Thanks, I see that it is working as of this morning.

To all the users that are currently using Freewallet or contemplating using their service, I don't agree that it is a scam. I have been using their app for almost a year now for converting alt coins to BTC. I have had an instance were a transaction of $50 worth of BCH got lost for months because of a technical issue with changing address format (That I could have avoided if I payed attention to the posted notice in the app), but I did eventually get it back. Yes, they have issues, but they do eventually solve them.  I have never been scammed by them and have no reason to believe they are a scam.  I mine directly into Freewallet because it's convenient and relatively quick to convert from one coin to another then send to my Coinbase account. My word of caution would only be to not store large sums of coin because sometimes you can be locked out from sending or converting from a specific coin for days or even weeks. I will say I have never been locked out of all coins nor have I ever seen their service go entirely down for more than a few minutes or hours. My other suggestion is to always read the posted "Family News" notices in the app each day before doing a transaction, it might save you trouble if you know ahead of time which coin is down for maintenance or what change you need to make note of before receiving or sending funds. Freewallet has their issues, but they are not a scam. Their service has saved me so much time and effort as a miner over the past year that I think it's worth dealing with the hiccups along the way.

ZEC sending has been down for almost a week due to "maintenance". No one can convert or send.  When is this going to be back online? (Your response will be "We are working very hard to get this back as soon as possible.") You can't lock out access to funds due to "maintenance" for this amount of time and expect people to use your service with confidence.

I said those that cannot run more than two Molex connectors on the same bus without getting hot are experiencing a switching PSU phase short. I did not say I recommend it. You send me a link to a generic wiki page, as if the Chinese even bother to follow PCIE protocols when designing risers.

You sir clearly don't understand how a switching PSUs operate, nor do you understand how the riser operates. The 3.3v is generated from the 12V source. You can clearly following the tracings from the 12v source and they end up at the 3.3v regulator, coil, and capacitor circuit. If the 3.3v was not produced from the 12v then what is the coil there for??? It's clearly a 12v to 3.3v regulated circuit. Heck, the number 3.3 is clearly stamped on the regulator on v006 boards.

The 3.3v bus isn't of consequence, the 12v bus is. The 3.3v is regulated and no longer has a switched phase, therefore it's isolated from the switched PSU and doesn't get affected by the MB PSU. You are focusing on a fly and ignoring the elephant. The 12v switched riser will eventually go 180 out of phase with the GPU PSU and will fry something. You have two engineers tell you otherwise and you still argue something you CLEARLY know little about.  Go ahead and burn your house down.

Ok, fair enough. But the 3.3v is created from the 12V through a regulator on the top side of the v008 board. Even if this were electrically shared with the 3.3v bus on the MB, it is regulated and isolated from the Riser PSU via the 3.3v regulator on the riser board. The riser does not use 3.3 from the PSU, in fact it converts switching 12V to regulated 3.3v. This isolates the riser PSU from the MB 3.3v and PSU, therefore there is not harm in having a separate PSU on the riser from the MB. The problem is not with sharing 3.3v power from two different components on two different PSU's, that is actually safe because of the regulators and low current parameters, and the power is no longer switching. Small potential differences of 0.1v is not going to short out or ground the 3.3v circuit. The real problem is from sharing direct 12V Switching Power and this is where the danger and the fires start.

You absolutely 100%, without a doubt, want to power your Riser with the same PSU powering that GPU 6/8 pin 12V, this is a fact. If you don't, this is where the danger arises. Internally the GPU is drawing 12v Switched power from two sources if your riser is on a different PSU, and that's a big red flag.  What's the point in worrying about the isolated, regulated, low current 3.3v MB to Riser connection when you are mixing pure high current 12V switched power right at the GPU? If one switched PSU happens to go 180 degrees out of phase from the other switched PSU on the same 12V circuit, bye-bye. This is likely what happened with the OP. We don't really know how he was setup, likely two PSU's on the same MB for all we know, but had he simply left the Molex disconnected on the MB, he would not have fried it.

I don't know who decided this was the rule to use the MB and risers on the same PSU, but electrically it's wrong to mix PSU's with the Riser/GPU combo, and it's electrically safe to have the MB powered by it's own PSU separate from powered risers when switched 12V is not involved.  

Friends don't let friends put Risers and GPUs on different power supplies, remember this!

