Abstract: Observational data, such as the spin frequency distribution of low-mass X-ray binaries, suggests that accreting neutron stars are sources of gravitational waves. One possible mechanism to create a time-dependent quadrupole moment are magnetic mountains, created where the accumulated accreted matter is confined to the poles by the magnetic tension of the stellar field. We have selfconsistently modeled such mountains by solving the ideal magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) equations for the equilibrium configuration and subsequently performing threedimensional MHD simulations with ZEUS-MP to examine the dynamics and assess the stability. We show that the axisymmetric solution is unstable to toroidal modes, but that the instability saturates after ~10 Alfven times in such a way that the field assumes a nearly axisymmetric configuration which still exhibits a considerable quadrupole moment. We present new results on the effect of Ohmic dissipation (non-ideal MHD). We compute the frequency spectrum of the resulting gravitational waves as well as the prospect of their detection with the new generation of long baseline interferometers.