Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB Ethereum Mining Rig Tutorial
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So.. i am back with a new Ethereum Minig Rig tutorial, this time i will be creating with the new GPU Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 480 8gb OC. YAY! and also with a bit different frame.. finally. I this post i will have less content and more pictures, if you really need a step by step tutorial with good explanation on how to create your first rig check here.
As for the frame i will only add a gallery and you will have to follow the steps, measurements will be found below. More detailed tutorial for building the mining frame can be found here.
Ethereum Mining Rig Frame / Case V2.
Measurements:
41cm (16inch) wide
60cm (23.5inch) long
30cm (11inch) tall
Components
1. Motherboard (http://amzn.to/1UupYtr)
2. PSU (Power Supply Unit) (http://amzn.to/2dTDPI6)
3. RAM module (http://amzn.to/2efwrKf)
4. One or more GPU’s (up to 6 Video cards) (http://amzn.to/2dDqSmV)
5. CPU module (Processor) (http://amzn.to/1PH6c5Z)
6. SSD (http://amzn.to/2e1iJYR)
7. Power and reset switch cables for the motherboard (http://amzn.to/1Pk7qWi)
8. USB risers (http://amzn.to/1UuaR3b)
9. Keyboard and mouse (http://amzn.to/1ZDZPrq)
10. Thermal compound paste (http://amzn.to/1Pk7SUw)
11. Ethernet cable (http://amzn.to/1UqBLUO)
13. Automatic screwdriver (http://amzn.to/1ZE0YiA)
14. Watt usage monitor like “Kill a Watt” (http://amzn.to/1YeCbTp)
Let’s get started
Preparing the motherboard
Unbox the motherboard carefully and keep the red material under it. The remove the black plastic protection from CPU slot.
Installing the CPU, Cooler & RAM
Once unboxed, get the cooler and remove thermal paste from it. Install the CPU and then apply thermal paste to it, final step is to install the cooler.
Frame, PSU and Motherboard
Now that we are all set with the motherboard and the frame let’s unbox the PSU. Then place the Motherboard in the center of the frame and the PSU in the left back corner.
Prepare the following cables:
- 24 PIN ATX
- CPU
- 4x PCI-e
- 2-3 Molex
- 1 Sata
- Power switch
- Ethernet cable
- And also do not forget about the keyboard 🙂
Once you have all the cables, begin to install them in PSU and motherboard.
GPU Installation
I highly recommend to install the GPUs one by one and test them, follow the next steps to make sure that everything will work fine.
- DO NOT install the SSD/ethOS yet
- Plug in the PSU, make sure you also plug in the watt usage monitor (if you have one)
- Install 1 GPU ONLY , turn on the PSU, power up the rig and make sure that it is booting correctly.
- Now install the SSD and turn on the rig (video tutorial: how to write ethOS image on SSD), wait for full boot and an error with WRONG DRIVER text will be displayed in terminal will be displayed (like in this image). You will have to access the local.conf file, type in terminal “nano local.conf” and below “globalfan 85” add “globaldriver amdgpu”, save the file by pressing CTR+O and them hit ENTER,exit with CTRL + X and reboot. Now the mining should start with no problem for your 1 GPU (23.xx mh/s)
- Success boot and mining for the 1st gpu? Great! Now install the second GPU and follow the same steps till you have all 6 GPU installed and working (in this way is very easy to find if a USB riser or Molex is not functioning correctly or the video card has a problem)
Rig is not booting with one GPU ?
- Double check cables (from psu and motherboard)
- Make sure CPU cooler is good placed and is not moving
- Make sure that the RAM fits good in the slot, if still doesn’t boot change the slot
- Check the jumpers for power switch if this is placed correctly
ethOS is not booting ?
- Black screen? Shutdown and start it again
- Is booting but the mining process is not starting? Shutdown and start it again
- All GPU installed but one keeps crashing or one GPU is always crashing, ethOS version is 1.1.1? No worries, new version will be released (1.1.2) and that will fix this problems, also more features for RX 4xx series will be available)
- Mining process not starting at all ? type “helpme” in terminal, copy the generated link and send it to mirc chat #ethereumOS
Everything is running perfect!? Great! Let’s configure ethOS
I had no problems, everything went nice a smooth from the beginning to the end, no riser/molex/sata/etc problem. Only that a card keeps crashing but like i said this will be fixed with the new ethOS release 1.1.2. I am too lazy to make this rig on windows, ethOS is much better, simple setup, easy configuration etc no headache on finding the right clocks and mems.. The screenshot of Watt usage meter is for 5 GPUs only, i forgot to take a photo with all 6 :/ but is somewhere around 900w.
