Motherboard BIOS Settings For Mining | The Basics - YouTube

hey everyone and welcome back to  another mining chamber video in  

today's video we are going to go over your  bio settings and everything you need to know  

when it comes to your bios so let's go ahead  and get into the video right after the intro

setting up the proper settings for your bios is  an important part of building your mining rig  

now most of the time if you have a mining  dedicated motherboard you don't have to change any  

settings everything is automatically set properly  for you but in some scenarios you'll have to open  

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  gpus not showing up on your mining software  

now the first thing i want to mention is all the  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  

very very similar so if i go over something in  this video and you don't have exactly the same  

words just try to look for something similar  to it and now let's say worst case scenario  

you've accidentally put a wrong settings on  your bios and then you can't post anymore  

you can always do a cmos reset and that's  basically resetting your bios to default  

settings so this 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 and  

then the battery will just pop out and after the  battery pops out just put it to the side for now  

and then you want to hold the power button  while the rig is off for 30 to 60 seconds  

i usually just hold it for 60 seconds to make sure  that it successfully reseted your bios settings  

and then 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 with  having that done it basically reseted the memory  

for your bios settings on the motherboard and  then everything is back to stock so now that's  

enough about the cmos reset now i hope you guys  understand what it is and know when to use it  

now we can go ahead and move on to the settings  so the settings will be in three different parts  

first you have the essential settings these are  the ones that you definitely want to keep an  

eye on and make sure you have them set properly  the second ones will be optional settings that can  

benefit you if you choose to use them and then we  also have the usb booting settings and that's for  

people that want to use a usb for their operating  system whether it's ibos or any other mining  

linux operating system and that section will be  especially helpful if you're also planning on  

running another hard drive with it or an ssd with  a different operating system for example for your  

personal computer so in this video i'm using my  msi z270 gaming m5 motherboard as an example for  

the bios settings now like i mentioned earlier  you might have some different wordings and 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 so in my  case it was the delete key and 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 and then you'll be good to go  

so the first settings i want to look for is the  pcie gen speed as well as the mining mode for my  

motherboard and i was able to find those in  the pcie subsystem settings so after i open  

up my pcie subsystem settings you guys can  see here i have the pcie graphics card max  

link speed so this is where you select the gen  speed for your graphic cards to be running on  

now generally it's usually on auto but if you're  planning on running more than two graphic cards  

i would usually 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.  

now 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 gen and they'll be  completely fine for mining now i'm not sure if it  

will affect your gaming performance but you can  feel free to try it and then change it whenever  

you want so here in this motherboard i have  two places where i 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 pcie latency timer option  

and usually you don't have to change that one at  all having it as default is completely fine but  

in some scenarios if you're having troubles with  your gpus and for example when you're running your  

mining software as soon as you make the dac file  it starts crashing or acting weird 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  just controls how long each pcie device can hold  

the bus before another one takes over so like i  mentioned you don't need to focus on the settings  

unless you're running into issues so just leave it  as default for now and come back to it if it's the  

last option you have and then after that setting  you also have the mining mode or 4g decoding  

sometimes they are two different options but in  this scenario 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 bad way so just have that  setting on and 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 gpus except one  and then boot into your bios turn on 4g decoding  

or mining mode and then plug in the rest of the  gpus after you turn your rig off make sure when  

you're unplugging and plugging off gpus your rig  is completely off and handle everything with care  

now the last essential settings is the one that  deals with your display so usually you want your  

display to come out of your motherboard rather  than the gpus it makes everything a lot easier you  

can just troubleshoot your gpus freely and unplug  them and plug them back in without having to worry  

about the display so not every motherboard and cpu  has this capability you first need to make sure  

you have integrated graphics and to do that you  just want to look at your motherboard if you have  

any display output such as hdmi or dvi then that  means you most likely have integrated graphics  

so the next step you want to do is you want to  go through your bios settings and then you want  

to find your graphics settings and set that to igd  which also stands for integrated graphics now peg  

stands for pcie graphics and that's for the gpus  so 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 and all that stuff as well so now that  wraps it up for the essential settings and now we  

can go ahead and move on to the optional settings  the first setting we have in the optional settings  

is the ac power so what this option does here is  a good example for it let's say you live somewhere  

where the power goes out very frequently so if  the power goes out your mining rig will turn off  

so 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 right on so the moment  

your motherboard gets power who will turn on  without you having to turn it on manually now 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 but this 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 then you  just want it to turn back on right away then this  

is a good option to keep on one of the best tricks  i found with this option was using smart plugs  

especially if you're mining on hive os you can  just have a smart plug connected to the rig and  

then you can turn the rig off and on just through  your phone by turning off the smart plug and then  

turning it back on in a way it will resemble your  electricity turning off and then it's turning back  

on and that can be useful if your rig is stuck  and on hive os it's showing offline then you can  

just try to reboot it that way and then it might  work completely fine so other than the ac power  

there's other multiple options that people decide  to turn off for example your audio controller on  

your motherboard and what that does it just turns  off the actual physical ports on your motherboard  

and i don't know exactly why people do it i think  it's to reduce the power usage but at the end  

of the day it won't take that much you can 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 as well but again i don't think it will make  that much of a difference so you can feel free to  

leave it on it's not a problem at all now 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 you did all  the troubleshooting steps and you're still having  

troubles then you can try to resort to flashing  your motherboard's bios all you need to do is just  

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  

every motherboard has a specific guide to it to do  it on their manual so feel free to check that out  

so now that wraps up the optional settings now we  can talk about the usb booting settings so these  

settings are only if you're planning on using  a usb stick to boot into it 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 of the video if not then you can feel free  to skip to the outro now 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 this differently for  example you might have a completely different  

option that will say legacy support or csm support  and you just want to make sure you enable that  

and in some scenarios you will also have an option  that says usb boot support so you also want to  

enable that as well and then after that you also  have your boot order priority in your boot order  

priority it's basically what your mining rig  will look for when it's booting in so if you  

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 so this is very 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 this topic is heavily  

documented on the internet if you have any further  questions just look up your motherboard's model  

and then the question you have and i'm sure you  will find the answer so now that covers the bias  

settings i hope you guys have now a better idea  of what to do when you're in the bios and what  

to change when you're in there as well so let's  go ahead and wrap up the video the next video  

that will be coming up will be which operating  system should you be using which will be the  

best next step from this video and if you haven't  built your mining rig yet then i highly recommend  

checking out the mining rig build guide which is  the video that came out before this one the link  

for it will be in the descriptions below now that  wraps up the video thank you guys for watching  

this video if you have any questions leave them in  the comments below and i'm curious to know if you  

had any settings that you needed to change to get  your mining grid going please let me know in the  

comments as well i'm sure there's a lot of things  i could have covered but i just didn't come across  

and if you like this video please leave a thumbs  up and if you're not subscribed make sure to  

subscribe this video is focused on the basics as  well as the next one but i will be posting a lot  

more entertaining content very soon so thank you  guys again and i hope you have a wonderful day

you