I know I'm late to the game here, but I find the mining process pretty interesting so I ordered parts for a mid-range GPU mining rig yesterday:
2 x ($499.99) PowerColor AXR9 290 4GBD5-MDHG/OC Radeon R9 290 4G
$899.98
1 x ($149.99) CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2
$149.99
1 x ($79.99) MSI 970A-G46 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX A
$79.99
1 x ($42.99) AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Singl
$42.99
2 x ($16.99) Hynix 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
$33.98
1 x ($-28.00) DISCOUNT FOR PROMOTION CODE
$-28.00
Total Cost: $1178.93
I've heard varying reports on the R9 290 hash rates for Scrypt, but each card should get somewhere between 750 and 900 kH/s, netting 1500 to 1800 kH/s total. I'll be mining smaller altcoins mainly. Hopefully I can break even in a few months, though difficulty increases could throw a wrench into this I know.
I'll throw in a spare HDD I have lying around and build it up when the parts arrive from Newegg. The power supply should be large enough to support one more card in the future if I continue down this path.
I'll be reading many tutorials on setting up mining rigs from now on. I tried installing Debian on a junk computer to get a feel for the setup, but I couldn't get cgminer or cudaminer to build properly. Might take some work to get this thing up and running. Is anyone using the BAMT distro (
http://guiminer.net/bamt ) for mining? Looks promising.
