( 06th September 2019 )
Purchasing the right motherboard is very important and it is easy to mistakenly buy something that appears to meet the needs of your mining rig but falls short. For example, a six card mining rig will require 6 PCIE slots in order to run all six cards. There are plenty of motherboard that come with six or more PCIE slots. The problem is a lot of these motherboard is not made to handle six GPUs running simultaneously and while they can run 6 PCIE devices at the time they weren’t designed with GPU mining in mind. They were designed to handle a couple of graphics cards in addition to other PCIE devices such as RAID controllers, NIC adapters, card readers and other PCIE interfaced hardware. Luckily, with the expansion of GPU mining, hardware manufactures have started making motherboards specifically geared towards GPU mining. ASRock, BioStar and others make several boards designed to handle 6+ GPUs, and even have “BTC” in the model name. While you don’t need a motherboard marketed as a “BTC” or “Mining” motherboard to run your rig. What you should do is extensive research on whether or not the motherboard you choose can handle the GPUs and has shown to be stable running multiple GPUs 24/7.
Fig: A 19-GPU supported Motherboard
Now that you have all the main components of your rig mapped out, it’s time to look into the peripherals that you will need to connect all the components and optimize your design. At a minimum you will need:
PCIE Risers: Risers are extension cables that connect your GPUs to your motherboards PCIE slots. Remember the reason we are building this open air rig is for cooling and airflow so housing your GPUs right in the motherboard would not allow for that cooling and likely overheat your rig. The risers allow you to secure the GPUs on the upper shelf, where air can flow more freely. There are a lot of PCIE risers on the market and most of them are made cheaply and are the component most prone to failure in your rig. It is recommended that you purchase a few spare risers so you minimize downtime in the event of failure.
Fig: PCIE Risers,Molex and SATA cables
PCIE/Molex/SATA Cables: Most PSUs and GPUs will come with cables and connectors. But you may not have enough cables to connect all your GPUs or more important connect them all with individual cables. Overall you will need to do a review of all the cable and interface/adapter needs for your components and make sure you have all the required cables. You will also want a few spares for troubleshooting or replacement and most importantly be sure to get the correct lengths so that your cables reach your hardware and aren’t being stretched.
Hard Drives/Storage: GPU mining rigs require minimal storage. You will need a drive to run your operating system and GPU hardware. Windows 10 requires 16 GB of drive space for its installation. With software and formatting you can easily get away with a 64 GB hard drive for a windows OS based mining rig. Linux based rigs can run on even less or even run off a USB stick.
RAM/Memory: While GPU RAM/Memory is crucial to the performance of your mining rig, system RAM/Memory is not critical at all. A 4 GB stick of RAM will be enough to power your rig without any issues. With the cost of RAM being so inexpensive, and for redundancy reasons, it is recommended to buy two 4 GB sticks of RAM, keeping your rig operational if one should fail. A 2 x 4 GB RAM kit will run you as low as $30.
Processor: Like system RAM, mining rigs do not require a lot of processing power from the CPU to operate. In fact, it is more profitable not to run a powerful CPU as it won’t increase mining performance but will increase your power costs. Using a Pentium or Celeron processor is going to provide all the processing required while consuming less power than an i3/i5/i7 processor and also save you quite a bit of money in hardware costs. Be sure to keep this in mind when choosing your motherboard to ensure the socket can handle the processor you choose. Since CPU mining is not profitable these days but there are still some cryptocurrencies that offer CPU mining. If you want to go for this option, then you must need a powerful processor like an i3/i5/i7 processor.
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