Picking hw for 1st rig, need feedback

[Eon046]

Hi there!

After a few months casually trading crypto, I’m looking to build my first dedicated mining rig to run on Hive OS.

I have a ~ 4.000 € budget (~10.000 € if ASIC). I don’t know where to safely acquire ASICs so I’ll go for GPU.

I was able to reserve a ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3090 O24G for 2.500 €. I’ll need to complete payment or cancel that order within few days. I’ll either commit or pass depending on your feedback.

I now need to pick a mobo, CPU etc to complete the setup. I was thinking for a Intel Core i5-11400 (240 €) alongside a ASUS TUF GAMING B560M-PLUS WIFI (164 €).

I’d also like the rig to be somewhat relevant on the used gaming hardware market after one or two years to take advantage of future resell value.

I’m hopping for good Samaritans to give some advice, opinions or feedback about this project, especially the below:

1. Is picking Intel CPU over AMD CPU makes sense or is complete waste of money?

   • There apparently is a call out where B560M’s PCI 4.0 won’t work without a 11th Gen Intel Core: I believe I may not pick a cheap Celeron as a placeholder

2. This projected ~ 3500 € expensive rig built around a RTX 3090 would mine about 5 ~ 6 € a day assuming today’s estimate, which would require a bit less than 2 years to break even. That might sound long, however, I wonder if we would see the glorious 6 to 9 months break-even time back anytime soon. What’s your typically desired break-even time?

3. Does RAM matter? I can always buy more at time I’ll want to resell the rig on the second hand market. How much RAM would you recommend for mining today?

4. Is it reasonable to not use a riser considering the following:

   • Using a single GPU for now.
   • The 3090 ROG STRIX above has good feedbacks regarding its temperature and dissipation compared to competing brands
   • The rig will be placed in the dry, cold and well ventilated attic, on the glorious Republic of Ireland. Attic temperature wouldn’t make it make it to 15°C but two months a year.
   • No desktop case, I will use a open wooden frame still

5. I never spawned an OS other than Windows on a brand new system. I guess I’ll need to follow a guide to load an HiveOS image onto a USB key, so I’ll then spawn it into a proper HDD. I don’t need to get crazy on the HDD I bet? Please shoot out any catch I should be aware off!

Thanks you very much,

Eon

[rkulov]

Listen, i am mining on a PC 15 years old just with new card and 4GB RAM and a new PSU ( the one from the 15 year old was 350W so … ) If you want just to mine, dont you have some old PC which has PCIe slots and you can put new card there.
On the other hand you are trying to build a decent gaming PC as i see. The mobo is cheap so in two years i dont think you can resell it any better. You have to think if you want to build a mining rig or a gaming PC. Usually mining rigs have weaker CPUs just to keep system running and consume less power. some 4GB RAM for mining is ok , some say you might need more if you get more GPUs. AMD CPUs lately are quite good if you get higher grade CPU but its like with everything.

so for mining, you need some CPU that uses less power and fits the Mobo.
Mobo with many PCIe slots if you plan to add many GPUs. if you are like me with one card and you cant add more soon, this mobo is ok. PSU 750W is the bare minimum but with this card and if you use strong CPU its better to go for 1000W. you will underclock the GPU and stuff but still maybe 500 W might be pulling at the wall. for mining any ram is working not less than 4gb. you can run the system on and USB flash drive even, or get a cheap SSD.

for gaming you need good CPU also and good RAM, atleast 8GB and Mobo also good.
thats what i think.

[rkulov]

The break even stuff. now after the upgrade in few weeks we will see a drop in the mining profit of ETH. Dont know how much exactly but it will drop . Now on the other hand they the price should go up and maybe the profit will be like the one we get these days. It wont be like in May when the price was 4400 and many transactions and you get good money. We will see actually. Nobody knows. Then again they are going to switch to PoS instead of PoW and stop mining. so in some time, maybe an year from now, mining stops for ETH with GPUs and then you can mine other coins like Ergo, ETC , Ravencoin.

[Eon046]

@rkulov

If you want just to mine, dont you have some old PC which has PCIe slots and you can put new card there.

Thank you for your answer, @rkulov

I’m planning to mine and mine only, so I don’t need to go fancy for the rest of the system. I can of course re-purpose an old PCIe mainboard laying around. However, I was concerned about compatibility.

Will the RTX 3090 and its 4.0 PCIe 16x port be retro-compatible with a motherboard that has a PCIe 16x “2.0” or “3.0” only (such as my old Gygabyte 870A-UD3 or something in between?)

When running the thing on HiveOS, where will the screen be actually plugged to? To the 3090 itself or should I also have a super-cheap GPU to go on the main 16x port and plug my screen there?

Sorry for the silly questions, but not only I never built any mining rig yet but I also haven’t put anything made after 2010 together so I’m rusty.

