The end going into the motherboard should always be smaller than the slot it's going into - ie  you can't put a 16x extender into a 1x slot.  Well you could, but it would require cutting the 1x slot on your board - not recommended.

You should be able to use a 1x extender in any slot.  Some board are tricky.  You may need to do a pin mod for it to work - there's threads here about that.

If you buy a 1x --> 1x extender like I did way back before Bitcoin started you can dremel the end open on the extender and the card will work fine as long as you don't mess up the pins.  Like I said earlier you could do this on a Mobo, but taking a dremel to a $200 Mobo is a bad idea.

Most importantly, buy quality extenders. Cheap ones will have the leads come off or get very hot and burn out.  You want at least 2 or 3 ribbons per extender in there since I think up to 75W can be drawn from the Mobo.

You can mine BTC with 3 7950s easily if can underclock the memory.  I'm mining with 2 undervolted and getting 1050MH/s at 370Watts at the wall on a 400 Bronze.

For LTC no way a 650 can handle that.  Maybe a Seasonic can run for a few days but it will die an early death.  You need a 800+

I don't think you understand what you need to do.  Go here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.0

and read the whole damn thread.  Most of it is pictures anyways.  Read the whole damn thing, even if it takes you 4 hours.  If you spent over $1500 you need to read that to learn how to deal with 4 7970s or you won't understand what you need to do.

Your board should be OK as long as you have risers.  The cards don't need to be evenly sprace, just need at least 1 inch away from each other to breathe air.

You're a dirty bird Mr. 8s

Yes, they're practically humping each other, although placing some clothespins between the cards to space them out reduced heat by about 4C on the hottest card, not to mention the air circulation in my basement is terrible.  I figured that running them 24/7 was the best way to deal with hot cards.
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Whooohoo pc porn love to see hot silicon grinding away  lol
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The pron thread is here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.0

Got some nice male PCIe terminal on female riser action going on there.  There also some fetish stuff like using milk crates and really kinky stuff like USPS boxes and scotch tape.  I had to look at those at night when the wife was sleeping.

You can tip me at the addy in my sig when your hands are free.

Mini-ITX is only good for cute systems.  You may never be able to even mine on it.  I say this because let's assume you mounted it in a regular full size case.  ITX boards don't expect people to run a 7950.  The video card may block all SATA ports - how will you put on an OS?  Sure you can boot off BAMT or Linuxdrive but you would have to know how to use those.

Keep it simple.  You don't need a case if you are familiar with building computers.  If it's your first time just buy a inexpensive $30 or $40 Antec or Coolermaster case.  Otherwise run it as on open system.

Get the cheapest board and chip combo you're willing to buy.  A Celeron or Sempron even from 2 generations ago is fine.  Only spend more money on the board if you expect to be running more than 1 card.  Spending $20 on a better board here will make it a lot easier to mine with 2 cards later.  You just need another slot, maybe a riser and more power.

The PSU is fine.  Maybe go to a 650 or 700 if you ever intend on going 2 cards.  HD is fine.  No screen needed, especially for a dedicated miner.

Since most of the cost is going into the overhead of your build, I say get cheaper overhead items and put more money into buying perhaps 2 7950s. For $800 you can have a dual miner.

I believe riser and extender are used interchangeably - ie they're the same thing.

There are 1x to 16x risers, and 16x to 16x risers.  Some risers have power taken from 4 pin molex so the card doesn't stress the Mobo (critical on 5+ card rigs).  Some mobos won't allow all slots to be used (they shut down some slots if other slots are populated).  Some boards need a pin mod to detect the video card.  You need to do the research on which board to buy.  Many users have posted success stories here.  These easiest would be to buy from somebody who is trustted in the for sale section though since then you know you probably won't get a DOA or picky board.

In an field where profits change every 3.5 days or 14days or less, time is literally money - so mining sooner and less efficiently is better than latter and more efficiently (a lesson lost on BFL).

No problem.  Let me just share some wisdom with some noobies who may be reading this.  Don't skimp on the PSU.  You can skimp on everything else, even the cards but don't skimp on the PSU.

I never went for the cheapest Apevia or Rosewill crap at Newegg but I never really shelled out for the high end Seasonics that everybody bought.  Mostly because I live in an area where 50F is considered cold, so having 4 card next to each other even with risers was not an option.  Having been in mining since 2011 I now regret it in hindsight.  Of course I didn't know my hardware would pay for itself 10x over with the current BTC price.

But high end PSU will use less energy and put out less heat.  They'll save your electric bill and allow you to push the cards even harder since there will be less ambient heat and cleaner power.

I finally did buy a Gold Seasonic 750, but that was so my rig at home would be efficienct as my power is $0.40.  The BTC GPU mining game is almost over, but if you intended to carrry on into LTC then spend $100 extra on the GOLD/PLAT PSUs.  It will allow you to move hardware around later when you have a 100 or 200 card farm like I did.  I had to play so much PSU musical chairs because my PSUs were always just a tad underpowered (Antec Neo Eco 620s just short of being able to support 2 LTC 7970s).

You're going to put a 7950 inside a mini-ITX case?  Have you thought things through?

First off I don't know if the card will fit in that case.  The MSI and Gigabyte 7950s won't even fit inside some of my mid tower cases.

Second, you want to disperse 300W of Heat inside a mini-ITX?  Every hear of the Big Band theory? 

Ah the life of a Pool Op.  People only see the 3 or 5%  and think they're getting passively rich.  Being a big time Pool Op is more or less a full time job.

And already TRC has been bamboozled again.  It's almost like a beaten wife.

It's normal if you have a crappy cooler and bad airflow.  Stop mining or at least spend $20 on a decent cooler.  Otherwise you can spend $2 in LTC buying a new board and chip 

Well if they don't specifically exclude overclocking and state normal usage (I think overclocking can be considered normal usage since most of the manufacturers boast about overclocking) then it's their fault.  Basically you paid for accidental damage and you "accidentally" damaged it.

A classmate of mine used to kill his Sony PDA device (back in early 2000s) by dropping water in it and getting Best Buy to refund him after he used it for a year.  I wanted to smack his so bad.  I hate Best Buy as a store but don't condone blatant fraud against them.  Stupid asshats ripped off Costco's accommodating policy and now look what happened to that.

Lower end Cooler Masters are crap.  That 1200 Pro Gold is very nice and have no problem.

 

I made $1200 selling at 2!!!

Exactly.  If you thought BTC to be a good investment at 200 or 250 why would you sell it all of a sudden - the fundamentals haven't changed.

Unless you were planning on selling it at 275, well in which case ha-ha.

Ah but if BTC becomes illegal the 5GH unit will become a museum piece as a crime against humanity 

Look back at the BTC graphs in 03/2011.  Pretty much the same thing as CPU miners switch to GPU Mining and a new boatload of miners piled on.

When BTC drops to $100 like it just did I wonder how many miners turn their rigs off 

You're not insane, I think it's R2D2