The Power Consumption of a 6-card Mining Rig using GeForce GTX 750 Ti GPUs

10 Mar
2014

six-gpu-rig-gigabyte-geforce-gtx-750-ti

We have already published some interesting findings about the power usage of the new GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics cards when used for crypto mining and recently we have built a 6-card GTX 750 Ti mining rig. We have taken some time to also measure the power usage of the individual cards as well as the total power usage of the whole system in order to give you some additional details about what you can expect in terms of power consumption from such a mining rig. We have used Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti video cards (N75TOC-2GI) that do have an external onboard PCI-E power connector and we started by measuring the total power that goes to a single video card both trough the PCI-E slot as well as through the external PCI-E power connector with the help of a watt meter that is attached directly to the power lines going to the video card (using a powered extender).

gtx-750-ti-power-usage-pci-e-power

As you can see on the photo the total power used by the video card is about 31W (with the card running at +135 MHz for the GPU and + 610 MHz for the video memory). Note that this power measurement is on the 12V line from the PSU going to the video card, so it does not take into account the power efficiency of the power supply and as a result the total power used by the video card from the mains will be higher by something like 15-20% (depending on the PSU). Note that we have used a powered PCI-E extender with USB 3.0 cable for the data lanes. This extender takes all the power provided to the PCI-E slot of the video card through a 4-pin molex connector and supplies both the 12V and the 3.3V power that the card uses drawing only power from the 12V line (there is a voltage regulator to output 3.3V from the 12V input on the extender’s board). So what the wat tmeter shows is the total power going from the PSU to the video card and in the case of the Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti it was 31W. Again the total power usage from the mains will be higher as this measurement does not take into account the power efficiency when converting 220V/110V to 12V.

gtx-750-ti-power-usage-5-6-cards

So what is the situation with the total power usage per GTX 750 Ti video card from the mains? The easiest way to check that is to measure using a watt meter connected between a power socket and the power supply of the computer the total power consumption of the system with 6 cards and then disconnect one card and to measure again. The difference we got using this method was about 79W, though this is not for the video card only as it also affects a bit the overall power consumption of the whole system. Also note that the measured 374 Watt for the 5-card and 453 Watts with the 6-card setup are with the video cards overclocked to +135 MHz/+610 MHz. The results we’ve got with the cards running at the stock frequency were 367W with 5-cards and 432W with 6 cards or a 65W difference per card (total power used from the mains). This difference of 14 watts between stock and overclocked frequencies brings roughly about 40 KHS more in terms of hashrate for Scrypt mining (per card). Have in mind that our power supply used had an efficiency rating of about 80-85%, so this means that 15-20% of the total power used at the mains is actually wasted in the conversion between 220V/110V and 12V.

Another interesting thing that we have noticed while testing the power usage and overclocking capabilities of the 6-card GeForce GTX 750 Ti mining rig was the total power consumption that we got for the system with the power target limit changed from the standard setting of 38.5W to the 65.5W. The watt meter showed an increase of power from the 453W with the 38.5W power target limit to 556W with the 65.5W power limit – about 100W increase with the same operating frequencies with a slight increase in performance of about 90 KHS total from the 6 cards or roughly a bit over 1W per KHS and in our opinion this is not worth the extra increase in power usage, so raising the power limit may not always be a good idea!






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18 Responses to The Power Consumption of a 6-card Mining Rig using GeForce GTX 750 Ti GPUs

RavenX

March 10th, 2014 at 17:57

Hi,

Are you having some heating issues with the rig?

What is the temperature and fan speed % average in each GPU?

Regards… ;-)

admin

March 10th, 2014 at 18:35

No problem with cooling of these cards due to the lower power usage and pretty good coolers. With fan on auto we get about 55 degrees Celsius and with fans at 100% the temperature hovers in the low 40s Celsius and the noise emitted from the coolers is still very low.

RavenX

March 10th, 2014 at 19:33

Awesome numbers.

These new GTX seems to give some fresh air over GPU mining.

Giorgos

March 11th, 2014 at 12:17

What is the gadget you are using in the first picture, to measure volts and amps?

Miner

March 11th, 2014 at 13:50

All have power from one PSU?

Amrac

March 11th, 2014 at 16:21

Did you try undervolting this cards?

admin

March 11th, 2014 at 18:50

Giorgos, it is a SKYRC Watt Meter.

Miner, all are powered from a single PSU, 750W Thermaltake 80 Plus Bronze, though you could go with a less powerful model as well as you can see from the total power consumption of the system.

Amrac, no unfortunately the cards do not support voltage control – up or down.

Slowdive

March 15th, 2014 at 02:01

Hey great write up guys. Just got a Gainward GTX 750 ti that clocked up to steady 300kh/s with a minimum of fuss. Core Clock 92, Mem Clock 475. Loving it!

I’m thinking about adding some external PCI risers so I can add two more cards to my system but since the Gainwards don’t have an external power connector I’m unsure of whether I have to use powered PCI risers or unpowered. Any advice?

admin

March 15th, 2014 at 12:53

Slowdive, if the video cads do not have external power you should go for powered PCI-E risers. Unpowered x16 to x16 risers might work as well (we’ve had trouble with such), but x1 to x1 or x1 to x16 PCI-E risers must be powered.

Shane

March 26th, 2014 at 07:58

Been trying to spin up a 4 card mining rig my self. Will move up to 5 once I get this running steady. Stuck getting anything after 3 cards to recognize. I have 2 plugged directly into 16x slots on the board and 2 cards on 1x to 16x powered risers.
Should all of these be on risers as opposed to 2 on the board and 2 up on risers?
Any tips or pointers on how you got all 6 of yours to be recognized be windows?

Currently running
Windows 8.1
4 gb ram
100gb ssd
650watt power supply
Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard

admin

March 26th, 2014 at 08:06

Shane, you should check the manual of the motherboard, on some motherboards you cannot use all of the available PCI-E slots if you use dual x16 slots, on others you get some of the x1 slots disabled if you enable some features from the BIOS etc.

Shane

March 26th, 2014 at 16:34

That’s what it looked like it was, looks like this is only going to be a 4 card rig when it is all said and done. One of the 16x slots disabled 2 of the 1x slots.
Thanks for the Help!

NoobMiner

April 1st, 2014 at 21:48

This probably sounds very silly, but what kind of screws did you use to fix your GPUs to the wooden frame? Thanks in advance.

admin

April 1st, 2014 at 22:01

NoobMiner, standard screws for attaching the motherboard or a VGA to the case, though with wood you have many options and it is easy to work with pretty much what you have handy…

NoobMiner

April 1st, 2014 at 22:08

Thanks, admin. I will make my frame out of wood. It’s a very cost-effective solution, and like you say, very easy to work with (and to modify later on). Cheers!

NoobMiner

April 1st, 2014 at 22:10

Do you have any more photos of your GeForce GTX 750 Ti rig? It would be great to see it from a few different angles.

rikki

May 11th, 2014 at 17:17

how do u power all six cards with one rail?

Harake

August 22nd, 2017 at 22:17

To replicate your test we need:

-PCI Express x1-x16 USB 3.0 Extenders
-watt meter, which one you used?

Thanks

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