ETH mining 101
Discussion
Steven_RW said:
g4ry13 said:
How many rigs / GPUs are you currently running?
4 machines and 11 GPUGaming pc - 3090 & 2080ti watercooled
2nd pc - 3070 air cooled, 2 x 2080ti watercooled
3rd pc -- 4x2080ti watercooled
4th pc - 2 x 3090 air cooled.
Not the most efficient way of doing it but I enjoy building pcs so it was a fun project.
I'm wondering if the cost of hardware would drop as crypto has fallen quite a bit over last few days. Probably not enough to get to the point where mining isn't financially viable.
Steven_RW said:
4 machines and 11 GPU
Gaming pc - 3090 & 2080ti watercooled
2nd pc - 3070 air cooled, 2 x 2080ti watercooled
3rd pc -- 4x2080ti watercooled
4th pc - 2 x 3090 air cooled.
Not the most efficient way of doing it but I enjoy building pcs so it was a fun project.
I think it’s fair to say that Steven and I have gone about this in completely polar opposite ways (I’m not saying either is better or worse than the other). Gaming pc - 3090 & 2080ti watercooled
2nd pc - 3070 air cooled, 2 x 2080ti watercooled
3rd pc -- 4x2080ti watercooled
4th pc - 2 x 3090 air cooled.
Not the most efficient way of doing it but I enjoy building pcs so it was a fun project.
Steven’s rigs are immaculate and look amazing with new GPUs in their dust free environment, mine look like complete monsters in comparison.
I guess it all depends on how much money you want to throw at it. Yes watercooled is far better for heat and noise and power, but they’re far more expensive to buy and set up.
My rigs are in my detached garage with lots of air and 2 aircon units on 24/7 in summer. There’s dust and crap everywhere and the motherboards are open to all dust and muck.
Steven’s are like a car showroom and mine are literally thrown together and forgotten about.
Like I say, each to their own. When I started mine I just went quick and dirty just using old components I had knocking around then just bought more second hand stuff as and when it became available.
audi321 said:
Steven_RW said:
4 machines and 11 GPU
Gaming pc - 3090 & 2080ti watercooled
2nd pc - 3070 air cooled, 2 x 2080ti watercooled
3rd pc -- 4x2080ti watercooled
4th pc - 2 x 3090 air cooled.
Not the most efficient way of doing it but I enjoy building pcs so it was a fun project.
I think it’s fair to say that Steven and I have gone about this in completely polar opposite ways (I’m not saying either is better or worse than the other). Gaming pc - 3090 & 2080ti watercooled
2nd pc - 3070 air cooled, 2 x 2080ti watercooled
3rd pc -- 4x2080ti watercooled
4th pc - 2 x 3090 air cooled.
Not the most efficient way of doing it but I enjoy building pcs so it was a fun project.
Steven’s rigs are immaculate and look amazing with new GPUs in their dust free environment, mine look like complete monsters in comparison.
I guess it all depends on how much money you want to throw at it. Yes watercooled is far better for heat and noise and power, but they’re far more expensive to buy and set up.
My rigs are in my detached garage with lots of air and 2 aircon units on 24/7 in summer. There’s dust and crap everywhere and the motherboards are open to all dust and muck.
Steven’s are like a car showroom and mine are literally thrown together and forgotten about.
Like I say, each to their own. When I started mine I just went quick and dirty just using old components I had knocking around then just bought more second hand stuff as and when it became available.
Watercooling chat replying to comments above:
In summary - the only real benefit is the noise if you had to sit in the room with your miners. Watercooled can run much lower pc case fan speed so the environment is much less impacted. If it is in the garage then there is no point and just a huge chunk of money spent that wasn't necessary.
What follows is a random download and a number of random photos that hopefully won't overload the thread ;-)
As stated the total amount of heat exchanged from the GPU to the air of the room is the same, so it doesn't reduce the temperature impact of the same amount of wattage really. The only very slight benefit is due to the colder GPU die/core temp driven by watercooling, you can run the cards more stable at a slighly lower wattage than when air cooled. But that benefit isn't always consistently available and definitely doesn't really make much of a difference to the room temps in terms of total wattage.
