Turning desktop machine into mining rig

[irishbeast]

I had a 2nd PC which I have up for sale. I did not had any luck selling it as a gaming unit, so sold the RTX 3070 and now have a decent desktop, but rubbish for games (Ryzen 3600, 16 gigs 3200hz memory, few TB SSD etc. Also a an old Gefore 770 just to allow it to function) 

 

I've not had any nibbles trying to sell it so am thinking of stripping it down. Remove 8 gigs of ram (or remove 16 and put 4gb in), replace SSD with SATA, maybe put a weaker CPU in there and so forth. Make a bit of cash selling the components as opposed to the whole unit. 

 

My idea being to get two GPUs (not top end) that will generate say £2 a day between them minimum(profit I hope) and just leave it running 24/7. So would be needing to make about $4 per day

 

There's a few cards which look okay for the money and can be acquired. I'm not going to become rich but its a passive income rather than the device gathering dust. I have a 750W PSU so need to bare that in mine but the power draw should be quite small as I will be downgrading some elements

 

5700XT

rx 580 8gb

rx 480 8g

1660ti

1660 super

2060 super 

1080

 

 

 

to name a few but reluctant to but cards which are too old as the may pack in before I get any kind of return on them

 

Some are a little out of my price range for this project so just looking for bargains. Just a little side project

 

I have a gaming machine so will be using this to mine and nothing else. Probably locked away in a cold cupboard somewhere.

 

Can anyone recommend a GPU that's low/mid range that could return something even half decent. Not expecting miracles given the state of things at the moment. I'm gutted I sold my 3070 non lhr as the price I got is far less than others are charging but I wanted a gamer to get it  )(turns out it went into a mining rig but hey ho)

 

Max budget for both cards combined would be about $500-550. Should be able to get a few hundred bucks for the parts I'm removing. I live in the UK by the way and just using nicehash for simplicity

 

Cheers peeps

[irishbeast]

Thanks @Caroline

 

Are the fees really that much?

 

I as informed NH only took about 6-7%

 

I understand the market goes up and down so not going to rely on this to pay my rent/bills!. I am a couple of years late getting into mining but I am a bit of a gambler. Ideally I would sell the second unit but its no use to me sitting there and it will certainly go down in value whereas bitcoin may or may not. My "operations" is so small scale that I would be happy to make the odd £50-100. Generally speaking when the market drops it does creep back up eventually. 

 

I think the 580s are probably the best bit, thanks for the info. Although if I can't get a bargain on the GPUs then I will just downgrade the machine a little bit and let it go at a more affordable price or just give it to someone I know or a charity

 

[irishbeast]

Well I bought a couple of 580s and can safely say they seem a waste of money

 

The chap who sold them seemed genuine and actually drove a fair way to drop them off. 

 

I made the mistake of not testing properly when he came. Plugged it in to make sure one of them worked but that's about it. 

 

Will probably end up selling them on as I got them at an okay price. He's adamant he can get the claimed hashrates but they are abysmal when I put them in my desktop. About 6MH/S on Daggerhashimito! I was watching and it did briefly go up to the high 20s which I would actually be happy with but the return would be useless on such low speeds. 

[Allyxxx]

You have to keep checking the local listings for used graphics card to find something at a good price. You can check Ebay, but I find the graphics cards to be kind of expensive after you include the cost of shipping.

[irishbeast]

2 hours ago, Allyxxx said:

You have to keep checking the local listings for used graphics card to find something at a good price. You can check Ebay, but I find the graphics cards to be kind of expensive after you include the cost of shipping.

I got them at a good price actually. Sadly what I read on the internet is not even close to accurate in terms of what they could turn over!

Hopefully by the time I die funeral parlours will accept crypto!

[irishbeast]

On 4/18/2022 at 11:28 PM, Caroline said:

2 ways to fix this

 

-enable Compute mode in the default drivers, do it TWICE because for some reason the cards won't switch the first time, just AMD bugware...

-install modded drivers and VBIOS

 

Not sure how to do this but will research

 

The MSI card works fine other than the terrible hash rate. Are there any guides about how to do this? You seem to know much more than me

The XFX one has a little bios switch which apparently swaps it from gaming to mining mode but it doesn't work properly on either so think its just defective. It makes my pc go crazy for want of a better word. Crashing, resetting etc. When I install the drivers it gives me an error which is not a good sign. Although windows and GPU-Z does recognise it as an rx580 is doesn't work as one. I only wanted it to mine but can't even do that/. 

 

@Caroline Thanks for being so helpful with this. I really do appreciate it. If I don't get some success then I will officially give up mining as I just seem to be wasting money! My 3080 is raking in a few quid which is good.  Experimented with dogecoin and made about a dollar in a day! I really don't know what I was thinking when sold by 3070 non LHR. After ebay pulled my pants down I ended up with a crap price and its hash rate was only slighly less than the 3080 LHR which I have now. Had I kept it I could have had about 120MHs hash rate but instead I have one card doign 60, one doing 6, and the other just crashing my computer and wanting me to smash it with a sledge hammer!

