Motherboard BIOS Settings For GPU Mining Rig

In this tutorial we are going to run through your BIOS settings and everything you need to know when it comes to your BIOS.

Setting up the proper settings for your bios is an important part of building your mining rig. Most of the time if you have a mining dedicated motherboard so you don't have to change any settings are automatically pre-set for you but for some motherboards, you'll have to set up your BIOS settings and troubleshoot from there.

 If you're running into any issues that can lead to your mining rig not running properly or some GPU’s are not showing up on your mining software, hopefully this guide should help you resolve any problems you are experiencing. 

The first thing to note, is all BIOS are not the same so you might have different settings you might have different wording for your settings but ultimately the options will be similar so if you don't have the same wording, just try to look for something similar or consult your motherboard manual.

CMOS Reset

 If you've accidentally saved the wrong setting on your BIOS and then you can't boot anymore, you can always do a CMOS reset. Resetting your BIOS to default settings is something really good to know  because it's usually the fix for a lot of problems if your motherboard is just not posting at all and  you're not getting any display and it's not a CPU compatibility issues or any hardware issues then  a CMOS reset will most likely help you out to do a CMOS reset it's very simple all you need to do is  you want to unplug your power supply from the wall make sure there is no power coming to your rig at all and then from there you just want to take out that little battery on your motherboard.

 

There is a little trigger next to it where you push it in, then the battery will just pop out and after the battery pops out just put it to the side for now, hold the power button while the rig is off for 30 to 60 seconds.

After that you can go ahead and put the battery back in and then you can plug in your power supply back into the wall now after resetting the memory for your bios settings on the motherboard.

Some motherboards have a CMOS reset button on the board, if you motherboard has this feature disregard the need to hold the power button, remove the batter as mentioned above, hold the reset butting (see manual for time required) then replace the battery into the motherboard.

Essential settings

Ensure you have the essential settings set up correctly. It is important to make sure you have them set properly to benefit your set up an optimise the motherboard for your GPU mining rig.

You might have a fully different layout for your menu but don't worry it should be the same concept now to get into your BIOS you want to figure out what's your bios hotkey you can find that in your motherboard's manual or you can just look up your motherboard's name and then hotkey for BIOS.

Usually it's the delete or escape key all you have to do is the moment you turn on your rig start spamming your delete key just keep hitting on it until you see that menu pop up and then once that menu pops up you're good to go, there is also another menu called the boot menu and if you get that boot menu instead of the BIOS menu you might find an option there that says enter setup so just navigate to the enter setup.

The first settings to look for is the PCI-e Gen speed as well as the mining mode for your motherboard. To find them, try the pcie subsystem settings.

 

Open up the PCI-e subsystem settings you can see the PCI-e graphics card max link speed, this is where you select the gen speed for your graphic cards to be running on. Generally, it's usually on auto but if you're planning on running more than two graphic cards, we recommend setting it on Gen 2 and that should work most of the time and if you still have troubles if you're trying to run for example 13 cards you can try to set it on Gen 1. 

The reason for the settings is because your graphic cards don't need to run on the full Gen speed, they can run on a lower generation and they'll be completely fine for mining now.

We are not sure if it will affect your gaming performance, but you can try it and then change it whenever you want. Some motherboards have more than one place where you’ll have to set them to Gen 2. You might have more than two places but just look around for any places that have auto and Gen 1 and Gen 2 and 3 and then just change them to Gen 2.

There is also the PCI-e latency timer option, usually you don't have to change that one at all having it as default is fine.

However, in some scenarios if you're having troubles with your GPU's and for example when you're running your mining software as soon as you make the DAG file it starts crashing or acting up then this is one of the settings that you might want to go back to and try to change it.

Ideally you can put it up to 94 or higher and what that setting does, is controls how long each PCI-e device can hold the bus before another one takes over. You don't need to focus on the settings unless you're running into issues. Just leave it as default for now and come back to it if it's the last option you have.

