Want to make my first GPU rig! Where to start?

[Monolith]

Hey everyone! Brand new to the forums.

Been messing around and have been trying to learn as much about mining for the last month on my work-supplied 22.00 M/hash Macbook Pro Retina running bootcamp, and decided to try it out for real. I ordered a BFL 5Ghz miner but seeing as those probably wont be shipped for a few months, I wanted to make a rig to try to take another step before it comes.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on where to start with a simple build? I am an audio programmer but I have never built my own computer so I was wondering where I should start. I wanted to keep the price of the first build really low - preferably around $300, but something I can add a bunch of GPUs to later if need be. Any ideas?

Was looking at the 6870 but newegg seems to be out of stock 

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[tkooda]

Hey everyone! Brand new to the forums.

Been messing around and have been trying to learn as much about mining for the last month on my work-supplied 22.00 M/hash Macbook Pro Retina running bootcamp, and decided to try it out for real. I ordered a BFL 5Ghz miner but seeing as those probably wont be shipped for a few months, I wanted to make a rig to try to take another step before it comes.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on where to start with a simple build? I am an audio programmer but I have never built my own computer so I was wondering where I should start. I wanted to keep the price of the first build really low - preferably around $300, but something I can add a bunch of GPUs to later if need be. Any ideas?

Was looking at the 6870 but newegg seems to be out of stock 

Start in 2009.

Don't try to build a GPU rig, get on the list to buy an ASIC.

[Daelus]

One ATI 5830, Approximately 245 Mhash/s

Power Supply    Rosewill Green Series RG530-S12 530W, 80 PLUS Certified   NewEgg    $50
Motherboard    Foxconn M61PMP-K AMD                                           NewEgg    $45
CPU                    AMD Sempron 145                                                   NewEgg    $39
Memory            2GB DDR3                                                                   NewEgg    $13
Graphics card    Radeon HD 5830                                                           NewEgg ($153)    $110
Storage            Western Digital Caviar 80GB                                           NewEgg    $17

Total    (Approx: $1.1755 /Mhash)       $285 + s/h/t

However as ASICS are about to ship out the doors and double the difficulty, GPU mining rigs are about to go the way of CPU miners and be obsolete!

But there is still hope! ASIC miners cannot mine LiteCoins (For Now) and this set up will work for LiteCoins with similar results.

[Dervana]

I'm a fellow noob as well, however for $300 I think you might want to try and build something around a 5830/5850 or 5870 card if you can get one second hand.

Keep the rest of the rig basic, although do try and pick up a good name PSU. You can even boot off a USB flash drive if you have one spare and you're at all familiar with linux. This would save on a hard drive.

[Daelus]

If you're really that serious about starting up a mining rig for BTC then I suggest getting on the long waiting list for an ASIC
You can get a 5.0 Gh/s ASIC from butterfly labs for $274. However, these machines serve only a single purpose, cannot be upgraded by any means, and it will take up to 3 months for you to receive one.

Hope all this helps!

Good luck!

[Monolith]

Thanks for the support everyone!

But there is still hope! ASIC miners cannot mine LiteCoins (For Now) and this set up will work for LiteCoins with similar results.

I actually had no idea what litecoins even were until you wrote this, just spent about 2 hours researching them. seems to be the better way to go for a beginner just getting into it this late in the game.

You can get a 5.0 Gh/s ASIC from butterfly labs for $274.

already ordered one right when the bitcoin to USD rate was going insane, just wondering if its going to come within the year, let alone the quarter. Not too excited about that.

One more question, are mining PCs becoming obsolete? would it be a better investment to just buy some crap netbook or barebones pc and get as many jalapenos as i can fit in my budget before the difficulty gets too insane?

[thepiece32]

To save money, try finding an old pc that has a pcie slot and spend the money on a card. There a lot of people that still have older PCs that they don't use but don't want to throw out. They may even just give them to you. Or like the others suggested, Newegg and Ebay are great places to buy parts.

[zellt5]

i dont buy this whole asci thing "get on the list to be super amazing this is really ganna happen this time we swear" sounds like a tactic to get people to *be to afraid to* buy mining rigs and up the difficulty..said the opposite of what i meant...i just dont buy it at all you cant even get voltage unlocked cards anymore

[Daelus]

Well that's exactly what ASICs are going to do. They are going to atleast (Probably) double the difficulty of mining BitCoins. The problem with this is going to be that unless you have an ASIC or a computer that can mine at least 1GH/s then you're not going to want to mine anymore because the difficulty is so high. This will ultimately cause the difficulty to drop back down. Eventually we will reach a point that's about 145-160% the difficulty now with the release of ASIC Miners.

To answer the question if these GPU miners are becoming obsolete, For the most part yet, for BitCoins at least, a computer that pulls under 1GH/s is not going to make much in the lines of mining and the electricity cost is going to probably be more than your return will be.

LiteCoins are the future of GPU Miners.
BitCoins are the future of ASIC Miners.