Need help getting all 6gpu's working on a MSI x470 Ryzen 5 3400g

[Frenchy19951]

So I'm on to like my third mining rig and up until now I have been using Intel, and using the exact same set up except for one rig where I have a motherboard specifically for the 3060s. Anyways so I decided to build my next rig this time using AMD chip and mining both AMD and Nvidia GPU's.

So far I have been able to get three cards going. Two Nvidia cards and one AMD. It will recognize all the cards if I only plug three in, no matter which three it will recognize it, but if I add more than three it will not recognize it in device manager. The fans turn on and everything so they are getting power.

I have changed all the bios settings that I am aware of, these including 4G decoding, crypto mining, PCI i.e. link speeds (I have tried Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 3 but to no avail).I have tried turning both on and off CSM, but no change either way. I am unaware of any other settings to adjust.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you

 

[Schro]

Have you checked your board specs to see what PCIe lanes will be available to you for your chosen CPU and motherboard selection?

Looking at a random X470 MSI board specifications, I see the following:

• 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (PCIE_1, PCIE_4)
  • 1st, 2nd and 3rd Gen AMD® Ryzen™ processors support x16/x0, x8/x8 mode
  • Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics and 2nd Gen AMD® Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Graphics processors support x8/x0 mode
  • Athlon™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics processor supports x4/x0 mode
• 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCIE_6, supports x4 mode)1
• 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots

1. PCI_E6 slot will be unavailable when installing M.2 PCIe SSD in M2_2 slot.

Reading this, since you're using a 3400G, you lose some PCIe lanes (well, what looks like a slot). If you're using the M2_2 slot, you will also lose a slot.

Consult your motherboard specs for your specific board, but the above is likely close to the problem....

 

[Frenchy19951]

Have you checked your board specs to see what PCIe lanes will be available to you for your chosen CPU and motherboard selection?

Looking at a random X470 MSI board specifications, I see the following:



Reading this, since you're using a 3400G, you lose some PCIe lanes (well, what looks like a slot). If you're using the M2_2 slot, you will also lose a slot.

Consult your motherboard specs for your specific board, but the above is likely close to the problem....

Thank you so much for your advice! I think that is the problem also but I'm still pretty new with all of this and I got lost reading your message.
Why am I losing PCI E lanes, what you say looks like a slot? What do you mean by that?
I do have a SSD in M2_1. Is that taken up anything?

I did bring up the manual for the motherboard and it is similar to what you showed me but not exactly. Could you please take a look at this and let me know? I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at or how to interpret it but if you could help me with that then I would know for next time. Here's the manual:https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7B79v3.0.pdf

I do have a Ryzen 5 3600 arriving today. Will that give me more lanes? And how do I calculate the lanes that my graphics cards are using? I really appreciate your help! Thank you

 

[Nobu]

Part of it is there are simply fewer lanes available from a Ryzen APU than from a Ryzen CPU, part of it is due to the way the motherboard is configured.

That motherboard has 16x lanes configured to go to either the first slot or be split between two slots (8x/8x). But half of those Lanes are unavailable on an APU, so the only option for them is 8x on the first slot, with the other slot getting none. Athlon processors have even fewer lanes, so only 4x are available in slot one.

It also has one slot switched, so that you can use either a pcie card or an m.2 card, but not both at once. For users who don't need an m.2 in that slot but do need a 4x pcie slot.

 

[Schro]

Thank you so much for your advice! I think that is the problem also but I'm still pretty new with all of this and I got lost reading your message.
Why am I losing PCI E lanes, what you say looks like a slot? What do you mean by that?
I do have a SSD in M2_1. Is that taken up anything?

I did bring up the manual for the motherboard and it is similar to what you showed me but not exactly. Could you please take a look at this and let me know? I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at or how to interpret it but if you could help me with that then I would know for next time. Here's the manual:https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7B79v3.0.pdf

I do have a Ryzen 5 3600 arriving today. Will that give me more lanes? And how do I calculate the lanes that my graphics cards are using? I really appreciate your help! Thank you

Page 31 tells you exactly what you need to know. It is broken down by processor and which slots will work with what combination of things in it.

Specifically, it says that the middle 16x length slot (PCI_E4) will not work when there's an iGPU installed. If you have the 3600x installed, then that slot should work just fine.

This is because slots E1 and E4 use PCIe lanes are wired from the CPU, and the iGPU only has 8 lanes available and cannot split those, whereas the 3600x has 16 lanes that can be delivered as either 16x to one lane or as 8x to two lanes. M2_1 uses CPU lanes and is not impacted.

The remaining PCIe slots (2,3,5,6) are all wired into the PCH (chipset). Only E6 is shared (with the M2_2 slot).

Therefore, with the iGPU, you should be able to run 5 cards on the board, just not one in slot 4 (and assuming you have nothing in M2_2).

 

[Frenchy19951]

Page 31 tells you exactly what you need to know. It is broken down by processor and which slots will work with what combination of things in it.

Specifically, it says that the middle 16x length slot (PCI_E4) will not work when there's an iGPU installed. If you have the 3600x installed, then that slot should work just fine.