OK, so we are all good, first of all we will need to configure ethos. Follow this steps
- Update ethOS to the latest version
This can be done by typing the commandsudo ethos-update && sleep 5 && sudo reboot
in the black window. Now hit the enter button and do not interrupt the process of update. - Set ethOS to the single rig mode
Run this command to make the remote file completely blankecho -n "" > /home/ethos/remote.conf
- Changing ethOS password
a) In terminal typepasswd
and you will see “Changing password for ethos.”
b) Type default/current password which is “live”
c) Then type your preferred password twice and that’s it, we secured the rig.
- Run the command
nano local.conf
and the default settings will be listed like in the image below. maxgputemp 85
leave it default for now. This number means that this is the maximum temperature your GPU should reach when the system automatically stops the miner.stratumproxy enabled
this is a default command and should not modify it.- Using arrows go down to
proxywallet
and change the address with yours. - On proxypool you will see it in 2 lines,
proxypool1
andproxypool2
, it is because the second link is as a backup and ifproxypool1
has connection problems or is down for any other reason then ethOS will connect toproxywallet2
. If you are located in EU changeproxywallet1
to this one:eu1.ethermine.org:4444
- Save new modifications by pressing
CTRL+O
thenENTER
.CTRL+X
to exitlocal.conf
file.
Here is my configuration file
update: –cl-global-work 8192 should be changed to –cl-global-work 16384
Here it is, up an running. Currently i am waiting for the new ethOS version 1.1.2 (now using 1.1.1). The problem now is that i can only run with sotck settings, so no overclock till the 1.1.2 version with more support for rx 4xx series.
- Hash power (stock settings): 140 mh/s
- Power consumption (no overclock): 915w
- Max GPU temp (near to open window, 40%-50% global fan): 55-60 °C
I will continue to update this post when the new ethOS version released, with overclock, hashing power, power consumption and much more, don’t forget to subscribe.
UPDATE: October 18 2016
The new ethOS 1.1.2 version is out since 8 october, i am still doing tests and ill show what i got till now but first of all let’s see what is new in ethOS
- Added better stability, overclocking, and driver support for RX 400 series with new linux kernel. (the most important)
- Dramatically reduced size of ethOS by removing unused packages and caches.
- Reduced ethOS updater size.
- http://ethosdistro.com/changelog/
So now we are able to overclock our cards, here is what i did.
I am having serious problems, one card keeps crashing, not sure why but i am still testing and checking to find the best core mem for this, so if one or two cards keep failing try to change usb risers recheck all the cables, maybe v 1.1.2 is not that stable yet but we can do a lot more things than previous version so maybe we can find the best core mem for our cards (for now).
First of all try to add “globalmem 2150” in local. conf (type “nano local.conf” in terminal). Core settings should remain default (do not add them). Leave it to run like for about 1-2 hours and if everything goes good increase the mem to “2225” and leave it like this for a while (significant mh/s will be visible).
thank you thank you
ethOS 1.1.2 changelog (released October 8th 2016)
Major Changes
Added better stability, overclocking, and driver support for RX 400 series with new linux kernel.
Added sgminer support to ethOS (miner sgminer-gm in config to enable).
Added sgminer conf support to /home/ethos/sgminer.stub.conf (for power users).
Dramatically reduced size of ethOS by removing unused packages and caches.
Reduced ethOS updater size.
Added syntax highlighting to nano that supports ethOS config style.
Added charts for total hashrate and capacity on ethosdistro.com stats panel.
Added per-rig historical chart data to ethosdistro.com read-only API.
Added “pasteit” script to easily upload output of commands (df | pasteit).
Added “rig status” report to “helpme” command, and added short “rig status” messages to command prompt.
Installed joe text editor….
http://ethosdistro.com/changelog/
Could you tell me what the hash rate would be for zcash? Genesis Mining is selling it by H/S. Could you tell me what the output would be in H/S please?
