Crazy Ethereum mining rig

[nugget9711]

I have a client who was come to me asking for a crazy Ethereum mining rig. He is looking for a linux based system with 15 RX 580's. Being relativity new to the crypto mining world, Im looking for some advice on what sort of set up would be needed to run 15 Cards at once ( I personally though 8 cards were the maximum possible). Getting my hands on 15 Cards shouldn't be a problem however where i would find a Mobo that supports that many is beyond me. I have seen ASRock have a 13 card mobo and so may end up pitching that to my client. Any advice would be great and thanks in advance  

 

 

[mariushm]

There were some limitations, you used to be able to run up to 8 cards at one time. I think the limitation was removed in the latest drivers.

There are mining motherboards which have a bunch of pci-e x1 slots so you can use riser cables that convert pci-e x1 into pci-e x16 for each video card , for example see :

 

ASUS B250 MINING EXPERT (19 pci-e x1 slots)  : https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/B250-MINING-EXPERT/

ASRock H110 Pro BTC+  (12 pci-e x1 + 1 x16 ) : https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/H110 Pro BTC+/index.asp

Biostar TB250-BTC PRO ( 11 pci-e x1 + 1 x16) : http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=884

Biostar TB250-BTC+ (7 pci-e x1 + 1 x16) : http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=886

 

Even if you buy such a motherboard, the next issue you're going to have is with power consumption and cooling. The RX 580 cards will average 200 watts of power consumption. Maybe with tweaking for mining, you're going to get average of 150 watts on each card.

With 15 cards, you're going to have 15 x 150w = 2250 watts - with a 92%+ gold efficiency power supply, you're looking at ~ 2400 watts .  That's doable for Europe mains plugs where we have 230v x 16a sockets, but not good for US where you're looking at maybe 1600 watts per socket.

That's also just the cards alone, reserve 100w for the motherboard and cpu and memory and fans as well.

 

Probably the best solution would be to have TWO systems , each with 7-8 cards, and each with a 1200w power supply or TWO 750-850w power supplies (whatever ends up cheaper) - you can power a bunch of cards from a second power supply without it being connected in any way to the first except maybe some ground wire.

 

All this aside, the dude should really consider if it's worth investing so much money now. My RX 470 on stock settings now makes around 26 dollars a month, maybe with RX 580 and tweaks you'd get 30-35$ a month. I can buy RX 580 with 4 GB of memory for $270 here ... it would literally take me around 10-12 months just to recover the investment if the currency remains at the same price (electricity costs included in the estimation) and if the difficulty won't increase (which it will)

Not sure RX 580 is the sweetspot for hash power vs cost anymore.

[nugget9711]

Im from the UK was planning on using 2 or 3 PSU's anyway, which would work well with the ASUS board you linked.

 

Tbh mining is never something I have been interested in personally but if this guy wants to throw loads of money at it, why not help facilitate him the best I can