Reddit reviews 6-Pack MintCell VER 008S Multi-Power 16x to 1x Powered Riser Adapter Card 60cm USB 3.0 Extension Cable - GPU Riser Adapter - Mining Ethereum ETH Zcash ZEC Monero XMR + 2 MintCell Cable Ties

It's not a very good time to be buying GPU's, the prices are still going down and there are new nvidia's on the horizon, but since you asked...

• Ausu b250 mining expert. $140 No brainer, best mining board out right now.
  
• i3 Processor. $120 I'm a big fan of the g4400 for linux builds, but being able to run windows is required for some coins/cards right now.
  
• 8 gig ram. $80. Split between 2 linux builds use both sticks for windows.
  
• Your favorite PSU. I like the Corsair HXi series. $180. You can use 3 PSU's with the mobo, so expanding is possible, but not optimal obviously.
  
• Risers $100
  
• 13 used GTX750 1Gig. $555.62. Make sure you don't buy the fakeedoos.
  
  That leaves you about $125 for presents for Mrs. Vosk and Tails. You will be running about 3.3-3.5kh/s on cryptonight/V7 @ about 500+watts or about 1ksol/s (I think?) on equihash. About $6 worth of monero/day at this instant.
  
  When the new Nvidia cards come out, ebay the 750's or throw them away as you replace them with 1180's.

>I'm building the kernel with "genkernel all". As far as I know this builds both initramfs and the kernel.

genkernel may provide basic kernel configs and genkernel is a useful tool but not one i regularly or used at all often so as a result i've become accustomed to not requiring linux kernel building software tools and always had good success relying on grub bootloader and linux kernel directory build commands to compile and install kernels.

I've also made a couple gentoo youtube videos in the past year one which displayed me upgrading a kernel on my old 1st gen intel i7 does not use uefi boot.

When i started my almost two decade gentoo adventure genkernel didn't exist so learning "the way linus intended" was the way to build your own adequately functional linux kernel. if i recall correctly genkernel may not yet have existed in more early years of gentoo linux around circa 2003 to 2008 so genkernel has generally provided a secondary benefit by providing the option for using an emergency frustration relief utility just to get a system booted but sometimes using other users provided configs aren't adequate.

I've built and run many gentoo systems not using an initrd or an initramfs but more recently also wanted to learn and attempt using zfs root as well as disk encryption which unless i'm underinformed does require an initramfs. Perhaps someone might be able to teach an old gentoo dog a new trick with how to build an initramfs image to use for grub with zfs boot or luks as well as optionally packaging an initramfs with zfs and luks support into the kernel image?

I've become so accustomed to not using initrd or initramfs my skills using initramfs could use some further practice but doing it right has always been more important than settling for and relying on having a software config tool build an initramfs for me.

Many years ago there was a preferential software usage advancement with linux os booting regarding using initrd boot disk files from what used to be the initrd disk to now being referred to as an initramfs image. The details behind the switch to preferring use of initramfs i'm not entirely clear about however modern linux kernel sources i believe provide a toolset for building initramfs images additional to the kernel binary or by compressing and optionally packaging the initramfs file contents into the kernel image. This can also have some benefits for uefi booting because the uefi bios can directly boot a linux kernel binary by booting an efistub linux kernel without software such as grub intervening. it's remotely possible or plausible that grub could be a contributing problem.

If you have the capability to figure out how to make a linux kernel source directory build toolset build a linux kernel initramfs that includes everything you need to use LUKS and lvm and optionally zfs filesystem support because why wouldn't any linux nerd with some skills want a macbook pro with zfs filesystem support.

Once your able to manipulate and create initramfs images you could also test if direct efistub booting would produce a different diagnostic result and zfs root on a laptop could be pretty nice:)

Also try booting on a spare disk not using luks encryption or lvm and just a bare unencrypted not lvm ext4 partition with minimally adequate uefi boot disk partition config to test if one of the additional "major install design features" is contributing to any anomalous behavior like a black screen at boot.
With uefi boot the minimal adequate disk partition config can be ultimately important to get right.