Maintenance. I think Audi123 said that he takes his gpus to pieces every 3 months and replaces thermal paste and maybe cleans the dust off them. That is quite a maintenance schedule in itself. I don't do that for my GPUs as they mostly live in dust filtered boxes and dont have their own fans blowing air on and dust on their pcb 24/7 but every so often you need to consider flushing out the water/fluid in the loop and inspecting the waterblocks to get rid of any build up that may have occured. Even with good fluid there is some sort of build up eventually or the water starts to turn green. Though the only waterblocks I have had to clean were ones owned by someone else from new rather than my own from new. My D5 pump (very common watercooling pump) has been running in my gaming pc for a couple of years for gaming and now constantly since February 2021. So they do work well and can handle constant use. My external cooling tower has dual smaller pumps and again they have run non stop for a long time now.
The benefit I can show is this. My 4x2080ti watercooled, all built into it's own case, produces 244mhs ish for around 600 watts and even during the hottest days of summer the gpus were running a MAX of 50c. Normally they run in the 40s or even in the 30s. The total noise from the 7 fans and one pump is totally unintrusive and could sit next to you all day and would hardly be noticed, My 2 x 3090 air cooled produces around 246mhs for around 610 watts and sounds like a jet turbine. the GPU fans are blasting away, I have 3000rpm noctua industrial case fans to keep the case air as fresh and close to ambient as possible and literally that machine is worthy of an ASBO.
I have an issue with my one watercooled 3090 founders (https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-vector-fe-rtx-3090-d-rgb-silver-special-edition), where I've bought what was supposed to be the best waterblock (EKWB Ltd Edition) and the temperatures I am seeing are just not very good. In fact my aircooled ASBO machine has cooler 3090s with cooler GPU core and VRAM. At that point you need to decide if the water in my waterloop is getting cool (IE isn't capable of shifting out the heat produced) or if the waterblock for some reason isn't transferring the heat. I have a 2080ti in that same pc and waterloop and I know that the temps it is seeing are exactly as expected, so I am confident that my waterloop has cool water in it, so that points to the way overly expensive waterblock not doing its job. I need to tear the waterloop down after draining and find if there is anyway that the waterblock isn't sitting flush. Maybe a thermal pad is in the wrong place and forcing the waterblock up 0.5mm and the contact across important components isn't ideal. Plus on my aircooled 3090s you can add an alloy heat sink to the backplate where the rear VRAM is and work to actively cool that but on the waterblock it isn't really active cooled so the VRAM of the watercooled 3090 is at 100c (erk) when producing 126mhs. ANyway, EKWB have a properly active backplate for this same waterblock that should be available for posting out on the 30th of September. (https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-vector-fe-rtx-3090-d-rgb-active-backplate-silver-se). When this arrives I will take this loop to pieces and inspect the setup to make sure that I am getting the best contact possible, also add in this active backplate, flush the loop etc. This particular waterblock is not in line with the usual cost of a waterblock but it sits in my gaming pc, so I wanted the best that was available and didn't use much commercial thinking when buying. Total cost of the components is €500 just for the block. No sense at all.
I am interested to see if re-seating the waterblock and the active backplate can truly get the 3090 under control and I can turn down the fan speed of my gaming pc.
Three pc builds in the garage. The lower one has an external watercooling tower that was the first watercooling part I bought a few years ago. I didn't drill a hole in the case for the hoses to go external, so I just left the side off for now. The gpus inside it didnt have identical waterblocks so they had a make shift loop to connect them. They now have two identical waterblocks so the big looping hose connector has been replaced with a tiny straight one connecting the two.
Two 2080ti Rog Strix I ran for a couple of months. I had the waterblocks for them delivered but I changed them to 3090 just before fitting the waterblocks.
