ELI5 - Budget Rig

[fwho]

I am interested in building a budget rig, but am not at all sure where to start. I will probably just start with LTC since there is less competition there, but I still need to know the bascis and how to get the most hash for my buck. It is also important to know that I have to have a case, and I am worried about temps.

Anyways, I assume I will want to just install Ubuntu. So, what CPU should I go for? How much RAM should I have? Can I use different cards on the same system? Im doing research and looking things up as well, but thought I should at least start a topic and hopefully get some advice from those who have been there, and done that.

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[BasementMiner!]

I am interested in building a budget rig, but am not at all sure where to start. I will probably just start with LTC since there is less competition there, but I still need to know the bascis and how to get the most hash for my buck. It is also important to know that I have to have a case, and I am worried about temps.

Anyways, I assume I will want to just install Ubuntu. So, what CPU should I go for? How much RAM should I have? Can I use different cards on the same system? Im doing research and looking things up as well, but thought I should at least start a topic and hopefully get some advice from those who have been there, and done that.

CPU - Any will do; they're useless for mining.
RAM - 1GB, otherwise it gets kinda slow managing the miner

You'll need to go big on the GPUs. ATI 5830s are preferred. They go around $100 a pop.

[mjester93]

A bit old, but I used this basically for my first rig:

Setup 1
* Motherboard: ZOTAC GF6100-F-E NVIDIA GeForce 6100+430 Socket AM3 mATX Motherboard w/Video, Audio & LAN - $32.99 + shipping
* CPU: AMD Sempron 145 - $29.99 + shipping
* RAM: G.SKILL NS 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 - $16.99 w/ free shipping. Not much RAM is needed for bitcoin mining, so 2GB will be plenty.
* Graphics Card: This is really up to you and what you consider 'budget'. Look at the comparison chart to figure out what fits your needs the best. I purchased a used 5770 for $60 w/ free shipping, but look to spend around $100-$300 to start out.
* Power Supply: Diablotek PHD Series - 2nd Generation PHD650 650W - $44.99 + shipping.
* Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 80GB 7200rpm Hard Drive - $6.75 + shipping. Can't really beat the price. And, if you're only using this for mining, you'll will only need to store your operating system and mining programs on it, so 80GB will be plenty.
* Case: You can have one, but it doesn't matter. As long as the card fits, you can get anyone.

Setup 2
* Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS - $69.99 w/ free shipping
* CPU: Same as #1
* RAM: Same as #1
* GPU: XFX HD-677X-ZAF4 Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card - $79.99 + shipping
* Power Supply: Same as #1
* Hard Drive: Same as #1
* Case: Same as #1
* Optional: You can purchase risers from this guy for a few bucks to add some more cards. More cards, however, would require a larger power supply.

Some useful links
* List of different mining rigs from the wiki
* Assembling / Building a bitcoin mining rig with AMD hardware. Radeon 5830, 6950 GPU

[fwho]

I am interested in building a budget rig, but am not at all sure where to start. I will probably just start with LTC since there is less competition there, but I still need to know the bascis and how to get the most hash for my buck. It is also important to know that I have to have a case, and I am worried about temps.

Anyways, I assume I will want to just install Ubuntu. So, what CPU should I go for? How much RAM should I have? Can I use different cards on the same system? Im doing research and looking things up as well, but thought I should at least start a topic and hopefully get some advice from those who have been there, and done that.

CPU - Any will do; they're useless for mining.
RAM - 1GB, otherwise it gets kinda slow managing the miner

You'll need to go big on the GPUs. ATI 5830s are preferred. They go around $100 a pop.

For LTC? I thought some of the other boards said you need CPU to mine better?

[ryantc]

for LTC you need sufficient RAM to do the job.
and my advise is find a mobo, cheap but with as many PCIe as possible(pcie speed doesn't matter), coz you don't know how far you will go with the mining business, 

[cryptodrifter]

I am interested in building a budget rig, but am not at all sure where to start. I will probably just start with LTC since there is less competition there, but I still need to know the bascis and how to get the most hash for my buck. It is also important to know that I have to have a case, and I am worried about temps.

Anyways, I assume I will want to just install Ubuntu. So, what CPU should I go for? How much RAM should I have? Can I use different cards on the same system? Im doing research and looking things up as well, but thought I should at least start a topic and hopefully get some advice from those who have been there, and done that.

CPU - Any will do; they're useless for mining.
RAM - 1GB, otherwise it gets kinda slow managing the miner

You'll need to go big on the GPUs. ATI 5830s are preferred. They go around $100 a pop.

For LTC? I thought some of the other boards said you need CPU to mine better?

For LTC gpu's are now usable. Cgminer and Reaper are capable of mining LTC on gpu's

[fwho]

For LTC gpu's are now usable. Cgminer and Reaper are capable of mining LTC on gpu's

Do they still use the CPU as well though? Basically what I am looking at is that I am going to need a CPU either way, so would it be worth it for me to get a little better of one that will help my hash rate?

[mjester93]

For LTC gpu's are now usable. Cgminer and Reaper are capable of mining LTC on gpu's

Do they still use the CPU as well though? Basically what I am looking at is that I am going to need a CPU either way, so would it be worth it for me to get a little better of one that will help my hash rate?

The Litecoin wiki has comparisons for all the different CPUs. I personally don't think you should purchase a better CPU because the mhash/$ is so low.

[Marrs]

For LTC gpu's are now usable. Cgminer and Reaper are capable of mining LTC on gpu's

Do they still use the CPU as well though? Basically what I am looking at is that I am going to need a CPU either way, so would it be worth it for me to get a little better of one that will help my hash rate?

cgminer only uses about 40k of memory and 1% CPU for me, regardless of whether I have it set to mine bitcoin or litecoin.

When it's mining litecoin, my GPU has almost all of it's 2 GBs of memory in use, compared to almost none of it in use when it's mining bitcoin. If the GPU had more memory, I could probably run a higher thread concurrency and get a better hash rate.

[fwho]

So comparing these two pages:
https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
Why is LTC rated in kHash/s and BTC in MHash/s? Is this because of difficulty?

[Marrs]

So comparing these two pages:
https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
Why is LTC rated in kHash/s and BTC in MHash/s? Is this because of difficulty?

They use different hashing algorithms that run at different speeds.

Bitcoin is based on SHA256, and Litecoin is based on Scrypt. Scrypt is much more memory intensive and about 1000x slower than SHA256.

[fwho]

Makes sense, thank you.