Finalising 4000kh/s+ Builds

[gooseta]

Hi, guys. I have about £2500 to invest in litecoin rigs. One of the rigs is a replacement for my Sandy bridge rig and will be a gamer/miner, I will use it to game maybe 4 hours per month. The other rig is a cheap AMD platform. The haswell rig will run with my 7970, a 7950, and a 6950 I will purchase. The AMD build will run 4 7950s and a 6670 or super-budget card for displaying the screen w/o compromising the stability of the cards that are mining. Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?
 
Here are the two builds, can they be improved?

Gamer/miner
I5-2500K
Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 (owned)
XFX 7970 (owned)
HIS or Sapphire 6950
Corsair HX1050 (owned)
Lian li T60
Optical drive, win7 h

Edit : updated build

The 7970 gives around 600kh/s, and the 6950 will get 400-450
Total hash rate : ~1000kh/s

AMD
Pentium G2010
Msi z77g65
4gb ram
5x sapphire vapor-x 7950
6670 (to power display)
Thermaltake 1475w psu
Optical drive, win7 hp
7950s will give around 600 each so 3000kh/s should be achievable. 6670 will give around 50kh/s should I decide to mine with it too.
Total hash rate : ~3000kh/s

Combined hash rate: ~ 4000kh/s

Thanks for your time!

Edit :builds updated

[malevolent]

Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?

Yes.

As for the builds you can make it cheaper by running some live usb linux flavor (e.g. Debian) as the OS, so no need for the drive and win7.

You can also save by using a dual core and a cheaper mobo (different socket), if you're gaming for only 4h a month do you really need a good cpu?

No need to buy a case too, more money saved.

[gooseta]

Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?

Yes.

As for the builds you can make it cheaper by running some live usb linux flavor (e.g. Debian) as the OS, so no need for the drive and win7.

You can also save by using a dual core and a cheaper mobo (different socket), if you're gaming for only 4h a month do you really need a good cpu?

No need to buy a case too, more money saved.

I've never used Linux but maybe I'll try it. Maybe I will keep my 2500k, and get a gigabyte z68x ud5, I could add another 6950 with the money...

[crazyates]

I have a hard time recommending 6xxx cards for anything. Those 7xxx cards use way less power for the same KH/s, and are even better when undervolted.

[jlsminingcorp]

Agreed, 7950s offer good MH/s/$ and run fairly cool. Some manufacturers' cards seem to run better than others. Gigabyte HD7950 Windforce 3 OCs are running nicely for us.

[gooseta]

Ok, Which brand of 7950s should I get

Builds updated

[PoolMinor]

Hi, guys. I have about £2500 to invest in litecoin rigs. One of the rigs is a replacement for my Sandy bridge rig and will be a gamer/miner, I will use it to game maybe 4 hours per month. The other rig is a cheap AMD platform. The haswell rig will run with my 7970, a 7950, and a 6950 I will purchase. The AMD build will run 4 7950s and a 6670 or super-budget card for displaying the screen w/o compromising the stability of the cards that are mining. Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?
 
Here are the two builds, can they be improved?

Gamer/miner
I5-2500K
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5
XFX 7970 (owned)
Sapphire vapor-x 7950
HIS or Sapphire 6950
Corsair HX1050 (owned)
Lian li T60
Optical drive, win7 h

Edit : updated build

The 7970 gives around 600kh/s, the 7950 should give around 600 too and the 6950 will get 400-450
Total hash rate : ~1600kh/s

AMD
Athlon ii x2 270
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
4gb ram
4x sapphire vapor-x 7950
6670 (to power display)
OCZ 1250W psu (might get a 1475w to be safe)
Optical drive, win7 hp
7950s will give around 600 each so 2500kh/s should be achievable. 6670 will give around 50kh/s should I decide to mine with it too.
Total hash rate : ~2500kh/s

Combined hash rate: ~ 4100kh/s

Thanks for your time!

You may want to rethink the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. I have one and it is difficult to mine with unless you are planning on using extenders, also the passive cooling on the board leaves virtually no space between the heat-sink on the board and one of the GPUs.

