April 18th, 2013 
CryptoBadger 
One of my finished plastic-crate mining rigs.
So you’re interested in mining cryptocurrency, but you’re not sure where to start? No problem, this guide is all you need to set up your own headless litecoin mining rig—even if you have absolutely no experience with this sort of thing.
First, let’s get the obvious question out of the way: why litecoins? After all, bitcoins are worth more, right? The simple answer is that at the time of this writing, litecoins are currently the most profitable cryptocurrency to mine when you take into account how much each coin is worth, and the time required to mine one. Rest assured that if the situation changes, and another cryptocurrency suddenly surpasses litecoin as the best mining option, the rig outlined in the guide should have no problem switching over to a new coin.
This guide will be broken into several parts, each focusing on a different aspect of building your first mining rig. First, let’s take a look at what you’ll need in terms of hardware to put a respectable miner together.
Build your own Litecoin Mining Rig, part 1: Hardware
4/06/2017: This guide is roughly three years old. Please don’t attempt to buy any of the hardware recommended here—it’s quite obsolete! If you’re looking for information about modern GPU mining, please click here for my updated 2017 guide on mining Ethereum.
Here is the list of hardware that I recommend:
| Motherboard | ASRock 970 Extreme4 |
$98 |
| Processor | AMD Sempron 145 |
$38 |
| Memory | 4GB G.SKILL DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 2GB) |
$46 |
| Power Supply | Seasonic 860w Platinum PSU |
$199 |
| GPUs | 3 x MSI Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 (Twin Frozr) |
$319 each |
| (optional) | 3 x PCI-E riser cable | $5 each |
| (for dummy plugs) | 68 ohm 1/2 watt resistors | $3 |
Update 11/26/2013: The Radeon 7950 video cards are sold out pretty much everywhere. They’re still the best option for mining if you can find them, but if you can’t, then the new Radeon R9 280X cards are likely your best option. They do consume a fair bit more power though, so you”ll want to upgrade your power supply as well (this 1250w Seasonic should support three 280X GPUs without problems). As for brands, I recommend these Sapphire, Gigabyte, and MSI 280X cards for now. I’ll be updating the rest of my guide at some point in the near future with optimal settings for the 280X, so stay tuned.
Update 12/01/2013: If you’re trying to put a rig together, you’ve probably noticed that the above video cards have become nearly impossible to find. I’ve received a few messages from folks that are having some good results using the R9 290 cards, although they’re a fair bit more expensive than the 280X. If you’re itching to build a rig ASAP and can’t find a 7950 or 280X, then you might consider the 290. It looks like all of the current 290 cards are using AMD’s reference cooling design at the moment, so brand probably doesn’t matter too much. Although given a choice, you usually can’t go wrong with Sapphire, Gigabyte, and MSI. Again, remember to pick up a fairly powerful PSU if you’re going to run 3 of these in a rig.
You will also need a USB stick (8GB or larger, this one is fine) if you’re using Linux as your OS, or a harddrive (a cheap SATA drive of any size will do) if you’re using Windows. I will cover setup on both Linux and Windows in the next sections of this guide, as well as the pros and cons of each.
The video cards may be difficult to find, as they’re popular and often sell out. You can substitute nearly any 7950-based GPU, but if you have a choice, go for the MSI or Sapphire cards. They’re not voltage-locked and will save you some electricity in the long run. I have the MSI card that I recommended in all of my rigs, but I’m told that this (and also this) Sapphire card is also a good choice.
The motherboard, CPU, and RAM are all relatively unimportant. The motherboard simply needs to have enough PCI-E slots to host your three GPUs (if the recommended board isn’t available, here is another, or if you can’t find either ASRock, this Gigabyte board is a good alternative). The CPU will essentially sit idle, as all of the actual mining is done by the GPUs. The Sempron 145 is an excellent choice here because it’s cheap and draws very little power (if the Sempron is unavailable, this one is also a fine choice). If you’re going with Linux, you can get away with even less than 4GB of RAM, but I’d stick to that as a realistic minimum on Windows.
