I bought 3x M5 and 3x M7 and have come to the conclusion the MSI Z170A M5 & M7 are inconsistent and poorly manufactured as results vary between the exact same model boards.
Out of all these boards, only 1x M5 board will do 7x 1070’s stable. All the other boards will only do 5 cards stable.
I can get all 7 cards to show up in both Win7 x64 and Win10 x64, but Win10 is the only one stable enough to mine with more than 4 cards reliably IMO.
The M5 board that works with 7 cards is made up of a mix of 3 different types of 1070’s. 4x MSI Quicksilver, 2x Gigabyte Sniper and 1x Asus Strix. I thought this may have been a key to the success, so I set up another M5 board identical in every way. Nope, absolutely no difference.
When coerced, I can get the 5 card rigs to show 7 cards in device manager with no yellow exclamation marks or problems, but the second they are put to task, the computer will reset OR the hashrate across 3 of the cards starts at pathetic levels making it pointless. I can swap card positions, I can try new risers and I can swap the riser power cables, remove devices, resinstall drivers including using DDU, reflash the bios and start again, but nothing makes a difference. None of the rigs were overclocked until stable.
I’ve tried:
Following the steps here multiple times to the letter.
Windows 7 x64 - can get 7 cards to show, but is not stable at all.
Latest Bios, previous bios
Latest drivers older drivers
Every bios setting possible. PCI Latency must be set at 96 or severe instability ensues even on the working 7 card rig…
I’ve cloned the HDD’s of the 7card rig and reimaged the 5 card rigs with that… The boards with 5 cards would show 7 cards immediately in device manager but the pc resets the second when mining is started before the miner can even detect the gpu’s.
I’ve matched the bios settings to the working 7 card rig with no luck.
MSI Z170A Gaming M5
MSI Z170A Gaming M7
All rigs share identical parts (video cards vary but all are 1070)
2x 4GB HyperX Fury 2400Mhz
Intel G3900 Celeron
Thermaltake ToughPower 1500w PSU
Samsung 120GB EVO M.2 NvME SSD
If someone would care to make light of this then I applaud you, but from my experience, I’m of the understanding that these boards are inconsistent.