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I actually called my company (DTE) and asked. They told me that commercial/industrial rates were higher than residential, so they're either lying or insane. They also said they won't give an industrial rate to a residence.
One of my most recent bills was about 4,000 kWh, worked out to around $0.16/kWh.
One of my most recent bills was about 4,000 kWh, worked out to around $0.16/kWh.
Re: dual booting windows 7 and a mining distro using 2 ssds
I guess my question is, why are you wanting to dual boot? Why arent you just running your miners on Win7? Curious.
linux is better for mining.
I'm using windows for work.
I have never found that Linux was better than Windows for mining, they are the same for me. Usually for most people it comes down to familiarity/ease of use, and cost. Minus the cost of hardware, if you dont already have a Windows box running or a copy of Windows laying around, and have to install a OS, then free is always better. Yes, there are the inherent Windows crashes and things, but take that out of account and I have never seen any performance increases/decreases in hashing rate from one OS over another.
How would you say its better for mining? Maybe there is something I have missed all of these years.
Linux will let you install it to a USB flash drive, while Windows won't. Flash drives are cheaper than hard drives or SSDs, and use very little power.
Plus, Windows isn't free.
You can use any good quality riser, actually. PCIe x1 still has more than enough bandwidth for hashing.
I use these risers for everything, even on x16 slots.
http://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-PCI-E-Cable%C2%A0/dp/B005G4SADY/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&srs=2529898011&ie=UTF8&qid=1370821348&sr=1-4&keywords=micro+sata+cables
I use these risers for everything, even on x16 slots.
http://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-PCI-E-Cable%C2%A0/dp/B005G4SADY/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&srs=2529898011&ie=UTF8&qid=1370821348&sr=1-4&keywords=micro+sata+cables
I jump around a bit. Try to support FeatherCoin, playing around a bit with DigitalCoin and WorldCoin, and always some Litecoin. I stopped with Bitcoin because it just isn't profitable enough with GPUs anymore.
My total hashing power is about 5.5 MH/s on scrypt.
My total hashing power is about 5.5 MH/s on scrypt.
Re: Rough estimate of power usage for mining rig w/3 x 7950 ?
I've got three 7950s right now on a 1000 watt power supply (80+ Gold certified) and it's pulling about 930 watts at the wall, 620 kH/s per card. I haven't tried to tweak it to save power yet, though.
Re: [GUIDE] Want to measure power usage but don't have a Kill-A-Watt or multimeter?
They have devices that read the glass bubble for you and calculate power usage as well.
http://www.mymeterstore.com/p3982/power_cost_monitor.php
According to that page, the Blueline Innovations 28000 is now discontinued though.
The listed price is 20 USD or so, so it would be on par with a watt-meter. Since it's discontinued, you can only safely measure your consumption by using a dedicated watt-meter or looking at your electric meter.http://www.mymeterstore.com/p3982/power_cost_monitor.php
According to that page, the Blueline Innovations 28000 is now discontinued though.
Other unsafe methods involve using an amp-meter on your power cable (unsafe and costly) or an induction amp-meter (possibly unsafe and costlier). Personally I have this:
http://i.imgur.com/RU6Zb8K.jpg
Things like that and the Kill-A-Watt are the best solution.
You can't get an accurate measurement just by measuring the current, because you aren't measuring voltage and calculating power factor.
Also, with inductive ammeters, you still have to separate the wires in the cable and clamp around only one of them. If you clamp around the all of them, it will read zero.
Re: Recomendations for a good breaker to handle all of my rigs.
Usually the next greater amps rating breakers handle the the load of the lower amp breakers well.
Just make sure you are not overloading the circuit amps rating by checking wire gage, and metering your power usage of your circuit.
Also if u have good power strips, they themselves will limit power drawn at each socket due to a reset switch which pops, so that should take care of some simple overloading anyways.
Just make sure you are not overloading the circuit amps rating by checking wire gage, and metering your power usage of your circuit.
Also if u have good power strips, they themselves will limit power drawn at each socket due to a reset switch which pops, so that should take care of some simple overloading anyways.
Of course they can handle it "better" but that does not make it safe.
Breakers on power strips are irrelevant, they only protect what's plugged into the strips. They do NOT protect the wiring in your wall.
How many times does everyone in this thread have to repeat DO NOT USE A BIGGER BREAKER, IT IS A FIRE HAZARD?
