Mining 101 – Mining Hardware

Before you all get confused looks in your eyes, 1A means that we’ve decided, as your supreme overlords), that the Mining Hardware bit will be split into two parts. Part 1A will focus on GPU mining hardware, part 1B will focus on FPGA/ASIC mining hardware. Now close your mouth and keep reading this article!


- GPU : This may be the most obvious term, but for those of you who really have no idea what i’m talking about, GPU means Graphics Processing Unit. This is also known as “graphics card”. If you ever want to get into Cryptocoin mining, you will need a decent GPU, preferably a Radeon card. Nvidia works too, but they are just sub-par for these tasks.

- Fans : No, we are not talking about your horde of groupies here. Fans can be found on the front side of your GPU, where they regulate the GPU’s temperature by blowing hot air away from your GPU as best it can. The number of fans on your GPU is important, the more, the better. Well, the better for your temperatures at least, because more fans also means there will be more noise produced by your GPU. Depending on where your mining hardware is located, this can be more or less important to you.

nvidia vs amd

- PSU : This is a very critical factor when building a mining computer. I know that EVERY computer needs a power supply, but bear with me here. Mining Cryptocoins with GPU(‘s) requires a lot of power, about 150W-300W per card (depending on the card itself, the brand, and your mining settings of course).

When considering to equip your mining machine with multiple GPU’s, make sure you allot for the required power consumption , plus an extra buffer. Why a buffer? In case you want to expand your number of GPU’s, change your existing GPU’s for newer models, and just to be on the safe side. Power supplies never run at the full labelled wattage.

To make it very easy, and this is not correct for all models, assume your power supply runs at 85-90% of the wattage stated on the label. For example, a 900W power supply will run at approximately 765-810W. If your entire mining computer requires 800W, you might want to buy a 1000W+ power supply, just in case.

- PCI-E Slot : PCI-E stands for PCI-Express. A PCI-E slot can be found on the motherboard of your computer (see image below). When you decide to build your own mining computer, the number of PCI-E slots is important. The more PCI-E slots you have, the more GPU’s you can put in there without using special wires (see below).

PCI-E slot

PCI-E slots come in different forms : you have the standard PCI-E 1.0/1.1 slot, there is a PCI-E 2.0/2.1 slot, and there is the one we are most interested in : the PCI-E 3.0/3.1 slot. Why is the PCI-E 3.0/3.1 slot important, you wonder? This is taken from the official Wikipedia page: “The new interface would prove advantageous when used for general purpose computing with technologies like OpenCL, CUDA,…”.

Mining cryptocurrency with your GPU uses the OpenCL protocol, if you’re using a Radeon card, or CUDA protocol, if you’re using an Nvidia card.To get the most work out of your GPU, your PCI-E slot should be , preferably, a PCI-E 3.0/3.1 slot. However, a PCI-E 2.0/2.1 slot will still be sufficient, just try to avoid anything older than that, unless you really have no other choice.

Just to be complete : PCI-E 4.0 has been announced in 2011, As this is still being worked on, we do not expect to see the finalized specifications until 2014 or even 2015.

- (Un)powered Risers : This may not be a too common term to most of you, so I’ll do my best to explain this carefully. Relocating and increasing the spacing between graphics cards will dramatically improve cooling and reduce power consumption for mining computers. Using a powered PCI-E riser cable will also protect your motherboard from overdrawing power on it’s ATX power connector.

Let’s break that into a few smaller bits . First of all, you will only need riser cables when you are running two GPU’s or more. With just one GPU, there is no real point in using a powered riser, but it won’t affect performance if you actually use one. Also keep in mind that powered risers are meant to be used in mining computers which are not inside a regular computer case. But we’ll discuss this further below.

When using multiple GPU’s, the spacing in between your GPU’s is very important. If multiple cards are in close proximity to each other, you will have one GPU’s fans blowing hot air away from the GPU, onto the back of your other GPU, thus increasing the card’s temperature. The higher your GPU’s temperature, the bigger the risk of hardware failure, sooner or later.

When your GPU is plugged into your motherboard, the GPU will draw power through the PCI-E slot on your motherboard. When running just one GPU, this does not cause problems. However, once you’re running with multiple GPU’s, say for example, 4, you have 4 PCI-E slots where power is drawn from, which can in an unfortunate event, cause you to burn up your motherboard’s PCI-E connection(s), requiring you to purchase a new one at some point.

But how can these help with power drawing? It’s called a POWERED PCI-E riser for a reason. Powered meaning that it has a molex connector, allowing you to connect the riser cable to plug into your power supply, and directly draw power from there, instead of routing it through the PCI-E slot on your motherboard. Power supply’s are designed to deliver power to different components at the same time, so this will not cause any major problems with the power supply.

powered pci-e riser

There are also unpowered risers. The main difference between powered and unpowered risers is that unpowered risers can NOT be directly connected to your power supply. An unpowered riser will serve as a way to create more spacing in between GPU’s, but has no other advantages. Depending on your setup, these may or may not be useful to you.

source: http://majesti.co/cryptonerd/mining-lingo-101-mining-hardware-part-1a/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/mining-101-mining-hardware/