Hey @disqus_XwtZqW27zq:disqus
Currently the best public perf/W & perf/$ is RX470 4GB in Win7 using
zcashgpuclient_silentarmy with a modded BIOS that brings it up to
~40Sol/s. The best miner/kernel/BIOS/GPU model/RAM size will probably
change over time but for current-gen HW IMO AMD will remain ahead of
NVIDIA.
So ill recommend RX 470/480! 🙂
40 sol/s or 40 h/s ?
Genesis Mining uses H/S to determine the power. Is this correct? H/S?
Are you saying only one card produces 40 sol/s? What is a sol? Is it the same as H/s? Genesis Mining is charging $1866.68 for 40 H/s.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a719ef81e5592f4819e4b6a8e0ca59ff27463f961bf495b4f3a98512091dc6be.jpg
Genesis mining is a rip off 🙁 you better invest in a tiny rig than rent from there 🙂 they are overpriced, but this is just my opinion and from what i read from other people.
With a modded rx 470 you can get like 40 Sols/s but with a non modded around 30-35 Sols/s, i am not telling from self experience, i did not tested them yet, but i am telling you from what other users reported. I will do a test later today with r7 370.
How many cards can you hook up to one motherboard? I’m looking at wanting to build a large rig. I’d like to get 1000 H/s or so. Please advise.
You can go up to 6 cards. You want to mine ethereum or zcash?
To achieve 1000 mh/s on ethereum you will need around 6-7 rigs.
I want to mine zcash. What will I need for that at 1000 h/s or 1000 mh/s? So 6 cards per rig? 6 to 7 rigs?
Yes, that’s correct! 🙂
And what would it cost in power consumption every month for one rig with 6 cards? What is the total wattage?
And this software pays directly in zcash?
Yes, they just updated the software and now is supporting zcash too. I’ll be posting a tutorial soon.
So 1100w per one rig at around what 10 cents a minute…so about $80 a month extra a month for electricity? What about the processor and RAM. How important is that when using the GPU cards? Or does it purely run on these GPU cards. I’d like to have the max 40 sols. What do you recommend in regards to motherboard, CPU, and RAM in order to achieve this?
Up to 1000w – 1100w per one rig. Right now my rig goes up to 980w.
Your hash power was 140 MH/s before the update. After update?
140 was at stock settings, at what update are you referring to ? 1.1.4 with silentarmy update?
Yes.
Although an indication on impact on hashrate per update would have been great.
Check my latest post with the last update , now mining ZCASH at 500h/s
You started at 140 MH/s for ETH. I wanted to understand your progress from that reference point.
ZCASH at 500h/s is beside the point.
great tutorial!
also, with ethos 1.1.6 and optiminer you can easily obtain 130 Sol/s with an RX 480 and 110 Sol/s with an RX 470…
I did not yet tested the 480s with the last estate update. If that is true then this is nuts 🙂 I have only updated my 370s but I had the same speed.
Hello again i do have a question, that u mentied to change to single rig mode why? I found it in a several tutorial, can u explain me that matter plz. Thanks un advance.
Do you have more than one rig ?
No juste one by now, but im expecting receiving second one next week.
Are these GPUs on that configuration, taking advantage of Crossfire mode?. Are there any performance losses when using these PCI 1x ports?
Hey Juan, there is no Crossfire mode and there is no loss when plugged in 1x ports.
Thanks for your answer, then the use of 16X PCI slots and Crossfire is irrelevant for mining? Well I think the use of crossfire maybe is not important, but I’m not sure about there are not performance losses when you use PCI x1, because it has 16 times less bandwidth than an x16 port, also I understand the use of a multicore processor is better to manage this kind of GPUs, but probably it is also irrelevant, are you have made essays with this?
have you received my reply on this? i cannot see it and i answered to your questions. please let me know..
Dear friend. I am planning to build a mining rig with 6x Amd PowerColor Rx 480 8GB. They require each 500 watt minimum. What PSU will be handle all of them? Maybe its better to use 2x PSU? I am very confused because each of GPU require 500 watt minimum and i can’t decide the proper PSU to handle them. Thank you
Hey Elio! There is no way that an rx 480 will eat that much power. Maybe from where you got the information they recommend a system with 500w psu. Am 1200 or 1300 psu will be more than enough. I have 1200w.