[gooseta]

Hi, guys. I have about £2500 to invest in litecoin rigs. One of the rigs is a replacement for my Sandy bridge rig and will be a gamer/miner, I will use it to game maybe 4 hours per month. The other rig is a cheap AMD platform. The haswell rig will run with my 7970, a 7950, and a 6950 I will purchase. The AMD build will run 4 7950s and a 6670 or super-budget card for displaying the screen w/o compromising the stability of the cards that are mining. Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?
 
Here are the two builds, can they be improved?

Gamer/miner
I5-2500K
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5
XFX 7970 (owned)
Sapphire vapor-x 7950
HIS or Sapphire 6950
Corsair HX1050 (owned)
Lian li T60
Optical drive, win7 h

Edit : updated build

The 7970 gives around 600kh/s, the 7950 should give around 600 too and the 6950 will get 400-450
Total hash rate : ~1600kh/s

AMD
Athlon ii x2 270
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
4gb ram
4x sapphire vapor-x 7950
6670 (to power display)
OCZ 1250W psu (might get a 1475w to be safe)
Optical drive, win7 hp
7950s will give around 600 each so 2500kh/s should be achievable. 6670 will give around 50kh/s should I decide to mine with it too.
Total hash rate : ~2500kh/s

Combined hash rate: ~ 4100kh/s

Thanks for your time!

You may want to rethink the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. I have one and it is difficult to mine with unless you are planning on using extenders, also the passive cooling on the board leaves virtually no space between the heat-sink on the board and one of the GPUs.

Why is it difficult to mine with? Also what am3/ am3+ board would you recommend for use with risers?

[mercSuey]

Hi, guys. I have about £2500 to invest in litecoin rigs. One of the rigs is a replacement for my Sandy bridge rig and will be a gamer/miner, I will use it to game maybe 4 hours per month. The other rig is a cheap AMD platform. The haswell rig will run with my 7970, a 7950, and a 6950 I will purchase. The AMD build will run 4 7950s and a 6670 or super-budget card for displaying the screen w/o compromising the stability of the cards that are mining. Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?
 
Here are the two builds, can they be improved?

Gamer/miner
I5-2500K
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5
XFX 7970 (owned)
Sapphire vapor-x 7950
HIS or Sapphire 6950
Corsair HX1050 (owned)
Lian li T60
Optical drive, win7 h

Edit : updated build

The 7970 gives around 600kh/s, the 7950 should give around 600 too and the 6950 will get 400-450
Total hash rate : ~1600kh/s

AMD
Athlon ii x2 270
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
4gb ram
4x sapphire vapor-x 7950
6670 (to power display)
OCZ 1250W psu (might get a 1475w to be safe)
Optical drive, win7 hp
7950s will give around 600 each so 2500kh/s should be achievable. 6670 will give around 50kh/s should I decide to mine with it too.
Total hash rate : ~2500kh/s

Combined hash rate: ~ 4100kh/s

Thanks for your time!

You may want to rethink the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. I have one and it is difficult to mine with unless you are planning on using extenders, also the passive cooling on the board leaves virtually no space between the heat-sink on the board and one of the GPUs.

Why is it difficult to mine with? Also what am3/ am3+ board would you recommend for use with risers?

I'm glad someone mentioned mobo issue.  I hate that mobo.  I have about 10mh, about to be expanded to 15mh in a few weeks once I settle into my new home.  You can't go wrong with MSI Z77G60.  Except you'll have to change your processor to an Intel 1650, preferably an Ivy Bridge proc if you want that last PCIx16 to be active.

[gooseta]

Hi, guys. I have about £2500 to invest in litecoin rigs. One of the rigs is a replacement for my Sandy bridge rig and will be a gamer/miner, I will use it to game maybe 4 hours per month. The other rig is a cheap AMD platform. The haswell rig will run with my 7970, a 7950, and a 6950 I will purchase. The AMD build will run 4 7950s and a 6670 or super-budget card for displaying the screen w/o compromising the stability of the cards that are mining. Is it possible in cg miner or guiminer to only mine with four of the five Gpus I will have connected?
 
Here are the two builds, can they be improved?

