Mining rig help!!

Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
So I built a multi gpu mining rig using older gaming cards bought used. I have 2 r9 290xs, a r9 290 and an r9 390. Running on an msi z170a with an i5 6500t , 8gb ram, with a 750 and 1200w psu. Had slight stability issue but had it running nice. Rebooting ever other day for the last week. So one morning I wake up and see that windows had frozen. Did a reboot and my 290 had an opencl error couldn’t write dag for buffer. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling everything, switching risers, virtual memory is fine. Even by itself when the card tries to mine I get that error or the system crashes and I check event log and it says there was a bug check and memory dump but I have no idea how to check the memory dump. The card shows up in device manager, afterburner, gpu-z and claymore. It is running and fine until under load. Shouldn’t be a psu issue as it was running fine for weeks. Have tried lidag gser and eres commands with no luck. Best I got was after freshly installing it was mining for maybe one minute with all four cards before crashing and getting same error or crash. Getting another 290x and brand new 1080ti tomorrow to add so will do more tests. Any ideas? I know there’s a good chance the card is bad but it’s running fine until under load?

System runs fine with all four cards in but only the other 3 mining. Stable for 12+ hrs

I have the registry tweaks and a few other windows ten tips but any advice on stability is welcome too.

Comments

  • XiNiXXiNiX NetherlandsMember Posts: 18
    Look in the bios for "Above 4g Decoding" and enable it.
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Ok I will try that. I got another r9 290x and added it and my rig is mining fine with 4 cards again. Just my 290 that is having the problem. Will let you know if this helps but pretty sure I enabled that when setting it up. Had something next to it saying it’s for crypto mining so I enabled but will double check
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Yeah it’s enabled with no luck. Like I said I added another 290x and it’s running fine with those four cards. Next step I guess would be to run a benchmark with just the 290 to see if it crashes? Then I’d know if the card was fine for everything but mining and it’s just an error there?
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Is it normal for a card to be picked up in every software imaginable and show both core and memory clocks running but crashing under load? Haven’t tried it with the display hooked up to that card. Will try and see if I get artifacts during crash.
  • Ericjh801Ericjh801 Utah, USAMember Posts: 371 ✭✭✭
    When I've had that issue, it was a bad GPU. When I hooked up the GPU to video, it would display lines on bootup/etc. You will want to check that for sure.

    Is it normal for a card to be picked up in every software imaginable and show both core and memory clocks running but crashing under load? Haven’t tried it with the display hooked up to that card. Will try and see if I get artifacts during crash.

  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Ok so definitely the card, realized it was one given to me by a friend because it was artifacting when gaming. Must’ve finally bit the dust. Still works half way just artifacts/crashes under load. Anyway to fix or should I just get what I can on eBay? Was mining fine for a month after he could no longer game on it so thinking it may be fixable. Anyway have a question on stability? I’m using windows ten with registry tweaks. The rig ran fine for almost 48hrs. Display driver would stop responding and recover maybe every 12hrs and miner would restart and everything would be fine, no reboot necessary although I do have it setup to reboot if a gpu cannot be restarted. This morning the display driver has stopped and recovered both times but instead of restarting miner or rebooting like it should windows just freezes and requires manual reboot. And both times a card wasn’t picked up after reboot, had to shutdown and unplug and plug back in on the motherboard. Usually any time windows freezes like that I have to unplug the riser and plug back in to get it recognized. Any thoughts?
  • Ericjh801Ericjh801 Utah, USAMember Posts: 371 ✭✭✭
    #1. Is the card under warranty? Might be worth looking into. If not, sell it on ebay and call it done. (Just start it off at like 9.99 and let people bid).

    #2. I've seen that happen a lot on systems that were either too undervolted, or too overclocked. I'd look into that first to see if you can stabilize it. If I had GPU's getting a ton of memory errors, I could pretty much count on it crashing at some point.
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Not under warranty so will sell on eBay. Can’t get it mining even at stock settings and low intensity so doubt i can fix it. Maybe a reflow but I don’t solder or bake cards so I’ll leave that to someone else.

    Im on stock settings, overclock makes it very unstable. Could be my psu. Using a shitty shark psu but have a nicer 1800w I’m putting in with two more cards so maybe that will help.



  • eth_shiftyeth_shifty Member Posts: 52
    Lol, glad I'm not buying a 290 on ebay! Anyhow, that rig is going to be super power hungry, maybe to the point of not being really worth it, but sounds like a fun project. Newer cards use much less power, blah blah blah.

    Post your power draw and mh/s when you get everything stabilized. I'm always interested in results from Frankenstein machines. I myself was too scurred, and kept ATI with ATI and Nvidia with Nvidia.
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Yeah I get free power which is why I went with these. More of a hobby/project but still profitable. Will update once all cards are added with new psu
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    Forgot to mention this but sometimes I hear these intermittent clicking noises. Pretty sure coming from my 390. Usually it’s fine but sometimes it seems like a really bad bout of clicks will coincide with a display driver crashing. Like I said they are intermittent, when it starts it might click every 3-6 seconds for a minute or two then nothing for 20 mins then another bout of clicks. Really weird, I’ve tried checking fan and can’t replicate by hand spinning but I do have them at 100% because it’s in the middle and stays around 70-80c, cool at night warm during day.
  • Crypto4lifeCrypto4life Member Posts: 9
    With 4 cards and no overclock I get 113mh/s with an estimated 1200w probably 1400 at the wall. Once I add the other 290 and a rx 470 I should have just about 160mh/s with 1750-1800w at the wall. Gonna buy a used gaming rig for the 470 and pop my brand new msi gtx 1080 ti in it. Rig didn’t want to pick up Nvidia cards.
  • cdnminercdnminer Member Posts: 2
    Ericjh801 said:

    #1. Is the card under warranty? Might be worth looking into. If not, sell it on ebay and call it done. (Just start it off at like 9.99 and let people bid).

    #2. I've seen that happen a lot on systems that were either too undervolted, or too overclocked. I'd look into that first to see if you can stabilize it. If I had GPU's getting a ton of memory errors, I could pretty much count on it crashing at some point.

    Have you or anyone else gone through a warranty process with a card used for mining? I have one Gigabyte RX 570 with a bad fan (bearings are shot on one fan) and one MSI Radeon MX 580 that crashes the Windows 10 just like the OP mentioned. I've troubleshot and determined it is a specific card - as soon as I put in a different card running solo - rig stays online and running. What's weird is that this problem GPU allowed me to reprogram the BIOS and it shows up in all software utilities as well.
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