If you're having this much trouble with it, have an electrician install additional circuits. I had a large outlet installed right next to the panel in the basement, and I run a subpanel off it. Hell, just have two or three 20A circuits installed there and move your rigs to the panel. But for the love of all that is in your house, don't go putting bigger breakers on things because they're tripping.
Put windows 8 and you can do 6 cards.
Tried windows 8, saw 5 cards, gave error 43 for the 6th card. Took the 6th one out and couldn't run cgminer anyways. If I put it to I 10 or 11 It would maybe start for a moment, drive would crash a few times, maybe recover and then crap out, anything higher than that in I would just immediately freeze and lock up and then crap out. You would see the hash rate for everything jump 500 550 600 then freeze, everything crashes. I have a 1600w psu so I know power isnt the issue, I was tried 13.1/28 and 12.8/2.8 in windows 8, both had the same result.
I've been in Ubuntu for the last 5 hours reading through all the documents on cgminer, despite what many believe about the system ram/gpu ram corrolation, either GPU MAX ALLOC PERCENT 100 isn't working for me or I need more memory. A high thread concurceny will crash all my gpus but one, and turn them off returning error 5 and disables them, but if I lower the thread corrurency to 1792 opposed to 21712 and turn the I down very low to 9/10/11 I can maybe get all 5 cards going at like 80-120kh/s (scrypt mining) so I'm very tempted to grab some extra dd3 memory and see if thats the issue.
But before I did that, I figured if ram is the issue than in theory I should be able to run only two cards both at full speed no problem. Pulled all the cards but two, one of them was in a pcie and would not post as enabled with hardware monitoring enabled, no matter what, removed drivers, reinstalled , rebooted, re initlized, changed cards and ports (different 1x port) same problem. moved over to a 16x port, no problem saw the card with hardware montioring enabled, Ok so I run cgminer, one card works fine, pulls 620-620, other card returns an error and doesn't hash anything. So I think the more ram theory is out the window.
Hephaestus, do you think you could make an image of your ubuntu 12,04 build that is currently running with x6 7950's? And upload it to a file storage site (ryushare, new megaupload) etc
Or provide any more details or insight to how you got that running? Out of curiosity how much RAM were you using? And you said you had it split on two PSU's ?
Thanks
I've got a rig with six 7870 XTs and one with three 7950s right now (both using this same motherboard)...and I'm actually having random reboots on the one with the 7950s.
Haven't nailed that down yet.Both rigs have 4GB of RAM and are mining scrypt just fine.
From the beginning:
Booted Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS from a bootable flash drive, then plugged in a 16GB flash drive and installed to it like a hard drive.
Ran all the system updates after it finished installing, rebooted.
Installed aptitude (personal preference), openssh-server, byobu.
Went to System Settings -> Additional Drivers and installed the beta drivers from there, rebooted.
Can't remember if I had to run aticonfig for anything at this point.
Copied over the a prebuilt cgminer (2.11.4) for x86_64 and a shell script from another mining rig.
Apart from the random reboots (which may still be a power issue), everything works fine.
Run lspci | grep VGA and it will show you all the graphics cards recognized.
Look in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and make sure they all have entries with the correct PCI addresses (unplugging a card will change other cards' addresses).
If they don't match up, try sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial and then reboot.
Hey So I tried just installing the proprietary drivers like you did and running cgminer, and cgminer spits out GPU 0 failure, disabling, for all the cards excpet one, and so then they all list in cgminer as OFF. I followed a few different guides on getting cgminer up and running in ubuntu/xubuntu and no luck. All the cards just show as off, expect for one. And then a few seconds in my display will go blank and I'll loose picture. Computer still on and running, no display. An ideas whats going wrong? I don't think theres anyway that 1600w wouldn't be enough for all 6 but is it possible?
Suggestions? I really just want to get this damn thing stable. I've had all the parts for almost 7 days now -___-
Suggestions? I really just want to get this damn thing stable. I've had all the parts for almost 7 days now -___-
I was setting up three 7950s today and actually found that I need the beta drivers (from the additional drivers in the settings menu) in order to use multiple cards. That fixed most of my problems.
After all the cards were working properly I frequently got reboots right after launching cgminer, I managed to fix that with a powered riser...
1600 watts on the output side of the power supply would be cutting it really, really close. My three 7950s right now are pulling 940 watts from the wall (pre-tweaking).
