Best $/performance mining rig parts

[WUTcoin]

I'm thinking about throwing down some serious coin ($X,000) on a dedicated mining rig. While GPU's are obvious (there are charts everywhere detailing hashrates), I'm lost in terms of the peripherals.

Particularly cases, motherboards, power supplies, riser cards, cooling supplies. Where are the best values to be found?

[Comodo]

I wouldn't invest any money into mining rigs for Bitcoins seeing how the profit margin is very low even if you have free eletricity.

[WUTcoin]

I wouldn't invest any money into mining rigs for Bitcoins seeing how the profit margin is very low even if you have free eletricity.

I should have been more specific. I think Bitcoin mining is dying if you don't have an ASIC. That said, I think Litecoin is still new enough to make a decent profit without specialized hardware.

[mr.n00blar]

Well, are you only going to mine on this rig? Might as well buy an efficient i3 on a z75 or 77 motherboard with as many slots as you plan on populating with gpus. You can really throw and value ram at an i3 for this application. I suppose a small SD would be good, power savings and quick. The PSU depends on what GPUs you plan on mining with.I guess, what is your budget total and how much of it is going towards gpus (and which gpus?)

[WUTcoin]

Yes, the rig is going to be strictly for mining. I currently have a 24/7 media server PC, but it's not nearly big enough (esp. with 4 HDDs), nor does the MOBO have enough PCIe to mine with it as well.

I don't have a budget yet, although I'm not averse to throwing $2k+ at the problem. GPUs would be determined mostly by what's available on eBay/Craigslist. They'd be chosen by shortest time to recoup the investment at a given price/wattage.

I guess my question boils down to how might I minimize my deadweight costs to support the most GPUs?

[techcoin12]

im still trying to figure out if 7850 are worth it or should we just stick with 7950 and 7970 ?

7850 are so cheap and the power req is low ... any thoughts ?

thanks

[WUTcoin]

Each card also requires an additional pcie slot. A 7950/70 is roughly twice as powerful so you'd need half as many motherboards for a given hashrate. I'm not sure which of the three has a better hash/watt or hash/$ ratio, but I suspect it's close/

[techcoin12]

so i will take your advice and i'll stick to the 7950

thanks

[vdragon]

Stick to 7950, unless you can get 7870 with tahiti core for cheap. Anyway if you take 7950, go for gigabyte WF3 models