Old Motherboard New GPU (Litecoin Mining Rig)

[rhombus_77]

I am building a litecoin mining rig. I prefer to use old parts I have laying around, but am running into problems. I have a Foxconn DG33M03 motherboard which is OEM for a Dell Inspiron 530. The BIOS is Phoenix AwardBIOS 1.0.2 (03/01/2008). I have a Sapphire HD 7790 1GB GDDR5 DUAL-X OC card I am attempting to use. When I start the computer, I get to the splash screen and it freezes (pic).

I have changed the BIOS settings so the the Initial Display First: PCIE. I currently have Xbuntu as the OS. I was reading about inactivating the kernal modesetting of the radeon driver:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=0"

But now the computer crashes before grub (as far as I can tell). Would using a PCI x1 riser for the card solve my problem and would it allow me to use the onboard graphics to set the system up? What can I do to get this running? Is it possible to get it running? Thanks


edit: added tags

 

[Kisianik]

I am not sure I understand what you are doing, but I see that you probably missing something in your hardware - have you upgraded your PSU? Original PSU is 300 watt, without supplemental GPU 6 pin PSU connectors, also your card requires 500 watt PSU.
SO, if you still have original PSU you must upgrade to at least 600 watt (golden rule is about 100 watt above GPU requirement) CORSAIR CX600M is the good choice here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139048

Most likely it is your problem, unless you will say that you have already very good PSU.

 

[rhombus_77]

I guess I should add some info. I swapped out the original PSU for a 850W Corsair 80 PLUS Gold unit. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600.


And to kind of understand what I am doing: mining

 

[Kisianik]

Was your PC working fine prior to 7790 installation?

 

[rhombus_77]

Yes. And it still works if I unplug the power to the card and run the onboard graphics. I noticed the board is powered by 4 pin connector. The card is run by a six pin. Could the card be trying to pull additional power from the board through the PCIe connection? I really don't like giving up, but I am thinking about grabbing a different used mobo off ebay.

 

[Ghoul21]

The card maybe trying to pull up to 70-80 watts of power throught the board, you can upgrade you psu or daisychain one using a add2psu adapter.

http://bitcoinblogging.com