Need help choosing a miner rig

[thehulkk]

Hello, I'm fairly new mining, I've been mining for about a week with my laptop that does 24Mh/s, and it feels that it's going no where so I found this two gaming rigs on Craigslist that looks very promising for mining, I hope someone with moreknowledge on hardware can give me better advice, I feel like the first one can do better for mining but I could be wrong. Thanks ahead of time.
1-
Custom Gaming Computer - $940 OBO

CPU: AMD Phenom II 955 x4 @ 4GHz stock voltage tested stable in prime95 water cooled
GPU: XFX 7950 Double Dissipation with lifetime warranty
DRAM: Two 8GB Crucial Ballistix Elite Rated for 1866 at 9-9-9-27 1.5v currently tested stable in prime95 at 1600 7-7-7-21
Storage: Sandisk 64GB SSD 490MB/s read
Main board: MSI GD-65 890FX with two full 16x PCI Express 2.0 Slots
PSU: XFX Pro 550w 80 plus efficiency
Case: Black Antec Lanboy Air
Disk: Lite-On DVD burner 24x read

2-800
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI H67A-G43 (B3) ATX  LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  
Storage: Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Recon3D PCIe 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card
Case: Rosewill RANGER ATX Mid Tower Case
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm  Fan
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 69.7 CFM 120mm  Fan
Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Optical Drive: LG BH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Full (32/64-bit)  
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Trigger Wired Gaming Keyboard  

[thehulkk]

Anyone?

[Kruncha]

Check here https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

The first one with the single card should give you better performance.

K.

[bigvern]

Radeon 7950's are a good choice for the hashrate to dollar value.   You can pick them up for around $300 in some places and get over 600 hashrate

BigVern

[shawtux]

yup check the wiki. there are various rigs there that seem to be tried and tested.

[thehulkk]

Radeon 7950's are a good choice for the hashrate to dollar value.   You can pick them up for around $300 in some places and get over 600 hashrate

BigVern

I had a good idea that the radeon 7950 was better than the two 6850 combined even if they were overclocled.  Thanks for your input.

[coalescent]

The used market is also good for cards. You can sometimes verify that a card will do a certain hash rate. I've seen a 7950 or two that wont get more than 300kh/s.

[thehulkk]

I think I'm getting more for the money in terms of harware on the second option, but my goal is to make more bitcoins, so I guess I go for the first option.

[thehulkk]

6850    301.4      1.67    -          2.4    PCI-E 2.0 x16    guiminer / poclbm    -v -f 2 -w 128 clock @ 985 mem @ 890
7950    605    -    -    -    1150    1792    2.6 (10.0.898.1)    PCI-E 3.0 x16    DiabloMiner    GPU: 1150MHz, Memory: 1375MHz; -v 1 -w 256

Thinking about it I can buy the second option since both 6850 will mine as fast as the the 7950, then later replace  or add more graphics cards, what do you think?

[Kruncha]

Why not the other way round, I haven't checked, but I would guess the first listed has a more recent motherboard if it's paired with a 7 series Radeon.

K.

[thehulkk]

So it's the first one, I hope I can give him a good offer.

[thehulkk]

Hello, I'm back again.  I've decided to build my own mining rig, and for about $800 I included everything I needed with the best graphics card for mining radeon 7970.  I would like some constructive criticism on how can I improve this build for better mining. This is  right in my  budget, but I could expend up to $900.

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 270 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($54.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($33.99 @ Newegg)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 12g Thermal Paste  ($21.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 ATX  AM3+ Motherboard  ($73.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($32.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card  ($413.98 @ Newegg)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN722N 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 Wi-Fi Adapter  ($15.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill CHALLENGER ATX Mid Tower Case  ($52.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Raidmax 630W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply  ($62.13 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer  ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $781.01

[thehulkk]

I moved this to hardware, since i'm allowed to post there now.