Part of my past applied studies were in voltage regulated circuit design, I'm not speaking out of my arse here, I know what I'm talking about.

I agree with most of what that engineer said. You can confirm his findings with a voltmeter or by simply following the tracings on a powered riser.


You are partially correct. Yes, the GPU uses power through the RISER, but not through the MB to the riser. I am not disputing that the GPU uses 35w or even 55w through the PCIE slot on the riser, I'm stating that the electrical connection between the MB PCIE slot to the riser is not 35w or even 10w. The 3.3v connection is a low current bus and isn't supplying much power to the riser. The argument here is with the 12V line, not the 3.3v. The 3.3v is isolated from the PSU through multi-phase regulators so this can be shared across PSUs. The MB is not powering the riser, proof of this is if you disconnect the 12V PCIE power to a quality riser, you lose the card connection. The USB cable is a shielded data cable with 24-22awg wires and even if it were a bigger gauge the specs only allow for a 2.4 amp maximum draw at 5V (12 Watt for 5v, 8w max for 3.3v) without attenuation issues to the data lines.  If the MB were powering the risers, you would have 420 - 660 Watts running through the MB in a 12 GPU setup.  My MB's are drawing less than 90 watts total so I know this is not the case. If your MB PCIE bus is getting pulled for power, you have a problem with inferior risers.  Good risers electrically isolate the 12V from the MB, and ties the PCIE 12V power to the 16X slot using only the 12v PCIE connector on the riser.  They also use a voltage regulator from the 12V PCIE power to convert to 3.3v. Your pic doesn't show the top side of the riser where this is happening.

Additionally, unlike 12V power which comes direct from the switching PSU, the 3.3v line is isolated from the PSU because it is created from multi-phase voltage regulators on the MB. It is safe to have the 3.3v come from two different sources because the switching part has already been isolated and converted in the circuit. You don't need to worry about voltage potential differences because they would only be in the 0.1v or less range. It would be unlikely that large power draw through the 3.3v would occur unless it was a complete short at the riser from a bad circuit design.

This is old info and no longer works with newer builds of Windows 10. The fall 2017 build and newer will simply re-enable the service after a few days or a reboot. There currently is no easy way to stop windows 10 from updating itself. It requires registry hacks and I've only successfully been able to stop it on one rig, but I don't know which of the 100 changes I made actually did it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you do NOT need to use the Molex connector on any motherboard when powered risers are used. Doing so is dangerous as seen in this case. Built in safety nets are bypassed when using that out-of-spec setup. There is very little power draw through the USB riser cable. It's primary function is to pass data, not power. If there is more than a couple watts passing through, then the powered riser is not doing it's job and is junk. The molex connector design on MB's was only put in place to facilitate multi GPU's directly connected in the slots for Crossfire/SLI configurations on Gaming MB's that had two or more cards running in the full length slots. It is an unnecessary design to have it on a mining board with 1x slot when powered risers are used. Molex connectors weren't even designed to exceed 36 watts so it's pointless to even have one molex boost 12 PCIE slots, it would theoretically only supply 3 watts per slot anyway. It is a design flaw that the Chinese just winged at and completely ignored the power limits and design standards of the components used. This fire hazard could have been avoided if the molex connector simply had not been used. The MB would have likely just shut down in the OP's situation instead of running current through an unmonitored bus. I would be more worried about having a separate switching PSU power the GPU PCIE 12V bus than the 6/8 pin 12V PSU. There's two high current differentials waiting to create a disaster right within the GPU itself.

Well, I disagree with this. It is more important to run the same PSU powering the riser and the GPU than it is to worry about MB to riser ground. The PSU, Riser, and GPU ground need to be tied together but the MB does not need to be on the same loop when using a powered riser. The reason is because the MB power is not powering the riser or GPU at this point. The USB cable is transferring data, not delivering 12v power, therefore common ground is less consequential.

On a side note, I have run 4 risers (Titan XPs) on one 18 gauge Molex and the current draw was not even 10A as long as the same PSU powered the GPU 6/8 pin.  I'm not saying it's best practice, but as soon as I separate the PSU that powers the riser from the one that powers the GPU, the current draw goes up and the Molex bus gets hot. This indicates a voltage potential difference on that bus, creating a greater power draw on that Molex bus. If the riser power is on the same bus, most of the power will be supplied via the 6/8 pin connector. While PCIE standards allow up to 75W via 12v and 3.3v combined power, most cards are designed to only draw up to 35 watts via 12V and the rest comes from the 6/8 pin bus.

