Got my raspberry pi and block erupter mining without a hub. I know it's never gonna ROI but I'm selling my 7970 and I feel like I just need SOMETHING mining away! Plus it's a good use for the pi I've had sitting around for a over a year doing nothing.


So to do this I had to do a few things:

Drilled a 3.5mm hole in my pi case (smallest drill bit I could find) and bolted the Arctic F8 fan on with a 3M bolt with two nuts as spacers and one inside the pi case holding it on.

Made a breakout board to convert the non adjacent 5v and GND pins on the GPIO into a 3 pin fan header.

Soldered the Vin and GND directly to the USB ports and bypassed the main polyfuse.

Plastered the BE in cheap ram heatsinks (these are £1.50 for 8!)


Fan Mount:




GPIO 5v to fan header:






Direct USB power:



Finished and mining:





Future plans:


Get washers for fan mount.

Make fan shroud.

Cut ridiculously long VRM heatsink on the pi in half and put one piece on the block erupter VRM (see pic 2)

Overclock block erupter.