The power supply is important, and you don’t want to skimp on it. The Seasonic that I’ve recommended is extremely solid and 93% efficient, which will help keep power consumption to a minimum. It’s also modular, which is really nice if you’re putting this together in a plastic crate like I recommend.
The PCI-E risers aren’t strictly necessary, as all 3 GPUs will fit on the motherboard without them. However, airflow will be extremely limited due to the close proximity of the cards, and I really don’t recommend setting them up that way long-term. The riser cables allow you to position the GPUs off of the motherboard in a more spaced-out fashion. I dropped the temperature of my GPUs by nearly 10 degrees Celcius by simply using risers to separate them. Availability and pricing on Amazon is constantly changing, so check eBay if you can’t find them.
Important: you may also need to create dummy plugs for each of your GPUs. Some operating systems will idle video cards that do not have an active monitor connection, which will obviously kill your mining performance. Dummy plugs “trick” your OS into thinking a monitor is connected, thus preventing attached GPUs from being idled. You just need a few resistors ($1-2 at Radio Shack if they’re not available at Amazon) and these instructions to create your own plugs.
So you’ve got nearly $1400 worth of hardware, but no place to put it, as I haven’t mentioned a case. I highly recommend against trying to cram 3 GPUs into a conventional PC case. A plastic crate or two works far better due to the tremendous heat that the video cards will give off. Added bonus: they’re cheap!
Here is what you’ll need to create a simple DIY plastic crate housing for your miner:
Plastic Crate (get 2 if you want a place for your PSU) |
$5 each |
| Plastic stand-offs | $4 |
| 6 x #4 3/8″ wood or metal screws | $1 |
| Brace to rest GPUs on (I used two of these) | $4 |
| a few cable ties (8″ or so) | $2 |
| power switch & LED (optional) | $6 |
You can get plastic crates in most home improvement stores if you don’t want to ship it from Amazon. I picked mine up at Lowe’s for under $5 each. You should be able to get everything else on the list at Lowe’s if you happen to have one near you, too. As far as tools go, you’ll need a drill and a knife capable of cutting into whatever plastic crate you buy.
Assembly Steps:
First, attach your CPU & heatsink/fan to your motherboard, and place your RAM into the memory slot(s). Then follow the general steps below to mount everything into your plastic crate.
Click the images for a close-up look at each step.
Place plastic standoffs on the bottom of your plastic crate, and rest your motherboard on top of them. Make sure that all of the essential ports are accessible (SATA, USB, keyboard, mouse, etc). Use your knife to cut away pieces of the crate if necessary so that all ports you plan to use are exposed. Then plug your riser cables into the PCI-E slots of your motherboard.
Place your brace (either the plastic guards that I recommended, or a cut yardstick, or whatever you have that works) so that it is sitting above the motherboard, high enough for your GPUs to rest on. Cut the brace so that an inch or two sticks out on either end of the crate.
Drill holes in your brace so that you can secure it with cable ties (see image). Do not simply rest the brace on the crate! An accidental bump can cause it to fall into the crate, along with ~$1000 worth of GPUs if you do that!
Connect each GPU to it’s corresponding riser cable, resting the bracket end on the lip of the crate and the other end on your brace.
Screw each GPU down into the lip of the crate. If you drill small pilot holes ahead of time (mark where to drill with a sharpie), this is much easier.
If you have a power switch and LED, mount them into one of the crate’s corners. I was pretty sloppy with mine, but it’s functional.
You’re done! Simply connect everything to your power supply and you should be ready to power your rig on for the first time. If you have a second crate, you can put your power supply in there (along with your harddrive if you’re using Windows), and stack it under your main crate to save some space.
In the next part of this guide, I’ll show you everything you need to do to start mining under Linux (and Windows will follow shortly after)!
Posted in 
Tags: 
can someone help? i have asrock 970 extreme2 r2.0 with one radeon 7950, and amd sempron 145.
connected, shorted power, and everything starts up, fans are all running.
Monitor, however, does not work.
VGA, it works because I tested it with a desktop.
The 7950’s getting power, so I guess maybe it’s the VGA/DVI adapter?
Literally, when I turn it on, the monitor stays in sleep mode.
Id the gpu is just in slot kinda leaning make sure its sitting at a 90 degree angle… i had this happen to me
Yep me too 😛
I checked, this is all the way in.
