Hi guys, I’m new to zcash mining. I’ve read that Nvidia cards gives out a higher sols/s rate as compared to amd cards. I’m planning a 6 gtx 1080 zcash miner build, i could not find any guides for such a build. Is the building process the same as building an ethereum rig? (I’ve built ethereum mining rig) I’m planning on using the MSI GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G DDR5 card. Are there any drivers that I should have before trying out? I have 1 msi z170a gaming pro carbon and one z170a m5 gaming motherboard. Any advice or pointers are much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
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@Roddin If you’ve built a mining rig for Ethereum, the build specs for Zcash rigs are basically the same. The only difference I would suggest is the one you already mentioned: use Nvidia cards instead of AMD, but I believe the 1070 is better than the 1080 when you look at performance per dollar. You’ll have to make that determination based on the prices you can find in your country. You may even find that AMD cards are still a better value, it all depends on the prices available to you.
Thanks man. The difference between 1070 and 1080 over here is roughly 100 USD. So I thought I’d like to try out the 1080s. Most probably will build another one on the 1070 as recommended by u since I have 2 unused motherboards.
How many of the 1080s can each of those motherboards take? I have been looking for motherboards which can take around 5-6 GPUs but I could not find any. I am new to the motherboard game so I might have overlooked the specs while reading.
I’ve not done an nvidia build as of yet. Still researching. But with amd the standard btc cards should be be able to support 6 and gpus. I’m currently running the msi z170a gaming pro carbon which can run 7 amd gpus.
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Any board with 6 PCI slots will do. Whether they are x1 or x16. You just need to get riser cards, otherwise your GPUs will catch on fire if you try to cram 4-6 GPU’s on top of each other 
Thanks! I was just looking that up right now. Looks like there are concerns about the power supply wires catching fire? Do you guys have any advice about how to avoid a fire 
Hmm, haven’t heard of any issues with PSU wires catching fire? Unless you are somehow wiring it wrong and the cabling is a mess, haha.
It’s even fine for my thermaltake P5 core case.
I would however recommend getting an actual mining rig case (you can find many of those on eBay).
Back to your original question about mobos, the ones I would use is a BTC one like biostar or MSI’s carbon pro. Links below:
or
https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/Z170A-GAMING-PRO-CARBON.html#hero-specification
Looks like the biostar one is already out of stock, unfortunately. Jeez.
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Awesome! Thank you so much
I have some Biostar TB250-BTC PRO boards, but they are selling fast. Looks like they will be sold out china wide again soon. Most sellers are sold out already again, or have raised the prices again.
Are you thinking about selling one?
I do currently have them up for grabs, both TB250 and TB350. TB250 is a better deal with the CPU and Ram compared to TB350 as the X4 950 costs much more than the G3900:
https://www.cryptomined.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=240
@cryptomined - any chance that you might make a 6 gpu zcash nvidia build tutorial on your YT channel? =D
maybe… i have some 980ti’s that I will probably mix in with 1060s or 1050tis
i have to finish 2 AMD builds im working on first though, waiting to build an 8 gpu 480 rig next, and then not sure if the 2nd rig is going to be 470D, vega, or what… 1050ti, 1060s maybe… but that would be strange as the 2nd board is the TB350 which is an amd board.
for the 980ti’s i have an old z97 gigabyte board waiting for them… and I can stick 3 more cards on that board easy so… that will probably be my nvidia rig as I already havfe 2 1080tis in aq desktop mining pretty much all the time and a titan XP on a mixed rig mining.
i gotta put the stock fan coolers back on the 980tis soon, maybe tomorrow.
thanks for asking, an Nvidia build is something Im missing on the channel. ive been contemplating it for a while now… was going to do a 1070 rig… but now im curious how vega will perform with zcash… so ill prob wait for that to make any more decisions
I will at least get 2 of the top of the line vega cards for a desktop thats now in need of GPUs (missing hte 980tis)… and if there is a lower end vega, maybe build a rig with those.
oh man. u made a fanboy out of me man. ur channel has a lot of good info, i learnt how to build from your channel. (ok, enough drooling.haha). man, the VEGA cards. any idea when those will be out? I’m afraid to even ask about the price. -_-
VEGA. i was told end of may/june, so im guessing some time in the next 30 or so days, hopefully before or after my vacation in june 
hopefully for me, not while i’m on vacation as I would like to again, be the first person on here with VEGA as was witht the 580 and 570
I’m glad the channel helped you. I’m happy that every day I hear from someone that I have helped them somehow with mining. The more of us using crypto, the better for us all, and the better for crypto 
and then there are the rumors that volta may come out Q3 of this year … so yeah… i dont like this waiting game all the time… but then I wonder how better volta will be over pascal… and will i have to then buy some 1180’s … because I just bought 1080tis for my desktop LOL
@cryptomined nice man. Will definitely be waiting for your review on the cards. Till then I’ll try out the 1080 build n update everyone here. And happy holidays man. =D
I wonder how accurate the leaks are for Vega and stating how it barely beat the 1070?
If this is true then I think Nvidia will just release a 1070ti to beat it and AMD. I hope so as that will just mean plenty of cheap 1070s will be floating around…
@thesmokingman, you have to put that into perspective. That’s the slowest SKU that comes in slightly above the 1070. Add tweaking and overclocking and those benchmarks can tell an entirely different story. All speculation of course until we see the real-world results. The fastest SKU basically goes neck-to-neck with the 1080 Ti.
Yep that’s why I said I wonder how accurate the leaks are vs throwing it our there as definitive proof.
I think you mean the top Vega is comparable to/better than the 1080 and not the 1080ti. Do you have a link to the benchmark showing Vega matching/beating a 1080ti?
The biggest thing for me on Vega will be the sols per watt breakdown since I pay roughly .14kwh. Even if the Vega hashes faster but power usage doesn’t justify it for me, I’ll just scoop up all the gtx 10 series cards everyone dumps to fund their Vega purchases. Just hope AMD can avoid the Ryzen launch issues with Vega.