How are you all physically managing your farms?

[superducky]

Now that prices for mining-related stuff are falling below stratospheric levels, I've been thinking about moving my main folding machine over to an open-air frame case that will free up one of my rack mount cases. Ex: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3537227911...6cwXYs5LnjIjYDUrff0FsJJw==|tkp:BlBMUJzf7en-Xw

Does anyone have any experience with these, or better ideas for running a lot of GPUs at medium-ish scale?

Host board is a thread ripper 1950 with a big-*** air heatsink.

 

[don256us]

How am I handling my farm? Not well.

That rig will work with all of the PCIe lanes from your Threadripper. Keep in mind that mining does not use the PCIe lanes like Folding does. When my farm was at its peak, I would pull every other card and connect it wil a PCIex16 ribbon cable to give the GPUs room to cool. This case does that in spades and would work great.

 

[superducky]

Yeah I already have a x4 and a x16 breakout cable...cards kinda just lying everywhere. I've just ordered the linked case. Will report back with the move and updates.

 

[dfonda]

Pretty well...2 GPU's in the Mancave #2 PC. 2 GPU's in the main #1 PC (see sig).

I have a spare PC sitting idle till a 5th and 6th GPU become available. The budget is month to month as I am retired and lived on a fixed income...

Hopefully I will sneak up on the leaders at some point...

Just standard PC case setups. I can make the house as cold as needed with the AC...We are freezing at 75F...Like to keep it at 76F...Lots of shade here. Will not be a serious heat issue for at least another 2 months. Been meaning to move another GPU to the Mancave but it has been cool lately so the heat is welcome.

 

[harlam357]

I have two active machines in cases. Two GPUs in one. One in the other. Back in my hay day I used to have open air boards all over the place (this was before GPU folding) but I haven't done anything like that in (10+) years. My machines serve purposes other than folding as well.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Here is how I manage my farm

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

I have two active machines in cases. Two GPUs in one. One in the other. Back in my hay day I used to have open air boards all over the place (this was before GPU folding) but I haven't done anything like that in (10+) years. My machines serve purposes other than folding as well.

Like this? This is sfu7274456's farm.

edit: these pics are from the the old days of CPU folding.

 

[harlam357]

I was not quite that organized. I actually recall these pics. Man, look at all those IDE cables!

...and from what I've heard CPU folding is still a thing. It just doesn't get the PPDs.

 

[superducky]

Man, those were the days....

Looks like the open air case gets delivered tomorrow, but I probably won't get a chance to mess with it until next week.

 

[HayesK]

FAHControl on W10 laptop and HFM on another W10 laptop.

My farm is open air, mostly on planks of wood, but a few are mounted in old cases with all metal removed except the frame and tray. All but one of the hosts have 2x gpu, except for one mining frame with 4x GPU on x16 risers. Ubuntu 18.04 on all the hosts and a few are dual boot with W10. Currently have six KVM with four KB/mouse/screen connected to 21 gpu hosts and one of the laptops.

 

[superducky]

An update:
Here's how the farm has existed for the last 18 months or so

Jesus. A little nasty in there.



Got busy and forgot to take more pics but here's the mobo and PSU in the case.

The green card is a highpoint rocket raid card with a switch on it. Next time I have a chance to play with it, I'll get another m.2->PCIe adapter to make sure it'll enumerate but this is my plan to allow this base system to keep folding for a long time to come.



Cleaned out the cards' blowers


Finished, but still need to cable manage



Retiring the Quadro to Plex decode...it was trash at folding anyway...
Anywho, here's a detail of the mechanical maintenance I had to perform to allow the 1080ti to fit without a riser cable



Bonus pic of the rack now with the reclaimed rack mount case



Much lower power consumption and fan noise now that its inside!

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

You should look up Spotswood Computer Cases for open air cases.

 

[superducky]

Man, the price of those mining mobo/ SOCs has really come down. If I was doing it again from scratch right now that's where I'd start, but I had a lot of money sunk into this Threadripper which is already kinda an also-ran for modern gaming workloads.

Post magically merged: Apr 19, 2022

You should look up Spotswood Computer Cases for open air cases.

Those are super clean!