Only thing I connected to it was a normal PCI cable from PSU and i connected the card to the mobo.
Nothing else needed, right?
Had a similar problem. Took me a bit to realize I needed to plug *both* PCI-E power connections for the GPUs from the power supply. Soon as I did that, everything was good.
It’s in, and recieving power, just that the monitor won’t come out of sleep mode.
Help!
You mentioned your using a VGA to DVI adapter, are you able to connect to ANY monitor via direct DVI output or HDMI output port on the GPU?
Someone mentioned earlier using a 290x which has done away with DVI-I (Dual link) and now only supports DVI-D (Digital only).
A way to tell visually is the DVI output plug would be a blue/grey colour instead of white or straight black. A DVI-D plug also has a straight input without surrounding 4 pins
see this image (http://cdn.eteknix.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_4349.jpg). You can see the top blue female plug with missing 4 pins surrounding flat input on right side of plug. (bottom black plug is dvi-i)
What does your card look like?
Also, no HDMI cable or monitor, and no DisplayPort monitor.
Hm.
what is the exact brand of your card?
MSI RADEON 7950 OC Boost Edition
checked specs, it’s dvi-i with a blue color.
I’m using the adapter that came with the card…
Try using the video output of the GPU. IF this works then your motherboard is set to not allow its video when there are GPU enables. A quick google search will tell you how to enable the motherboards video output.
I am using the video output of the GPU..
Processor is AMD Sempron 145, and motherboard doesn’t even have VGA port.
I am having the same problem with the same motherboard. im using a r9 290 card
sorry didnt mean to repost all that
[…] set up a crate build based on http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-hardware/ But when I went to turn it on, I got no response. Everythings all plugged in right and its the same […]
Hello,
Why use dummy plugs ?
And what is dummy plugs ?
TY
The dummy plugs stop the problem of a motherboard “turning off” a GPU because it thinks it is not being used since no monitor is attached to it. If you have only one GPU you probably don’t need the plug. With more than one GPU, maybe you will. For a way to do it straight on the GPU without the adapter, refer to here
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=11
The above method is much simpler than a dummy plug, and as you may read in the comments, supposedly there is very little chance of harm from a shorting of the GPU, as some people have thought. One person just used a paper clip, but I don’t know enough to be able to recommend that!:) Good Luck!
am building a rig using this guide however I am trying to build a rig using 4X R9 270x’s. I bought two 850w PSU’s to handle the consumption. I didn’t see much on using two PSU’s (they aren’t cheap PSU’s mind you) and wanted to hear what people thought about using 2 PSU’s as opposed to a 1250 or 1500w PSU. Any stories? Advice? Thanks
minerman,
Getting ready to build a similar rig (using 270s). Why the two power supplies? cryptobadger has just the one Seasonic 860 for 3 7950s, which draw more power than the 270s? Please educate me.
Regards
Sorry for the delay in replying. I am using 2 PSU’s because i figure i should allow for 200w per card, that means i’m at 800w already with just the video cards, so i thought i’d break the consumption up with 2 PSU’s. I’ve seen the 270x use as little as 142w in charts online, but i’m playing it safe I guess? Anyway, i’m pretty annoyed that i didn’t see that i only got one pci-e power connector with my PSU, Crossfire doesn’t transfer power does it?
There are comments that they need to be “linked”. Google the question to find threads that explain it, I’m not yett familiar with that.
There is something called crossfire connection. If you buy an amd gpu you can connect up to 4 gpu’s if im not mistaken…
the dummy plugs are to fool the motherboard into keeping the video cards alive. it saves you from having to have a monitor for each video card. if you have 1 video card then you probably gonna have 1 monitor but if your running 3 video cards then you may not have the room for 3 monitors. it talks about the dummy plugs above. just re-read it.
Dammit. Sorry Tony… responded to the wrong post. :/
Interesting thing, I just unplugged my dummy plugs in windows 7 and its still mining fine. I actually don’t think you need them at all anymore in windows probably you still do in linux https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175312.0
Finding the riser cards these days is a nightmare… no places have them that I can find 🙁 Ebay sellers are still selling them but when you buy they tell you they are OOS. Pissing me off.
