What hardware goes with a 5870?

[awatson824]

I am thinking of getting like 4-6 AMD 5870s. But I have no idea on what other hardware I need.. (mobo, power supply, cpu, ram, etc..)
If you guys could tell me what would work all together, please tell me. I could not find anywhere were I can find all the hardware.
Also It is just a dedicated one so I would like it to be the cheapest stuff ever.

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[russianfool]

ASICs, own risk, stupid to mine on GPUs, yadda yadda and so on. Anyway...


What you're looking for is the cheapest mobo that can take two of the cards. I think they use pcie, so go with that. I'm fairly certain that cards designed to run on pcie 2 can run on 1 as well, and the decreased bandwidth doesn't matter too much to you. once you've picked out your mobo, grab a gig or two that fits into it, and the cheapest processor that fits into the socket on the mobo. That's... basically it. You'll want a power supply that can supply enough power for everything (there's a power supply calculator online), and  a tower to house this all in. Try http://pcpartpicker.com/ to see what can be bought new, and then look for old computers with compatible ports that people are getting rid of or throwing away. Reusing old hardware will make your power usage higher, but initial investment cheaper.

[awatson824]

ASICs, own risk, stupid to mine on GPUs, yadda yadda and so on. Anyway...


What you're looking for is the cheapest mobo that can take two of the cards. I think they use pcie, so go with that. I'm fairly certain that cards designed to run on pcie 2 can run on 1 as well, and the decreased bandwidth doesn't matter too much to you. once you've picked out your mobo, grab a gig or two that fits into it, and the cheapest processor that fits into the socket on the mobo. That's... basically it. You'll want a power supply that can supply enough power for everything (there's a power supply calculator online), and  a tower to house this all in. Try http://pcpartpicker.com/ to see what can be bought new, and then look for old computers with compatible ports that people are getting rid of or throwing away. Reusing old hardware will make your power usage higher, but initial investment cheaper.

Thanks for the help.

[ssateneth]

i prefer 6+ slot motherboards and high end, high efficiency power supply. Motherboard MSI Z77A-G45 or MSI 890FXA-GD65 or 890FXA-GD70 (or gigabyte equivalents), celerons or semprons, 2gb ram, 1200 watt or higher single rail 80plus gold power supply (OCZ ZX 1250w, Rosewill Lightning 1300w, Corsair AX1200, etc), some 1x > 1x PCI-E risers, a couple PCI-E power plug splitters, and thats about it.

[crazyates]

890FXA-GD70

I've heard very good things about these boards. If I were looking into putting together a mining rig, I'd be using one of those.

[awatson824]

Ah cool thanks for more help! 

[ssateneth]

890FXA-GD70

I've heard very good things about these boards. If I were looking into putting together a mining rig, I'd be using one of those.

Able to populate all the slots at the same time, though you'll need to short PCI-E presence pins if using 1x risers.

[invader]

find all the hardware, populate all the slots!!!!! lol, srsly...

even if you take 6 x 5870 and overclock them to 450mh/s each, at best you will get 2.7Gh/s in total, and at current difficulty (not counting it will rise soon) you will get only near 11btc per month. and will be dealing with more than 1kW of power to thermal dissipation and noise 24x7.

my advice: if you want to do it just for fun, or planning to use this hardware later for other purposes than mining, then go for it.
also better to use linux and downclock memory for the best hashrate/power ratio.