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How much CPU is necessary for GPU mining?

V

vortec4800

Gawd
Joined
Sep 19, 2003
Messages
946
I was able to score an ASUS M5A97 AMD motherboard from the local Fry's on clearance for $29 bucks, so now I want to get a chip for it and put a couple cards in it for mining. I know you don't need much to mine with, I was looking an an AMD Sempron 145 which is a single-core unit at 2.8Ghz. That should be enough to run a mining rig right? Or will I need a dual-core job with just a little more juice?
 
I have several of those semprons running and I don't believe I've been limited at all by them. Intensity getting cranked up when having a bunch of cards may need more CPU but I haven't pinpointed the CPU as the issue
 
i have a single mining rig that is run by an e350 (dual core 1.6ghz) that is pushing to a 6950 that never sees more than 10% cpu usage.
 
That's awesome, thanks for the input guys.

I only plan on running 2 7950/7970 per machine, so I think these chips should be able to handle it.

2gb per rig or 4? I think I'll be running BAMT or Ubuntu and not Windows, FWIW.
 
you should be fine with 2gb in Linux
 
Hmm next question, is a 750W Gold PSU enough for 2x 280x cards, or do I need 1000W for 2 of those? The price jumps up quite a bit for that extra 250W.
 
vortec4800 said:
That's awesome, thanks for the input guys.

I only plan on running 2 7950/7970 per machine, so I think these chips should be able to handle it.

2gb per rig or 4? I think I'll be running BAMT or Ubuntu and not Windows, FWIW.
Click to expand...

you are fine with 2gb on any card you won't be cranking the TC up on. 7970/280x's run best at 1050/1500.

now the 290 series is something that seems to need having a chunk of RAM
 
vortec4800 said:
Hmm next question, is a 750W Gold PSU enough for 2x 280x cards, or do I need 1000W for 2 of those? The price jumps up quite a bit for that extra 250W.
Click to expand...

I have 2 280x's running on both a corsair 750w and an evga gold 750w they're plenty.
 
Excellent, that's what I was thinking. Some of the PSU calculators were saying 1000+ but it just didn't seem necessary.
 
vortec4800 said:
Excellent, that's what I was thinking. Some of the PSU calculators were saying 1000+ but it just didn't seem necessary.
Click to expand...

mine are the OC edition ones that stock are 1.2v but most will run the 1050/1500 at 1.1v or less and that equates to about 100w savings at the wall for me just dropping that .1v
 
Just to echo the sentiment of others, I really don't think you'll be limited by any modern day CPU.

I occasionally mine on a quad 290x rig using a 3930k. It makes absolutely no difference in hash rate if my CPU is overclocked to 4.2Ghz using all six cores or if it's at 3.2Ghz with 4 of the 6 cores disabled (even at this setting the CPU never goes above 10% load while mining).

For an exclusive mining rig, the only thing I would be concerned about when shopping for a CPU is power consumption.
 
Pick the cheapest lowest power use chip you can get if it is a dedicated mining rig CPU mining is pointless the highest CPU hash rate I have seen is around 100 my i5 3230m gets around 20 most i7 get around 50-100.
 
Cool, this Sempron 145 is only a 45W chip and it looks like it will get the job done.

I knew having a fast chip wouldn't make the miner go any faster necessarily, I just wanted to make sure that if I got a really slow single-core chip it would have enough power to manage the little background tasks on the machine (plus any little web scripts and stuff) without interrupting the mining operation. Even though the GPUs are the main workhorses, wasn't sure how much the CPU had to do to manage the GPUs.
 
Keep in mind you can get a used 45W Athlon II X2 on ebay for $30 shipped. Look for the 235e (2.7Ghz) and 240e (2.8Ghz) models. I usually see the Sempron 145 around $40 shipped.
 
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