Hi Paul where are you I just managed to order 3 from a company in Ireland called the Big Bargain Store at £7.14p each including mail delivery up to 21 days though I also noticed several Chinese compsanies also whilst trawling through Amazon UK I live in UK
I’m very late to the litecoin party… but here’s what I’ve experienced so far.
Video card price gouging: people are snapping up $500 R9 290s and trying to resell for $600 or $700. I experienced this while in line at the local Micro Center. Kinda made me mad. Especially when she had 6 (by Gigabyte) in her cart (3 of which I came in to buy). I ended up buying 3 MSI 270s ($179 after rebate, before tax). The way I see it, better to start mining now and upgrade to 290s as they become available. Time is, quite literally, money. Found this chart while trying to find video card alternatives… hope it helps: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
MoBos: I couldn’t find an available ASRock 970 to save my life. Found the slightly updated 990 as the above Micro Center for $139 (before tax). Some minor changes… if you see something of note, please educate me: http://www.asrock.com/mb/compare.asp?SelectedModel=990FX+Extreme4&SelectedModel=970+Extreme4
If anyone is interested in my going back to Micro Center for parts, LMK.
Regards
Phil,
I saw a RSRock 970 EX4 on Amazon this morning just under $200
http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-MB-970EX4-970-CrossFireX-Motherboard/dp/B0058HUQJ0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1387229655&sr=8-2&keywords=ASRock+970
Thanks… still $50 more than I paid for the ASRock 990…
Regards
Phil,
Right after I sent the message to you about the ASRock MB970 EX4 on Amazon for under $200 I went back to check one of my orders and there was a NEW ASRock MB970 Extreme 4 on sale for $99.49. I could not resist so I bought it. If you have time to check Amazon several times a day, they often get in a few items at a decent price. I also see that there are Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards coming on there for sale each day but most are around $400 to $440 plus shipping.
Hi guys, not sure if anyone has tried this. I just cant seem to find the answer for this anywhere i have looked. I bought a Asus Mother board with 4 xPCI-X slots (2xPCI-X 16x & 2xPCI-X 16x(x4) , 2 x R9 280X cards + 2 x 7950 cards. want to run them all from the same motherboard will this work as these cards are 2 different models??? or they all need to be the same models for it to work? I would really appreciate an answer or help. thanks
It will work you just will have to specify different timings for the two models.
Sorry for being a noob, but what you mean the timing?
Hello,
Thanks for this really helping guide!
I’m new to coin mining and before spending a lot of money in hardware components, I thought about my old laptop from 2003 (still working!).
So there is already all the needed components (except a good video card of course):
-ACER Aspire 1690 series
-Intel pentium M 750 (2MB L2 cache, 1.87 GHz, 533 MHz FSB)
-512MB DDR
-PCI express (128 VRAM for an old ATI mobility radeon X700 :D)
-USB/ethernet ports
So you already know my question: do you think I can build a first rig by reusing these components? are they too old (motherbaord and CPU) for a new video card?
Hi HI Thanks CRYPTOBADGER for the great and very detailed guides which I am working to. I am currently at pre build stage and I am just waiting for some of the components including the recomended gigabyte mobo GA990FXA- UD5 I have purchased a 1.2KW power supply and 3 x R9 290 cards ( nothing else with a decent posted hash rate available) and I realise these are PCIE3 as is the specified 7950 card in the guide, however checking through specs etc before I build I notice that the specified motherboards are all equipped with PCIE2 slots. I know you can run a PCIE3 graphics card In PCIE2 AOK as I currently am with an EVGA GTX 670 in a CRosshair IV mobo with PCIE2 connectors as the Spec is backwards compatible,.
Please Can someone reasure me that this is AOK or shall I get an RMA on the motherboard and send it back to Amazon and find an alternate board equiped with PCIE£ slots for the graphics?
