Can't run x6 1060 MSI ARMOR 6GB

snipaaaxd1 · 5 Sep 2017 at 12:42

Hello,

I recently build my first mining rig, with x16 PCIe lanes and all, but only 5 out of 6 card are recognized my the bios and windows.

At first when i booted up the machine for the first time everything was ok....until i open the "Device Manager"and only 3/6 cards ware running fine, the other 3 had error 12 ( not enough recourses)
After some digging i found out that i must change the setting in the bios to GEN1 and TLOD to 3.5gb, and so i did.
The machine booted up normally but this time when i checked the "Device Manager" there was 5 cards running normally no error 12, nothing. But the 6-th card was not recognized, like there was no card installed to the MBO. I checked in the "System Browser" from the BIOS and in the 4-th pci slot it showed nothing like the card does not exist.

Cheklist:
I thought that the card is dead, but when i boot up the machine, the fans on all cards are spinning normally.
Checked the pcie lanes but they are fine too.
Updated BIOS...same thing
re-installed drivers..no luck

I'm running out of ideas.....

If anyone has any idea how to fix this. It would be very appreciated.

Here is the rig:
MBO: Asrock z170 Gaming K6
CPU: Intel Pentium G4500
Ram: x1 4GB DDR4 Kingston 2400mhz
PSU: x2 1200W RAIDMAX RX-1200AE-B
GPU: x6 MSI 1060 6GB Armo

pastymuncher · 5 Sep 2017 at 14:26

Hi and welcome to the forums.

I suspect that is is a pci-e lane issue with the cpu not having enough of them and/or the motherboard disables a slot when a certain combination is used which is common on the mainstream boards. Your motherboards manual should explain about pci-e lane allocation.

We actually have a mining section in the forum and it can be found here.

snipaaaxd1 · 5 Sep 2017 at 15:44

Thank you!
You make a good point. I will check and report in the mining section.

Cheers!

ubersonic · 5 Sep 2017 at 16:29

Assuming you are using risers, unplug the riser for the card that isn't working from the PCI-E slot (with the machine off) and move a different one into that PCI-E slot. If that card works then the issue is with the card or the riser not the PCI-E slot.

From here you can swap a card with the one that's not working to see if it's the card or the riser. If it's the riser then you can swap in a known working USB cable to test that then finally a known working PCI-E/USB connector.

Once everything has been tested something should be apparent as faulty (if not then the board/cpu is unable to operate that many PCI-E lanes/devices at once.

GWANGY · 5 Sep 2017 at 17:16

Why would your normal Bios machine support anything more than 4 GPU's ?? that is the normal max allocation ... I would ask on their forum .
I think you are bloody lucky to get anything over four cards working . What are you mining If I may be so bold as to ask?? DASH or monero? :eek:

u-9600 · 6 Sep 2017 at 16:52

Check for a 4G decoding option in the bios, that needs to be enabled for more than 4 GPUs to be detected.

Edit: Also you might need to set the PCIe mode to Gen 1

ZXSpectrum · 6 Sep 2017 at 17:09

I have had issues in the past trying to run more than 6 GPUs in windows on an 8 GPU system. It seems to have some sort of limit in the amount of GPUs windows can address. Tried all windows versions inc server. Linux seemed to work fine though.

snipaaaxd1 · 7 Sep 2017 at 07:24

ubersonic said:
Assuming you are using risers, unplug the riser for the card that isn't working from the PCI-E slot (with the machine off) and move a different one into that PCI-E slot. If that card works then the issue is with the card or the riser not the PCI-E slot.

From here you can swap a card with the one that's not working to see if it's the card or the riser. If it's the riser then you can swap in a known working USB cable to test that then finally a known working PCI-E/USB connector.

Once everything has been tested something should be apparent as faulty (if not then the board/cpu is unable to operate that many PCI-E lanes/devices at once.

Tried that and the result is the same. No matter if i connect the gpu directly on the mbo or with a different pci-e connector. The pci/pci-e shows nothing https://imgur.com/a/xYBB8

snipaaaxd1 · 7 Sep 2017 at 07:27

u-9600 said:
Check for a 4G decoding option in the bios, that needs to be enabled for more than 4 GPUs to be detected.

Edit: Also you might need to set the PCIe mode to Gen 1

Sadly my MBO don't have the 4G decoding option. All of the cards are set to GEN 1 and 3.5GB.

snipaaaxd1 · 7 Sep 2017 at 07:29

GWANGY said:
Why would your normal Bios machine support anything more than 4 GPU's ?? that is the normal max allocation ... I would ask on their forum .
I think you are bloody lucky to get anything over four cards working . What are you mining If I may be so bold as to ask?? DASH or monero?

ty

I'm mining ETH at the moment at 20Mh/s per card with a small OC

snipaaaxd1 · 7 Sep 2017 at 07:39

ZXSpectrum said:
I have had issues in the past trying to run more than 6 GPUs in windows on an 8 GPU system. It seems to have some sort of limit in the amount of GPUs windows can address. Tried all windows versions inc server. Linux seemed to work fine though.

Probably is from the windows, when i set the bios settings to default all of the cards are detected but 3 of them are unusable ( Error 12 ), maybe there is some way of tweaking the OS to allocate all of the cards.