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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zodiacfml - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
Too bad for this company is crypto is down for months with no signs of recoveryNotmyusualid - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
What, like crypto coins have only been going for the past year you've managed to hear of Ethereum?Oh well, they are down a bit, cheaper hardware for me.
Cry on...
DearEmery - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
40MH/s - $644 dollars for $425 return in a year if Eth freezes at its current price. The cheapest cloud miner I've found in my country and would trust is over $1500 for a full 2 year investment.I have several friends who went for a cheap rig with a 'consider it lost' attitude. This sort of thing does lower the entry point for these types of non-all-ins, and if cryptocurrencies take a year to recover to say 10k, you still make a profit. If the whole thing comes crashing down you're out 644 dollars and not stuck with junk hardware.
But is all this worth being part of a group of people who are standing on the shoulders of toddlers, screaming about how they were told it's going to grow into a giant by John McAfee.
gfkBill - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
US$750 from Euros, so even worse. And given that two 1060's would hit ~44MH/s, you could just roll your own if you've got the free slots, and you own the cards at the end of it.FunBunny2 - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
RE: crypto"When you're buying nonproductive assets [bitcoin], all you're counting on is the next person is going to pay you more because they're even more excited about another next person coming along."
-- Charlie Munger/2018
nerd1 - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
This will make a very nice deep learning server.Arbie - Friday, June 29, 2018 - link
There's pretty good evidence that the crypto spike in the last half of 2017 was manipulated via Tether.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/technology/bitc...
If so, then values seem sure to return to what they were before the pump & dump. Meaning $400 for Bitcoin and $12 for Ethereum. That will be slow since interim buyers will not want to take the losses, but it seems logical. Absent equally good evidence to the contrary, this appears to be a very bad time to buy or hold crypto.
bananaforscale - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Screw that noise. Let GPU mining die a quiet death.dasyrup - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Don't buy anything from Comino. N1 DOA in 11 months. Contacted Comino tech support told them what was going on they responded and said was a loose USB connection. And then total silence. Ive sent them numerous e-mails for help. Warranty is one year. I was just under that as I took delivery of the N1 in early March of '18 DOA Feb 13 2019. Prolly has something to do with that. Worst investment I've ever made by far. If your smart enough in this field, build something yourself for half the cost and if your not that smart like I am and you buy this your out a cool 5k and in my case $5400. Because of the low cost of Ethereum I was out around $400 over the 11 months because of electricity costs.