Yes, I know it's kind of a POS, but the price was right. I'm not too worried since I expect the draw at the wall of the system to be in the 700W range, but I am wondering what is the best way to configure the system for bitcoin mining.
It's a 4 rail supply, each rail rated at 20A with the max on all 4 rails being 75A.
12V1: EPS
12V2: PCIe0, 1
12V3: ATX24, Molex, Sata
12V4: PCIe2, 3
Since I want to run four cards, I'm a little worried about overloading the third 12V rail. The cards have molex to PCIe adapters, but four PCIe adapters plus the PCIe bus power and other MB draw is sure to overload the 240W capacity of that rail.
One option I thought I might do is splice a second PCIe connector onto each PCIe rail, running two cards off each PCIe rail. The 5850s won't be drawing more than about 150W, so as long as they draw at least 30W from the bus that should be safe.
The other option would be to add one PCIe connector to each of rails 2 and 4, and two to rail 1. The CPU will be underclocked and undervolted and will sit idle most of the time, so even if each PCIe connector on that rail pulls 75W (6.25A), that would still leave 90W max on the rail for the CPU. Seems like it should be ok.
Of the two options above, which seems like it would be the safest and most stable? I'm leaning towards the first, since while the second gives better margin I don't really want to deal with the random BSODs that come with CPU instability.
It's a 4 rail supply, each rail rated at 20A with the max on all 4 rails being 75A.
12V1: EPS
12V2: PCIe0, 1
12V3: ATX24, Molex, Sata
12V4: PCIe2, 3
Since I want to run four cards, I'm a little worried about overloading the third 12V rail. The cards have molex to PCIe adapters, but four PCIe adapters plus the PCIe bus power and other MB draw is sure to overload the 240W capacity of that rail.
One option I thought I might do is splice a second PCIe connector onto each PCIe rail, running two cards off each PCIe rail. The 5850s won't be drawing more than about 150W, so as long as they draw at least 30W from the bus that should be safe.
The other option would be to add one PCIe connector to each of rails 2 and 4, and two to rail 1. The CPU will be underclocked and undervolted and will sit idle most of the time, so even if each PCIe connector on that rail pulls 75W (6.25A), that would still leave 90W max on the rail for the CPU. Seems like it should be ok.
Of the two options above, which seems like it would be the safest and most stable? I'm leaning towards the first, since while the second gives better margin I don't really want to deal with the random BSODs that come with CPU instability.
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