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So i am buying this for 260 euros from a guy. It has 3 years warranty. I think it is quite good. it costs 490 at stores.

I ll also buy the triple fan cooler Accelero Xtreme 5970 for 30 euros. Is it adequate or i need something better?

Now, i dont know what mobo,ram and cpu to buy. Do i need something good? Do you have something to propose? i also have in mind to add another 5970 in future maybe...How is this done?

Anything else about hardware?


Now about mining, i suppose it will get about 700Mh/s .My electricity costs at most 0.13$/KWh but actually half of it will be about 0.10$/KWh. Do you think it worths? At this price i believe i ll be even in 6-7 months.


Anything else? Any guide? Pool? Whatever you would like to add :)

bumping since i change it a bit

About the 5970s, I've heard that they run very warm and that the vrms get very hot. They are a 300w card so plan for that. People usually go with the cheapest mobo and cpus they can find. Plus a single stick of ram. Amd catalyst drivers limit you to a max of 4 gpus under windows (2 5970s) and 8 under linux (4 5970s). Be careful when applying thermal paste on the if you are planning on replacing the cooler, I'm not knowledgable in this area so someone should be able to elaborate.



For 700 mhash/s (without factoring in electircity):
btc -> usd: 6.10
difficulty: 1307728.3606041

              btc         usd
day:       .538        $3.28
week:     3.769      $22.98
month:   16.387     $99.94

Thank you very much for your answer! I now understand that you need to pay the least and use as little as electricity is possible.

But I have seen it is 300-350 watt and i have a question. Is this figure misured at the gpu only or generally the power that the PSU will actually use? If you know what i mean. Because PSUs have about 70% efficiency i think and this isnt good.

MB - Get the MSI 890FXA-GD70 MB.  It will allow you to expand to 3x5970 w/o expanders.  Take a look at the board photo until you figure out why.  A board config like that is rare.
CPU - Cheapest sempron (no need for aftermarket cooler) watch out if someone is selling OEM model it has no heatsink.
RAM  -2 GB DDR3 is fine (you likely can get away w/ 1 GB but RAM is cheap grab 2GB).
HDD - None.  Use a 4GB USB drive and LinuxCoin, Ubuntu, or BAMT distro.
PSU - 800 or 1200W 80-Plus Gold (depends on if you want to be able to expand to 2 or 3 cards).  

About power:
Power draw is closer to 230W - 250W per card once you downclock the memory to 150 or 300 Mhz (which you will be wasted electricity is less profits).  You likely don't need an aftermarket cooler (waste of money) if it is reference design (squirrel cage at the end) and you are using open rig.  All my rigs are 3x5970 and they pull 870W at the wall.  Backing out PSU inefficiency that is ~800W DC for 3x5970 plus sempron & MB.  PSU is where you spend your money.  800W is minimum for 2x5970.  1200W is minimum for 3x5970.  Don't even think of anything less than 80Plus-Gold.  Junk PSU = 70% efficient.  80Plus-Gold = ~90% efficient at 75% load (800W DC load on 1200W PSU).

#1 noob mistake is buying shit you don't need and then cutting corners on PSU.  A mining rig lives and dies by good, clean, EFFICIENT power.

If you get all that you can expand to a 2nd and eventually 3rd 5970 (w/ 1200W PSU) using your earned coins.
You should get 730 to 760 MH/s per card.  Nice choice the 5970 is the a mining monster.

Power use should be measured at the wall for the whole rig. Buy a Kill-A-Watt (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001). They also come in EU plug configurations, assuming you're in Europe since you spent Euros

From what I've seen, those are good power cost for Europe. Estimating a break even at 6-7 months is kind of shooting blindly; It depends, there are too many variables. Use a pool with 0% fee.

DeathAndTaxes setup, or similar, is what you're going to want.

Wow! Really thanks for the answers! This is really really helpful :)

Now, what will make me mine it or not is the power consumption of the rig. According to what you say i should expect to draw about 300 watt total. And not 500+ . Which seems good :) I am starting with just one card, and i ll try to buy 1 more soon. 3d looks difficult for now...

Thank you very much again :)

Make sure you turn everything you don't need off in the MB BIOS.  Onboard sound, extra ethernet controllers, usb3.0 ports, IDE controller, SATA, firewire, etc.  All you need is USB2 ports turned on and that is it.  

* not using windows - saves wattage
* using USB drive instead of HDD - saves wattage
* not running junk you don't need in MB - saves wattage
* keeping fans to a minimum (I run 2x120mm) - saves wattage
* downclocking the memory low - saves wattage

Every little bit helps.

With only 1 card is might be a little higher than 300W, maybe 350W tops.   The only unknown is how much of the 870W is the system (non-GPU) idle.

Say non-GPU system wattage is 70 (a guess).  Then 870 - 70 = 800.  800/3 = ~265W per card.  So a single card rig would be 265+70= 335W.

Whatever the system non-GPU load is, obviously spreading over 3 cards is more efficient than spread over 1 card so your eventual goal would be multiple cards for max efficiency.

