Bitcoin Forum

Hello,
Since there is no "hardware" subforum under the altcoins topics I thought i'd ask this question here. I'm looking to possibly build a scrypt miner, probably for LTC or w/e the highest transfer rate to BTC per day would be (IE Franko or Anon coin etc). However, I've noticed that the power usage cuts down quite a bit on the revenue I would generate.

With that being said, can anyone give me an example build of a PC with graphics cards that would be efficient at mining scrypt coins? And estimate how much wattage it would use total? I've looked at the LTC mining hardware page, but I still don't know the most efficient builds in terms of initial cost, operation cost and hashing power (maybe even throw in some resell value :P  ).


I appreciate any help/advice or any path that people could point me in. Especially if you have an altcoin miner yourself :) I also love photos of the miners if you havent already posted it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.new#new

The term GPU-mining is dead, is just not true. In my case, i`m runnig my rigs at least until summer. If i just break even in power, it`s free heating.

The best card today i guess is the 7950. A 7970 is 10-15% faster, but cost a lot more. I have just 2 rigs going now, one with 4x 7950 at a 1200w psu and 3x 7870 at a 750w psu. I`m also building a rig with 2x watercooled 5970 that i bought second hand.

Some keywords regarding hardware:

- One big rig pay better off that two smaller ones.
- Get a motherboard that can handle a lot of GPU`s.
- Don`t be cheap when buying PSU.
- Buy a cheap and low power CPU.
- Scrypt also use a lot of RAM.
- Do not build a miner in a case, it just gets to damn hot..

And one last thing. Remember AMD will soon release their 9xxx series. So we might see some new scryptmonsters on the marked.
Also a lot of cheap 7xxx series on the second hand marked.

How much and what type of ram would you suggest? How much wattage does your rig pull from the wall? and is the 7950 currently the best $/hashes or $/wattage?

Thanks for your help :)

(Going by eBay pricing)
Of the current gen, the 7950 is easily the best Price/Hash.
Of the current gen, the 7790 and 7990 both have a higher Hash/Watt (but MUCH less Price/Hash, so I wouldn't consider them)

Previous gens have some good stats, but also drawbacks. 5830, 5850, 6850, and 6950 are very cheap and produce decent hashrates, but not very power-efficient and may have compatibility issues with certain drivers.

tl;dr the 7950 is probably the best bet, being most balanced of the lot and should play well with current drivers.

EDIT: For RAM, I've had a couple rigs with 2 GB DDR2 that were fine, but it's generally advised to have 4 GB.

Ok thank you spiral. Would you mind also recommending a motherboard/cpu and PSU for me? I know the electricity cost of these scrypt miners (or GPU mining in general) is very important for efficiency.

Edit: Assuming that I go down the 7950 route, maybe about 4 of them to start, but it'd be nice if the mobo could expand to like 6+ later if I wanted. Also do i need powered PCI-E risers?

Hello there, I need some advice on a scrypt mining rig that i am trying to put together. I am ready to build one and i would like your advice.

So far i have decided to go for

4x GIGABYTE GV-R928XOC-3GD Radeon R9 280X
Antec HCP-1300 Platinum 1300W
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD1 2.5" 64GB

I need to know what i should get for a CPU and Motherboard, as i will need 4x pci express slots. Also Could you recommend what i should do for the housing.