Dear Ciprian, i asked because i saw that you used 1200w PSU for your 6x Sapphire cards. Another question which i am not sure is how to calculate the total power consumption by whole system. I made some calculation online and my system consumes 859 watt. This is the power consumed in 1 hour or 24 hour? Because i need to make a prediction on how money will i use for electricity.
Thanx man. I appreciate your help and when i gain my first ether i will send you to buy a beer 😉
Total power consumed will be MAX 950w but you will stay somewhere 850w-900w hourly. Around $60 monthly electricity bill. Check this calculator https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth , your max hashing speed with 6x rx 480 8gb is 150MH/s, overclocked 850w to 950w max. enter your cost per KW/h and you will see the profits and how much you will pay the electricity bill.
My recommendation is to go with 6x sapphire nitro+ RX 470 4GB, modded bios, undervolted, 28-29 mh/s 70w per card 🙂 around 750w. with the same speed as rx 480 8gb. also there is a big price difference. I just hot 3 rx 470 on sale, i saved $150. Wait for the best moment to buy them or check every store possible.
If you want to discuss more contact me on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/1stminingrig/
Thanx Ciprien i will go with your opinion. I saw that Amd Red Devil RX 480 has an 30.5 Mh/s. I think this is OC. Is that right?
yes 🙂
Hi Ciprian. Sorry but something is not clear for me.. Considering your hardware rig configuration costs (about 2000$ + with today prices (?)), mining with this rig configuration cannot be never profitable or never economically convenient as we can see on https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth?HashingPower=150&HashingUnit=MH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=0&CostPerkWh=0
Even if i don’t pay for electricity (impossible! it’s just a test)..
150MH/s give me a risible profit per day of $ 8.24 (??!!)
So two conclusions:
1) There is something enormously wrong in my reasoning.. (i really hope so).
2) If my reasoning is correct, someone tells me who, why and how can earn considering hardware and power costs !!
Sorry but i’m really confused 🙁 with $ 8.24 at best i can buy a beer and coffee 🙁
those calculation were made few months a go when difficulty was low.. but now because eth went down $150 and difficulty increased really high… yeah.. the income is much less.. BUT this is for now 🙂 is good to have some eth mined.. soon the price will be very high :).. so it may not be very profitable NOW but it will be after few months..
So, you are saying me that beyond the current profit, that is better to mine than not to do it at all 😀 .. I Agree! 😉
Me and some friends are really interested in mining. What can you recommend us for buying video cards. Which video card, and which cripto you feel us to consider today in prevision of an investment of about $ 40,000 in hardware? Obviously buying video cards available right away and not in six months 😀
We believe that with such investment we can reach $ 100 a day roughly.. without considering power cost that in our location is about $ 0.07 / 0.09 kWh for business.
Thank you very much
Umm I’ll go with any 580s or 1070s 🙂 also you should consider some good ASIC miners like L32and D3, check my reviews
Sorry for delay. Sure, i’ve to see your reviews, especially about D3. Really thank you again.
hi i mount 1st rig with rx 480 sapphire, but the screen is black, the fans run , the graphics cards also but the screen nothing, im use hdmi cable depend on it? need dvi cable?
are you using ethos ? hdmi cable is ok..
try start with 1 card and screen on , instal windows 10 and drivers, 1 card run at 4 mh/s im check on gpuz
(im using 11260-01-20g) 1 card have micron memory how its possible?
Same for me
I have 5 rx 480, 2 8gig and 3 4gig, all Samsung
I reinstall many time, I pass from Win7 to Win 10 home edition, and now win10 Pro all x64
I use Claymore’s v9.4
Crimson 16.9.1
If I unplug one card, is another one with only 4 mh/s https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d97d8ec36bea6ebba8e2fd43e6fa797e4bbe233ec00c531573fd9a4d73a2a6b7.png
Same for Zcash
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d26822313112161557e84afb6bda56995cc8f18c312710369f42211e5dd5990.png
Hi ! on ethos with sapphire radeon nitro+ rx 470 4gb. How much Mhz on mem clock and coreclock and globalpowertune ?
Please.
