Need Help With Mining Computer

[Hudstr22]

Hi, I do realize that some might argue that this should go under the "Mining" subsection but I am putting this under Troubleshooting because that is more what this is about. There may be some spelling and grammar mistakes that I missed so no need to point out every mistake.

 

So to start off, the hardware i have is a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard (might not have been the best choice but it made sense to me), AMD FX-4300 CPU, 4 gb of DDR3 Ram, 2 R9 290's (Gigabyte Windforce), 2 R9 280x (Asus), and 2 CX 750m psu's from Corsair. I am running Windows 8.1, AMD 13.1 display drivers, AMD APP SDK v. 2.9 (I dont really know what this does but I was told I should have it), CGMiner 3.7.2 and CGWatcher.

 

The problems I am having is the Board at one time I can only get 3 GPU's to be recgonized and in addition to them not mining well (1 of the 3 gpu's will always have problems). The motherboard has 2 PCI-e 16x slots and 2 PCI-e 4x slots. With the GPU's I am using 16x risers. Correct me if I am wrong but using a 16x riser with a 4x slot shouldnt be a problem since I am not driving a display for example from that slot.

 

I have disabled Crossfire so that shouldn't be causing any problems. Looking looking from the "top" (CPU socket, Northbridge) to the "bottem" (sata connectors, Southbridge) the PCI-e slots alternate 16x, 4x, 16x, 4x. Currently I have the R9 290's in the "top" 16x and 4x slots and the R9 280X's in below that in the remaining 16x and 4x slot. When i try to mine with this configuraiton, the very bottem R9 280x is not recgonized by windows or CGMiner. Also, when running working mining settings *(will put at the bottem of this post), the very top R9 290 (16x) and the R9 280x (16x) both run fine. The middle R9 290 (4x) however has problems. When I try to run it with the same settings as the other R9 290, the middle R9 290 (4x) comes up with Hardware Errors. I have conculded though that there is nothing wrong with this card (works fine when not in the current 3 card configuration). When I lower the intensity to 13 the card seems to work fine at that setting.

 

On top of these problems, the display driver seems to fail and recover quite often (not while mining though) and I have bluescreened several times too. Also, after letting it run for a few hours, I sometimes return to find it has crashed, and the BIOS not recgonizing a bootable drive. After powering everything down, it will boot back up as normally.

 

This is just a side note: I found that one of the R9 290's vibrates (not too severe but still noticable) when the fan speed is above ~50% and I have not found any of the other cards vibrating. I used a small wire to "tighten" the cooler to a frame attacked to the card and found that the vibrating stopped. I assume that this is nothing major, possibly just a small manufacturing error or the cooler was slightly loosened durring shipping ect.

 

Mining Settings: For the 2 R9 290 (Gigabyte Windforce): Intensity-19, Thread Concurrency: 20480, GPU-Engine: 1000, GPU-Memclock: 1250, Powertune:20, Target temp:75

 

For 2 R9 280x (Asus): Intensity-13, Thread Concurrency: 8192, Engine:1000, Memclock:1500, Powertune:20, Target temp: 75

 

Any Help is Greatly Appreciated

 

Thanks,

hudstr22

[Hudstr22]

Yep I kinda figured I would get no help. People always assume that this guys is an idiot who bought this stuff and now just goes on fourms and chat to get someone else to do everthing. Go on fourms they say, you will get help there. Go on chat rolls they say, people will help you there. GG no RE.