> If I don't get this running than I will try reinstalling it again, this time with your method for the kernel.

Best thing about gentoo is you never need to reinstall as long as you can access the filesystem contents you installed as you can create your own stage4 install tarballs using a clever and very tested system backup tarball creation script

Installing another gentoo install i do agree however is worthwhile practice. Your ability to mold software to work with hardware can only get better with testing things and sometimes installs do break so occasionally a reinstall can be beneficial or necessary despite your best efforts.

Some hardware can also just be completely unforgiving and uncooperative. That new 8th gen intel asus z370-a pc build i assembled was selected as a repair upgrade for an asus z270-a motherboard i have that wouldnt work with the desired hardware configuration.

Those pc builds entire reason for existing is to run crypto miner software such as ethminer or xmr-stak and have seven graphics cards per pc build connected by pci express graphics card extention cables more or less similar to the typical gpu crypto mining pc build.

This specific z270-a motherboard wouldn't consistently run more than 4 graphics cards with any software configuration running windows or linux. Additionally i think three of the pc's i own with this similar configuration running gentoo consistently spam the kernel syslog with an endless flood of pcieport kernel driver errors and with seven graphics cards connected the z370-a pc build will not boot gentoo using a kernel config i created that also solved a black screen boot problem i was able to replicate with ubuntu sysrescuecd and debian.

The black screen boot was also partially caused by having eight graphics cards active with the primary gpu being the cpu and seven nvidia 1070's running nvidia binary drivers but i figured out how to force the kernel software config i wanted to use to boot and not require any kernel boot arguments which fixed the black screen boot using gentoo but the pcieport kernel errors are so abundant that they overwhelm systemd and the boot process halts while the endless flood of errors continues. If i manage to figure this out it will be a good week.

Getting gentoo working sometimes needs to be approached with small steps with some difficult hardware not hurdles.

Buy newer risers that have multiple power options including molex. Use molex cable plugged into your PSU's PERIF to power some risers. People say 2 risers per molex cable should be safe.

008s are good for regular motherboards. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076KP6FQC/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I109IHYT52W3ZA&colid=2CHXPKAXDY2PJ&psc=0

009s are good for mining motherboards like Asus B250 mining expert and such.
https://www.amazon.com/Graphics-Extension-Powered-Adapter-Capacitors/dp/B077JYBDYT/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1518323525&sr=1-3&keywords=009s+riser

You can use the 007 risers you bought once you've used up the PSU's molex cables.

Thank you.
It seems that Mintcell is also redistributing the same manufacturer type of riser as well but at a well-bloated price.
https://www.amazon.co.jp/6%E3%83%91%E3%83%83%E3%82%AFMintCell-multi-power-Powered%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B6%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A2%E3%83%80%E3%83%97%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8960-3-0%E5%BB%B6%E9%95%B7%E3%82%B1%E3%83%BC%E3%83%96%E3%83%AB-%E2%80%93-GPU%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B6%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A2%E3%83%80%E3%83%97%E3%82%BF-%E2%80%93-Mining%E3%82%A4%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B5%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A0ETH-MintCell%E3%82%B1%E3%83%BC%E3%83%96%E3%83%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4/dp/B076KP6FQC/ref=sr_1_91?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1510441575&sr=1-91&keywords=PCI-E+%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B6%E3%83%BC

I do see a review on the similar ver 008s riser but the review it got from Amazon is awful too. The image posted also see signs of low-quality solders on its board, maybe that's the one you are talking about.

Can a single 6-pin sata output port power a sata riser (straight up sata, no adapter) safely? I know the adapters can be dangerous?
Example of risers:
https://www.amazon.com/MintCell-Multi-Power-Powered-Adapter-Extension/dp/B076KP6FQC/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1509412386&sr=1-2&keywords=VER+008S