Thats interesting, I cycled over to an Xubuntu instal but it seems that even my clean installs are getting corrupted, I open firefox and terminal and the whole system just locks up and craps out. I've pulled a card and only using x5 now to eliminate the possibility of using to much power. Same issues still occuring. I Had windows 8 running on another hard drive and it saw all 5 cards fine, installed drives, booted up cgminer conncects, reports hash rate, and screen goes blank no signal all control lost, no idea.
How many powered risers are you using?
I was having issues with three cards on unpowered risers, adding a powered riser (with the line to the board cut so it only pulled from the molex) solved it.
Hey So I tried just installing the proprietary drivers like you did and running cgminer, and cgminer spits out GPU 0 failure, disabling, for all the cards excpet one, and so then they all list in cgminer as OFF. I followed a few different guides on getting cgminer up and running in ubuntu/xubuntu and no luck. All the cards just show as off, expect for one. And then a few seconds in my display will go blank and I'll loose picture. Computer still on and running, no display. An ideas whats going wrong? I don't think theres anyway that 1600w wouldn't be enough for all 6 but is it possible?
Suggestions? I really just want to get this damn thing stable. I've had all the parts for almost 7 days now -___-
Suggestions? I really just want to get this damn thing stable. I've had all the parts for almost 7 days now -___-
I was setting up three 7950s today and actually found that I need the beta drivers (from the additional drivers in the settings menu) in order to use multiple cards. That fixed most of my problems.
After all the cards were working properly I frequently got reboots right after launching cgminer, I managed to fix that with a powered riser...
1600 watts on the output side of the power supply would be cutting it really, really close. My three 7950s right now are pulling 940 watts from the wall (pre-tweaking).
Please solar power it, just to be the first and show it can be done with a little 50w panel...
A 50 watt panel would only be enough to power it during the day, and probably not the whole day either.
I'd recommend a 200-300 watt panel, a deep-cycle battery around 80-100 amp-hours, and a charge controller - this way it could run 24/7 only on solar power, worst case scenario that battery could run it for at least a full 24 hours.
how much would this setup cost?? and can i get the stuff at bitcoinstore?
I only glanced at the bitcoinstore, but it looks like no, you can't. Additionally, you can't get wet lead-acid batteries shipped to you, you'd be better off looking for them locally (make sure to get deep-cycle, not a car battery).
It's not quite as simple as I made it sound, you'd need to get the solar panel properly mounted at a good angle so it gets the most possible sun, plus run wire down through the roof to wherever you decided to put it.
The panel would be around $200-300, http://www.wholesalesolar.com/ has some of the best prices I've seen (but if anyone's seen better, please, do share).
Probably around $100 for a decent charge controller for 12V batteries, and at least $100 for a good battery.
Don't forget, $30-50 for a DC-DC supply, you can't plug the Jalepeno straight into the battery because it's not regulated.
It's pretty hard to justify the cost for this when you're only pulling 36 watts...this kind of setup I suggested is more for someone who wants to run it completely off-grid, which is often impractical.
Please solar power it, just to be the first and show it can be done with a little 50w panel...
A 50 watt panel would only be enough to power it during the day, and probably not the whole day either.
I'd recommend a 200-300 watt panel, a deep-cycle battery around 80-100 amp-hours, and a charge controller - this way it could run 24/7 only on solar power, worst case scenario that battery could run it for at least a full 24 hours.
Re: Recomendations for a good breaker to handle all of my rigs.
+1 this.
If I'm remembering correctly, most residential-grade breakers aren't designed to run at 100% of their rated capacity all the time. Ask for commercial grade, perhaps.
How many rigs do you have per circuit and how much power does each one use?
I think you'd most likely find that with "better" power strips, you'd either see no difference, or you'd start tripping the main breaker instead.
I think you'd most likely find that with "better" power strips, you'd either see no difference, or you'd start tripping the main breaker instead.
All you need now is a small solar panel and battery set-up and you can be mining bitcoins for no operational costs.
I wonder how long this could run off of just a 12v car battery. Or a bank of LiPos.
For fun:
Let's take a group 27 deep-cycle battery from my store ($117.95 + $5.00 core charge).
It's rated at 96 amp-hours, multiply that by its nominal voltage of 12 volts and you get 1152 watt-hours.
Divide by 36 watts (we'll assume that the DC-DC supply you'd use in place of the AC-DC supply will also pull 36 watts from the battery) and you get 32 hours of run time (approximately).