[rkulov]

dude i have this board ALiveNF5SLI 1394 - ASRock and a Phenom x4 9550 processor and some 4 pieces of 1 GB ram to make them 4. I just bought new PSU 550W and connected all of this with RX 570 8GB and it works like a charm. I guess your motherboard is newer. It doesnt matter if the PCIe is 2.0 or 3.0 or in my case 1.0 because there is not big transfer of data between the GPU and CPU. PCIe will give the card 75Watts power so the rest will be with the 8 pin connectors from the PSU. The connection to the monitor can be made with the 3090 just to configure it if needed. or if you have some old GPU or integrated one in the mobo you can use it. HiveOs is flashable on FDD, HDD, SSD. I flashed it directly on the HDD because i had an adapter for HDD. you have to mount that the HDD after flashing and open the file system on the HDD and put there the config file. If its all ok you wont need to use a monitor but you will be able to do all from the web interface.

If it doesnt work with the old mobo you can then invest in new one with CPU and RAM

[Eon046]

Hi,

my 1st rig project in underway. I’m waiting for the ram and 850W PSU to arrive (FSP Hydro G Pro 850W if curious). Normally this week.

In order to maintain a clean bookkeeping, I want to make a dedicated wallet to cash the mining effort to. I already have a Metamask and Binance Smart Chain to play with.

Have you any alternate wallet provider recommendation to store the mining outcome?

Thanks!

[Eon046]

Hi,

my first dedicated rig is up and running. Special thanks @rkulov for your earlier highlights!

Installation was impressively straightforward: I hadn’t had to touch my keyboard even once.

Here some pictures:

At the moment, it’s making 120 MH/s with ethminer with core -200 , ram 2400 Mhz and pwr limit à 330w. It looks to be in range of what most calculators forecast.

Temperature is 56 ~ 57 °C
I’ll move some of the system ram away as 12 gb is probably useless here.

I planed to use my partner’s celeron-based mainboard for it, but her case couldn’t fit my older Gigabyte, so the Gigabyte went to the rig instead (in case you are wondering why I have that towering cpu fan)

I have a few questions though:
On my latest screenshot, the 4th line reads

eth0 no-carrier

should I be worried?

I saw guides that are mentioning a core temp and vram temperature. I only see one temperature though. Does the card sensor vram temperature? How could I see it?

Whenever the payment wallet address is updated in Flightsheet, is the unpaid amount lost?

Suggestions & feedback welcome!

thanks

[rkulov]

Unpaid stays unpaid for that address you i guess if you want to change ot you need to get paid first and then change it to other address. Find OC settings for the card and use absolute core settings something like 1300 core clock. For temp dont know exactly othink you need to see only one temp. If it runs dont touch it

[Eon046]

For the record,

about 2 months after OP, I have moved the rig in my attic and powered up my 2nd GPU it this morning.

I stuck a smoke alarm above just in case.

Now mining eth @ 237 Mh/s and keeping educating myself and venturing into the rabbit hole.

What a journey and what a helpful community this is!

[khacanh26]

you don’t need to use 10400 with mb, you can chose low budget mb and cpu, 8gb ram, and 1 USB 32Gb for Hiveos. Btw, you save your money for gpu. With 4000 € budget, you can buy 4 x AMD 6800XT, 3090 is so hot temperture.

[Eon046]

Hi @khacanh26

At the time of first post, I wasn’t yet aware that old mobos had no problem handling latest GPUs for mining purposes.

I ended up re-purposing my old GA-870A-UD3 from my desk PC into this rig, and got myself a second-hand, 60 € MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max for my desk computer.

I might had considered the 6800XTs indeed, the mh/s per € ratio is similar as 3090, but they are out of stock as well.

At the moment, the 3090’s cores are 42 and 37°C , pulling 118 Mh/s with a not very agressive OC.

I share that general concern about what mining is going to look like post ETH-POS and wonder if I should stack some XTs whenever they restock, or if I stick with that pair of 24gb 3090s for the foreseeable future.

Happy mining

[khacanh26]

Hi!
That temperture you show is core temp, you should care about mem temp. If your budget is enough money, you can continue with 3090. I live in Asia and the weather here is so hot. Mem temp of 3090 from 90 - 100 degree.

[Eon046]

Yes, those Strix don’t come with a temp probe for the VRAM indeed, but the backplates are fairly hot, even with Memory at 2000 Mhz. I guess memory itself might be 20 to 30°C hotter than the core.

I was able to ease it with a few salvaged fans, and autumn season is bringing some nice ~10 °C temps in the attic here in Ireland

At least a benefit from cold climate countries

[khacanh26]

Cool!!! This is my temp when i add more 3 fans, i trying more setting to low voltage and cooler