1130/2100! 🙂
Hi ! I have question about OS. What you recomende for such minning rig. Would you still go with Ethos or change to Windows.
I couldn’t find any sapphire nitro so I bought AMD rx 480 8gb. Would the AMD GPUs still work with the rest of the hardware you listed here? Can the AMDs be modified also? Thanks https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073646STC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Hi, yep this card will also work 🙂
Hi Ciprian I have been following your guides and made my 1st rig using 6x rx480. 3x 8gb ref 2x nitro+8gb and 1x nitro+4gb.
Using your guide on bios mod and some overclocking i am able to get 176mhs for ETH and 5300mhs for DCR on dual mining @ 1110w and would like to know is this considered good? Temps are around 70+/- with fans running 80%
Hi @teng_chunjian:disqus , First i want to mention that temps are too high, switch fans to 100%. Power consumption is a bit high, usually in dual mining top is 1000w, but since you have some refs i guess you are ok. How did you proceed with the undervolt ?
Hi Ciprian thanks for replying.
I had tried undervolting using claymore but seems like its not working, gpuz vddc is not fixed as it changes every reboot.
right now i am using trixx didnt really like it but at least it works. avg -70 to 100mv decrease. Will AB beta be better? Most of my core OC are 1100 and mem 2200.
Lastly i had a used rx480 nitro+ 8gb oc samsung sku #11260-01-41G which i had brought online and i am not able to find any stock bios for it. not sure what the previous owner did to it the mem straps are causing alot of gpu mem error in hwinfo and he flash the same bios on both sides of the bios 🙁
seems like most people are having 11260-01-20G. This particular 41G runs way hotter then the 20G i had and not being able to undervolt much even flashing from the same bios i took from the 20G..
Lastly i would like to thank you for your wonderful site. really informative.
Hi, are you running with on board video card ? If yes, try disabling it from device manager. Ill recommend to OC and undervolt from .bast file like this -cclock 1100,1150,1130,1200 -mclock 2200,2150,2100,2170 -cvddc 900 -mvddc -gser 4 -dcri 5
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b072e1d3a6c261d168e22c5859400c534192004fc7f40f040209f14437bb0ec2.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/165a74da84f88350314f74a72a9bd58f8bf426bd1c79027bd01cc8d9705a5792.png Yes I am using onboard graphics when i was testing out oc and uv. Does that causes unstable undervolt?
I had notice GPU1 which is the one on pcie x16 slot is never 100% load during mining is this normal? (
i had downclock all gpu cores by 50 and fans to spin 100% at 70c now, much better temps at the cost of 6mhs haha
You can set core clock to 1130 or 1150 there is no much difference.. i see no undervolt in gpu-z, 145,8w is a lot..
This is the particular card i am having issues with.. notice the previous owner had flash it with a rx580 bios and i tried flashing it back with rx480 bios though succeed but the version remained as rx580.
i will disable onboard graphics and try oc with claymore again.
hello Ciprian, is everything in this guide still up to date?
I just bought my first RX 480 nitro+ and i wanna buy the other parts to finish the rig.
my question is : are the Motherboard and Processor you got listed still the best to buy right now seeing as you made this tutorial in October 2016
Thank you
Hi, umm yeah still good but the motherboard is not produced anymore and you will have to go with asrock h81 pro btc r2.0
I have 1x 470 4gig and 2 480 8 gig.
Turned globalmem on 2000 and globalcore to 1200 with globalpowertune @ 5.
Having 27mhs on both 480 and 22 on the 470.
Is it ok to add globalmem and core commands with different gpus?
Rig is running at 45 degrees celcius? Seems a bit low ?
Is globalmem 2200 recommended?
Using ethos latest 2017 update. Thanks!
Hello,
I have bought an existing rig from someone claiming it gives
132Mh/s with 5 GPUs 3 RX 480, 1 470 and 1 580. I faced lot of issues on
Windows, not all the GPUs were mining due to one or other issues e.g.
Driver, GPU Hanging etc. however GPUs were giving ~24-25 Mh/s. For
stability I moved to Ethos, testing my first GPU and its only giving
~4Mh/s? am I missing anything here?
Thanks in advnace for your help
I would switch back to windows and test the cards one by one till you find the best settings for each.