Table of Contents
Introduction
Miners, we are back with some newly installed light, and electrical connections that are perfect to get us mining! Perfect right? I usually utilize my office for mining, and it does get a bit messy so I’ve started to clean and organize the space. So, today we will be focusing on, you guessed it, our famous Pixie rig.
The Pixie Rig
Our Pixie rig is an HP Mother-board rig featuring an i3 core processor with eight-gigabyte memory from an HP tower excluding the redundant aspects. We powered it up with a 750-watt Ares game power supply and boosted it with a 128 gigabyte solid-state drive, officially morphing it into a mining rig. Currently, the rig is equipped with two Power Color R9 380s which are mining Ethereum classic at a rate of 18-22 Mega-hash.
My aspiration has been to turn this into a six GPU R9 rig, and I’m excited because the day has finally arrived where I can get my hands on more cards.
More Cards, More Power
Now we have a Gigabyte R9, another Power Color R9 380, an Aries Strix R9 380x, and an XFX R9 380x. This combination will give the rig a total of six R9 380s with some carrying the X version to deliver a slightly higher hash rate- nearly two mega hashes provided the overclock settings remain constant.
Installing the GPUs
We will be installing gpu hangers on all these cards and fit them into the rig placed at the bottom. You may be wondering about the airflow, and I’ve anticipated that. I’ve been working on a design using a plywood and angled aluminum combination to compact everything and also allow sufficient ventilation.
Our 750-watt Ares game power supply is mounted in place, and we’ve managed our cables with the use of wire ties. We also have a 1200 watt HP power supply to provide the necessary support. To avoid any vestiges of disarray, we used the angled aluminum to mount our solid-state drive securely.
The Motherboard Mounting
The last step of this elaborate set-up includes mounting the motherboard. I planned on this being the last step since I wanted to ensure everything else was configured according to my specifications. We had to install a rear chassis fan due to the restrictions within the motherboard BIOS- a necessary yet unappealing installation.
However, I am pleased by these newly discovered PCI splitters I found in Brandon Coyne’s video. I haven’t used these yet, so I’m quite eager to test them out.
The Clean-up
The whole set-up appears slick, with every component having its allocated space. I aimed for neatly organized rigs rather than a trailed mess of wires. A neat construction also aids in improved airflow, providing optimal conditions for mining operations. With that in mind, I went ahead, mounted the motherboard, and got my R9 380s ready.
Card Preparation
Each card now has a riser, the USB cable, a six-pin riser power cable, and finally, another set of connectors associated with each card. The cards have been installed in the rig, and I’m now ready for the grand power-up to check if everything functions as it should. I have made sure that hive OS is ready to track the functioning of the rig immediately after the power-up.
Overclocking and Power Consumption
After some minor tweaks and overclocking, I tested my rig and was pleasantly surprised by the performance. Especially the power consumption, which seems way under the estimated calculations. All the six cards were contributing to a total of about 114 mega hashes while consuming only 519 watts as compared to the estimated 900 watts. This made me excited about the potential of these cards. After all, more hash with less power consumption means more profits.
Mineral Magic
So, I went ahead, assigned my flight sheets to the rig, and finally kicked off the mining operations. I have set it to mine Ethereum Classic, which according to ‘What to Mine,’ gives me an advantage of about four dollars a day given the current market value of Ethereum Classic. Considering the skyrocketing rates of cryptocurrencies, this could translate into a hefty profit in the coming months.
In conclusion, I’m delighted with the performance of my R9 380 rig, and I look forward to pushing its limits further. I encourage all miners out there to push their boundaries and explore the hidden potential in their rigs. Happy Mining!
Are you Mining with an R9 380 4GB GPU? If So, What Miner? What Hashrate? and finally what in the world are you mining?!
the HP m/b has 2 different ways to access the BIOS, I think to get to advanced BIOS you have to press CTRL + DEL during startup (or CTRL + F10) something like that, in that BIOS, you can disable the chassis fan setting.
It messed with my head when I first started mining, bought a cheap HP m/b, setup in shed with 1 old GPU, but I was constantly running from the house to the shed because of it .. 🙂
Hope that helps, and yes, I'm using a Sapphire R9 380, had to wait a few weeks for new fans from china, but sitting there in my rig now quite happy 🙂 (x2 RX480, x2 RX5500XT, x1 RX5600XT and now x1 R9 380) 🙂
can you name a few other good gpus to build that similar rig with only 3 r9’s but three extra slots
this powercolor seems to be better than rx 560 4gb. What you think about r9 370, it will have a lot of worst results comparing?
I saw now, before your vid somebody mining at 146 mhash with a board like this
do u have disk drive R9 380x , i need this
Hello how are you good afternoon greetings from Argentina luckily I can calmly watch your videos since you have enabled the transcription of the subtitle in Spanish some English-speaking youtubers do not have that option activated so from here Latin America is very important that thank you very much for your video for The contribution I wanted to ask you a question and sorry if it is wrongly expressed since I am using Google translator I wanted to see if this platform that you built would be able to mine ergo sedella Thank you very much
What’s that website with the calculator?
Where do you buy those long yellow/black PCIe cables?. Or are they specific ones for server PSUs?. I don’t know if they would work with “normal” PSUs. Thx!
Would you consider 100-120Eur a good price for these cards?.
if you use the mini molex from the atx psu it will switch the server psu on and off with the main board
The memory refresh rate is for Polaris, your card is Hawaii. The memory refresh rate oc has no effect on Hawaii cards like 380 390
How'd you get this to work.
Is the splitter to 4usb being run off the 16x slot and other 2 card are on the 2x 1x slots
Hey, any updates on your mining with R9 380 ….. I managed to get reported speed of 146 MH/s … edited .bat file on Phoenix miner with custom settings and accidently got to 146 … however after few hours drivers keep crashing … that card is 100% fun to play …you can see my 146 mhs on my video apart that not much to see
Hii. Please. R9 390 8 gb overclock settings for eth?
do you have any card that you sell
Nice build, I have question about the psu connection. These old hp mobo's have proprietary psu connections, how did you connect the atx psu and the server psu. Does your mobo have 24 pin connection??
HiveOS doesn't take into account PCIe wattage with AMD cards from the riser itself which is typically 60-75W so I'd say their 150W measurement is conservative if anything. Those are some power hungry GPUs. At my >1kw price of 14c/KwHr I'd lose far too much profit for that rig to be viable.
@The Hobbyist Miner. What HP motherboard are you using?
New to all this. Is it actually profitable after a while to the extent to make a living?
I hope you change the thermalpaste on all your used cards, even if the Edge temp is good (the one you see in software) the hotspot temp might run at over 90c which will kill the GPU over time, this happens when the thermalpste is dried up or cracked at some spots which happens over time or if it got badly applied in the case someone re pasted it.