Hmmm. So going for 3 cards in the end should be my target. Now about the MB it costs 150 euros here which seems a bit expensive but i assume you mean the spacing is very good for temperatures?

Yes i ll go for Ubuntu and i will close unnecessary things :)

Now for the PSU. I understand about the efficiency of course, but dammit gold is double+ the price!

Anyway, i ll grab the vga tomorrow and start searching for the rest :) thank you

IMO this bullet is questionable! Especially if using Windows 7, and restricting the AMD CPU to run at 800MHz.

It is correct, windows always has all sorts of background services munching away at CPU time unnecessarily, especially with all the useless graphics shit. Linux is a bit more efficient due to simplicity and no GUI etc.

Not just good but required.

The 3 slot spacing allows a 2 slot card and then a blank slot.  No other way to get 3 dual slot cards on a single MB without extenders.
Slots 1, Slot 4, Slot 7 are the slots you will use.


Well that is why we saved money by not buying lots of RAM, GPU coolers, high end CPU, HDD, etc.  :) Long run efficiency matters.  If you have to look for a 80-Plus Bronze or Silver unit but you want your electrical costs as low as possible to be competitive. 

As I said if, the AMD CPU is restricted to 800MHz, which happens to be the lowest p-state for the 45nm AMD K10 CPUs, the mining rig should consume almost the same power, with either Windows or Linux. I am assuming that one would be using a fresh install devoid of any cpu hogs, with relevant drivers loaded.
I am saying this because I have measured the power usage (VA) on the wall and it was within a margin of 5% between the two OSs.
I am not bashing or promoting any operating system here, just trying to put out my observations.
My gaming rig is also one of my two mining rigs, and I am speaking from my experiences on this rig.  

Alright. So 265 for the VGA.
Just found new unused from store the MSI MB for 99 euros. I think its good. Yesterday i needed 130+ for the same.
I think i ll put an Athlon x2 3200 i found for 20 euros. Some one will give me a Ram hopefully :P

So its the PSU now. A guy wants to sell a Corsair AX1200 for about 170 euros. Which i believe it is good again. And i will be at 90+% efficiency :)


btw, i have a 2.5inch hhd disk. It draws about 5W which i believe in 4 months is about 1.3 euros total in electricity. But i think i will add it since i want to use pyrit for cracking passwords...


So  a total of 600 euros. Will i ever break even :P Thanks  for all the help! I hope it works out finally....

AX1200 is a monster PSU.  Solid choice.  If you are getting it for a good deal even better.


With only 1 GPU it will be tough but you are "upgrade ready" with that config.

Granted difficulty and price can (and likely will) change but:
1 5970 = ~ 750 MH/s
@ current difficulty (and $6 per BTC) you are looking @ $106 gross per month.
Power @ 350W and $0.113 per kWh = -$28 per month
Net is $78 per month.
$790 system / $78 ~= 10 month break even.  Ouch.

2x 5970 = ~ 1.5GH/s  (say for $350 extra)
@ current difficulty (and $6 per BTC) you are looking @ $212 gross per month.
Power @ 610W and $0.113 per kWh = -$49 per month
Net is $163 per month.
$1,140 system / $163 = 7 month break even.  Getting better.

3x 5970 = ~ 2.25GH/s  (say for $700 extra)
@ current difficulty (and $6 per BTC) you are looking @ $318 gross per month.
Power @ 610W and $0.113 per kWh = -$70 per month
Net is $248 per month.
$1,390 system / $163 = 6 month break even.  Nice.

4x 5970 = ~3.0 GH/s  (say for $1110 extra including extenders and custom built rig)
@ current difficulty (and $6 per BTC) you are looking @ $424 gross per month.
Power @ 1130W and $0.113 per kWh = -$92 per month
Net is $386 per month.
$1,900 system / $386 = 5 month break even.  Sweet.

Don't take the # as gospel.  The larger point is more hashing power per rig improves efficiency (both MH/$ and MH/W).

The key thing now is too get more GPU power as cheap as possible.  So keep your eye out.  Only buy when you find a good price.  Save your mining rewards to pay for that 2nd, 3rd, 4th GPU.

Thank you very very much for all the writing!

Well i am already starting to look out for the second card :)  Probably i start mining in a day or two :) I only need the cpu actually now....

Although i know i have tire you i cant but ask about which miner you believe is better right now and pool?


P.S. generally i believe it to be a fail-safe investment. I mean, theoretically whatever happens i will take my money back in a year and i will have bought a very descent pc.

Now even if for some reason bitcoin isnt used anymore i still can sell the pc at 2/3 the price.

So whatever happens i cant lose money. And after all i really really like the whole idea of the bitcoin :)

A 2 x 5970 rig is a very respectable rig :)

Be sure to join P2Pool or basically any other pool rather than Deepbit! Honestly, I would go solo with that.

I use cgminer mine at Bitminter pool.

I would recommend you support a smaller pool or use p2pool.  Support keeping Bitcoin network decentralized.