You'd want to use a deep-cycle battery, not an actual car (cranking) battery. The car battery wouldn't last very many cycles in this application.
And LiPos are just too expensive for something like this, several times what a wet lead-acid would be.
I've got two of the exact same motherboard you have, and I'm running six cards each as well. Using Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. I can't really say anything about Windows vs Linux, I've only been mining in Linux.
Yes, you do need a presence short on the 3rd PCIe x1. I've got all my cards on x1 to x16 risers (even on x16 slots) and had to do the presence short on that last x1 slot and the x16 slot just under it.
There aren't any additional power lines on the longer PCIe slots, x16 won't have any more than x1 does. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout - all of the power pins are on the little section before the notch.
On my boards, I use three unmodified and three powered risers. With my powered ones though, I sever the +12V lines going to the motherboard so that it only pulls power from the molex. I actually have those powered risers powered off the second power supply.
If you don't sever the lines, you have to plug those molexes into the same power supply that's powering the motherboard.
1600 watts should be enough, I measured one of my rigs with a Kill-A-Watt at about 1500 watts with all six cards running (before playing with voltage). I actually over-spec my power supplies, each rig has two in the 900-1000 watt range.
There's a mining rig in your bathroom?
Now for the issue of PCIe slots, all three of my 16x slots handle non powered and powered extenders fine. my 1x slots one and two are good, but the third one I think might need a presence short, it was being picky. As far as powered extenders go, I was planning to do something like all the 16x powered(three) and 1x (three) non powered. This should be ok I think, or do pcie 1x pull less power through the board and would benefit more from a powered extender? And or should I just power extend all 6 of them?
Yes, you do need a presence short on the 3rd PCIe x1. I've got all my cards on x1 to x16 risers (even on x16 slots) and had to do the presence short on that last x1 slot and the x16 slot just under it.
There aren't any additional power lines on the longer PCIe slots, x16 won't have any more than x1 does. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout - all of the power pins are on the little section before the notch.
On my boards, I use three unmodified and three powered risers. With my powered ones though, I sever the +12V lines going to the motherboard so that it only pulls power from the molex. I actually have those powered risers powered off the second power supply.
If you don't sever the lines, you have to plug those molexes into the same power supply that's powering the motherboard.
Now do you think a 1600w 80 plus gold psu the Lepa one, that should be able to handle x6 cards just fine.
1600 watts should be enough, I measured one of my rigs with a Kill-A-Watt at about 1500 watts with all six cards running (before playing with voltage). I actually over-spec my power supplies, each rig has two in the 900-1000 watt range.
-my gf wrote this while staring at my rig sitting on the toilet
There's a mining rig in your bathroom?
You have the same motherboards!!! YES!!!! With 6 running?! *hallelujah* That literally just relieved me so much, because I really didn't want to go through the hassle of having to order a different Mobo/CPU setup.
Ok, presence shorts on the thrid x1 slot assuming your counting the northbound (coming from cpu moving down the board) one as #1 then pcix16 then pcix1 # 2 and pcix1 # 3 and pcix16 pci 16 end of board
So I need to presence short pcix1 #3 and pcix16 just under it? Got it. Could you send me pictures of your presence short? I've seen pics on line for a 1x slot, but not of a 16x, or if you could link me to a good pic/diagram.
I have powered x16 to x16 extenders, I have powered x1 to x16 as well, but they were done incorrectly and don't provide the extra 12v I think... None the less i have the 16 to 16 which I know were perfectly, and since I'm using one PSU and its the same one for the mobo I don't need to sever any of the lines.
Yeah I have these MSI cards and they undervolt just fine in windows so hopefully it won't be much of an issue in Ubuntu, any advantages to Ubuntu or Xubuntu?
Any chance you mind emailing or IMing me or some kind of instant communication and we can discuss a little more?
Oh and in regards to the song my gf wrote lol, we live in these new apartments for college students and our walk in closet is actually through our bathroom, so you walk into the bathroom and then theres another door to the closet which is directly in front of the toliet and often open, and in there on the top shelf under an AC vent are all my rigs Lol so she had a clear view of them
Sorry for the confusion, if you're using x16 to x16 risers, you shouldn't need to do the presence short for the x16 slot like I did. I had to do it because I had the graphics card there on a riser like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-PCI-E-Riser/dp/B005G4SADY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370553268&sr=8-1
So it was only connected as x1 even though it's plugged into an x16 slot.
