TB250 BTC +AMD RX580 + NVIDIA 1080ti PCI Passthrough PCI splitter! Crypto Mining + Gaming Linux
(PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR LIST OF HW AND MORE INFO) Mining via PCI Passthrough on a Biostar TB250 BTC motherboard. AMD+Nvidia hybrid mining, Intel CPU. Linux host, Linux guests. Using a 1 to 4 port PCI splitter/switch to get up to 4 GPUs in one PCIe slot. This TB250 BTC board has 6 PCIe slots. here running 7 GPUs, tested with 8 GPUs and it works great. Potentially 9, 10, or more could work. Originally was running this setup with a Pentium G4600, PCI passthrough works with that too. People may think this is overkill secops for GPU mining security and setup, but consider the benefits: 1. Isolate proprietary closed source software. Recently it came to light that a recent version of Claymore miner could be remotely exploited in a few different ways, from directory traversal, DoS, memory leaks, to remote code execution! (see: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/42074/Claymore-Dual-Miner-Project-Claymore-Dual-Miner.html) By containing it to a virtual machine, the threats are limited and contained. 2. By running AMD and NVIDIA in their own virtual machines with PCI passthrough, the drivers and kernel modules are isolated and there are no conflicts and headaches. Intel CPU can be used for the head with Integrated graphics, and just blacklist/remove all NVIDIa & AMD modules/drivers. 3. When testing different clocks and intensities for mining, when the Virtual Machine hangs, it can usually be shutdown/destroyed and restarted without restarting the whole machine. This saves a lot of time when experimenting. MOBO: Biostar TB250 BTC PCIe 1 to 4 port switch/splitter: "PCIE-EUX1-04 VER.002" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B073VL2N39) CPU: Intel i7 7700K RAM: Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (16GBx2) DDR4 2400 MT/s NVIDIA GPU: EVGA 1080 Ti SC Black Edition GAMING 11GB AMD GPU: 3x RX580 ASUS DUAL OC 4GB 3x RX580 PowerColor Red Dragon V2 8GB OS: Ubuntu Server 16.04 minimal install Virtualisation: libvirt/qemu-kvm (w/virt-manager GUI)
(PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR LIST OF HW AND MORE INFO) Mining via PCI Passthrough on a Biostar TB250 BTC motherboard. AMD+Nvidia hybrid mining, Intel CPU. Linux host, Linux guests. Using a 1 to 4 port PCI splitter/switch to get up to 4 GPUs in one PCIe slot. This TB250 BTC board has 6 PCIe slots. here running 7 GPUs, tested with 8 GPUs and it works great. Potentially 9, 10, or more could work. Originally was running this setup with a Pentium G4600, PCI passthrough works with that too. People may think this is overkill secops for GPU mining security and setup, but consider the benefits: 1. Isolate proprietary closed source software. Recently it came to light that a recent version of Claymore miner could be remotely exploited in a few different ways, from directory traversal, DoS, memory leaks, to remote code execution! (see: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/42074/Claymore-Dual-Miner-Project-Claymore-Dual-Miner.html) By containing it to a virtual machine, the threats are limited and contained. 2. By running AMD and NVIDIA in their own virtual machines with PCI passthrough, the drivers and kernel modules are isolated and there are no conflicts and headaches. Intel CPU can be used for the head with Integrated graphics, and just blacklist/remove all NVIDIa & AMD modules/drivers. 3. When testing different clocks and intensities for mining, when the Virtual Machine hangs, it can usually be shutdown/destroyed and restarted without restarting the whole machine. This saves a lot of time when experimenting. MOBO: Biostar TB250 BTC PCIe 1 to 4 port switch/splitter: "PCIE-EUX1-04 VER.002" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B073VL2N39) CPU: Intel i7 7700K RAM: Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (16GBx2) DDR4 2400 MT/s NVIDIA GPU: EVGA 1080 Ti SC Black Edition GAMING 11GB AMD GPU: 3x RX580 ASUS DUAL OC 4GB 3x RX580 PowerColor Red Dragon V2 8GB OS: Ubuntu Server 16.04 minimal install Virtualisation: libvirt/qemu-kvm (w/virt-manager GUI)