FPGA's will eventually get cheaper once china starts churning out clones  . This will force current FPGA manufacturers to drop prices.

Supply and demand. So for now, I'll hold out until it hits mainstream prices.

Hardware measurements are either equal or more accurate than software methods, but never less accurate. Just like if you had a motherboard that had voltage measuring points for multimeter readouts, that's generally more trustworthy than CPUz or any other software.

But if software is all you have, then go with that. Temperature readings for the GPU is fairly accurate because it is taken from the video card's sensors, but CPU temp readings are based on TJ max, so softwares can only guess what the temp is for CPU readings.

Looks like this thread is in the wrong section? I don't see any speculation going on in here 

On topic, there's hasn't been a free way to convert BTC into straight cash, and there also has never been an instant way either.

Where those rigs the ones that won you the votes?

Btw gigavps, where did you get those frames? They look custom made?

Sigh... this is the most boring volatility months ever.

You can skimp on anything but the PSU. A cheap $14 PSU is guaranteed to burn out for 24/7 operations with a load. These kinds of cheap PSU's don't have good enough voltage regulations, and I'm sure the ripple tolerances are very bad. And killing a PSU is a dangerous way a system can go out, because it can take out other components too. You can skimp on a hard drive, CPU, memory, (maybe motherboard), but not a PSU.

lol @ all the sarcasm. But seriously, some newb might actually take it seriously if they're still trying to learn about the hardware-building.

OP, you should build a rig with that will be able to support future cards to be added on later. Building a complete rig to support exactly one GPU, especially a 5830 is extremely wasteful in terms of initial costs.

Even though newegg business and the normal newegg are not exactly the same (and sometimes even has different prices), you can still make an account on newegg business and shop like normal.

Btw, with the 7970 being nearly the same performance as the 5870, is it even worth it, even at this sale price? Unless people are planning to buy it to flip and profit.

Is this really true? I found guiminer to the very easy to setup and use. I haven't checked out the software forum much, what's the most efficient miner for the HD5000 series?

I've read about the oven baking a video card back to life before. When I first read about this, I though it was a joke post, but surprisingly it was actually serious and it actually works for many people.

Can someone shed some light on as to why this works?? If really high temperatures and revive a dead GPU, then does putting it in the freezer also have the same effect?

So far, none of the motherboards I've tried needed any tweaks to the motherboard. I saw that thread once, and I majority of the time it applies to older motherboards. Which motherboard are you using?

Hmm interesting card. I just found out about this dual 6870 card just now. It could be the next best high density card in terms of initial investment. Looks like it's better than a 5970 or 6990 price wise. But these reports of memory underclocking and temperatures do not look good.

Perhaps it has high temps because it doesn't have that reference-like design with centrifuge fans? I noticed that reference design cards with these centrifuge fans are louder, but they can direct air better.

Hurrah for competition! Nvidia's gtx600 series has forced AMD's HD7000 series to lower price once they started stocking again. Although it'll probably be a while before I upgrade from HD5000 series to 7000 series.

I noticed that people buy certain cards for different reasons. The HD6000 and HD7000 series are for higher resell value or gaming on, while HD5000 are purely for mining. And within these 5000 series cards, is can be broken down even further. There is the initial cost factor, and mining costs factor. The 5870 and 5970 are good when it comes to hash rates per kwh, but their initial investment cost is high. The 5830 has the lowest initial cost investment, but it consumes a lot of power for the hash rate output. This is favorable for someone with low cost or free electricity. It seems that the 5850 is the middle of the two 5870 and 5830 in terms of initial investment and electricity cost.

I would say sell your BTC. Price stayed below $5/BTC for a while, first time it went above in a week or two.

Just because there it can theoretically accept 8 GPU doesn't mean it actually will. 8 GPU limitation is the AMD driver limit, the motherboard could hit that limitation before that.

Pick me!

April 29 is still sooo far away.

Yeah here you go. Post in here whether you're the buyer or seller, so that way you can have references in the future if you want to buy or sell anything with future buyers/sellers.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=484.0

edit: oops I just realized someone already posted this link.

I would think just wood is fine. You won't have a problem with moisture, but that really depends on where you put it. And if you want to insulate it with plastic, the problem with that is that some plastic holds static charges pretty well, and that's never good for electronic components.

I personally would just go with bare wood.

With only 2500mh/s, there's going to be huge variances, and especially since difficulty is still changing. I only have 1 rig, I wouldn't even think for a second to do solo mining. Unless you'll be doing solo mining for a long time, don't expect to gain anything statistically.