Just a heads up.

Just wanted to let everyone know  

Hey guys,

I've seen threads in other coin forums on showing off their rig.  It can spark some new ideas on setups and share our experiences on what we've learned and what we could have done better.  I did most of my reading on litecoin forums, but I haven't mined any LTC yet.  Had more faith in GLD at the moment haha.

Intro
I started to read about bitcoins/litecoins early November before it shot through the roof.  I was deployed at the time so I couldn't really get into investing in it, but kept on reading and learning.  As I came home in December, I decided to get two rigs going as a hobby.  Got into mining a month ago and learned a lot throughout the process.  I really like to tinker with computers so I took the plunge.  It's been fun so far, even though I went through a lot of issues so I figured I would share my experiences.  Most of the mistakes I've made were due to my lack of knowledge in terms of electrical components

Justification
Even though I purchased GLD directly with money (Thanks Alty), I decided to mine for two reasons.  One, I wanted to build a computer for fun and see how this whole mining thing worked.  Two, I wanted to invest long term and for some reason crypto market was a bubble and all my coins were worthless tomorrow, at least I would have hardware I could use and sell .  I was planning on buliding a sweet driving/flight sim down the road with 3 1440p monitors, so having multiple GPUs weren't necessarily a bad thing, except for a dent in my wallet 

Component Choice
a. CPU/Mobo:  I went with AMD because it was cheaper than Intel.  I think I saved about $40-60 bucks over intel overall.  Mining is not CPU intensive so it didn't matter for me.  For the motherboard, it didn't really matter much if you spent $300 or $100 on your motherboard as long as it had the right amount of PCI-e lanes.  So I went with the cheapest motherboard that had 2 PCI-e 16x lanes and 2 PCI-e 1x lanes.  The good thing about buying higher end board is that you have more lanes to mess around with if one was to go bad and it's probably more durable, but that's what warranty is for.

b. RAM:  The cheapest 4GB RAM stick I could find.  Even though Mobo supports dual channel memory, single channel is good enough according to others.  However, there is a possibility that the newer R9 series AMD GPUs may require more RAM to run more threads... I may purchase another 4GB RAM down the road when the prices go down just to be safe.

c. PSU:  This is very important and I wish I knew more about PSUs before I just went off of the wattage numbers.  I chose Lepa G1600w which was the only 1600w PSU in the market.  Others were 1500w that cost a little more at the time.  The thing with Lepa G1600w is that it's  multi rail that supports only about 360w per rail (30 amps), which may limit the overclockability of each card if you want to push it to the limits. 

d. GPU:  I first looked for 7950s because they were supposedly cheap ($150-200) at hashrate of 600-700.  However, I could only find them at $300 at the time due to the increasing demand of mining rig components.  I made the decision to go with R9 290s because they were $400 each and came with BF4 game coupon, that I could sell and use myself.  A week after I purchased my GPUs, the prices shot up to $500-550 per card!  Another reason I chose the R9 290s was that it was a high end gaming card as well so if mining was to die, at least I could make killer gaming rigs.  There are plenty of choices on this one so look around and keep doing your research.  Think of hashrate, cost, and how much watts it require to run at mining (stock and overclocked).  Don't get Nvidia cards.

e. OS:  Went with Win 7 because I was most comfortable with it and driver support was probably best out of Linux and Win 8.1.

f. HDD:  I went with a 128GB SSD that was on sale.  Could have saved some money with mechanical HDDs, but faster boot-up speed really helps when you're troubleshooting the rig or updating drivers and other software that require a reboot.  Time = money and SSDs also have a lesser chance of failure.

Rig
I decided to NOT use milk cartons because I wanted to put two rigs in the same place right next to each other.  I ended up buying a metal shelf on amazon, because it would be strong and I could configure it the way I wanted.

For cooling, at first I was going to get some 120mm/140mm fans, but decided to get a box fan instead.  That way it can cool all the components and only have to worry about 1 fan.  The downside is the noise.

I also got powered risers to spread out the GPUs for better cooling and power stability.