Gamer/miner
I5-2500K
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5
XFX 7970 (owned)
Sapphire vapor-x 7950
HIS or Sapphire 6950
Corsair HX1050 (owned)
Lian li T60
Optical drive, win7 h

Edit : updated build

The 7970 gives around 600kh/s, the 7950 should give around 600 too and the 6950 will get 400-450
Total hash rate : ~1600kh/s

AMD
Athlon ii x2 270
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
4gb ram
4x sapphire vapor-x 7950
6670 (to power display)
OCZ 1250W psu (might get a 1475w to be safe)
Optical drive, win7 hp
7950s will give around 600 each so 2500kh/s should be achievable. 6670 will give around 50kh/s should I decide to mine with it too.
Total hash rate : ~2500kh/s

Combined hash rate: ~ 4100kh/s

Thanks for your time!

You may want to rethink the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. I have one and it is difficult to mine with unless you are planning on using extenders, also the passive cooling on the board leaves virtually no space between the heat-sink on the board and one of the GPUs.

Why is it difficult to mine with? Also what am3/ am3+ board would you recommend for use with risers?

I'm glad someone mentioned mobo issue.  I hate that mobo.  I have about 10mh, about to be expanded to 15mh in a few weeks once I settle into my new home.  You can't go wrong with MSI Z77G60.  Except you'll have to change your processor to an Intel 1650, preferably an Ivy Bridge proc if you want that last PCIx16 to be active.

Will any ivb CPU work? I will check out the msi board and G2010

Edit : Can I crossfire the 5 Gpus? Edit : build updated

[gooseta]

The sapphire vapor cards seem to be the best for hashing... Agree/disagree?

[jlsminingcorp]

I don't have too much experience with other GPUs, as the Gigabytes have worked well for us (if it aint broke don't fix it), but I think I've seen vapour-Xs in other people's builds.

Don't crossfire the cards. This can lead to problems and lower hashrates in Windoze and is not needed for mining. Crossfire doesn't seem to have an adverse effect on my linux box for some reason, but it isn't needed so there's no need to take the risk. If you want to use your rig for gaming as well as mining then just hook up the crossfire cables when you switch to gaming mode.

[gooseta]

I don't have too much experience with other GPUs, as the Gigabytes have worked well for us (if it aint broke don't fix it), but I think I've seen vapour-Xs in other people's builds.

Don't crossfire the cards. This can lead to problems and lower hashrates in Windoze and is not needed for mining. Crossfire doesn't seem to have an adverse effect on my linux box for some reason, but it isn't needed so there's no need to take the risk. If you want to use your rig for gaming as well as mining then just hook up the crossfire cables when you switch to gaming mode.

Good to know. Yeah I might hook up the cables when I want to show off benchmark scores or a bit of gaming

Edit: how many kh/s do your gigabytes get?

[Joerii]

Don't even try linux for a mining Scrypt unless you are either very competent with Linux already or have a 150+ IQ.

[mercSuey]

The sapphire vapor cards seem to be the best for hashing... Agree/disagree?

I don't like 7950s for two reasons. 1) because you have to run them at intensity 20, they draw more electricity than 7970s. 2)because of high intensity, I found them to be less stable and not as efficient as popular consensus claims.  Moreover, I had the standard Sapphire 7950s (the ones advertised on coinchoose), and those fans are as loud as a industrial vacuum cleaner.  So, if you don't have a basement or garage, or just some separate space for your rig, then it can get really annoying.  I have twelve 7970s, both Gigabyte and Sapphire Vapor-X.  The Vapor-X are awesome and seem to be most stable.  That's not to say the Giga's are bad.  It's just that the Vapor-X gpus have worked pretty much flawlessly.  The Giga's have had a couple hiccups along the way, but nothing serious.  But the Giga's were $400 usd from Amazon and I'm a prime member and I get 764kh on them.  The Vapor-X were $450 and I also get 764kh on them.  A quad rig pulls 1300 watts, without touching voltage. 

-Merc

[jlsminingcorp]

Good to know. Yeah I might hook up the cables when I want to show off benchmark scores or a bit of gaming

Edit: how many kh/s do your gigabytes get?

I don't push them too hard (1000MHz core and mem clocks) and get around 560-580 kH/s with temps of 65-70 oC. If you're willing to push the core clock higher than this then I believe that you can go higher. In my hands the mem clock has less of an impact (even for scrypt!) In terms of temperature control, there's a big difference between one card and multiple cards, so think hard about your cooling solution. You'll need to deliver lots of cool air to the GPU fans to avoid them being heated up by their neighbours. Good luck and enjoy!

