Mining on external graphics card?

Mining
1

I assume this is a dumb question, but if I wanted to try mining for the first time with Grin, running an HP z2 Mini Ubuntu 18.04, could I connect something like this external graphics box and have it work like an integrated card in a desktop? Or would there be a ton more work involved?

Here’s the external card: https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-AORUS-Gaming-Graphic-GV-N1070IXEB-8GD/dp/B073PYMG3G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542046579&sr=8-3&keywords=nvidia+external+graphics+card

Or would I be better off just buying a new desktop? Current machine is i5, 8gb, 1Tb. I know we’re still on testnet, just want to be ready for main.

Thank you for the help!

2 Likes
2

It should work but it increases costs (per card) by a lot. You’d probably be better off buying a desktop computer and putting 2 cards into it.

3

I had some problems with egpu on linux in the past. It might be Arch Linux causing the problem.

4

Could you elaborate why that would increase costs a lot? Do you mean that he will have to invest in something like a case, additional wiring etc.?

5

eGPUs are still quite expensive.

6

You won’t have to buy anything else, but the case is a niche product with a corresponding (high) pricing. In other words, it doesn’t scale beyond a GPU or two. If you don’t want to scale, it shouldn’t be a problem. Go for a quality case with high bandwidth !