Mining Rig -\> GPU + Riser problem, help needed!

Jsnow

Hello to everyone!

First of all, I’m a noob in Mining and such, so I’m sorry if I’m asking something obvious for you.

That sayd, I’ve some problems with my mining rig, here’s my setup:

MB: Asrock 970 Extreme4
CPU: Sempron 145
PSU: Corsair AX860 Platinum
RAM: Gskill 1x4Gb 1333Mhz
SSD: Kingston 60Gb
GPU: 3x Sapphire R9 280x OC Dual-X 3GbGDDR5
Riser: 3x Powered Risers 1x-16x

I tested all the 3 cards and all the 3 risers in every combination, and all of the items are working good at 700-750 KH/s.

My problem is the following:

The PCIE4 slot, the 16x in the middle of the MB, is not recognizing any card if I use them with any of the risers -> D6 error on the Dr.Debug led on the MB, that is: “No console output devices are found”.

I tested the same slot, the PCIE4 slot, plugging in any of the cards directly, without risers, and it recognizes them normally.
I also tested the 3 16x slots together, plugging all of the cards directly in, without the risers, and all of 3 works fine.
I tested the other 2 16x slots of the MB with risers, and they recognize the cards normally.

So, why that single slot isn’t recognizing the 1x-16x risers? Should I need to buy a 16x-16x for that slot? There’s a way to fix it somehow?

And also, I’ve encountered another probem trying to avoid using that 16x slot, here the configurations I’ve tried so far:

Config A:
GPU 0 -> Riser plugged in PCIE 16x slot --> 700Kh/s
GPU 1 -> Riser plugged in PCIE 16x slot --> 700KH/s
GPU 2 -> Riser plugged in PCIE 1x slot --> 100KH/s

Config B:
GPU 2 -> Riser plugged in PCIE 1x slot --> 700KH/s
GPU 1 -> Riser plugged in PCIE 1x slot --> 700KH/s
GPU 0 -> Riser plugged in PCIE 16x slot --> 100KH/s

So, with both those configurations, all of the 3 cards are correctly recognized with the risers.
BUT, in both cases, the single card that has a different PCIE Interface compared to the other 2 cards (GPU 2 in config A & GPU 0 in config B) is having a really low hash rate for some reasons.

Why?
I think this could be a setup problem, cause if only the cards on the same slots interface are getting proper Hashrate it would be nosense to put more than 3 cards on the same MB.

Thank you in advance to anyone that will try to help me out, I hope I’ll be able to set it up properly to continue mining with all the 3 cards!

Jsnow

Jsnow

[quote name=“MrFeathers” post=“54521” timestamp=“1390529891”]
To fix the problem where one card mines super slow/not at all you have to boot up with the monitor attached to that card. Try booting with the monitor on different cards and see if it fixes the problem. As for the card not being recognized you may need to set pcie to 1x in the bios to enable all slots to work over 1x at the same time. Try these and let us know if they work.
[/quote]

Thank you for your help MrFeathers!
I fixed the problem of the card mining superslow doing as you suggested! Switching the monitor over the slow card (even after the boot) brings that card to the same normal Hashrate as the others!!

Regarding the other hint you gave me, I’ve looked for an option like that on the bios but I can’t find it…
Here the screen of my bios menu:
[IMG]http://i40.tinypic.com/27wx4rp.jpg[/img]
[IMG]http://i39.tinypic.com/2mhzlsp.jpg[/img]
[IMG]http://i41.tinypic.com/2qnp8qu.jpg[/img]

Can you explain me better how to force the PCIE to 1x?
Cause it will come back usefull to run 4 or 5 cards at the same time using all of the slots available.

Thank you again for you help, really appreciated :)

Jsnow

I’m waiting for three 16x-16x risers to arrive in few days, so I think the best option is to try one of those in that middle 16x slot to see if it works.

If it’ll not work I’ll try to short it…but I need to find a guide on how to do it properly in the 16x slot (that thread shows the pic of a 1x slot shorted), to avoid some nasty problems :P

Btw, thank you again for your help, I’ll let you know as soon as the 16x-16x risers will arrive!