6 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Build Guide

103 Replies

PLEASE NOTE: the guide below was written back when Litecoin mining on GPU’s was profitable. I recommend the AntMiner L3+ Litecoin Miner (ROI in about 100 days, currently) or building an Ethereum mining rig by following my 6 GPU Mining Rig Guide as it is updated weekly and utilizes current graphics card and build options. Happy Mining!

Building a mining rig with more than 4 graphics cards has its challenges. There are operating system limitations, power requirements and hardware issues to sort out. However, following the success of our Budget Litecoin Mining Rig Build Guide and mid-range 4 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Build Guide, we’ve decided to do the research and publish a guide showing you how to build a fully functional 6 GPU mining rig. Once assembled and configured correctly, this mining hardware is capable of roughly ~2,700 Kh/s of scrypt mining power. As of the date this guide was updated, a 6 GPU Litecoin mining rig like this, can generate over $250 USD worth of Litecoins per month. It will cost you roughly $1,800 to build. If you want to see the live current calculation yourself, click here for a Litecoin calculator. You’ll just have to enter your electricity rate to calculate your net profits. You can also use this rig to mine any other Scrypt based digital currencies like Dogecoin, Reddcoin, etc. Build time should be right around 2 hours. You can find an excellent photo set here of how this rig looks like all built.

6 GPU Litecoin Mining Hardware Build List

  • Power Supply – $250 –  1300 watt Gold Rated PSU  –  If you are having a hard time finding these larger power supplies in stock, an alternative is to get  two lower powered 750 watt Gold Rated PSU’s and connect them together with this add2psu adapter to power your rig. 
  • Motherboard/CPU – $160 – H81 Pro BTC motherboard coupled with the Intel G3220 CPU. If you can find one reasonably priced, the MSI Z77A GD-65 is also an excellent motherboard combined with the inexpensive Intel Celeron G1620 Ivy Bridge Processor .
  • Graphics Cards (GPU) – 6x $200 – AMD Radeon R9 270. This GPU is capable of 450Kh/s. Running six of them will net you a total of 2,700Kh/s.  I recommend the Gigabyte, Sapphire and MSI versions of this card. If the R9 270 is out of stock or overpriced, the R9 270x costs just a bit more for slightly more hashing power (480 Kh/s) and will work with everything else in this guide.  I’ve also recommended several other GPU’s for crypto mining here. Just remember to calculate the power requirements for whichever cards you decide to go with and purchase an appropriately sized PSU or multiple PSU’s to run your rig. For example: you could build this rig with six R9 280x GPUs running at 750Kh/s and 280 watts each. You’d need to combine a 1kw PSU and a 750 watt PSU with this adapter to provide power. Everything else would stay the same, and you’d have a 4,500Kh/s rig for around $3,000 USD at today’s prices. All the other components would stay the same.
The AMD R9 270 can mine Scrypt currencies at 450+Kh/s
  • RAM  – $40  –  4GB Kingston DDR3 RAM –  Since this will be a dedicated Litecoin Mining Rig, 4GB will be enough RAM. If you plan to use Reaper mining software for Litecoin mining or other scrypt based currency mining, you’ll want to put 8GB in this system.
  • 1x to 16x Powered Riser Cables – $60 –  (6x $10) PCI Express 1X to 16X Slot Flexible Extension Cable – These are to connect the 6 graphics cards to the motherboard and allow spacing between cards for heat dissipation. Powered risers are necessary when building a rig with this many GPU’s. The 1x male end of the riser cable plugs into either the 1x or 16x slot on the motherboard, and the 16x slot on the cable is where you plug the graphics card into.
  • Hard Drive –  $40  –  Solid State Drive for installing Windows 8 and your mining software (alternatively you could boot BAMT from a USB flash drive)
  • Custom Mining Case – $30-$80 – You can build one of these yourself with angled aluminum from your local hardware store, or ask around on the Bitcoin forum. There are several custom case builders selling them through the forum. I can personally recommend the custom built cases designed and built by Rich Chomiczewski. They are well built and reasonably priced.
  • Extra Cooling  –  $30  –   Box Fan (I find supplemental cooling from a box fan to be helpful in keeping the temperatures down on the graphics cards)
  • Operating System  –  $0-$90  –  Windows 8 supports 6 GPU’s, but if you’re familiar with Linux you can of course download it for free (some folks consider Linux to be the best OS for Litecoin mining, since it keeps your overall costs down, improving your litecoin mining ROI or return-on-investment). Keep in mind that undervolting/overclocking works better in Windows vs Linux for Litecoin mining due to better drivers in the Windows world. You can load almost any operating system with a thumb drive these days, but some folks might prefer to load the OS from an install CD, in which case you’ll probably want to pick up a $30 external USB powered DVD drive. Many laptops in the ‘thin & light’ category are shipping with no internal optical drive, so it will probably come in handy for other uses as well. I have one that I use fairly frequently around the house.
  • Monitor, Mouse and Keyboard (to install the OS and configure the mining software, no need to buy more than one set since you only use this for setup)

TOTAL HARDWARE COST TO BUILD A 6 GPU MINING RIG: ~$1,800 for a ~2,700 Kh/s Custom Litecoin Mining Rig.