Going past the timing setting, you also have the mining mode or 4g decoding sometimes they are two different options but in the screenshot below they're both together, so mining mode and 4g decoding needs to be on if you're planning on mining with more than just one GPU and even if you're mining with just one GPU just turn them on it won't affect your motherboard or your gaming performance in any way, then you should be good to go. 

 

In some scenarios when you're booting your mining rig and you just see a pitch black screen and you don't even see the BIOS it can sometimes be due to the 4g decoding to being turned off so in that case you want to unplug all your GPU’s except one, then boot into your BIOS turn on 4g decoding or mining mode and then plug in the rest of the GPU’s after you turn your rig off make sure when you're unplugging and plugging off GPU's your rig is completely off.

The final essential setting, this one deals with your display, usually you’ll want your display to come out of your motherboard rather than the GPU's it makes everything a lot easier you can just troubleshoot your GPU's freely and unplug them and plug them back in without having to worry about the display, not every motherboard and CPU has this capability you first need to make sure you have integrated graphics. To check you have, just want to look at your motherboard if you have any display output such as HDMI or DVI, that means you most likely have integrated graphics.

The next step you want to do is find your graphics settings and set that to IDC  which also stands for Integrated Graphics Configuration.

 

PEG stands for PCI-e graphics and that's for the GPU's, it's better to just have that resource come out of your motherboard and CPU rather than from your GPU and it's especially useful when you're trying to BIOS mod. 

Optional Settings

Moving on to the optional settings, the first setting we have in the optional settings is the AC power so what this option if your power goes out very frequently, if  the power goes out your mining rig will turn off , having this option set as on or power on or last state based on what bios you're using what it will do is the moment you get power again the rig will turn automatically saving the need for you to turn it on manually. If you decide to shut down your rig manually it won't turn on right away so you don't need to worry about that. It can be pretty useful if you just want to plug your rig it turns on right away and if you're worried of power loss and just want it to turn back on right away.  

There are multiple options some people decide to adjust. For example, your audio controller on your motherboard, what that does it just turns off the actual physical ports on your motherboard the school of thought is to reduce the power usage but at the end of the day it won't make that much difference. Feel free to turn off anything that's not being used so for example your audio controllers all these additional USB ports and a bunch of these SATA ports. We believe the difference will be so tiny it is not worth the effort so feel free to leave it on it's not a problem at all.

In the optional settings there is also flashing your motherboard's bios and usually you don't have to flash your motherboard's BIOS but if you do have a really outdated motherboard BIOS or did all the troubleshooting steps and you're still having trouble, you can try to resort to flashing your motherboard's bios. Go to your motherboard support page find the latest BIOS put it on your USB stick and then come to the BIOS and then choose the flashing utility if you need more information on that very motherboard has a specific guide to it to do it.

USB Booting Setup

The the final part lets talk about the USB booting settings. These settings are only if you're planning on using a USB stick to boot into, so if you have Hive OS flashed on a USB stick or any other mining operating system then you want to check out this section if not then you can skip the next section.

The first thing you want to look for is the boot mode and in the boot mode you want to make sure you have legacy and UEFI set.

 

Sometimes you'll have a different display for example you might have a completely different option that will say “legacy support” or “CSM” support. You just want to make sure you enable it. In some cases you’ll have an option that says USB boot support, you’ll also want to enable that as well. Then after that you have your boot order priority in your boot order priority. This is the order of drives the motherboard will look for when it's booting, put your first option as a USB stick for Hive OS. Your mining rig will always go to that one first and if it doesn't find it it will go to the second option.

It is useful if you're doing dual booting and you have windows SSD as well as a Hive OS on a USB stick so like that you can tell your rig to boot into which one you want first and then from there you move forward.

We hope you have now a better idea of what to do when you're setting up the bios for mining and what to change, if you have any further questions about this topic feel free to reach out to us and we will only be happy to help.