You must connect the SAME psu that powers the riser to the same GPU 6/8 pin 12V connector. The purpose of the power to the riser is to give a current boost to the PCIE 12V bus feeding the GPU (up to 54 watts), not to feed power back to the MB.  If you have been doing it the way you described, only luck has been on your side. I know others do it this way as well, but this is actually wrong and is one of the reasons people have stated they can only run 2 risers on the same molex cable bus before it gets hot. It's overheating because the voltage potential between the molex 12v bus on one PSU and the 6/8pin 12V on another PSU is out of phase and causing a balancing current draw. But the part you said about not using the molex on the MB is correct.

Likely the reason why the OP burned up his MB is because he used the molex connector on the MB in the first place. You can't do this while using more than one PSU with the risers or GPUs. The reason is because of voltage phases with switching power supplies. He also may be on to something with one of the GPU PSU's being off and the MB trying to power the GPU alone, but this is a design flaw with all these Molex motherboards. There was never a provision for additional power to be supplied the way they are doing now. In normal circumstances, without the molex power being there, his MB would have simply shut down from an overload and prevented this hazard. but because that molex connector is running 12V on it's own bus, bypassing other circuits and thermal overload protections, it just ran away with the current. His PSU should have also prevented this from happening but the molex bus is allowed to do it's own thing and doesn't have the overload protections that the 24-pin bus has in place.

I'm an electrical engineer, and I have yet to understand how the MB manufacturers have got this so wrong. You can NOT use one PSU to power the risers and another to power the 6/8 pin GPU connectors with switching power supplies. This will create a potential delta of 12 along the same bus if and when one PSU is out of phase with the other on the same circuit. I don't think most people understand how a switching PSU works. It's basically a square wave cleaned up, but under heavy load it still shows itself as a square wave. For argument's sake, think of one PSU at a +12V peak for 60 cycles (an example, but it could be higher) and another at anything less than 12V or even zero, for 60 cycles on the same circuit. Whatever the difference is, the phase will create a voltage potential that shorts the circuit or the power bus in this case.

Do NOT use the molex connectors on the ASRock or Gigabyte mining boards. It is not necessary and is actually dangerous when using more than one PSU. It's a design flaw to even offer them. You would only ever need to use the molex connector if you had one single insane PSU run all the GPU cards and didn't use powered risers.  I have been running both the ASRock and Gigabyte mining boards with 12 cards and have never used the molex connector on the MB.

Anyone that thinks GPU mining will die is trying to get you to quit or has too much tied up in their ASIC bricks. I panicked four years ago because of naysayers and widespread selloff/panic. If only I had stuck with it, my $20k+ investment in mining would have been worth $250k - $500k today. Alt Crypto currency cannot survive without mining, and since crypto is here to stay, mining is here to stay. GPU mining is waaaayy safer than ASIC mining, especially now. I bought an S9 back in December when it was making $30 a day after power costs. I sold it the following week; if I had kept that S9, I would have lost $2k in two months as you can now get them for $2k and they only make $6 a day. $5k spent in graphics cards will pull in way more than $5k spent on ASICS. You can't win with ASICs because ASIC algo difficulties ramp up way too fast to keep up. They only ones making money on ASIC mining are the chinese companies that are in bed with Bitmain and Bitmain themselves. The house always wins and in this case the house is Bitmain and their cohorts. They are mining with tomorrow's SHA-256 ASICs today.  But the chinese do not have control of the GPU market. GPUs will hold more than 75% of their value for at least 6 months after the new GTX cards are launched because no one will be able to get the new cards, they will be in just in time for the holiday rush of gamers and miners this fall. Additionally, new GPU pricing will reflect the market demand; if they give 30% better mining performance then they'll be 30% more expensive, so don't expect previous gen GPUs to simply tank. Gamers will still need GPUs and previous gens will be the only affordable option for them. ASICs cannot replace GPUs because Bitmain simply does not have the ability to produce or obtain the GDDR5X/GDDR6 ram that Samsung has a monopoly on. Cellphones and GPU's are top priority for Samsung. Bitmain would have to sink billions into R&D just to bring out a competitive ASIC to current GPU levels. It doesn't work the same way SHA-256, X11, etc ASICs operate.