Assembling the Custom Litecoin Mining Hardware

  1. Un-package it all
  2. Build / assemble custom open air mining case
  3. Install processor and RAM on motherboard
  4. Plug in all riser cables
  5. Place motherboard in custom open air mining rig case and connect motherboard PSU connector (leaving PSU unplugged from the wall of course)
  6. Plug in SATA hard drive (or optional Linux on USB stick)
  7. Connect all GPUs to riser cables and fasten them to custom case. Drilling evenly spaced holes in the soft aluminum slightly smaller than the screws works best. You might need to experiment for optimal spacing to keep the cards cool.
  8. Plug in all power supply connections
  9. Connect mouse, monitor and keyboard and an internet connection (I use a USB WiFi adapter)
  10. Check all connections once more
  11. Fire it up! Install the OS if needed. Install Graphics card drivers. Install mining software. Make sure fans are fully functional. Start the mining software, tweak settings for maximum hash rates and let it run!

Sidenote: If mining isn’t your thing, and you are just interested in purchasing some cryptocurrency as part of your investment portfolio, I personally use and recommend FTX Global Crypto Exchange (Use FTX US if a US resident)

103 thoughts on “6 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Build Guide”

  1. James

    I’ve come across this a few times and am unsure… Was hoping someone could clarify why an SSD is necessary?

    Cheers in advance.

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      A solid state drive is cheap and uses very little power. Alternatively, you can run Linux from a USB thumb drive.

      Reply ↓
  2. Bazza

    This is an awesome DIY!

    Using your guide, I bought a pair of Sapphire R9 270x cards and a 850w supply to get my feet wet. All is well, but now I have the fever and want to go full blast and fill all 6 PCIe slots with cards. I am confused about all the power connectors. My 850w supply (NZXT HALE90) has four 8-pin PCIe connections which I am running to the cards (each needs two). I also have powered risers with four pin molex each. To add four more cards I’ll obviously need a bigger supply, but how many connectors?

    My two cards and all gear (MOBO & hard drive) show 380w at the wall, so it seems like the cards are around 150-175 each at full power. For six cards do I really need a total of 12 8-pin PCIe connectors and six 4-pin Molex from the dual supplies or can I get away with splitters, etc, or even molex adapters to 8-pin? Only the GIANT supplies have enough ports and I don’t think I need 2000 watts of supply.

    Thoughts? Thanks so much!

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      I used splitters and only powered 3 of the 6 cards on my six card configurations. With such low power usage, running three 270(x) cards isn’t going to strain your motherboard. I’d recommend getting a 750 PSU and run it alongside your 850 watt one with an add2psu adapter.

      Reply ↓
  3. CWH

    Thanks for the guide… I’m looking forward to getting my rig up and running! I’ve been running two rigs with a total of three cards, but it’s a mix of old parts and I’m ready for an upgrade.

    Q: Can you recommend a few more LGA-1155 motherboards?

    I ordered the MSI Z77A-GD65 Z77 DDR3 1600 with all the supporting components, and the seller canceled the motherboard due to inventory issues. It’s too late to return the additional components and switch to the AMD solution, so I hoping to get another recommendation that will work with the CPU that has been delivered (Intel Celeron G1620 2.70GHz LGA-1155 Processor BX80637G1620) .

    Thanks for your help!

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      It is hard to find LGA-1155 motherboards in stock that support six GPU’s. Your best bet is to shop around for the GD65 on Amazon. It goes in and out of stock pretty frequently.

      Reply ↓
  4. wowbond

    I’ve done some research for you, and the fix for the 280 seems to be letting windows install the drivers with NO AMD drivers at all. Do a fresh install of windows 8.1, and plug in all 6 gpu’s. Let windows search look for the drivers to install them and you should be set.

    BTC: 13RboPP3FrQKWmbfFXHExLnqDTaYnhWwUT

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      You could easily build two 6x GPU mining rigs (using the R9 270) for four thousand. It all depends what approach to mining you take. Some folks mined Dogecoin when it first came on the scene in December and have made many times their hardware investment just from that one popular currency. Others played it safe and mined the most profitable coin on multipool or hashco.ws and have still made a decent return. The future is uncertain, but fortune favors the bold. There are no guarantees, but a hardware investment is a great bet on the future of these crypto-currencies.

      Reply ↓
  6. Jake

    Hey, I’m having trouble undervolting and over clocking the x6 R9 270. I can’t find mush help for the CGminer Config also. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      Hi Jake, I use the following cgminer config for my R9 270’s:
      -I 17 --gpu-engine 1137 --gpu-memclock 1484 --thread-concurrency 24000 --gpu-powertune 20

      Reply ↓
  7. Flsteve

    Josh (post author), Thank you for sharing. This is a wonderful post. The 6 gpu miner looks great but what would its potential be if only the finest components were used regardless of budget. I have a budget of 4-5k and will gladly build to the 6 gpu specs posted but i would like to be sure to that I’m not losing out on an opportunity to gain more horsepower by spending a little more. Any help would be much appreciated and thank you in advance for your time

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      The 6 GPU miner uses the R9 270 which has the best $ to Kh/s ratio due to most of the higher end cards being over-priced.

      Reply ↓
  9. Jake

    Do you have a guide or a link for how to under-volt them and overclock them or is it threw a program?
    I’m using the x6 Gigabyte R9 270 GDDR5-2GB OC Version.

    Also for the Riser Cables x5 (with Power) x1 without. What do you plug into the power on the riser?
    (First time building it and confused on that part)

    Thank You.

    Reply ↓
    1. Josh Post author

      In the .bat file, the following settings should give you about 450kh/s:
      -I 17 --gpu-engine 1137 --gpu-memclock 1484 --thread-concurrency 24000 --gpu-powertune 20

      Reply ↓
  10. Josh Post author

    You can use the cheaper 1x to 16x risers in all the slots. 16x to 16x powered risers will of course work as well in the 16x slots, but usually cost more.

    Reply ↓
    1. LettuceJoans

      Damn I just realized you can plug a 1x into a 16x that’s why i’m confused. Thank you for clarifying that.

      Reply ↓

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