 

Think I am gonna flog both the rx580s. Although the seller of the xfx one is adamant that it worked fine, I couldn't sell it on in good faith as fully functional. Might just ask for £50 (stating that it may be faulty) and someone might get a bargain! I will ask my local friendly computer store to test it I think. They do it for free generally. If it comes back good then I will ask for more but given that it failed in both my machines I just can't see it working.  

 

 

[irishbeast]

14 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Hi there

Here's how I did it with my RX cards. I assume you have the latest version of the drivers. You should be using the card at the first slot as display output, don't use the integrated graphics (if any) or a different card (older models, nvidia, etc.)

Ignore the hardware switches, they're mostly useless.

 

1. Right click on your desktop and get into AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition
2. Once in, click on the gear icon that's on the upper right corner of the window
3. Click on the Graphics tab on the upper left
4. Once there you should see options for GPU 1, GPU 2, GPU 3... etc, as much cards as you have. If you DON'T see this you must scroll down, click on Advanced and DISABLE the option called AMD Crossfire, it'll prompt you to restart your computer, do it.
5. Click on Advanced and find the GPU Workload setting, it should say Graphics, change it to Compute, your screen will flicker for a few seconds. Do this for each one of the cards on your computer by clicking GPU 2, 3, etc at the top. You can ignore the rest of the settings.
6. Restart your computer once you're done with all cards.

Don't worry about changing the mode on the card that's set to display output, it'll still do it but won't be able to process 3D workloads like games. Of course, avoid running GPU intensive programs while you mine as it could decrease the hashrate or crash the computer.

Also, set your power plan on Windows to high performance to prevent the cards from sleeping.

Thanks very much for that. Appreciate you taking the time. 

I have the latest Adrenalin software and no integrated graphics so all good.

 

The computer is a spare (long story) which I was going to use just to mine so has nothing apart from windows on it. All I was going to do was getting two budget mining cards and leave them mining 24/7. the rx580 8gb seemed a reasonable choice. As long as they make a small profit I am happy enough. Not expecting miracles. My plan was to get two rx580s which could in theory get me close to 60mhs hashrate, which was what the 3070 I sold was able to reap. I have no interest in using them for gaming so thought I would let a gamer have the 307. Turned out he was using it to mine anyway so I won't ever try top be  nice again

 

Will let you know how I get on, and thanks again

 

[irishbeast]

49 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Hi there

Here's how I did it with my RX cards. I assume you have the latest version of the drivers. You should be using the card at the first slot as display output, don't use the integrated graphics (if any) or a different card (older models, nvidia, etc.)

Ignore the hardware switches, they're mostly useless.

 

1. Right click on your desktop and get into AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition
2. Once in, click on the gear icon that's on the upper right corner of the window
3. Click on the Graphics tab on the upper left
4. Once there you should see options for GPU 1, GPU 2, GPU 3... etc, as much cards as you have. If you DON'T see this you must scroll down, click on Advanced and DISABLE the option called AMD Crossfire, it'll prompt you to restart your computer, do it.
5. Click on Advanced and find the GPU Workload setting, it should say Graphics, change it to Compute, your screen will flicker for a few seconds. Do this for each one of the cards on your computer by clicking GPU 2, 3, etc at the top. You can ignore the rest of the settings.
6. Restart your computer once you're done with all cards.

Don't worry about changing the mode on the card that's set to display output, it'll still do it but won't be able to process 3D workloads like games. Of course, avoid running GPU intensive programs while you mine as it could decrease the hashrate or crash the computer.

Also, set your power plan on Windows to high performance to prevent the cards from sleeping.

Just tried it and its worked really well!

 

There was no option relating to crossfire but changing the mode to compute has increased my hashrate significantly!  Its sitting around 25mhs now whereas it was about 6mhs before which wouldn't even cover the energy costs! 

 

Thank you so much for this. At least both the cards are not useless! I can probably make some small tweaks in afterburner to get the rate up to 30 but 26 I am pretty happy with a really small power consumption. 

 

Shame the xfx one I bought is seemingly defective. The drivers install with errors and it makes windows go crazy. Any ideas what the problem might be:

 

It installs but then in device manager it has an error saying the device is not working, although it does recognise it as an rx580. Have tried it on 2 systems now. Error message during install attached

 

 

[irishbeast]

6 hours ago, Caroline said:

The XFX could have a modded VBIOS that requires you to patch the drivers with: 

https://sourceforge.net/projects/amd-ati-pixel-clock-patcher/

 

If the VBIOS instead is corrupted then you can try reflashing the card using a file made for your exact card model you can download from: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ - you'll also need additional software to flash the card, you'll find the link on the same site.

 

Oh, and by the way do not use Afterburner or any other third party software to undervolt/underclock the cards, instead use the provided utility that comes with the drivers, you'll find it under Performance -> Tuning -> Global Tuning (you have to read and accept the terms and conditions) - my advice is that you don't mess with the memory settings, for the core a speed of 1100 or 1050 MHz should be fine if you're mining ETH, and also a 981mV core voltage, most cards can go below that so you should try, my 590s can do 1100MHz and 931mV and get 30MH/s as well.

Thanks!

 

That could be plausible actually as the guy who sold it to me said he had done something with the bios so this could be it. That would explain why it worked for him but on neither of my machines. 

 

Might be onto a winner here. No harm in trying.