2 x 3090 in place with their extra heat sinks cable tied on. Thermal pads inbetween GPU backplate and heatsink. Works well.
Quick tear down of my gaming pc and one of the 2080ti watercooled (from factory) that I bought second hand. It wasn't performing as well as hoped and the tear down showed that the waterblock was a bit gunky. Good scrub up and back into the gaming pc and it runs nice n cool.
3090fe with the EKWB Ltd Edi waterblock on it. The sheer shrinking in total mass from aircooled to watercooled is quite something. It is now the size of the PCB only and much shorter than the total aircooled card as much of the aircooled card is pure heat pipes and fins and fans and the PCB is actually quite dense and short.
Temps of (iirc) two 2080ti mining away when the loop is working well and in a cold room.
Anyway that is enough for now. I have some more pretty pics somewhere and tonnes more pics of the teardown of aircooled cards on their way to watercooled. I'll take more when the active backplate arrives.
Oh yeah - one more point. The benefit of watercooling was this. When I was buying up used 2080ti card at the start of this year, the market for easy to fit, attractive to all, air cooled 2080tis was very competitive and in many cases you could buy an already watercooled 2080ti with a near £200 EKWB waterblock already fitted for less than an aircooled one. Usually the first owner kept all the parts to return it to aircooled and just sold it as is to get it out the door. SO I hoovered up lots of 2080ti that way and just adapted them to fit my needs.
Any questions ask away. I've never really been into the RGB visual side of this stuff. Think racecar rather than showcar.
In summary - the only real benefit is the noise if you had to sit in the room with your miners. Watercooled can run much lower pc case fan speed so the environment is much less impacted. If it is in the garage then there is no point and just a huge chunk of money spent that wasn't necessary.
What follows is a random download and a number of random photos that hopefully won't overload the thread ;-)
As stated the total amount of heat exchanged from the GPU to the air of the room is the same, so it doesn't reduce the temperature impact of the same amount of wattage really. The only very slight benefit is due to the colder GPU die/core temp driven by watercooling, you can run the cards more stable at a slighly lower wattage than when air cooled. But that benefit isn't always consistently available and definitely doesn't really make much of a difference to the room temps in terms of total wattage.
Maintenance. I think Audi123 said that he takes his gpus to pieces every 3 months and replaces thermal paste and maybe cleans the dust off them. That is quite a maintenance schedule in itself. I don't do that for my GPUs as they mostly live in dust filtered boxes and dont have their own fans blowing air on and dust on their pcb 24/7 but every so often you need to consider flushing out the water/fluid in the loop and inspecting the waterblocks to get rid of any build up that may have occured. Even with good fluid there is some sort of build up eventually or the water starts to turn green. Though the only waterblocks I have had to clean were ones owned by someone else from new rather than my own from new. My D5 pump (very common watercooling pump) has been running in my gaming pc for a couple of years for gaming and now constantly since February 2021. So they do work well and can handle constant use. My external cooling tower has dual smaller pumps and again they have run non stop for a long time now.
The benefit I can show is this. My 4x2080ti watercooled, all built into it's own case, produces 244mhs ish for around 600 watts and even during the hottest days of summer the gpus were running a MAX of 50c. Normally they run in the 40s or even in the 30s. The total noise from the 7 fans and one pump is totally unintrusive and could sit next to you all day and would hardly be noticed, My 2 x 3090 air cooled produces around 246mhs for around 610 watts and sounds like a jet turbine. the GPU fans are blasting away, I have 3000rpm noctua industrial case fans to keep the case air as fresh and close to ambient as possible and literally that machine is worthy of an ASBO.
