How to assemble an ethereum mining rig 2017 (Part 2)

How to assemble an ethereum mining rig 2017 (Part 2)

• One or more NVIDIA GTX 1000 Series / AMD RX or AMD VEGA GPUs with at least 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. Recommended graphics cards: GTX 1070 8GB , RX 570 4GB , RX 580 8GB and RX VEGA 56 8GB.
• An LGA 1150/1151 / AM4 motherboard with enough PCI-E slots to support the number of cards to be installed. Recommended motherboards : ASRock H81 PRO BTC R2.0 (LGA1150), Gigabyte H110-D3A (LGA1151)
• If you use more than one GPU, you will need PCI-E extender cables for each additional GPU.
• Power supply: You should check that your power source has enough connections to support the number of GPUs you are running and the total power enough to support the total power consumption of the system. (plus 20% extra power to avoid problems). For example, for a rig with 6 GTX 1070 GPUs a power source like the EVGA SuperNOVA 1200W P2 80+ PLATINUM is recommended.
• A dual core processor compatible with LGA 1150/1151 / AM4 sockets; Recommended processors: Intel Pentium G4600 (LGA 1151), Intel Pentium G3260 (LGA 1150), AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (AM4).
• At least 4GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM . Recommended memory : HyperX FURY 4GB DDR3 (for 1150 motherboards), Ballistix Sport LT 4GB DDR4 (for 1151 and AM4 motherboards).
• Operating system: Windows 10 Creators Update 64-bits or Windows 10 Anniversary Update 64-bits (these 2 versions of windows offer the highest rate of hash and are the most stable when mining ethereum)
• A mining program, such as Claymore, Genoil or Nicehash.

Read Also : HOW TO ASSEMBLE A MINING RIG 2017 (I)

First of all we recommend that you have at hand a set of screwdrivers, antistatic wristband, MX 4 thermal paste (optional), and several molex cables.

The first thing will be to prepare our frame or chassis, which we can buy here . If you propose to do it on your own in this link there is an excellent tutorial in English that explains how to make it in a simple way. Doing it to our advantage has the advantage that we can customize it and add some additional fancoolers, although this is not necessary. Sufficient that our chassis is open and spacious enough to accommodate a minimum of 6 graphics cards.

Placing the motherboard

Now proceed to carefully place the base plate in our frame fixing it with their respective screws. Make sure the motherboard does not touch any metal parts.

Carefully install the RAM in the first slot of the motherboard:

Make sure that the orientation of the RAM is correct (the central slot in the memory must match the slot in the motherboard). The first slot is the one closest to the CPU port:

Unlock the two plastic latches in the memory slot of the motherboard, to place the module easily. If the module does not come reasonably easy, do not force it. Instead, take a look at the latches and make sure they are fully open.

Once the RAM module is installed, lock the latches again.

First of all, locate the CPU slot:

Pull the small metal bar to open it:

Remove the black plastic cover by pulling the point that says “remove”. NOTE: be careful not to damage the pins of the socket, you should not touch them since they are extremely fragile.

Unpack the CPU and carefully place it in the slot. The CPU chip has a small marker (a triangle) in one of its corners. Make sure that it is aligned with the same type of marker in the port.

Once you have placed the CPU chip, close the cover and push down on the metal bar.

Now we must install the fancooler. Since our processor is quite efficient it will produce little heat, so we will use the thermal paste that comes pre-applied by default on the heatsink. You can also choose the MX-4 thermal paste.

Place the fancooler on top of the processor, and make sure the 4 bases align with the holes at the ends of the processor socket, and then press down on the 4 black plastic brackets to secure it to the motherboard. When pressing each plastic support you should hear a “click” which will indicate that it is firmly attached. Finally connect the fan cable to the motherboard.

Now we will have to connect the power cables of the PSU to the motherboard. As you can see, our modular PSU has several cables, each of which serves a different purpose. They are marked.

We are going to use five of these ports, which are:

24pin – ATX (supplies power to the motherboard):

Molex – Peripheral (for feeding the extension cables or risers):

SATA cables (supplies power to our SSD or hard drive, can also be used to power the extenders):

12V ATX ​​cable of the CPU (supplies electricity to the processor)

PCI-e power cable (will provide power to our GPU). Since we have more than one video card, we will use several PCI-e power cables.

