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Typical crypto miner setup. I had two 6GPU setups with 1200W PSUs and 6 PCIE slots with PCI extender cables. Its value dropped harder than a cyber truck's after a few months.

The worst thing is dust. They would accumulate so much every week I had to blow the dust off with an air compressor.

Electricity cost was around $4 a day (24 x $0.20~). If online GPU renting is more expensive, maybe the initial cost could be justifiable.




> Typical crypto miner setup.

Except not doing the sketchy x1 pcie lanes. That’s the part that makes nice LLM setups hard


Can you tell me what's sketchy about it? I have not had an issue with any one of the 12 extenders and bandwidth held well without any issues. Please explain if possible if LLM requires a different type of extender.


Eh perhaps poor choice of words.

It works fine for crypto but LLM performance is far more sensitive to bandwidth. You lose a ton of performance if you’ve got PCIe in the loop, never mind one lane pcie. That’s why nvlink is (was) a thing - trying to cut that out entirely.


Got it. I was planning to switch my miners to LLM farm. I will test and see how much of a difference it will make. Thanks.




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