I have an issue with my one watercooled 3090 founders (https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-vector-fe-rtx-3090-d-rgb-silver-special-edition), where I've bought what was supposed to be the best waterblock (EKWB Ltd Edition) and the temperatures I am seeing are just not very good. In fact my aircooled ASBO machine has cooler 3090s with cooler GPU core and VRAM. At that point you need to decide if the water in my waterloop is getting cool (IE isn't capable of shifting out the heat produced) or if the waterblock for some reason isn't transferring the heat. I have a 2080ti in that same pc and waterloop and I know that the temps it is seeing are exactly as expected, so I am confident that my waterloop has cool water in it, so that points to the way overly expensive waterblock not doing its job. I need to tear the waterloop down after draining and find if there is anyway that the waterblock isn't sitting flush. Maybe a thermal pad is in the wrong place and forcing the waterblock up 0.5mm and the contact across important components isn't ideal. Plus on my aircooled 3090s you can add an alloy heat sink to the backplate where the rear VRAM is and work to actively cool that but on the waterblock it isn't really active cooled so the VRAM of the watercooled 3090 is at 100c (erk) when producing 126mhs. ANyway, EKWB have a properly active backplate for this same waterblock that should be available for posting out on the 30th of September. (https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-vector-fe-rtx-3090-d-rgb-active-backplate-silver-se). When this arrives I will take this loop to pieces and inspect the setup to make sure that I am getting the best contact possible, also add in this active backplate, flush the loop etc. This particular waterblock is not in line with the usual cost of a waterblock but it sits in my gaming pc, so I wanted the best that was available and didn't use much commercial thinking when buying. Total cost of the components is €500 just for the block. No sense at all.
I am interested to see if re-seating the waterblock and the active backplate can truly get the 3090 under control and I can turn down the fan speed of my gaming pc.
Three pc builds in the garage. The lower one has an external watercooling tower that was the first watercooling part I bought a few years ago. I didn't drill a hole in the case for the hoses to go external, so I just left the side off for now. The gpus inside it didnt have identical waterblocks so they had a make shift loop to connect them. They now have two identical waterblocks so the big looping hose connector has been replaced with a tiny straight one connecting the two.
Two 2080ti Rog Strix I ran for a couple of months. I had the waterblocks for them delivered but I changed them to 3090 just before fitting the waterblocks.
2 x 3090 in place with their extra heat sinks cable tied on. Thermal pads inbetween GPU backplate and heatsink. Works well.
Quick tear down of my gaming pc and one of the 2080ti watercooled (from factory) that I bought second hand. It wasn't performing as well as hoped and the tear down showed that the waterblock was a bit gunky. Good scrub up and back into the gaming pc and it runs nice n cool.
3090fe with the EKWB Ltd Edi waterblock on it. The sheer shrinking in total mass from aircooled to watercooled is quite something. It is now the size of the PCB only and much shorter than the total aircooled card as much of the aircooled card is pure heat pipes and fins and fans and the PCB is actually quite dense and short.
Temps of (iirc) two 2080ti mining away when the loop is working well and in a cold room.
Anyway that is enough for now. I have some more pretty pics somewhere and tonnes more pics of the teardown of aircooled cards on their way to watercooled. I'll take more when the active backplate arrives.
Oh yeah - one more point. The benefit of watercooling was this. When I was buying up used 2080ti card at the start of this year, the market for easy to fit, attractive to all, air cooled 2080tis was very competitive and in many cases you could buy an already watercooled 2080ti with a near £200 EKWB waterblock already fitted for less than an aircooled one. Usually the first owner kept all the parts to return it to aircooled and just sold it as is to get it out the door. SO I hoovered up lots of 2080ti that way and just adapted them to fit my needs.
Any questions ask away. I've never really been into the RGB visual side of this stuff. Think racecar rather than showcar.
Edited by Steven_RW on Wednesday 22 September 12:10
Edited by Steven_RW on Wednesday 22 September 13:24
Very interesting to see and some of the technical information went a bit over my head. If you were doing it again on a limited budget, would you substitute the money spent on water cooling and put it towards extra GPUs? Or would you still go down the water cooling line?
I'm quite curious to see Audi's Frankenstein creations
I'm quite curious to see Audi's Frankenstein creations
Commercial consideration: I would do it all air cooled. I'd also just build mining frames in the garage from the out set.
