In theory, whats better: One large rig or several small rigs

farwarefarware Member Posts: 116
edited October 2015 in Mining
This weekend I combined two smaller rigs with two cards each into one large => to save energy and improve stability. I don't have to mention what a hassle it is to get even geth properly running. First I ran into corrupt database errors mining stale blocks and what not and later I'd simply not find any blocks at all with the new setup.
Added my old SSD drive and within minutes I was finding blocks, very strange but goes to show: Never touch a running system ;)

Anyway, my question is how good of an idea it is to to have one large rig rather than two smaller. In theory it should be more reliable. I used a Add2PSU adapter to combine 2 PSUs and I use regular risers for the cards.. all works fine. Had a small issue with ASUS surge protection triggering but after I added the hard drive to the 2nd PSU, everything went smoothly and its now my most stable rig. No issues whatsoever. I'll take some pictures later, looking good


Post edited by farware on


  • farwarefarware Member Posts: 116
    I actually think running geth on a dedicated machine with SSD can be a good idea. However, anything more than a Dual Core CPU is not needed, I am at 30% CPU usage with BOTH geth and ethminer running. But RAM is always important. Neither RAM nor CPU affects the hash rate, but RAM seems to make the node more responsive, so 4GB-8GB at least. I use 16 now to avoid any kind of swapping in the background that could result in CPU spikes. So either a quad-core and 4GB of RAM or a dual-core and 8GB+ of RAM is probably a good idea
  • o0ragman0oo0ragman0o Member, Moderator Posts: 1,291 mod
    The less energy wasted on mobo's, CPU's and memory the better efficiency you'll get....
  • farwarefarware Member Posts: 116


    Yes, that's obviously one aspect why I did that to save energy and increase the ROI, but when you are actually sacrificing stability and find less blocks that can lower your ROI

  • MrYukonCMrYukonC Member Posts: 627 ✭✭✭
    I think fewer larger rigs are much better than more smaller rigs.

    I have 3 rigs -- 2 each that run ~150 MH/s (6 x 280X) and a 3rd that runs ~126 MH/s (3 x 280X + 3 x 270).

    I've learned from both pool mining and solo mining that the closer the work difficulty matches the hashrate of the worker, the better the efficiency -- less starting and stopping to acquire new work and turn in the results.

    Now, with solo mining it will be impossible to ever come close to having a hashrate that matches the difficulty of a unit of work. But, with larger workers I believe there is still an advantage for the following reasons:

    The pools have to split up and recombine all of the sub-work that they handed out to their smaller workers and that takes processing time.

    When you're solo mining with larger workers, you don't have to deal with any of that. Not only have you cut out the middle man, but you're also working with a significantly higher hashrate than the average pool worker and more than likely even the average solo worker.

    After 4 days, my average number of blocks per day from solo mining with 3 large workers is about 15% higher than when I was pool mining with the same 3 rigs. I know that's a pool vs solo comparison, but I think it is still relevant.

    For pool mining, I think it is more beneficial to use more smaller workers because that way the hashrate will more closely match the difficulty of the work that the pool is handing out.

    As far as electricity consumption efficiency, it's a no brainer -- without doubt fewer larger workers will be most efficient because you'll be eliminating motherboards, CPUs, and ram.

    Hopefully that all makes sense.
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