Building a 12 GPU Mining Rig with Sapphire RX570’s & Simple Mining OS
A little bit of background, I’ve been building rigs and mining for approx 3 years now, you could almost say its my full time job, but more importantly its my hobby :).
Skip to the end and download the BIOS Mod here.
Some Assumptions
First of all I am assuming you can already build a computer to a reasonable level. This post doesn’t cover things like CPU and RAM installs, just the more experienced side like flashing motherboards and GPUs, plus problem solving and best practises.
Also, if you are doing this from home, you are probably going to want an Open Air case. They are a lot quieter. I use this style case because I need airflow in the facility.
Equipment List
1 x Biostar BTC 250 PRO Motherboard
1 x 3.1Ghz CPU
1 x 4GB RAM
1 x 120 GB SSD
1 x Case with Power Fans
2 x 1500W PSUs
12 x USB Risers
12 x Sapphire RX570 Pulse 8GB GPUs (with Hynix Memory)
Step 1 — Check all the risers
I find this to be absolutely essential to maintaining my sanity. Risers are the number one reason there are faults or non detected cards etc, so the first thing I do is connect a GPU to the first riser, power on the rig, check it works, then move that same GPU to every single riser one by one. Any riser not working, eliminate the problem by changing one component at a time (say the PCI board, or the USB convertor) until you have 12 working PCI slots.
Step 2 — Ensure you have the correct memory type noted
Every model of GPU comes with different types of memory. For instance, the sapphire RX570 can be Hynix, Elpida, Samsung (the best IMO), etc etc.. So make sure you check this using GPU-z on your Windows machine. This matter later on. If you have different types then you won’t be able to use the BIOS mod I’ve provided here, but you should be able to find it somewhere else on the web.
Step 3 — Download SMOS & Flash
I’m using Simple Mining since its very effective at remote management, and does auto updates with a cool panel. You can download and follow the instructions from their website here: www.simplemining.net .
Once downloaded, use a tool such as Etcher, or HDD Raw Copy Tool to flash the .iso file to your SSD. Once finished, edit the config file and change to your email address.
SMOS works on USB as well, but I’ve found it to be problematic. Suggest using an SSD as the price is not that much higher.
Step 4 — Flash the Motherboard with the latest BIOS
Use this BIOS (or check the Biostar website) to flash your motherboard. Copy it to a USB and boot whilst pressing F12 continuously. Select the file and flash.
Once flashed boot in the BIOS and make sure you set as follows:
Boot on power loss → On
Primary Graphics → IGFX
CSM Support → On (important otherwise it will not boot SMOS)
Everything else should be fine to be left as it is.
Step 5 — Install the GPUs
Now you can begin installing the GPUs. I normally do 2 at a time, followed by a full boot and test run to check for any errors. Saves having to go back and find a broken card or something wrong later on.
On first boot SMOS will do all its update, and it might not fully boot, staying stuck with the repeating message “There is no miner to be attached”. Just ignore, restart and all should be fine. You can login to your panel at simplemining.net with your email and you can configure everything there.
Step 6 — Setting the configs
In SMOS Control Panel you can setup your rigs config. In this tutorial we’re covering mining ETH, but you can do pretty much anything by changing the group settings. The standard config line helps you get started, just change your wallet address and your pool (hopefully you’ll use hivepool.io when we are live) and the rig will start mining. Here is my sample config.
wd 1 -r 1 -epool eth-eu.hivepool.io:8008 -ewal $walletETH -eworker $rigName -esm 0 -epsw x -allpools 1 -asm 1 -dpool dcr.suprnova.cc:3252 -dwal alpha-redhive.main -dpsw password -mode 0 -dcoin dcr -dcri 18
You will see that I am dual mining, ETH & DCR which seems to be the most profitable at the moment. You can check this on a site called WhatToMine.
Step 7 — Modding the GPU Bios
This is complex part that can sometimes damage cards. Please be very careful here. You can mod cards in Windows, SMOS, or EthOS using atiflash, a great program when used well.
Absolutely essential, you save your original BIOS first in case all goes wrong. Do this by SSHing to your SMOS rig (you can get the IP address from the SMOS control panel by hovering over the rig name). The username is ‘miner’ and the password is ‘miner’.
Once logged in, type:
screen -x miner …. and then press ctrl+c few times until whole screen exits
sudo su
dmesg -c (this will clear system log)/root/utils/atiflash -i
This will display all your cards. Suggest you test one at a time. First of all save the bios by running:
sudo /root/utils/atiflash -s 0 original.rom
0 represents the first GPU. Once saved you can go ahead and flash the bios, but you need to get the bios file on the rig first :P. Download it here, then use windows command to transfer it to your rig:
pscp filename miner@IPaddress:/root/utils/filename
It will ask for your password which is ‘miner’.
Now go back to Putty/SSH and run this command:
sudo /root/utils/atiflash -f -p 0 filename.rom
That will flash the card!
Reboot and see the change in the hash rate, then perform for all the other cards.
Step 8— Overclock the Cards
I’ve been overclocking my cards quite comfortably with the following settings:
Core 1300
Mem 2200
Undervolt 900
Each card should get approx 30MH/s for ETH and 500+ for Decred. In total your rig should be running around 360MH/s and 6000MH/s.
If you get some problems with the overclocking, identify the problem cards and just don’t overclock those ones. You can do that by putting this into the simple mining oc field:
2200,2000,2200,2200,2200,2200,2200,2200,2200,2200,2200,2200
For the above setting I put the second card (GPU1) back to stock 2000 mem.
Good luck! Don’t forget to check out my pool which is launching soon at HivePool.io.