But important to remember that I started mining in Feb 2021 at the point GPUs and mining rigs/kit including PSUs were all in heavy demand with huge prices prices low availability. So the decisions were made based on what I had and what I could get hold of. I bought expensive GPUs that had quite long pay back time frames but they were top end gaming GPUs so I felt they could always be sold off easily to gamers if the mining fell off. So it's easy to highlight a better plan with hindsight but I need to recall the timing and environment I started mining in.
Plus.. it was never supposed to be more than a couple of GPUs added to my gaming machine and so it grew very organically.
Cheers
Rw
But important to remember that I started mining in Feb 2021 at the point GPUs and mining rigs/kit including PSUs were all in heavy demand with huge prices prices low availability. So the decisions were made based on what I had and what I could get hold of. I bought expensive GPUs that had quite long pay back time frames but they were top end gaming GPUs so I felt they could always be sold off easily to gamers if the mining fell off. So it's easy to highlight a better plan with hindsight but I need to recall the timing and environment I started mining in.
Plus.. it was never supposed to be more than a couple of GPUs added to my gaming machine and so it grew very organically.
Cheers
Rw
Be interesting to see what these go for. 4 x RX580 that have been used exclusively for mining and "pushed to their limit".
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334152598998?hash=item4...
Why not keep them ticking over mining for you? Space, power...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334152598998?hash=item4...
Why not keep them ticking over mining for you? Space, power...
moonigan said:
Be interesting to see what these go for. 4 x RX580 that have been used exclusively for mining and "pushed to their limit".
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334152598998?hash=item4...
Why not keep them ticking over mining for you? Space, power...
Don't think it'll be much of a discount. I've seen that these tend to go for anything between £250-300/GPU and currently at £200/GPU with a few hours of the auction left.https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334152598998?hash=item4...
Why not keep them ticking over mining for you? Space, power...
Discovered two interesting things in the last couple of days..
If you are running a B550 motherboard (which I am on my main PC) then adding a 4-1 splitter and running your cards off that fixes a load of problems compared to individual PCI slots.
For 6800 series cards, you can take the voltage below 700 in windows - I didn't realise they tolerated this but they do!
If you are running a B550 motherboard (which I am on my main PC) then adding a 4-1 splitter and running your cards off that fixes a load of problems compared to individual PCI slots.
For 6800 series cards, you can take the voltage below 700 in windows - I didn't realise they tolerated this but they do!
£900 for the 4 heavily used cards.
At £225/card that's definitely on the cheaper side but not sure how likely one of them is to fizzle out after a few months.
If you do some basic maintenance and replace the thermals / fans on well used GPU is that really going to add much longevity to the cards? Or are the GPUs likely to fail due to wearing out?
At £225/card that's definitely on the cheaper side but not sure how likely one of them is to fizzle out after a few months.
If you do some basic maintenance and replace the thermals / fans on well used GPU is that really going to add much longevity to the cards? Or are the GPUs likely to fail due to wearing out?
g4ry13 said:
£900 for the 4 heavily used cards.
At £225/card that's definitely on the cheaper side but not sure how likely one of them is to fizzle out after a few months.
If you do some basic maintenance and replace the thermals / fans on well used GPU is that really going to add much longevity to the cards? Or are the GPUs likely to fail due to wearing out?
I've not really heard of GPU cores just fizzling out. Obviously as time goes on there is more chance of a failure but really I'm not a believer that my mining cards have had that much of a hard life. Maybe others have data to say otherwise but as long as they run within spec then it's what they were designed to do. At £225/card that's definitely on the cheaper side but not sure how likely one of them is to fizzle out after a few months.
If you do some basic maintenance and replace the thermals / fans on well used GPU is that really going to add much longevity to the cards? Or are the GPUs likely to fail due to wearing out?
Edit: on reflection air cooled cards fans will expire at some point. Having the fans running at 100% or close for many years will eventually need fan replacements so I'd check how easy that is to do on any second hand card and whether the fans were available.Factor that into the purchase. That is one benefit of a card that has been watercooled since new, if you return it to air cooled the fans have been sitting idle for the life of the card so far.
