Bitcoin Forum

Case: Coolermaster HAF-X Gaming Full Tower Case w/ 1x230mm Red LED Fan, 1x200mm Fans, 2xFront USB 3.0 Port
CPU: AMD Athlon™II X2 255 Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
Cooling Fan: Asetek 570LX Liquid Cooling system w/ 240MM Radiator and Dual Fans (Extreme Overclocking Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA)
Motherboard: MSI 890FXA-GD70 AMD 890FX Chipset CrossFireX Support DDR3 Socket AM3 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Audio, eSATA, Dual GbLAN, USB 3.0, SATA-III, RAID, 5 Gen2 PCIe, 1 PCIe X1, & 1 PCI
Memory: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Module (Corsair or Major Brand)
Video Card 1: AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by AMD)
Video Card 2: AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by AMD)
Video Card 3: AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by AMD)
Power Supply Upgrade: 1200 Watts - Corsair Professional Series CMPSU-AX1200 80 Plus Gold Power Supply

Looking to build this mining rig for about $2000 USD. My goal is to use three 6970's at first, with potential to add a fourth one. Does this look like a reasonable setup? Any comments/feedback are appreciated.

Thanks.

P.S.
I realize the CPU liquid cooling is likely unnecessary, but figured I may as well keep the unit as cool/quiet as possible.

Specs look good. If this is a dedicated mining rig you do not need an Athlon X2 or 4G of RAM. You can get away with a Sempron processor and 1-2G of RAM. If it is not a dedicated miner and/or you are planning for other uses or post mining usage then it looks good.  My dedicated linux miner has 2G of RAM but is barely using over 1G, if you are planning to using windows for mining you probably want 2G.

To the guys in mining still profitable thread...
This is why difficulty never will go down...
People love the free money concept too much...
No economic analysis...

Spending 2k on rig that will give you 1.1Ghash...
And people saying it looks good...
This is all crazy talk...
If you pay more than $.75/Mhash today...
You will lose your money like nothing else...

Now, I give you some sound advice...
Take your 2k to Mt.Gox...
Buy 300 BTC and forget about it...
Your rig might make you 80BTC if you lucky...
And save you tons of hassle...

Oh so true. If I had $2000 just laying around I would not be buying video cards, I would buy Bitcoins directly. Much more profitable that way.

I have to say, with the upcoming difficulty jump project to be 350k, I agree.

Estimated   384995 in 911 blks

Yeah, couldn't remember exactly what it was...

Basically though, the last three difficulty jumps have been 45%, 60%, and soon another 65-70%.  I think anyone who buys more hardware right at the moment is pretty stupid, or at the very least, an extreme risk-taker.  I don't see difficulty slowing down any (a recent poll I made suggested that 40-50% of miners are still buying new hardware), so unless the value of BTC gets a magical bump, there's just not going to be any profit in mining in a very short time.

Now, with regards to the OP's rig, he's looking at a net loss of $29 in the first month according to my spreadsheet, with 10% depreciation on hardware, and assuming no rise in the value of BTC.  At 2 months, the loss rises to $183.

Basically, unless you are building this rig to game with, or use in some similar manner, you're better off not building it at all.  At the very least, if you're looking to spend money on a rig,

if you can set it up within 3 days with that config you will get around 3.5 btc daily (for next 10 days, after that less and less with each difficulty increase)

IF you need upgrade - buy whatever you want, if you want a mining rig get cheap mobo, pcie risers, forget about liquid cooling and fancy cases or you will lose money

buying 6970 is massive waste of money (unless you are HARDCORE overclocker) as any 6950 with unlocked shaders can be just as good, with 3 stock coolers on cards you won't hear any noise by cpu fan anyway

My home PC's video card died (not directly related to mining) and so I just purchased a 5850 on newegg a few days ago. $185 - $30 rebate.

Assume 300MHash/sec:
- $185 (assuming I don't get the rebate....) = ~$0.61667/(MHash/s)
- $155 = ~$0.51667/(MHash/s)

So, if you already have "overhead hardware" to put the cards into, it can still be profitable. But, you are absolutely right that specifically building a rig is really pushing that line to where it is more profitable to buy BTC instead of mining hardware.


Edit: Also, I needed to purchase a video card anyways just for general PC usage. Accountant types could amortize that part out of the hardware purchase cost.