It is good to go… pcie3.0 just has more bandwidth witch youbdont need… same power throughput
Thanks UBERDAG for replying with confirmation about PCIE3 graphics in PCIE2 slot every thing about mining is quite new to me. I will certainly post again if I have more questions once all the components arrive and I start the build and set everything in motion as per Cryptobabgers instructions. It is always an act of faith the first time you do anything like this and its amazing that there are guys like yourself who will come to us noobs help Thanks . I saw your comment about the riser cards too I have found a supplier as I told Paul in Ireland when I replied to him yesterday I have ordered through Amazon UK but like the Chinese you commented about I am already told I may have to wait ~2-3 weeks for delivery I hope not !!
Best regards
Ian
First I want to say that this is the best source of real information about mining I have found.
I was able to buy 3 Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 graphic cards on Amazon for around $400 in the past two days. Also there are Sapphire HD 7950 selling on eBay for about the same price today. The other recommended cards are also available on Amazon and eBay for a price. I picked up a used recertified ASRock MB970EX4 for $137.62 at Amazon Warehouse. Also was able to get most all of the other hardware needed from Amazon in the past 3 days. I am wondering about my power supply for the 3 HD 7950 cards. The Seasonic 1200 and the ECGA 1300 are both out of stock and on backorder at Amazon and not available on Tiger Direct or Newegg so I ordered a Seasonic 1000W Platinum today from Amazon. Will the 1000W Seasonic handle the three HD7950’s along with the other hardware; CPU, etc? PCIe extenders are impossible to find locally and are selling for extremely high prices on eBay but Amazon has some coming from Hong Kong at $12.98 each with free shipping although it may be about 3 weeks before they arrive.
Beware on those ones on Amazon… I had ordered from several sources there and a couple of them cancelled on me after a few days 🙁 Same thing with Ebay.
I have a 850 raid max gold I got at newwgg running mt 3 7950s… there is also a seasonic 860 plat there…
Hi There,
Can anyone tell me if it’s possible to build the rig using the Radeon 7950 if they’re made by different companies such as 2 made by Gigabyte and 1 made by Sapphire or MSi?
Many thanks,
Paul
Hello there other Paul… yes its possible you may have to specify individual settings for the cards to get the most out of them though.
Cheers Paul,
You can probably tell from my first question that I’m a complete beginner with no computer tech skills to my name, I suppose I’ll cross the individual problems as I get to them such as specifying the individual settings.
Hi all,
I’m currently building my own litecoin minig rig, the configuration I choose is the following one (garphic card/power supply/CPU):
– intel core i3 ;
– 3 x AMD RADEON HD 6990
– SILVERSTONE ST1500 1500W, 80 PLUS Silver certified
The personn building the rig with me, thinks it’s possible to have a more performant config by using more recent graphic cards references.
So I try to find a litecoin minig rig benchmark in order to compare, but I didn’t find anything.
The config above is supposed to deliver a 2,1 GHash/s … If you know a config delivering more could you send it to discuss about it?
Thanks in advance for your answers,
Julien
julien,
Found this:
6990 850kH/s 880MHz Core Clock 5000 Memory Clock 435Watts using Reaper v13 Beta 4 aggression 17 sharethreads 24 gpu_thread_concurrency 8144
On https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
I’m assuming you meant 2,1MH/s with your current setup?
The above could potentially give you 2,5MH/s.
Regards
Phil,
Thanks for your feedback.
You’re right, my setup powered 2,1 MH/s actually. AMD RADEON 6990 have a Memory clock of 5000 Hz which is quite high compare to other GPU. The question is, this card has been overlocked or no ?
Which config gives you 2,5 MH/s ?
I’m also studying the option of using 3 x AMD R9 280 x, but I’m not sure that the performance will be the same …
Anyway thank you for your help,
Regards,
Julien
I’d like to know how many KHASH this card has… Radeon HD 7950 ’13Series OC CoolStream 880 mhz core clock. I bought 6 of them but not sure now if it is a good buy…..
Raymond,
I assume you’re referring to the Club 3D card (http://www.alternate.nl/Club_3D/Radeon_HD_7950_13Series_OC_CoolStream,_grafische_kaart/html/product/1077478/).
