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.
- 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
- Un-package it all
- Build / assemble custom open air mining case
- Install processor and RAM on motherboard
- Plug in all riser cables
- Place motherboard in custom open air mining rig case and connect motherboard PSU connector (leaving PSU unplugged from the wall of course)
- Plug in SATA hard drive (or optional Linux on USB stick)
- 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.
- Plug in all power supply connections
- Connect mouse, monitor and keyboard and an internet connection (I use a USB WiFi adapter)
- Check all connections once more
- 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)
Hey, is it necessary to have a cpu cooler on this ????? just wondering
thx
The CPU comes with a cooler.
Is there any advantage having 6 AMD R9 270 cards vs having 3 AMD R9 290 cards?
Cost per card, primarily. Six R9 270’s will cost significantly less than three R9 290 GPU’s.
Will the AS rock H81M motherboard work with this set up
Yes. I’ve actually added it as an option, if you can find it in stock. It is very popular for crypto mining.
Dear Admin:
I had no luck finding an open air case to buy so I built my own using PVC pipe and a wooden base. I posted the link to the directions to build the case on litecointalk.org and it is receiving some positive reviews. Over 600 people have visited for the directions in the past week. My case costs less than USD 20 to build and can be done in less than 2 hours. If you think it would benefit your site to link to my blog, please share it with your readers: http://wilsafris.wordpress.com/
I have all the parts to your 6 GPU mining machine except riser cables. I just can’t wait to try my hand at mining! Thank you for the excellent “recipe.” sincerely, will
Thanks for the link Will! Way to go DIY and build your own!
Yes, the MSI Z77A-GD65 is still an excellent motherboard. It was often out of stock or overpriced, so I linked to a more easily available one.
Josh,
Did you just change the recommendation of your 6 gpu motherboard and other items? Was there something wrong with the MSI g65?
Michael, the g65 is excellent, but was out of stock frequently and/or overpriced. I often update the guides to reflect current hardware availability and best price points for mining hardware.
Hey so I have 6 280x all plugged into one motherboard Z77X-UD3H. I’m using Windows 8 for 6 gpu support and it only recognizes the 6th gpu if I plug one directly into a 16x slot on the motherboard. Not a big deal so I have 5 on risers but the 6th gpu isn’t working and gives the Error 43 code. No matter what I do I can’t get the 6th card to work in cgminer.
Will using the pcie jumper method work? What options do I have here to help me troubleshoot. I am at work and going to be plugging in a 2nd monitor in the 6th gpu to test it out where I get home.
Alright I have tried all sorts of non-sense and have 2 of 5 cards working. Is there somewhere, (I have tried many forums) That someone has used this guide and gotten it to work. I am specifically using 5 280x gpus with everything else you listed. It would be great to pick someone’s brain that got this to work. This has in no way been near as simple as I hoped.
Please try BAMT 1.1. I have successfully running 2 of my rig on 4 gpus each at 1x pcie slot. Have 2 more rigs being assembled now. Anyway, I have observed that you need a good airflow as the gpu heats up too much. I have used 70 watts electric fan running at 3 speed selector and the rig runs now for 48 hours straight.
Also, do you have any pictures of a 6 card setup? That may help.
There are some great shots of this six gpu setup in the bitcointalk forum thread here.
My build is this
5x r9 280xs
Everything else you listed in your guide.
My issues,
If I plug a 1x to 16x in a 16x slot on the mobo it wont load.
I just plugged 4 of the gpus in to the mobo using the 1x slots. Everything works fine until I install the r9 280x driver. Then on reboot the computer will load to Windows Loading and freeze. I then cant do anything with it. I don’t understand why I am having this issue.
Once and if thats fixed I still dont get why the computer will not even turn on “black screen” if I plug the 1x to 16x into a 16x slot on the mobo.
Thanks for the help.
Try following these excellent directions (with photos): http://www.gobitgo.com/articles/1001/How-To-Correctly-Use-and-Install-PCI-E-Riser-Cables/
I also have this same issue on running 6 gpu on MSI z77a-gd65 mobo. I have tried both running the rig on win8 and bamt 1.1 but the 16x slot was not recognized by both os. In the link above it says about shorting the 1x slot. Can it be also applied to 16x? I have seen that my mobo’s bios version is 10.7. In MSI website version 10.8 bios has some fixes for “Improved PCI-E display card compatibility”. Latest version though is 10.11. I will try this approach first.
i have a simple question that i can’t find an answer to.
if the mother board have 2 pci e 1x and 2 16x can it run 6gpu ?
and the 16x slots do they need 16x to 16x risers or the 1x to 16x will work on it ?
Thanks a lot for all the great information you got here
The motherboard will support one GPU in each slot with powered riser cables for a total of four GPU’s. The easiest to configure is to match risers to slots. So 1x to 16x riser in 1x slots and 16x to 16x risers in 16x slots. However, 1x to 16x risers can be used with 16x slots. It may require additional configuration, though.
great articles. I am new to this but I have managed to build following your instructions.
The rig has two cards but with capacity to add more.
I have a R9 290 and an R9 270 x.
The rig is mining but the cards are under-performing. All the latest drivers are installed and running on Windows 8, 32 bit.
The main problem is that when i increase Thread concurrency to above 16,000 on the R9 290 I get the following error:
error -4. enquing kernel onto command que
with I = 13
From what I understand the R9 290 can do a much higher TC and I. So is this limitation a result of the 32 bit windows or the 4GB ram I have on the system?
I am planning to place a couple more video cards.
Has anyone encountered this type of situation before? Thank you in advance.
Try lowering your TC and running 2 GPU threads, like this: “–thread-concurrency 8192 -g 2 -I 13” (to put in your .bat file without quotes). Higher thread concurrencies are not the end goal. You want a stable hash rate as high as your system will allow with maximum accepted shares in whatever pool you are mining with.
Do you need dummy monitor plugs for all of the gpu’s? Windows only recognizes 3 of the gpu’s for me. Thanks
You can use dummy plugs, or do what I did, which was to plug my monitor into each GPU to ‘activate’ it if it wasn’t recognized by the OS right away.
I don’t need dummy plugs for any of my mining rigs including the exact build of this guide.
Great post, thanks for this. Do you see any issues with modifying your build to use the 7990 GPU instead of the 7950? This fairly well written wiki suggests that the 7990 can produce 1300-1500 kH/s, while the 7950 produces only about 730 (or 666 using your ~4000/6)
Any reason why you would recommend against trying to do this same build with 6 x 7990s?
https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
Two reasons I wouldn’t recommend 6x 7990s: heat and power. The 7990 is basically two 7970s in one card with most cards having only one fan for cooling (stock cooler). That means these will run pretty hot when mining. As far as power goes, each cards pulls almost 500 watts when mining. 6×500=3,000 watts which is more than a household circuit can support and would require you to run a minimum of 2x 1600 watt PSU’s. All around, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Do i need a CPU cooler? I did not see that on the list. Also all the recommended alternative GPU are sold out but i did find the VisionTek Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0, will that card work? Thanks
The CPU cooler comes with the CPU. I haven’t used the VisionTek 7950, so can’t comment one way or the other on it. I would recommend asking around on the GPU mining subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/gpumining