[jlsminingcorp]

I don't like 7950s for two reasons. 1) because you have to run them at intensity 20, they draw more electricity than 7970s. 2)because of high intensity, I found them to be less stable and not as efficient as popular consensus claims.  Moreover, I had the standard Sapphire 7950s (the ones advertised on coinchoose), and those fans are as loud as a industrial vacuum cleaner.  So, if you don't have a basement or garage, or just some separate space for your rig, then it can get really annoying.  I have twelve 7970s, both Gigabyte and Sapphire Vapor-X.  The Vapor-X are awesome and seem to be most stable.  That's not to say the Giga's are bad.  It's just that the Vapor-X gpus have worked pretty much flawlessly.  The Giga's have had a couple hiccups along the way, but nothing serious.  But the Giga's were $400 usd from Amazon and I'm a prime member and I get 764kh on them.  The Vapor-X were $450 and I also get 764kh on them.  A quad rig pulls 1300 watts, without touching voltage. 

-Merc

Yes, they're all fking noisy. If you have a significant other, kids, pets etc. do them a favour and put your rig in the garage !

[jlsminingcorp]

Don't even try linux for a mining Scrypt unless you are either very competent with Linux already or have a 150+ IQ.

I'm not sure I agree. I don't remember it being any more difficult to set up scrypt mining in linux than SHA-256, you just need to run the cgminer configure script with --enable-scrypt flags. There are lots of tutorials (e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95718.0). Mining in linux is worth the effort in the long run, as it's much easier to switch between differnet coins and to automate your mining using your favourite shell scripting language.

I'm happy to share cgminer config files if anybody needs them (no guaraantee that they are optimised, but they may help).

[gooseta]

The sapphire vapor cards seem to be the best for hashing... Agree/disagree?

I don't like 7950s for two reasons. 1) because you have to run them at intensity 20, they draw more electricity than 7970s. 2)because of high intensity, I found them to be less stable and not as efficient as popular consensus claims.  Moreover, I had the standard Sapphire 7950s (the ones advertised on coinchoose), and those fans are as loud as a industrial vacuum cleaner.  So, if you don't have a basement or garage, or just some separate space for your rig, then it can get really annoying.  I have twelve 7970s, both Gigabyte and Sapphire Vapor-X.  The Vapor-X are awesome and seem to be most stable.  That's not to say the Giga's are bad.  It's just that the Vapor-X gpus have worked pretty much flawlessly.  The Giga's have had a couple hiccups along the way, but nothing serious.  But the Giga's were $400 usd from Amazon and I'm a prime member and I get 764kh on them.  The Vapor-X were $450 and I also get 764kh on them.  A quad rig pulls 1300 watts, without touching voltage. 

-Merc

I was originally thinking of 7970s, but they draw more power : fact. A 5x7970 rig would require more than 1475w like my 5x 7950 build

[mercSuey]

The sapphire vapor cards seem to be the best for hashing... Agree/disagree?

I don't like 7950s for two reasons. 1) because you have to run them at intensity 20, they draw more electricity than 7970s. 2)because of high intensity, I found them to be less stable and not as efficient as popular consensus claims.  Moreover, I had the standard Sapphire 7950s (the ones advertised on coinchoose), and those fans are as loud as a industrial vacuum cleaner.  So, if you don't have a basement or garage, or just some separate space for your rig, then it can get really annoying.  I have twelve 7970s, both Gigabyte and Sapphire Vapor-X.  The Vapor-X are awesome and seem to be most stable.  That's not to say the Giga's are bad.  It's just that the Vapor-X gpus have worked pretty much flawlessly.  The Giga's have had a couple hiccups along the way, but nothing serious.  But the Giga's were $400 usd from Amazon and I'm a prime member and I get 764kh on them.  The Vapor-X were $450 and I also get 764kh on them.  A quad rig pulls 1300 watts, without touching voltage. 

-Merc

I was originally thinking of 7970s, but they draw more power : fact. A 5x7970 rig would require more than 1475w like my 5x 7950 build

I forgot to mention resale value of 7970s are much better.  This is going to come into play when next gen models hit the market later this year (supposedly).