You’re just going to have to plug those suckers in and get an average. I couldn’t find it’s hashrate but should still be between 650 and 750kH/s. I’m sure that’s not the answer you wanted hear. Check out this mining hardware comparison if you’re browsing: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
Regards
Thnx phil, thats the card i ment… couldnt find any hashrate allso, hope that it has atleast 650… i was affraid i spent a ton of money on a crappy card…. ;-). Gonna assemble this week so i will see what its gonna give me…
Julien,
AMD’s specs page for the 6990 is http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6990/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6990-overview.aspx#3. I don’t know which BIOS you’re running so I can’t say if yours are in reference (830MHz) or over-clocked (880MHz) mode.
As for the memory clock rate of 5000… AMD’s page says it’s 1250MHz Memory Clock operating at 5.0 Gbps with the GDDR5 RAM. The number you should be interested in is 1250MHz. The GDDR5, to put it simply, operates at a multiple of the Memory clock to give the 5.0 gigabits per second. If you want to geek out on this more check out http://www.elpida.com/pdfs/E1600E10.pdf.
So, the configuration you may be looking for is a 880MHz Core Clock and 1250MHz Memory Clock. As to the process switching from one BIOS to the other on the 6990… GTS (google that stuff.) 😀 I don’t have that card so I don’t know what its capabilities, nor its limitations regarding tweaking the parameters.
According to https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison your 6990 should operated at about 100kH/s higher than the R9 280X.
Regards
that mining hardware comparison site isn’t that much trustworthy. My XFX 7950 will never reach above 700 as it showed on there. I would be lucky to hit 600s.
Thank you Phil for these information.
I will study that more in detail 😉 I think I will definitly try to find
the HD 6990 … which I think deliver quite good performances
Now the question is, the factory cooling system of the AMD 6990 is it enough for an intense use ???
Anyway you gave me usefull advices,
Thanks,
hi that it is profitable with these materials and after how long?
Anyone useing XFX 7950 FX-795A-TDKC?
I would like to know hashrate that you get and cgminer setting. I can’t trust the hardware comparison site as everyone telling me different results.
Hey
im using XFX 7950 Ghost, dont know if its the same model. (dont have the papers)
but im getting arround 630 khps
BUT int the last days cgminer started to give me some wired result, now its saying -+ 750 on my 7950 and -+ 1050 on my 290 (locked) i do not belive this, have any other seen cgminer fuckup in khps? (when i look on my avg its saying 1,8mhps) cgminer 3.7.2
settings:
7950 gpu 0
290 gpu 1
(pool)
,
“api-allow” : “W:127.0.0.1”,
“api-listen” : true,
“api-port” : “4028”,
“expiry” : “120”,
“hotplug” : “5”,
“kernel-path” : “/usr/local/bin”,
“log” : “5”,
“queue” : “1”,
“scan-time” : “60”,
“scrypt” : true,
“shares” : “0”,
“auto-fan” : true,
“gpu-threads” : “1”,
“gpu-dyninterval” : “7”,
“gpu-engine” : “1100,990”,
“gpu-fan” : “65-88,65-90”,
“gpu-platform” : “0”,
“gpu-memclock” : “1500,1500”,
“gpu-memdiff” : “0,0”,
“gpu-powertune” : “-20,0”,
“gpu-vddc” : “1.030,0.990”,
“intensity” : “20,20”,
“temp-target” : “80,80”,
“temp-overheat” : “85,85”,
“temp-cutoff” : “92,92”,
“temp-hysteresis” : “3”,
“vectors” : “1,1”,
“worksize” : “256,512”,
“lookup-gap” : “2,2”,
“shaders” : “0,0”,
“thread-concurrency” : “21712,32765”,
“no-pool-disable” : true
}
coinotron.com server down?? first time experienced.
I heard of one guy that purchased 250 GPU’s (280x) – that is some serious mining power!
I’ve been mining Quarkcoins on 15 virtual machines using 5 microsoft azure free trial accounts, and they are all expired. But I made about 500 coins, not bad for free 😉
So now I am about to build a Litecoin mining rig using 4 Radeon r9 290x’s on a gigabyte mobo, amd chip, 8gb, ram, in milk crates with a 1200w gold PSU. Never done this before, but i’ve been reading all about it, so hopefully i will be able to get all of this hooked up and running tot mine some coins. I’ve built probably 100 PC’s in my life, so this is just another PC to me, albeit with 4 super powerful GPU’s. I’ll let everyone know how it goes once I get all the parts in the mail this week. My guess is the software / configuration settings will be my only hurdle.
