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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FunBunny2 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
at least central banks, when they behave as authorized, create their fake currencies to benefit the population at large. and doing so doesn't divert gigawatts of electricity.smilingcrow - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
How naive you are. They are controlled ultimately by their political masters who are controlled by their sponsors who have their own agendas which aren't aligned to those of the common folk.I am not talking about grand conspiracies but the multitude of everyday small conspiracies whereby power exerts itself in a myriad of ways.
R0H1T - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
And you think crypto isn't manipulated by the same (set of) people? The ones making billions from crypto are some benevolent lot who'll rid the world of US dollars or fiat money? Must be nice living in an alternate reality!UnNameless - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
This is a valid question, however to manipulate a significant amount of say crypto "X" you'd have to own/buy that amount, empowering that crypto at first, while with FIAT you simply print money, as much as you like.Also price manipulation is completely different than currency manipulation. For example, say Mr. Filthyrich can manipulate the price of say BTC, by investing billions and billions of dollars into it, but even so it can't decide the path for the BTC, meaning it can't change the release curve, can't put a dent in the inflation curve, can't modify the algorithms behind it and can't change the blockchain (to a certain extent). Meanwhile, with FIAT, said person can have a much deeper impact in the currency, not only in the price.
smilingcrow - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
1. No.2. It is.
boozed - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Indeed. Fraudcoins are thinly traded on unregulated exchanges. It would be an entirely new level of naïveté to believe that they're not manipulated up the wazoo.boozed - Saturday, June 30, 2018 - link
Although it also seems silly to pretend that they're manipulated by "the same set of people".They're manipulated by whales, miners and the exchanges themselves (e.g. to blow out highly leveraged shorts and longs, among other practices such as painting the tape, front-running etc.) Highly illegal of course but that's your reward for gambling in the financial equivalent of the wild west.
FunBunny2 - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
"How naive you are. "perhaps, but your ignorant. the Great Recession was caused by those "sponsors" during a Republican controlled DC. those same "political masters", at the direction of the "sponsors" blocked meaningful fiscal policy by Obambi. it was left to the Fed to try something to reverse the collapse. it did so. you'd best thank the Fed for what economy is left.
UnNameless - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
You are delusional if you think that central banks create the currency for the benefit of the population at large! That or you have no solid background economic education, and have no clue what an inflationistic debt based economy is.FunBunny2 - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
"You are delusional if you think that central banks create the currency for the benefit of the population at large! "I have an earned MA in econ. not that you'd care. the fact is that the 19th century, the Gold Bug's Wet Dream Century, was unremittingly awful for all but the .1%. since WWII, the US Buck has been the New Gold, aka the Global Reserve Currency. without an expanding store of US Bucks out in the world, the global economy will stagnate. there's a reason we run a trade deficit to the world: the rest of the world needs more reserve currency to forestall global deflation. you can thank Bretton-Woods for giving the US control of world reserve currency, and the primacy of the US Buck. that also means responsibility. you want the world's economy controlled by Australia?? here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/248991/world-m...