Tips for a newbie on a 7950 rig

[MadAlpha]

Hello all.

Newbie to cryptocurrencies and I am thinking about trying to mine Litecoin. I have been looking at the following parts for my computer.

GPU: 7950, either Gigabyte (3 fan cooling) or MSI (2 fan cooling). I am kind of bending towards the Gigabyte. It has higher stock clock speeds among other things. My plan is to buy 1 videocard first and then add a second one if everything works out. Are they both good for overclocking, undervolting and all that, should I need it?

Motherboard: anything with a Z77 chipset is what I am looking at. There is multiple brands to choose from. Do I need to look at anything else than make sure the board has 2 PCI-E slots and CrossFire support? Should I just buy the cheapest one?

CPU: Intel i5-3570K

Memory: 2x4 GB

Thanks in advance for any tips. Good to be in the community.

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[ssateneth]

Hello all.

Newbie to cryptocurrencies and I am thinking about trying to mine Litecoin. I have been looking at the following parts for my computer.

GPU: 7950, either Gigabyte (3 fan cooling) or MSI (2 fan cooling). I am kind of bending towards the Gigabyte. It has higher stock clock speeds among other things. My plan is to buy 1 videocard first and then add a second one if everything works out. Are they both good for overclocking, undervolting and all that, should I need it?

Motherboard: anything with a Z77 chipset is what I am looking at. There is multiple brands to choose from. Do I need to look at anything else than make sure the board has 2 PCI-E slots and CrossFire support? Should I just buy the cheapest one?

CPU: Intel i5-3570K

Memory: 2x4 GB

Thanks in advance for any tips. Good to be in the community.

Will this be for coin mining? If so, you don't need nearly that much ram, only 2gb will suffice. Also I recommend the MSI Z77A-G45. It will work with 6 graphics cards, no problem, granted you have pci-e risers. I have 2 rigs with 8 gpu's each (6 cards) using this board.

[MadAlpha]

Thanks for the reply and the recommendation.

Yes, it is for mining primarily for now, if that doesn't work out it will be for gaming and whatever. Again, I am just getting started here.

I do not think I can run 6 GPUs (with heat, and power supply requirements), or invest that much money into this. Was just thinking of 2 GPUs. By the way, if you can use GPUs even on slower PCI-E slots, does that mean that PCI-E speed does not play a significant factor in mining? How is the mining performance between 16x, 8x, 4x and 1x PCI-E slots?

[superfastkyle]

PCI-E bandwidth should not have any noticeable difference in performance with bitcoin mining

[MadAlpha]

Thanks for help. Just ordered the new parts today.

[biodieselchris]

MadAlphaa: nother newb here paying some attention to this thread MadAlpha, so anything you get up and going and report on would be appreciated. You mentioned mining LTC over BTC, any particular reason (you think it will be more profitable, etc?)