Hello dear ethereum-community,
with this post, i want to share my journey to mining on a 6 GPU rig. I haven't found a complete guide, that suits my needs, so I figured I could write one myself (or at least try). This is WIP!
This post is divided into a section where I'm explaining, what i did to make it work (I.) and a section of things that failed (II.) up to the point of success. At the end i will write down, what i want to do in the near future (III.).
I. How did i get it working
First of all, lets see what I bought:
- 1 x MSI Z170A GAMING PRO CARBON
- 1 x Intel Celeron G3930 2x 2.90GHz BOX
- 2 x 8GB Crucial CT2K4G4DFS8213 DDR4-2133 DIMM CL15 (overall 4x 4GB =16GB)
- 1 x 120GB Kingston SSD Now V300 2.5" SATA
- 6 x XFX 480 RS 8GB
- 1 x 1200 Watt Seasonic Prime Modular 80+ Platinum
- 6 x PCI-E Express 1x to 16x Extender Riser
Getting started:
After you have assembled everything except the GPUs and their risers. You should be able to boot the system into the BIOS. That is where we start. You have a keyboard and a DVI or HDMI cable in the corresponding output plugged into your motherboard. Prepare a USB thumbdrive with the newest BIOS (Version 1.7) provided by MSI (link). Plug that USB drive into the motherboard. Start the computer and press DEL on your keyboard to enter the BIOS. Once you are seeing the BIOS, you choose Advanced Mode (F7) and M-Flash. This will require the system to reboot into flash mode. The next window you see, will show a folder structure. Find your way to the file you've just put onto the USB thumbdrive. Once you've selected the file it will start flashing the BIOS. This was the very first step
Now we need a working bootable windows 10 pro usb-thumbdrive (at least thats what I use). I recommend rufus for creating such drive. Plug the bootable USB drive into the motherboard and boot it. I assume that the installation is a UEFI installation.
Once W10 is installed, make sure that all necessary drivers (i.e. Chipset-Driver) are installed (not those that are needed for the GPUs!). I've allowed RDP access on my miner to check if everything is alright on my main computer. You can find that option via System, Advanced System Settings, Tab: Remote, Check: "Allow Remote ....". Next setting we want to touch, is the "install drivers automatically"-feature. Go to System, Advanced System Settings, Tab: Hardware, Driver Installation Settings and choose No. If your Windows is updated and configured, we can proceed by downloading the AMD drivers. I am currently using the WHQL-Drivers version 16.10.1 (link). Just download it, don't install it yet. Shutdown your system.
Take one of your GPUs and plug it directly onto the 16x PCIe slot onto your motherboard. Pull the DVI/HDMI cable from the motherboard and plug it into the GPU. Boot your system. It should detect, that the display is now on the GPU rather than the iGPU and you should see the BIOS booting up. Change the setting: Settings, Advanced, Integrated Graphics Configuration, Initiate Graphic Adapter to PEG. Save the settings and reboot.
Once the system is successfully booted, go to your downloads folder where you've put the AMD driver installer and install the driver. I chose to install everything. Your display will flicker during this process. As soon as the installation is complete, try to start "AMD Settings" from the windows menu. If that worked we are good to proceed. (I uninstalled the iGPU via Device Manager at this point, but I'm not sure if thats needed). Reboot your system and enter the BIOS.
In the BIOS go to Settings, Advanced, PCI Subsystem Settings. Here you change PEG0 and PEG1 to Gen1 and enable "Above 4G encoding". Save the settings. The system will try to reboot now, but i shut it down via pressing the power button.
Now its time for the 5 remaining GPUs. Remove the GPU that is sitting on the PCIe 16x slot and plug all risers on the motherboard. Plug the GPUs into the risers and connect everything accordingly. Picture 1 shows my rig. My risers have a SATA to 4-Pin Molex cable, where they are pulling power from. The AMD cards are power hungry and they are not only pulling from the 8-Pin connector, they are also pulling from the PCIe/riser. So i did only connect two risers on one SATA power cable coming from the Power Supply (PSU). If you are connecting more than two risers you can feel the cable getting warm. I do not want that. The GPUs came with a 2x6-Pin to 1x8-Pin adapter. The PSU came with four cables that have two 8-Pin connectors. As you can see in the picture 2, I connected two of the mentioned cables to three GPUs.
Is everything set? Boot your machine, Windows will install the drivers for the remaining cards and you will see flickering for the next 5 minutes. Check the Device Manager if you can see 6 x RX 480. If yes, "high five"!, if not, let me know, I may have got an idea.
The next step is to download mining-software, I am using claymore's miner v8.0 at the moment. Once downloaded and extracted, go to the folder containing EthDcrMiner64.exe and search for the start.bat. Edit the file to your preferences. This is what my start.bat looks like:
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eu2.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal 0xfD4d1B9ec7C75Af47787d3449d6e1f85c88B3eF1.Miner01 -epsw xDouble click start.bat and the machine should start working. Congratz, you are mining Ethereum! First thing I did was to open "AMD Settings" and reduced the power limit. Go to Gaming -> Global Settings and choose the first RX 480 Wattman. Scroll down until you see power limit and set it to -15%. Do that for all GPUs. Most systems should be stable at -15%. You can fine-tune that to your liking. I will explain more on that topic in section III.
II. What failed and problems I've encountered
UNFINISHED: Will continue in the next days -
6 bought 2 broken opencl hangs watchdg, another broken motherboard. bought ram because i thought i needed it. hashrate on one card is terrible when on RDP.
III. Whats next?
UNFINISHED: Will continue in the next days -
Testing 17.x.x driver, flashing boysie's on GPU, more tuning on Clocks and stuff.
I hope you liked to read my story! I'm open for questions!
If you feel like you want to buy me a beer: 0xfD4d1B9ec7C75Af47787d3449d6e1f85c88B3eF1
Best wishes Dave2k