And yes, the farthest x1 slot from the CPU is the one that needs the short. I actually just peeled the presence lines from the risers, clipped and soldered them together because I didn't have any wire that fit very well.
Undervolting is harder in Linux, or so I've heard. If cgminer can't do it you're pretty much screwed...
The real advantages of Linux are 1) free and 2) can be installed to a flash drive.
Right ok so then I just followed this diagram
http://blog.zorinaq.com/images/pcie-short-schematic.png
and did that to the third pcie 1x slot, thats the only thing thats need to be presence shorted
Yeah windows just craps out in so many departments though, remote desktop client wouldn't work, updates forever and ever, system instability, I'll give both a go and see what happens. Which drivers did you use in Ubuntu?
And what BIOS settings did you tweak? Also, are you using dummy plugs? actual plugs? no plugs?
Thanks
I just installed the drivers from the settings menu under "Restricted Drivers", it will download and install them automatically from the repository. I had to install the beta ones for my 7870 XTs though. I'm not sure what version number any of them are...so I feel kinda dumb about it.
I haven't actually tweaked the BIOS yet, and no dummy plugs needed. Nothing is plugged into any of my cards, I do everything over SSH with byobu so I can detach sessions.
I've got two of the exact same motherboard you have, and I'm running six cards each as well. Using Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. I can't really say anything about Windows vs Linux, I've only been mining in Linux.
Yes, you do need a presence short on the 3rd PCIe x1. I've got all my cards on x1 to x16 risers (even on x16 slots) and had to do the presence short on that last x1 slot and the x16 slot just under it.
There aren't any additional power lines on the longer PCIe slots, x16 won't have any more than x1 does. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout - all of the power pins are on the little section before the notch.
On my boards, I use three unmodified and three powered risers. With my powered ones though, I sever the +12V lines going to the motherboard so that it only pulls power from the molex. I actually have those powered risers powered off the second power supply.
If you don't sever the lines, you have to plug those molexes into the same power supply that's powering the motherboard.
1600 watts should be enough, I measured one of my rigs with a Kill-A-Watt at about 1500 watts with all six cards running (before playing with voltage). I actually over-spec my power supplies, each rig has two in the 900-1000 watt range.
There's a mining rig in your bathroom?
Now for the issue of PCIe slots, all three of my 16x slots handle non powered and powered extenders fine. my 1x slots one and two are good, but the third one I think might need a presence short, it was being picky. As far as powered extenders go, I was planning to do something like all the 16x powered(three) and 1x (three) non powered. This should be ok I think, or do pcie 1x pull less power through the board and would benefit more from a powered extender? And or should I just power extend all 6 of them?
Yes, you do need a presence short on the 3rd PCIe x1. I've got all my cards on x1 to x16 risers (even on x16 slots) and had to do the presence short on that last x1 slot and the x16 slot just under it.
There aren't any additional power lines on the longer PCIe slots, x16 won't have any more than x1 does. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout - all of the power pins are on the little section before the notch.
On my boards, I use three unmodified and three powered risers. With my powered ones though, I sever the +12V lines going to the motherboard so that it only pulls power from the molex. I actually have those powered risers powered off the second power supply.
If you don't sever the lines, you have to plug those molexes into the same power supply that's powering the motherboard.
Now do you think a 1600w 80 plus gold psu the Lepa one, that should be able to handle x6 cards just fine.
1600 watts should be enough, I measured one of my rigs with a Kill-A-Watt at about 1500 watts with all six cards running (before playing with voltage). I actually over-spec my power supplies, each rig has two in the 900-1000 watt range.
-my gf wrote this while staring at my rig sitting on the toilet
There's a mining rig in your bathroom?
You have the same motherboards!!! YES!!!! With 6 running?! *hallelujah* That literally just relieved me so much, because I really didn't want to go through the hassle of having to order a different Mobo/CPU setup.
Ok, presence shorts on the thrid x1 slot assuming your counting the northbound (coming from cpu moving down the board) one as #1 then pcix16 then pcix1 # 2 and pcix1 # 3 and pcix16 pci 16 end of board
So I need to presence short pcix1 #3 and pcix16 just under it? Got it. Could you send me pictures of your presence short? I've seen pics on line for a 1x slot, but not of a 16x, or if you could link me to a good pic/diagram.