You have run out of PCIE lanes. Set the PCIE bus to version 1.0 in the bios.

I would personally skip this board and go with the Gigabyte GA-B250 for $150. I just picked up two new ones in a combo deal for $120 each. The GA-B250 is a solid board from a real manufacturer.

I have a combination of three Corsair 1050W and five 1200W PSU's that I've been mining with for years. All you need is 4GB of Ram per MB. The chassis is a $60 Home Depot metal rack. There is nothing portable about any rig with 19 cards, let alone 30+, so concentrate on airflow and forget about moving it around, it's heavy as frack. For 18 Titans and 12 1080's it's about 7kw.
https://image.ibb.co/hz8tqn/20180217_005712_resized.jpg

Let me save you the headache. There is nothing wrong with the Asus B250, except that going beyond 12 cards will give you grief.  Don't go beyond 12 cards on any MB currently out now. There are only 12 usable pcie lanes with the B250 chipset. Go beyond this and you will have reliability issues and your CPU will work overtime trying to keep it together. The Asus MB is nice, but confusing and since 12 is the maximum pcie lanes, save the money and get the Gigabyte board. It works right out of the box, you don't need to even hit the bios, just load the OS and start mining. Ignore the directions to plug in molex connectors or more than one PSU to the board. Just use the 24 pin MB and 8 pin CPU connector and that's it. I have two of these fully loaded. One more piece of advice, don't skimp on the CPU like with a Celeron, get a decent one like the i3-7100, otherwise you'll be pegging near 100% while mining and it'll feel sluggish. My i3 is at 60% utilization, 12 lanes is a lot for one chip to handle, night and day from just 6 cards.
https://ark.intel.com/products/98086/Intel-B250-Chipset

Yes, that's normal for blower style. Feel free to run the blower at 100%.  MSI blowers run a little slower than other blower brands. They are ball bearing anyways, so no need to worry about burning out the blower motor. Crank the fan all the way up. I prefer a single BB blower any day over a sleeve bearing triple fan.

Simple answer for most coins, No.  

FYI: For starters you would never be able to fully load an Asus B250 with the same brand cards, you would have AMD and Nvidia cards mining two different algorithms. You can't get 19 AMD or NVidia's to work on that board.  I just returned two of those boards after only getting 12 or 13 NVidia's to work. Not enough PCI-e lanes to be reliable past 12 cards, better to stick with the Gigabyte B250 with 12 slots.  No sense in having NVidia and AMD on the same MB anyways, opens a can of worms.

Typical sleeve bearing issues with all Gigabyte fans. To be honest, reference card single blowers are more reliable because they are all ball bearing. The only thing I can suggest if installing ball bearing fans is not an option, is to take the fans apart every 3 months and re-oil all the sleeve bearings.

ViperGuyMike, I'm the original ViperGuy here. lol    I had this screen name 3 or 4 years ago, then lost it, but just reinstated it, although I lost my street cred and status somehow. I also sold both my Vipers so I'm Viperless.    But I have a Demon on the way!

A couple months ago 1070Ti's would have been the way to go at $550, but at today's prices of $700+ (to get them in bulk, not piecemeal) it's not worth it. Neither are 1080Ti's at $1000. At $900 1080Ti's seam like an ok deal compared to what's left. RX570's and 580's at $380 are not bad, but if the rumors about an ASIC ETHASH are true, then all AMDs would have to go to Equihash where they don't do so well. The other problem is the lower grade you go with the card, the more of them you need, the more MB's, Ram, and PSU's you need. Each rig takes up a standing power cost as well. Two rigs use more overall energy than one rig with the equivalent GPU hashrate, and cost more. There's really not a "Great" card to buy right now, that's readily available. Yes, you can piecemeal something together one-by-one, but if you need a complete matched rig, the options are low.  If it were me, I'd try to get 1080Ti's for around $900 or less.  They will hold their value better in the long run, and you'll have less of them to sell off later.

Sorry dude, "zero-point energy" is not possible. And if you found a solution to reclaim 100% of heat loss, you need to publish it to an energy/physics group and claim you Nobel prize money.
 

Nope, not a Viper, though I have owned two in the past.

They are all hanging with zip ties. Since most of my cards are blower style, hanging them vertical allows for the hot air to shoot upwards. I can also throw a box fan on top to move more air. It is very simple but effective.