Former GPU mining rig now running BOINC

Read up on app_config.xml and then adjust it to your needs!

If you can't make sense of the documentation then ask and I or someone else will help you get started.

As a start I use this:

<app_config>
   <app>
      <name>hsgamma_FGRPB1G</name>
         <gpu_versions>
            <gpu_usage>0.33</gpu_usage>
            <cpu_usage>0.2</cpu_usage>
         </gpu_versions>
   </app>
   <app>
      <name>einstein_O1OD1I</name>
         <gpu_versions>
            <gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage>
            <cpu_usage>0.16</cpu_usage>
         </gpu_versions>
    </app>
</app_config>

The CPU should be fine - it's fast enough - but it would be nice to have a couple more cores for 5 (6??) GPUs :-).  The most important thing is not to run any CPU tasks as I would guess that would have a very negative effect on GPU crunch times.  I have a lot of experience with AMD GPUs under Linux and the very low CPU support requirement is very nice to have.  I use some quite old (and slow) CPUs with RX 570 GPUs and the crunch time hardly changes at all compared to a much more modern CPU.  However I've never tried to run more than 2 GPUs in the one host.  That's unknown territory for me :-).

Holmis has pointed you in the correct direction but I think you'd be wise to avoid the new GW GPU app, at least until you get some experience with how the Gamma-ray pulsar app works.  He has shown the file he uses and you will need to make some changes for your situation.  For example, the first block of his file is designed to run 3 concurrent GPU tasks (0.33 gpu_usage) per GPU.  If you tried to use that with 5 GPUs, that would give a total of 15 tasks, each one set to 'reserve' 0.2 CPUs.  So 15 x 0.2 = 3 full CPUs - but you only have 2 - so it can't work properly without being amended for your situation.

It's always best to start conservatively and increase gradually and test each step to make sure you're gaining, not losing.  You should test just one task per GPU.  From his file, remove the 2nd <app> ... </app> block and in the remaining first block, change <gpu_usage> to 1 and <cpu_usage> to 0.16.  I've chosen that 2nd number as a precaution.  You suggested you were going to have 6 GPUs and if you did and if you also tried to run 2 concurrent tasks per GPU at some later stage, then you wouldn't want the total CPU support requirement to exceed 2 cores.  Since 2x6x0.16=1.92, it doesn't exceed 2 cores so BOINC wouldn't prevent you from using 6 GPUs @ 2 tasks per GPU.  I'm certainly NOT suggesting that this will work out to be a viable operating condition, but since it's unknown territory, you won't know until you decide to try it.  Just be assured that the 0.16 setting for cpu_usage will not cause a GPU task to be denied CPU support when you are running fewer GPU tasks.

So if you install the amended version of the file in the Einstein project directory and restart BOINC, that should allow BOINC to run a single GPU task on either 5 or 6 GPUs, whatever you had installed.  I strongly suggest you let it run that way for a day or three until you get comfortable with seeing how each individual GPU performs.  From what is showing currently on the website, everything looks pretty good.  Ignoring the stuff earlier than July 4, you have no errors and only 1 invalid for a total of 167 valid results (when I looked).  An invalid rate of 1% or so is quite normal. Yours (so far) is less than 1% so all is well.

The crunch times for your tasks seem to be around the 720 - 740 secs mark.  If you were running a single RX 580, I would consider that to be just a little slow.  With 3 out of your 5 GPUs actually running, it may well be quite OK.  If you get 5 running, it will probably become a little slower.  There's bound to be some effect from the extra PCIe bandwidth needed to support the extra GPUs.  Please take the time to observe what happens as you run a single task on each installed GPU.  Please report any slowdown you see when you get the extra GPUs working.  Once you get a feel for how well things work and if there are any problems that show up, there will be plenty of time later to try running more than one task per GPU :-).

For your information, I think you are doing a great thing - getting an ex-mining rig to do some useful work for a change :-).  I'm sure many people will be interested in your experiences so please do keep us all informed :-).

The H110 chipset supports only 6 PCIe lanes, while your Pentium G4400 CPU can support a maximum of 16 PCIe lanes, so, yeah, it would seem that the mobo chipset is the limiting factor, right? With a mobo limit of 6 PCIe lanes and 5 lanes taken by the 5 cards running on x1 risers, any card put in the x16 slot would only have the remaining one PCIe lane available to it, which would hobble it's performance. (What I just wrote taps out my really limited understanding of PCIe.)  As I recall, there was another E@H discussion within the past few months where someone said they had good E@H GPU performance with x4 lanes, and passable performance with x2 lanes, but things suffered with x1 lane for a GPU.

In any event, thanks for making me aware of the differences in PCIe support among chipsets. More on those specs here, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/chipsets/view-all.html