Edited by Steven_RW on Thursday 23 September 11:35
Steven_RW said:
I've not really heard of GPU cores just fizzling out. Obviously as time goes on there is more chance of a failure but really I'm not a believer that my mining cards have had that much of a hard life. Maybe others have data to say otherwise but as long as they run within spec then it's what they were designed to do.
Edit: on reflection air cooled cards fans will expire at some point. Having the fans running at 100% or close for many years will eventually need fan replacements so I'd check how easy that is to do on any second hand card and whether the fans were available.Factor that into the purchase. That is one benefit of a card that has been watercooled since new, if you return it to air cooled the fans have been sitting idle for the life of the card so far.
This is why I went watercooling - in effect it offboarded the fans which were a potential weak point to the radiator which are easily replaced. Edit: on reflection air cooled cards fans will expire at some point. Having the fans running at 100% or close for many years will eventually need fan replacements so I'd check how easy that is to do on any second hand card and whether the fans were available.Factor that into the purchase. That is one benefit of a card that has been watercooled since new, if you return it to air cooled the fans have been sitting idle for the life of the card so far.
Edited by Steven_RW on Thursday 23 September 11:35
The watercooling also dropped my memory junction temps by 5-6c. Stabilising previously unstable clock levels.
Interesting read - thanks everyone for contributing.
I've got an air-conditioned comms room with a few servers in that are no longer being used. Mostly dual-Xeon but more importantly, with decent PSU's. I might have a play and see if I can (a) source some appropriate GPU's, and (b) get them hooked up and have a play at mining!
I've got an air-conditioned comms room with a few servers in that are no longer being used. Mostly dual-Xeon but more importantly, with decent PSU's. I might have a play and see if I can (a) source some appropriate GPU's, and (b) get them hooked up and have a play at mining!
ArsE82 said:
Interesting read - thanks everyone for contributing.
I've got an air-conditioned comms room with a few servers in that are no longer being used. Mostly dual-Xeon but more importantly, with decent PSU's. I might have a play and see if I can (a) source some appropriate GPU's, and (b) get them hooked up and have a play at mining!
Check what power you have across the PCIE slots and that the PCIE slots are x16 and not x8. I've just removed around 15 Dell R610s from our DC and had thoughts of frankenstiening a few of these for the garage at home but they are useless. I've got an air-conditioned comms room with a few servers in that are no longer being used. Mostly dual-Xeon but more importantly, with decent PSU's. I might have a play and see if I can (a) source some appropriate GPU's, and (b) get them hooked up and have a play at mining!
halo34 said:
This is why I went watercooling - in effect it offboarded the fans which were a potential weak point to the radiator which are easily replaced.
The watercooling also dropped my memory junction temps by 5-6c. Stabilising previously unstable clock levels.
What card did you watercool and do you have before and after temps and so on? I entirely agree with watercoolomg being a good solution if you have the time and money spare. The watercooling also dropped my memory junction temps by 5-6c. Stabilising previously unstable clock levels.
Most of my gpus to date have responded wonderfully to watercooling, just this one 3090 that's not impressing me yet
moonigan said:
ArsE82 said:
Interesting read - thanks everyone for contributing.
I've got an air-conditioned comms room with a few servers in that are no longer being used. Mostly dual-Xeon but more importantly, with decent PSU's. I might have a play and see if I can (a) source some appropriate GPU's, and (b) get them hooked up and have a play at mining!
Check what power you have across the PCIE slots and that the PCIE slots are x16 and not x8. I've just removed around 15 Dell R610s from our DC and had thoughts of frankenstiening a few of these for the garage at home but they are useless. I've got an air-conditioned comms room with a few servers in that are no longer being used. Mostly dual-Xeon but more importantly, with decent PSU's. I might have a play and see if I can (a) source some appropriate GPU's, and (b) get them hooked up and have a play at mining!
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