CPU: AMD Sampron
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 AM3/3+
PSU: Lepa G1600
RAM: 4GB Vulcan DDR3 1600mhz CL9
OS: Win 7
HDD: 128GB Kingston V300 SSD
GPU: 4 x R9 290s running stock voltage, clocks, and memory.
Network: Edimax PCI Wireless 300MBs
Hashrate:  Around 820-840 per card.
Wattage: 1300-1350w

Issues I ran into
First was that my PSU kept shutting off.  I could not run more than 3 cards.  I had driver issues.  Stability issues where one gpu would keep failing randomly.  Pretty much anything you can think of minus burning my house down 

What I've learned from my mistakes
- Make sure you know what kind of PSU you are getting.  Initially, I didn't know they were multi rail so I was overloading a rail and the psu kept shutting off on me.  Once I found out, it was an easy fix but I had to ask around for a while.  Wattage is not always the answer.  Make sure you get one from a good PSU manufacturing company (example, seasonic/corsair) and know how much wattage you require.  I estimated a MAX of 400w per card, but that was an overstatement.  My 4 R9 290s running measured around 1350w using the killawatt unit.  You also don't want to max out your PSU.  You want to hit around 80-85% of your max rate power to ensure stability.

- Test out your components one by one.  I tried to throw everything on and press start.  As you get more parts, you will eventually get faulty ones.  After days of troubleshooting, I finally realized that one of my PSU was bad and that one of the riser was the cause of random GPU failures that led to the freezing of the OS.  Also, some components may be less stable.  For instance, I bought a cheap $10 usb wireless network card and it kept giving me issues like dropping connection or getting stuck on boot up.  I switched them out with a PCI card and it's much better and faster.

- Ensure that you have a stable OS before you get into mining.  Make sure your windows updates are all done and have the latest drivers for all of your components such as your chipset, GPU, and even your network cards.  Flash the latest vBIOS for your GPUs and BIOS for your motherboard.

- Know your electrical system in the house.  I have 2 rigs in the same room and a typical home in the US uses 15A for the circuit, which equate to around a max rating of 1800w.  Same with PSU, you don't want to run 100% all the time since there may be spikes in wattage while mining and could trip your circuit breaker if you overload it.  I didn't know this so I had 2 rigs running from the same room's electrical system.  I did separate the 2 by using 2 different wall outlets, but you are still overloading the room's electrical circuit.  One of my rigs would shut off randomly and this was the reason.  I fixed it by getting a 12 gauge extension cord (rated for 15A, which is 1800w) and running it from another room's outlet.  Also, do not use a power strip unless it's rated for your use.

My advice
- Don't get into mining unless you like to tinker with computers or want to learn how to do it.  It's fun, but it can be time intensive and can give you some headaches.  Thankfully, there are a lot of knowledgeable people out there who will help you and that's exactly how I finally have 2 rigs running 24/7 stable today.

- You can start small.  You don't have to get 4 GPUs to start mining.  If you have a AMD card, try mining with one or two to see how all of this works.  I started mining with a GTX 670 at 200 kh/s ( ) and it taught me a lot on the software side of mining before building one.

- Have a dedicated room to do this.  It will be loud and it will get hot.  Thankfully I am single so no one gives me trouble about it, except my family members and friends who ask me what the hell that loud noise is coming from.  A dedicated room away from your living space also cuts down on heat and noise.  Also, plan your cooling.  I live in the South so I know I'm going to run into issues once summer hits.  I just ordered a 10,000 BTU window air conditioner for the room to aid in cooling in the future.  Note that this would also contribute in putting more load on your electrical system so plan for that as well.

- Think long term.  You are not going to make millions right off the bat.  Mining is for those who slowly build their wallet in the hopes for the price of those coins to rise exponentially.  1 GLD coin you mine per day may be worth $0.05 today, but it can be worth $1.00 tomorrow. 

Looks like the "Sent Message" does not work on the forums.  It's not saving any of my messages that I send to other members (which is helpful looking back at what I sent vs. what messages I received).

I haven't built my rig yet since I'm still deployed oversees... but I plan on getting the rig up early December to mine/support GLD coin to become profitable down the road.

How much is 'too much?'  The estimate hashrate for my planned rig is around 3500-4000 kh/s (in terms of litecoin so it should be similiar).  Is that too much depending on the pool or would solo mining be more profitable?