I actually went with the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard which my friend referred to me, is this a good board?
Its a good board but gigabyte boards seem to have iommu problems witj Linux. Once you get one card up and running and can change grub file it will work great
thanks uberdag, I was planning on using Win 7 since I’ve never used Linux, is it hard to get up and running using Linux? and do you recommend that over Win 7?
Well win 7 will be easier. .. but xubuntu isnt hard oer say but you have to keep file locations lined up. Reminds me of the good ole dos days
Although I really like Linux, I had problems with undervolting using linux. I’m not sure if the drivers have been updated since though
Hi Jason
I see you are using UD5 gigabyte mobo and Radeon R9 290X which has only got DVI-D connectors I am in the same position as you but a lot less experienced ,( Only built 5 pc’s so far ) I am using the XFX R9 290’s x 3 plus the same Gigabyte mobo are you aware of any problems with the DVI-D connectors I see on the metal work of my cards next to the DVI-D connector a symbol with VGA crossed through and next to it the symbol representing DVI-D dual link I looked on wikipedia.org/DVI-D to try and get some information I have been looking on amazon .co.uk (I live in UK) and can aparantly source DVI-D to VGA adapters , however the wiki article mentions a need for a more expensive converter being required to connect DVI-D to VGA , what I dont want to do is to get one of these DVI-D to VGA adapters convert it to a dummy plug with the resistors I have as per cryptobadgers instructions , plug it into my card and poof bingo no card it goes up in smoke Do you have any ideas about this or have I opened this can of worms I am sure we are not the first to use the R290 or 290X cards Regards Ian
I’ve been using my rig with 280x’s for a few days now with the Dummy plugs completely removed and no monitor connected at all. Just tight VNC to check it (and obviously if fans are going flat out you know its hashing). If you google you will see there is no need for Dummy plugs. I think however that Linux still needs dummy plugs (?) I’m using Windows 7. I believe the windows drivers way back in ~June 2013 removed necessity for them. I haven’t been using Linux anyway though, because I had issues with Undervolting under linux. Under windows i undervolted which reduced each card power usage by 70W at the wall.
In short, If you buy 290x’s I’m fairly certain under windows you WILL NOT need dummy plugs
I have 5 280xs and no monitors or dummy plugs. In Win 8.1 its running just fine 🙂
Thanks Paul same as above to Rob
Many Thanks Rob
I wil;l try without the just as soon as I get all components and have built my rig I purchased just about everything through Amazon so can easily return all unwanted adaptors and resistors or I could assemble the dummy plugs and sell via ebay
I’m currently thinking of buying 3 X R9 280x with Asrock 990 extreme3. Do I need extreme4 or extreme3 will do the job too? Thanks
They’re both fine, in using extreme 3 and it’s cheaper.
Thanks. So there is no actual difference in mining, even if I buy 970 Extreme4?
They’re shouldn’t be no. It doesn’t matter what mb you use as it’s the gpus doing the work AFAIK.
Is it OK to use the reference design 7950’s? My cards came with DVI to HDMI will I still need to create dummy plugs?
Hi.
Has anyone used a Corsair AX860 PSU?
it’ll be running 3x Sapphire HD7950 on a Sempron 145
Thanks.
Btw – this PSU will be running 3x Sapphire HD7950’s
I have looked at building this rig vs. one with the 990 extreme 9 mother board with 4 PCI-E slots. Is there any advantage of this build over one that can handle 4 GPU’s. Also what is the average KH/S on this build. Is there any other motherboards that work well our are the ASRocks the best for mining.
Does anyone know if I can flash the Gigabyte F43 Bios on my XFX Radeon HD 7950 FX-795A-TNFC?
I’ve successfully flashed a MSI 7950 (reference design) to Gigabyte F43 and now it runs a good 6-7 degrees cooler! Originally it was 85-86 degrees.
Teamviewer is another great tool for remote access. It is compatible in both Windows and Linux.