This was my first attempt at building a miner. I am a newbie, a newb etc etc. I was trying to build a 6 GPU machine but ran into multiple problems. There are many intelligent people in the world who will know exactly how to configure software for a 6 GPU machine, unfortunately I am not one of them. Along with software issues, here are other problems I ran into:

PROBLEM 1. In your house, what is the size of your circuit breakers? My house has all 15 amp breakers, except for the obvious dedicated breakers for the fridge and air conditioning etc. A 15 Amp circuit breaker will trip at 1800 Watts. (math in the USA is 15amps *120 volts=1800 watts.) However, it is NEVER recommended to run more that 1440 watts CONTINUOUSLY 24/7 on a 15 amp breaker.

http://www.ehow.com/info_12175189_capacity-15-amp-circuit.html

There are many, many examples from experienced electricians that say the max should be 1440 on a 15 amp circuit. YES, you could push it, but is it worth the risk of a fire or tripping the breaker, possibly messing up your mining machine?? I personally don’t want to burn down my house, and I doubt you do either. OK, so right away I am in trouble trying to run a 6 GPU machine in my home. You may have LARGER circuit breakers, and then you will be OK. For instance, a 20 amp circuit would give you 2400 watts, and you could carry a safe load with 6 GPU’s. For me this is NOT the case.

PROBLEM 2. Just how many WATTS is my mining machine using?? Good question. For my Saphire Radeon 7950 GPU’s I read on the internet they ran anywhere from 200 watts per GPU to 300 watts per GPU. OK, how much additional wattage is used by your motherboard, power supply, cpu etc??? Well, this gets very important if you only have 1600 Watts of power supply like I do. This was the amount of power supply recommended to me for a 6 GPU build. At 300 watts per GPU the whole power supply is gone. In fact you might just kill your power supply. At 250 watts, your 6 GPU’s use 1500 watts. But that nagging question…how much more to run the rest of the machine? MY BEST ADVICE go buy a Kill-a-Watt device from Home Depot, or buy one online. This device plugs into the machine you want to know the EXACT wattage output for. For the pictured 4 GPU Machine, I am running 1250 Watts of power according to the Kill-a-Watt device. IF I was running 6 GPU’s on a 1600w power supply I would burn up my power supply. It is not enough power. I am estimating each of my 7950 GPU’s uses 270watts of power. I am estimating that a 6 GPU machine would need 270*6=1620watts PLUS addition for the rest of the machine, possibly 2 1250w gold standard power supplies strung together. 1600 watts is not near enough. Now there are some of you that know how to undervolt GPU’s or know how to work other magic. This is just letting the new miner know what I found out.

PROBLEM 3. Again, this is for the NEW miner. I am not a computer technician. I found out about crypto currency and I thought it would be fun to build a machine. I really tried to understand Linux. But in the end I became frustrated. I put an add on Craigslist under Computer Help Wanted. I was very specific that I had a Litecoin Machine and that I needed someone who could configure Linux with Cgminer to the 4 GPU’s and get me mining. I hoped to find someone who had built their own machine. I got an email back from a computer technician who had built Litecoin machines and he offered to help for $45 per hour. nEWBIES–this was the best $200 I spent. He was able to configure the GPU’s to Linux BAMT, configure that with Cgminer and set me up on a mining site. It is plug and play from a usb stick. When I turn on the machine it boots from the stick, loads BAMT and starts mining at hypernova.com, a mining site he considers the best.

This was a long post, but hopefully NEW miners will get something out of this. I repeat, I am a newbie. Professionals can probably see problems and solve them. I CAN’T. I am sure I will run into new problems along the way, but for now I am up and running.

In my next post I will put the exact hardware I used for this 4 GPU rig. Until then, good luck to you all!!!