edge]

The 750Ti is only bested by the R9 270 for hashrate/watt atm I believe, so nice choice!

You set on buying a $68 frame though? You could make one for a fraction of that!

 

[RadeonHDx]

The 750Ti is only bested by the R9 270 for hashrate/watt atm I believe, so nice choice!

You set on buying a $68 frame though? You could make one for a fraction of that!

I have a 270 atm but I want to game aswell so I want to get a 290 and I can't really justify getting two or three 750ti's myself. Can't wait to see how it pans out and see how quiet it can be. I imagine that the fans are barely running on the GPU's.

 

[d3rrial]

Here's a screenshot of the miner running with 1 card.

Clocks are visible in MSI Afterburner in the background, Memoryclock is 3GHz according to Afterburner

 

[wassupdoc]

Can the pcie slots deliver enough power?

 

[d3rrial]

Can the pcie slots deliver enough power?

Yes they can. A pcie slot on the motherboard can deliver 75W, the maximum TDP of the card is 60W so that'll be enough.

My PCIE x16 riser came today btw. so I'll hook up a second card today and see how it goes. Pics and Text will follow as soon as I'm home from work!

 

[wassupdoc]

Yes they can. A pcie slot on the motherboard can deliver 75W, the maximum TDP of the card is 60W so that'll be enough.

My PCIE x16 riser came today btw. so I'll hook up a second card today and see how it goes. Pics and Text will follow as soon as I'm home from work!

I was aware of that, but in my mind that was over all the slots ah well