I have powered x16 to x16 extenders, I have powered x1 to x16 as well, but they were done incorrectly and don't provide the extra 12v I think... None the less i have the 16 to 16 which I know were perfectly, and since I'm using one PSU and its the same one for the mobo I don't need to sever any of the lines.
Yeah I have these MSI cards and they undervolt just fine in windows so hopefully it won't be much of an issue in Ubuntu, any advantages to Ubuntu or Xubuntu?
Any chance you mind emailing or IMing me or some kind of instant communication and we can discuss a little more?
Oh and in regards to the song my gf wrote lol, we live in these new apartments for college students and our walk in closet is actually through our bathroom, so you walk into the bathroom and then theres another door to the closet which is directly in front of the toliet and often open, and in there on the top shelf under an AC vent are all my rigs Lol so she had a clear view of them
Sorry for the confusion, if you're using x16 to x16 risers, you shouldn't need to do the presence short for the x16 slot like I did. I had to do it because I had the graphics card there on a riser like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-PCI-E-Riser/dp/B005G4SADY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370553268&sr=8-1
So it was only connected as x1 even though it's plugged into an x16 slot.
And yes, the farthest x1 slot from the CPU is the one that needs the short. I actually just peeled the presence lines from the risers, clipped and soldered them together because I didn't have any wire that fit very well.
Undervolting is harder in Linux, or so I've heard. If cgminer can't do it you're pretty much screwed...
The real advantages of Linux are 1) free and 2) can be installed to a flash drive.
I've got two of the exact same motherboard you have, and I'm running six cards each as well. Using Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. I can't really say anything about Windows vs Linux, I've only been mining in Linux.
Yes, you do need a presence short on the 3rd PCIe x1. I've got all my cards on x1 to x16 risers (even on x16 slots) and had to do the presence short on that last x1 slot and the x16 slot just under it.
There aren't any additional power lines on the longer PCIe slots, x16 won't have any more than x1 does. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout - all of the power pins are on the little section before the notch.
On my boards, I use three unmodified and three powered risers. With my powered ones though, I sever the +12V lines going to the motherboard so that it only pulls power from the molex. I actually have those powered risers powered off the second power supply.
If you don't sever the lines, you have to plug those molexes into the same power supply that's powering the motherboard.
1600 watts should be enough, I measured one of my rigs with a Kill-A-Watt at about 1500 watts with all six cards running (before playing with voltage). I actually over-spec my power supplies, each rig has two in the 900-1000 watt range.
There's a mining rig in your bathroom?
Now for the issue of PCIe slots, all three of my 16x slots handle non powered and powered extenders fine. my 1x slots one and two are good, but the third one I think might need a presence short, it was being picky. As far as powered extenders go, I was planning to do something like all the 16x powered(three) and 1x (three) non powered. This should be ok I think, or do pcie 1x pull less power through the board and would benefit more from a powered extender? And or should I just power extend all 6 of them?
Yes, you do need a presence short on the 3rd PCIe x1. I've got all my cards on x1 to x16 risers (even on x16 slots) and had to do the presence short on that last x1 slot and the x16 slot just under it.
There aren't any additional power lines on the longer PCIe slots, x16 won't have any more than x1 does. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout - all of the power pins are on the little section before the notch.
On my boards, I use three unmodified and three powered risers. With my powered ones though, I sever the +12V lines going to the motherboard so that it only pulls power from the molex. I actually have those powered risers powered off the second power supply.
If you don't sever the lines, you have to plug those molexes into the same power supply that's powering the motherboard.
Now do you think a 1600w 80 plus gold psu the Lepa one, that should be able to handle x6 cards just fine.
1600 watts should be enough, I measured one of my rigs with a Kill-A-Watt at about 1500 watts with all six cards running (before playing with voltage). I actually over-spec my power supplies, each rig has two in the 900-1000 watt range.
-my gf wrote this while staring at my rig sitting on the toilet
There's a mining rig in your bathroom?
Re: PCIe Power Risers with Capacitors? Are they better then without Caps?
In my rigs I use three unmodified risers and three where I have the +12V lines completely disconnected from the motherboard and running to a separate power supply.
The 3 powered risers are NOT connected to your PSU which is plugged into the motherboard???
Correct. That's why the lines to the motherboard are severed, unlike this riser which just adds a molex. With this one, you have two parallel paths from +12V to the PCIe connector on the graphics card, so it would have to be the same power supply...putting power supply rails in parallel with each other is...iffy.