That's what I want to build right now. I undervolt my card to 887mv 605/200MHz, which gives me 554 MH/s and saves about 115W versus running at 1050mv 825/200.  So is it reasonable to expect similar power savings on a undervolted quad-5970 system to be around 4x115W?  If so, a quick calc shows 1130W-460W=670W @ 2.2 GH/s, or 3.28 MH/J!  That is pretty nuts.

When you guys are done, difficulty will go up massively... You have to factor that for your break even dates ;)

If the observed power is accurate then yes.  I wouldn't see why power savings would be anything other than linear.  This is one reason why I like 5970 so much.  As the network gets more efficient undervolted 5970s will still be able to compete for some time. 

I mean @ 3.5 MH/J current difficulty and $0.10 per kWh.

kWh per Block = (2^32 * 1,307,826.36) / (3.5 / 1000^2 / 60 / 60 / 1000)  ~= 446 kWh
kWh per BTC = 446 / 50 ~=8.9 kWh
USD per BTC = 8.9 * 0.10 = $0.89

following...

So i tested the items today. I used windows for now since i want to see some things on windows first and i am not the best on linux. But i will transition soon to linux.

Anyway, for some reason i can make it see only the 1 core. Not both...in device manager it shows both but one has problem symbol...

anyway i will figure out this one...

btw what about the core temperatures before the downclocking? Where should i be afraid?

If you one see one core with a 5970, turn off crossfire. Just a guess though.

That is not a good sign.  Is this a clean install of windows.  Sometimes windows "chokes" when installing new GPU to an existing system.

Normally I don't installed Catalyst Control Center but it is useful for troubleshooting.

1) Do both GPUs show up in Catalyst Control Center?2
2) Donwload GPU-Z and check that both GPU are listed there.
3) run latest version of cgminer w/ -n option "cgminer -n". post results.

As long as second GPU is showing up as error in device manager it likely isn't going to work.  Worst case scenario is that the second gpu is dead (don't freak out yet that is worst case scenario). 





Don't worry about getting max performance yet.  Just try getting both GPU working at stock first.  Then use cgminer to lower memclock to 300 and set fan at a constant 70% (85% if it will be out of earshot).  Let it run 24 hours at stock/300 w/ 70% to 85% fan.  If it is stable THEN start playing with clocks, and settings.

I try to keep my GPU under 80C.  Some run them hotter or colder.

No i cant make it to work. It only show one GPU. Btw i put a simple dummy plug ofc.

I believe it has to do with motherboard bios and if i upgrade it i will be fine...I ll try this today and see...

Although i run the one core for some hours and it reached 76.5oC . But fan's speed was low all the time and it was reaching 380Mh/s some times...

btw, i was thinking that with all those FPGAs out there, is it cost effective to mine with VGA cards ? hmmm

No dummy plugs are required for current drivers.  Haven't been for some time, v11.6? on windows.

If you do a clean install and it still it showing 1 invalid GPU in the device manager it likely is a dead GPU.

correct me if i am wrong, but if i had a dead gpu, shouldnt the monitor work on both outs?if you know what i mean.

All outputs can be driven by either GPU.  It isn't 1 GPU = 1 monitor.  When using multiple GPUs (and to the OS the 5970 is simply 2 video cards).  One GPU becomes the master and handles output, all the other GPU become the slave.

So no having all outputs work is no indication the second GPU is dead.  The way the 5970 is constructed it is possible to have one GPU die and the other one function perfectly in every test.

FPGA still have a high capital cost.

Take Icarus board.  360 MH for $570.  That is ~$1.6 per MH/s.

A 4x5970 rig can get 3000 MH so having equivalent hashing power using an FPGA would cost $4800 plus say $200 for power, host PC, usb hubs, and cables.

The non-GPU portion of rig (RAM, CPU, MB, PSU, USB stick, Linux) can be had for ~$400.  @ $400 ea a 4x5970 system would cost ~$2000,  @$350 ea a 4x5970 system would cost $1800,

FPGA (3GH/s) - $5000
4x5970 (@$400 ea) - $2000
4x5970 (@$350 ea) - $1800
4x5970 (@$300 ea) - $1600

Granted FPGA will use about 1/10th the power but depending on one's electrical cost it will take a long time to make up that difference.  That being said FPGA will only get more powerful, more efficient, and cheaper.  They will eventually replace GPU rigs but not today.

ok so catalyst control center is called engine control center now,right?

now this isnt very good i think, or it could be the driver?
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/24/newbitmapimagesgz.png/

i am quite freaking now. also i would like to note that at device manager it shows 2 cards, but one has a explanation mark and it says :

Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

And i wonder, can this be a driver error? maybe problem cause i have win 7 32bit?

P.S. i am starting thinking to sell everything and minimize my losses! :P

also thanks for the info about FPGAs :)

It could be drivers but the 2nd GPU is likely dead.  Do a clean install of Windows on a clean partition if the 2nd GPU shows up w/ exclamation point it is dead.

At that point you are looking at getting a refund from your "friend" or an RMA.

according to this it must be bios and if i update it should work. i am doing this and then a clean install. if not i'll go get a gun first :)

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/286381-13-890fxa-gd70-compatibility-issue-video-card-5970-help