This is because slots E1 and E4 use PCIe lanes are wired from the CPU, and the iGPU only has 8 lanes available and cannot split those, whereas the 3600x has 16 lanes that can be delivered as either 16x to one lane or as 8x to two lanes. M2_1 uses CPU lanes and is not impacted.

The remaining PCIe slots (2,3,5,6) are all wired into the PCH (chipset). Only E6 is shared (with the M2_2 slot).

Therefore, with the iGPU, you should be able to run 5 cards on the board, just not one in slot 4 (and assuming you have nothing in M2_2).

I have the 3600, not the 3600x. Will that make a difference? I guess I will find out as I'm installing this CPU now and will follow your suggestions. If I can get five cards going I'll consider it a win It's just frustrating when I seen a post on Reddit two years ago about somebody using the same motherboard with a 3600 and getting six GPU's working, with some difficulty but he did get it to work. Thank you so much for the in-depth explanation, it really made me understand. I can tell you have some experience!

 

[Schro]

I have the 3600, not the 3600x. Will that make a difference? I guess I will find out as I'm installing this CPU now and will follow your suggestions. If I can get five cards going I'll consider it a win It's just frustrating when I seen a post on Reddit two years ago about somebody using the same motherboard with a 3600 and getting six GPU's working, with some difficulty but he did get it to work. Thank you so much for the in-depth explanation, it really made me understand. I can tell you have some experience!

Per the manual, no difference between the 3600x and 3600. Therefore 6 cards should work.

 

[Frenchy19951]

Per the manual, no difference between the 3600x and 3600. Therefore 6 cards should work.

Sounds great! Due to my disability I have to get my caregiver to build the rig so I am just waiting on him to finish so I can test it. I will install one card at a time following your suggestions. Any bios settings except 4G decoding, turning off integrated graphics, setting speeds to gen 1? Or any other suggestions. In any case I will let you know my luck.

 

[Frenchy19951]

Per the manual, no difference between the 3600x and 3600. Therefore 6 cards should work.

So you are absolutely right.After I installed the 3600, all five graphics cards are showing! 4 Nvidia and 1 Radeon. I was getting an issue at first getting the fifth card working. I have a 1000 W Corsair RMX Series RM1000Xpower supply a only having four VGA cables and I had used an extra one I had but from a different brand-name and it had worked with the old APU but Not with the new CPU. I read somewhere not to mix brand names with power supply cables and luckily I had another power supply of the same brand and model, used that and it worked! I Am Currently Mining!

This Is the Only Issue Still. I Am Unable to See the Options for Bios Once I Start up the Rig. I Only Get Video Output on the Login Screen For Windows. Only Started after Adding the Fifth Card. All My Bios Settings Are Currently Set for Mining so There Is No Issues There but I Would like to Be Able to See the Bios Screen. Even When I Load into the Bios Screen by Tapping F11, I Can Tell That It Goes into the Bios but I Do Not See Anything on My Screen. I Did Try Switching HDMI Screens and That Had Helped Once (Because of My Disability I Use 65 Inch Screen TVs to Get a Good View from My Bed, Sometimes My Smart TV Has Issues but My Old HD Samsung Doesn't Sometimes but in This Case They Both Will Not Let Me See Bios. Any Suggestions?

Thank You to Everybody Who Helped Me! You Guys Are the Best!
P.S.So will I be able to run six cards or no? I do have a NVM E In the M.2_1 but I thought from the manual it said that as long it's under the_1 slot that the lanes were not affected? In any case it's not a big deal to replace it with the regular SSD, I'm just wondering if I should be able to get six cards running as it set up now?

 

[alyen]

I have this link bookmark for MSI B450 motherboard, but maybe perhaps this may be similar to your motherboard.



You should try without M.2 drive to see if you can get into bios with the 6 GPUs.

 

[motqalden]

Some motherboard seem to have issues loading display till boot if you enable 4G decoding. Could also be you dont have the display cable pluged into what the system thinks is the primary gpu. I have the 4g decoding issue with one of my board and i need to reset cmos if i want to get into bios

 

[Frenchy19951]

Sorry it's been a while since I've come back to this thread. But my issue is fixed and I have 8 GPU's working, even going to attempt 9 GPU's as my power supply has nine GPU connections, and I still got about 400 W left with eight of them connected so should be all good. Here's a couple things of what I had to do but everything is now working.

1. Switched my bios from CSM, to UEFI
2. I switched secure boot off
3. Install hiveOS instead of Windows
4. Selected hiveOS as main bootable drive
5. On my motherboard, MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max, I have a single riser in the slot 2, 3, 5 and 6 while a 1 – 4 riser splitter in slot 1 with 4 GPU's connected into it.

As long as the installation process of hiveOS is followed properly with the UEFI version of the bios. If it's CSM and you're trying to do hiveOSit's completely different installation process and from what I could read not recommended. I install hive directly onto a SSD with GPT partition instead of flashing on by USB Drive.
Hope this hopes this will be my last post as my questions of been answered. A big thanks to everybody in here!