There's so many expensive (and questionable) options when it comes to (safely) setting up GPU miners. There's elaborate enclosures you can buy on the Internet, which are essentially tubed aluminium, rivets, and a few tapped screws. Then there's milk crates, and the ubiquitous shelving units.
I didn't want any of these, and most importantly, I didn't want to spend any money at all. I'm a tight arse when it comes to money.
This is my final result:
The dual R9 270x Roared, mining UBIQ.How is it made?
Step 1:
Find a tree seed. Plant it... let it grow. Get it cut down while protesters scream "Save the forest" (just kidding)Step 2:
Obtain Your Recycled Timber and draw plans you'll never follow:
The initial plan was to emulate existing rig designs that I have seen many pictures of on the Internet. Once I got in the shed, I quickly changed my ideas.
Step 3:
Change your ideas as you build.Here I'm measuring out the holes that I will be drilling to mount the PCI-E risers to the timber. The risers will hang slightly off the top piece of timber, with the weight of the timber and the GPUs themselves to keep them steady.
Step 4:
Engage Power tools. I drilled these holes small and shallow, to facilitate hand screwing the risers in at a later date. I'm only building a mount to support Four GPUs, as that's the number of PCI-E slots in the motherboard for my mining rig.
Step 5:
Personal Protective Equipment (or PPE) must be engaged when using the circular saw (skillsaw for you Americans that might be reading this) or "Power Saw" everywhere else in the world, I guess. I don't have safety glasses, so I use my sunglasses, because I'm one stylish son of a bitch. The earmuffs are not to be messed with. I take my hearing very seriously, and they're a proper pair, affording excellent protection. It makes my saw sound whisper quiet.
It didn't take long to cut the additional slack off the boards and get things to line up pretty closely. My plan had evolved to have the risers on a piece of timber that hovered above the existing case that the motherboard, RAM and hard-disks are stored in, so I improvised as I went.
Step 6:
Give him the clamps! Pre drilling, and countersinking holes on what will eventually become the underside of the mining platform, ready for take off to the moon. Countersinking is where you initially drill a pilot hole through which your screw will go. Then using a larger, tapered drill bit to enbiggen the hole, allowing the screw head to sit flush with the wood. It ends up looking like a piece of flat packed furniture:
Step 7:
More clamping, except there's two pieces of wood clamped together now. I changed to a smaller drill bit to pre-drill the holes in which the screws that the whole thing will be held together with would drive more easily, without splintering the recycled chipboard.
Step 8:
Mount the risers using the pilot holes drilled in the earlier step, ensuring you don't scratch the risers with the screwdriver, short circuit the boards with the pencil, or get sawdust in the PCI-E slot. Apply liberal amounts of hot air from mouth while exhaling in order to clear residual saw dust. Realise how much of an abject failure you are when the side that will be visible has been de-laminated by your circular saw.
Step 9:
Plug in everything and pray it doesn't blow up.
Spoiler alert: It didn't blow up. I was glad. It didn't look very nice in the spot it ended up.
Step 10:
Perfect the aesthetics. Rotate that case.
There's room for two more GPUs to come, I am thinking RX 460 or 470 cards if I can find them, owing to the fact that the two R9 270x cards already draw about 195W each; there's a i7 920 running in that machine, and a few hard-drives (it doesn't just mine!) there's also a bunch of fans and probably a lot of dust and broken dreams, too. Oh, that Power Supply is a Corsair 1000W, Platinum rated. Its amazing.
Don't worry about the cables laying over the first fan cage. That just has a single SSD in it running the operating system. It's cool; man. Its cool. If anyone has any old RX 460/470 or 480 cards, or knows where I can pick two up in Australia (I'm in Adelaide) really cheap, I'd love to know. If I can barter, or offer joyrides in my Steem-Mobile, I'm open to all offers.
Let me know what you think!