Hardware and Monero Mining

Question

I was wondering if anyone has built a monster super rig or heard of anyone doing so? I've just been doing research by browsing the Internet and was looking for a motherboard that would hold as many CPU's and GPU's possible. I found this:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10QBI.cfm

Although, I'm not certain if it would fit the application of mining. It will hold up to 24 cores and has 11 PCI-E slots. I was imagining putting 11 R9 295X2's in it. From what I understand the 11 dual core GPUs would bring around 16.5Kh/s and I'm unsure about the combined 24 cores of the CPUs, but I'm guessing maybe another 1Kh/s? Totaling 17.5Kh/s for a current value of ~2.5BTC a month. I understand that we would be dealing with bleeding edge everything so that would = mucho $$ for considering such a build which = insanity, but I'm just in the mood for speculation and I want to start a real discussion about mining Monero. I simply don't see an in depth thread anywhere that explores many options, so why not start a discussion on the Monero stack exchange? I, occasionally win substantial amounts of BTC gambling and I want to build a computer next time I hit it big. I, not only, want to mine Monero, but possibly other cryptos that may rear their heads. I thought about also adding a significant hard drive to rent out memory on for one of the cloud service cryptos out there, possibly use for some gaming, and anything else that may emerge that piques my interest. So, for me personally, I would like to have a well rounded rig. I hope that there will be people who are very tech savvy that will help me and any others brainstorm on what hardware to use for their Monero mining build. And, yes, what I'm looking to do, primarily, is mine Monero. With both CPU and GPU at the same time. Possibly dedicate some of the hashing power to running a full node. I just want to have options for whatever else may come along. I want to run Ubuntu on Lenux as well which would be a first for me. I have previously only used Windows. The i7 I'm using now doesn't support aes-ni so I can't find any way to mine other than using... ... ... Minergatecringe and I get absolute diddly squat. I only have 0.09XMR after five days of mining. I'm sure others are in similar situations. I am inclined to think that it would be more cost efficient to built two separate rigs, each with 8 cores and 6 PCI-E slots, allowing for slightly more GPU power and and 2/3's the CPU power that the above build would have. Probably being more profitable. Please advise... also, feel free to suggest edits or add to this thread with more questions about hardware for mining Monero. Hopefully this will be a nice resource for anyone looking to start mining Monero and crypto in general.

Answer 1

The "24-Core" supported by the motherboard you linked to is per-CPU, (e.g., E7-8890 v4 has 24 cores), so per quad-socket motherboard that would be 96 cores. However, these CPUs cost >$7K each yet you won't benefit much from the n-way architecture when mining. Compare that with less than half that price for a 20-Core, 2-way CPU. Those n-way motherboards are very expensive too, you pay a premium for the ability to to have 4 CPUs in the same machine. In addition, if at some point you'll want to use the rig with Windows after all, take into account that for anything above 2-way you must use a Windows Server, another premium-priced component. Bottom line, although you "waste" a core per rig for the miner, several 1 or 2-way rigs will likely yield better mining power per $$$ than a single 4- or 8- way rig.

The above discussion doesn't take into account the cost of hosting, if you intend to host the rigs in a data center then the form factor can have a significant impact on the overall cost.

As for GPU mining, for that you don't need much CPU power, you can use your current machine and just add a strong graphics card. Before you invest in multiple graphics cards make sure the mining software you intend to use can support your configuration.