Comino Crypto Mining Rigs: Liquid-Cooled 16 GPUs in a 4U Server
by Anton Shilov on June 27, 2018 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mining
- Asus
- NVIDIA
- Liquid Cooling
- GP106
- Computex 2018
- Comino
- Object N1
Cryptocurrency mining has made quite a dent in the hardware industry in the last couple of years. Motherboard manufacturers have built special platforms for mining rigs, video card vendors have put together specially-designed "mining edition" video cards, and even chassis & PSUs vendors have gotten into the game with mining-focused designs. Obviously, not everyone wants to build mining rigs themselves, hence there is a meaningful market for companies who offer turnkey mining solutions. One of such companies is Comino, a multi-national firm registered in Cyprus with offices in China, Latvia, and Russia, which produces liquid-cooled turnkey mining rigs that look to be quite unique.
The company brought two of its key products to Computex — the Comino Object N1 designed for homes and offices, and 4U systems aimed at large cryptomining farms and offered for remote rent by Comino itself. Both types of machines use the company’s own liquid-cooled solutions and run proprietary software to ensure stable operation, predictable power consumption, and a guaranteed hash rate.
The Comino Object N1 is a factory-built system that looks like a regular desktop (taking some pages from the Voodoo Omen), yet packs eight NVIDIA GP106-based graphics cards from GIGABYTE. The mining rig is a completely sealed solution that only needs to be plugged to a power outlet and connected to the Internet. The Object N1 does not need to be set up, as all the management can be done using a special program for smartphones. Similarly, since Comino is focusing on a low-impact/low-hassle design, the Object N1 is also designed to be rather quiet despite the TDP, with the idea being that it can run 24/7 without disturbing anyone around (pictures over at Comino’s web site depict cats sitting on a working N1 machine). It is noteworthy that while the Object N1 uses a proprietary cooling system and software, it is actually based on off-the-shelf components, which is understandable as this was the first product by Comino and the company did not have access to custom hardware last year.
Meanwhile the 4U machine from Comino is a completely different thing aimed at large mining farms. Each 4U system is based on a custom ASUS motherboard, custom PCIe risers and packs 16 of the earlier mentioned GP106 GIGABYTE cards. One of the key features of this rig is Comino’s liquid cooling system comprising of proprietary water blocks, an external heat exchanger, and special tubing that allows technicians to remove just one 4U system from a rack without leaks if a GPU fails. Each water block can take away up to 450 W of heat, meaning that one block can handle two 220 W GPUs. Right now the GP106 GPUs that Comino uses dissipate up to 120 W, but if it manages to obtain more powerful GPUs, it will be able to install them without changing the cooling setup.
The 4U systems from Comino will be available for purchase by owners of large mining farms. Meanwhile, the company is also operating a cloud hosting program that rents out time on these servers to everyone interested in mining. For example, a 40 MH/s system costs €644 a year. For customers willing to take financial risks and unwilling to invest in hardware, Comino’s cloud mining program offers a potential alternative.
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59 Comments
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FunBunny2 - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
"favour those who got in early. "last time I looked, that was a pyramid scheme. great way to run a global economy, dontcha think?
bigboxes - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
It's a tremendous waste of resources.PeachNCream - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
My cat sleeps on the dryer when it runs. Since its rather noisy, I'm not sure how trustworthy cats are when it comes to sound measurements. Still, its interesting to see more turnkey mining solutions. This would be for non-Bitcoin right since its GPU-based?smilingcrow - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
One cat video is worth in real terms more than the whole of the Crypto currency shenanigans.Notmyusualid - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
@ smilingcrow - you are not even fooling yourself.Cars, property, everything really, is being traded in crypto currency. And I think you know this.
smilingcrow - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
I am aware of that and I am saying they are all worthless.If you look at the larger arc of the evolution of consciousness you will see that all these things are mere baubles and trinkets that engage the attention of young children.
PeachNCream - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
I'm not the right person to engage in debates about crypto currencies. Take it back up to the posts above mine to argue about it with them because I don't care about politics, fiat versus crypto, or any other aspect of that pointless debate. Thanks!voicequal - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
Correct - Bitcoin would require an ASIC miner to be competitive. GPU mining is in a somewhat precarious state as ASICs are produced for more algorithms. Ethereum is propping up GPUs at the moment, but their roadmap calls for a transition to proof-of-stake, eliminating the need for proof-of-work miners. This may still be a year or more away.UnNameless - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
ETH has been migrating to PoS for some time now. Soon ™ !PeachNCream - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
Thanks, that's what I'd been hearing so confirmation is good. I've been sort of curious about dabbling with mining something, not to attempt to get rich off it, but just to explore the technical aspects a little bit.