4x 7970 Mining Rig Help Please

[cryptopi]

So I would like to get into the world of mining and as such, I have a few questions:

1) I would like to build a rig with 4x 7970s: how much hash power can I expect to get with that? Furthermore, what is the best type of 7970 to get?
2) Which other parts would you recommend I get for a good mining rig (it will be used only for mining 24x7) - motherboard, PSU, case, processor, etc.?
3) Anything else I should know?

Please forgive me if these questions have been answered elsewhere (if they have please post the link(s) to their respective threads and I would be happy to read them .

Thank you for any insight you could give me

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[intense]

You're unlikely to break even anytime soon if you're buying all of this stuff brand new, you'd be better off using the money from rig costs to just buy bitcoins.

Now onto your questions

1) 2600mhash -- 2800mhash depending on how well your cards perform and if you're willing to overclock them.
2) ASRock z77 extreme 6 mobo is pretty decent, lots of pcie slots. You'll need a 1200watt psu but I'd recommend 1300watts and the highest quality psu you can get. Get some pcie riser cards 1x --> 16x as well as 16x --> 16x. Cheapest processor that'll fit your mobo (1155 socket), cheapest ram you can get, cheapest hdd you can get. I'd build a custom case so you can cool the cards better and fit them in easy, check the "Show us your mining rig" page for ideas.
3) The difficulty for mining is about to skyrocket with all of the asics coming on board in the next few months meaning gpu's won't be profitable for mining as the electricity costs will strip your of any proffits from mining. If you just want coins, easier to just buy them. Of course if AMD release their 9xxx series gpu's they might be useable but that's a long way off.

[KS]

about the case: almost all cases have only *7* expansion slots, so you wouldn't be able to fit 4 double-slot GPUs.  That's why you either get a PCI-E extender or use a custom case.

*some* cases allow for 8 or more slots but they're of course more expensive.

if you OC the cards, expect them to reach in the low 300W each. even a 1200W PSU will not be enough. a 1350W might be enough but i would go to 1500W to have a bit of margin and keep efficiency slighly higher (and don't go cheap, you don't want to fry your GPUs - which you might be able to resell later on).

[cryptopi]

You're unlikely to break even anytime soon if you're buying all of this stuff brand new, you'd be better off using the money from rig costs to just buy bitcoins.

Now onto your questions

1) 2600mhash -- 2800mhash depending on how well your cards perform and if you're willing to overclock them.
2) ASRock z77 extreme 6 mobo is pretty decent, lots of pcie slots. You'll need a 1200watt psu but I'd recommend 1300watts and the highest quality psu you can get. Get some pcie riser cards 1x --> 16x as well as 16x --> 16x. Cheapest processor that'll fit your mobo (1155 socket), cheapest ram you can get, cheapest hdd you can get. I'd build a custom case so you can cool the cards better and fit them in easy, check the "Show us your mining rig" page for ideas.
3) The difficulty for mining is about to skyrocket with all of the asics coming on board in the next few months meaning gpu's won't be profitable for mining as the electricity costs will strip your of any proffits from mining. If you just want coins, easier to just buy them. Of course if AMD release their 9xxx series gpu's they might be useable but that's a long way off.

Thank you for your responses. Are there any threads around (I looked and was not met with much success) detailing the finer aspects of building a mining rig (instructions, etc.)?

Also as for ROI buying it now, I am not going to mine BTC with it. I intend to mine LTC in the dead time and when new altcoins are released, mine them in hopes they increase in value (such as WDC). Would that method of mining be met with profit?

Thanks in advance

[bcpokey]

You're unlikely to break even anytime soon if you're buying all of this stuff brand new, you'd be better off using the money from rig costs to just buy bitcoins.

Now onto your questions

1) 2600mhash -- 2800mhash depending on how well your cards perform and if you're willing to overclock them.
2) ASRock z77 extreme 6 mobo is pretty decent, lots of pcie slots. You'll need a 1200watt psu but I'd recommend 1300watts and the highest quality psu you can get. Get some pcie riser cards 1x --> 16x as well as 16x --> 16x. Cheapest processor that'll fit your mobo (1155 socket), cheapest ram you can get, cheapest hdd you can get. I'd build a custom case so you can cool the cards better and fit them in easy, check the "Show us your mining rig" page for ideas.
3) The difficulty for mining is about to skyrocket with all of the asics coming on board in the next few months meaning gpu's won't be profitable for mining as the electricity costs will strip your of any proffits from mining. If you just want coins, easier to just buy them. Of course if AMD release their 9xxx series gpu's they might be useable but that's a long way off.

Thank you for your responses. Are there any threads around (I looked and was not met with much success) detailing the finer aspects of building a mining rig (instructions, etc.)?

Also as for ROI buying it now, I am not going to mine BTC with it. I intend to mine LTC in the dead time and when new altcoins are released, mine them in hopes they increase in value (such as WDC). Would that method of mining be met with profit?

Thanks in advance

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=163306.0

This is probably one of the simplest most sensible builds I've seen. It's easy, pretty affordable, replicable, and modifiable (it's for litecoin but you can of course use it for bitcoin or whatever you choose). You can buy a slightly bigger milk crate or stuff the cards in more tightly and get 4 cards on the same design as well, if you use the motherboard recommended above, or any 4+ PCI-E board.

[nwoolls]

There are some pretty good how-tos here. I recently did:

• AMD Sempron 145
• GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3
• Corsair XMS3 4 GB 1333MHz
• 4 x Sapphire Radeon HD 7950
• OCZ ZX Series 1250W PSU
• 2 x 1x-to-16x PCI-E risers
• 2 x 16x-to-16x PCI-E risers

This all went together more-or-less without a hitch and does 2.4 Gh/s.

[TheOrri]

Don't be cheap on your PSU. I use a seasonic-x-1250-80+-gold, but there are other good PSU's as well.

You can use cheap memory and processors though or  not use a case which actually is better for cooling.