Carefully connect each cable to its respective port on the PSU, as shown in the images. Verify the installation.

Once all the cables are connected to the PSU, we can connect the cables to the motherboard:

The 24-pin ATX port is right next to the RAM slots

The 12V ATX ​​CPU connector will power our processor.

The Molex additional power cable goes next to the processor socket, in this case we will not use it. Each graphic card will be connected directly to the power source through its respective PCI-E power cable, in the same way the molex cables that supply power to the risers will be connected to the PSU.

Make sure the fan is also connected to the motherboard.

Now connect the SSD to any of the SATA slots on the motherboard using a data cable. Then, connect the SSD to the PSU through the SATA power cable. SATA slots are small and can be located in one of the corners of the motherboard.

Carefully unpack each of the GPUs and remove the plastic protection that protects the pins on the bottom of the cards.

Now let’s proceed to prepare each of the extenders

Connect the two ends of the extender using the USB cable and connect the power molex

Now we connect the extender to the GPU

Then we place the first of the GPUs inside our rig, as seen in the photo

The smaller end of the extender is connected to the PCI-E slot on the motherboard.

Slot where the GPU is connected via the extender, there are 6 slots in total (5 PCI-E X1 + 1 PCI-E 16X):

Note 1: The system video signal by default will be supplied by the graphics card connected to the PCI-E 3.0 x16 port. (see the motherboard manual for more information)

Note 2: if you are only going to use 1 graphic card you can dispense with the riser cable, in this case it connects the GPU directly to the main PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot located on the motherboard (the slot is usually of a different color and greater size to the others), and in turn, you must connect the GPU to the power source through the 6-pin or 8-pin PCI-E power connector located in one of the corners of the GPU.

Note 3: if you plan to use several GPUs, the video signal will be delivered by the graphics card that is connected to the PCI-E 3.0 x16 port.

Note 4: If you’re using multiple graphics cards connected by risers, you should always connect both the power cable PCI-E 6 or 8 pins on the GPU as the power cable Molex riser or extensor to the power source, is say:

• Connect the graphics card to the power source through the 6 or 8 pin power connector that includes the GPU in one of its corners. This will serve to power your GPU.
• Connect the riser cable to the power source using the 4-pin MOLEX power connector. This will serve to supply additional power to the PCI-E slot.

Note 5: It is advisable to test each riser individually with an old graphics card to check that they work correctly. Most risers are made in China, so it could be the case that some of the cables come defective.

Connecting the MOLEX cable from the extender to the PSU (you can also use the MOLEX to SATA power cable that is included with the riser):

Now we connect the video card directly to the power source using the PCI-E power cable:

We repeat this process until we connect all the GPUSs in their respective ports:

We will use only the ignition (Power) and Reset cables. Each cable has labels on the plastic tips indicating its function (Power, Reset, HDDLed, etc) so we should not have major problems at the time of installation.

These cables will be linked to the “front panel” connector located on the motherboard. The manual of the board should indicate by a diagram the arrangement of these connectors.

At the moment of connecting them it is also important to check the polarity: the positive cable has a triangular marker on one of the points, so be sure to fit each cable in its corresponding pin.

The Ethernet cable connects the motherboard to the router. The ports are easy to find and can not be confused with anything else. The Ethernet cable usually comes in light blue, light gray or yellow.

Finally, our mining rig is ready. Do not forget to connect the monitor, mouse and keyboard too! once on, enter the system BIOS by pressing the DEL or ESC key and check that the system is correctly configured.

Now with our mining rig ready to work, we can go on to configure our rig and install the graphics drivers. We must also choose the right mining software. There are several options available, such as Claymore or Genoil. We can mine directly from Windows or if we prefer, from Linux, although this will depend on our level of knowledge and personal preferences.

Read Also : HOW TO ASSEMBLE A MINING RIG 2017 (I)

Contents

• 2 Assembling our mining rig

Original article and pictures take digitalbodha.com site