Newb questions about mining rig

[karahk]

Howdy. I'm brand new to mining (few days) and I'd like to build a budget mining rig to get started. I'm currently using a HD7700  as that's all I've got at the moment. I'm just doing it for fun to start with and see where it takes me.

Would a cheap microatx motherboard be sufficient? I'm planning to get a 7850 for my first gpu until I can afford something better.

Any suggestions you could give would be appreciated. I really can't spend much at the moment though. :/

[WillMilk4Coin]

Are you planning on mining BTC with this rig? -mining with GPUs is a little late to begin doing at this point in the game. GPU mining is still formidable for LTC and other alt coins, though.

Regarding motherboards, the main requirement is that it has the number of PCI-e slots (x16 and x1 via an adapter) you plan to fill. If you only will use 1 GPU now and in the future, then a micro-atx would likely be sufficient.

[olram]

It all depends on what you are planning for the future.
Every board would be sufficient.
if you want to upgrade soon or maybe add a 2nd gpu i would reccomend a board with a lot of pcie slots (1x,4x,8x,16x doesnt matter)
However if you just want to mine with one gpu, maybe a mini-itx board is a better coice. (this due to low power cpu's)

here are some sites which can help you:
hashrates:  https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
calculator:  www.coinwarz.com

btw. i would really reccomend the hd 7850 its like 10x as powerful as your current card

[miners78]

I would get a motherboard with more room for expansion in the future. (I assume this is for litecoin)

[karahk]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, this is for LTC. I plan to add a second gpu at a later date.

[lulutis2000]

The difficulty is growing up so fast

[Zenchuck]

I think your plan for a 7850 is a good one.

Here is a link showing how different cards perform:
https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

you can see here the 7770 is not that great at ~200 kH/s. The 7850 might do 350-400.

good luck to you.

[Ethan1581]

I would personally go for the 7950. It has a good KHS but could be too much for your budget. How much do you have to spend?

[karahk]

only $450 at the moment. Now that I think about it it's probably a better idea to buy a 7950 to put in this pc rather than building a new one. I can build a dedicated mining rig later if I'm still interested.

[elendorsuma]

We have a 2800kh 4 card system waiting for riser cards to arrive around a week now when they do we will have 5500kh+ 8 cards 2 systems . My advice mining is a bit of a mugs game we spent £2500 for the hash rate its good but the dificulty has gone up even in the last week to much that now with 4 cards we are only getting 0.96ltc/24 hours and £6/24 hours running costs 1900w 0.14p per what's our profit £20 a day  between us? Lol  So it will be £40 if those bloody riser cards come but every 3 days they are chipping away 13% 13% if they would just give us a break it might be okay but I recon by the time our risers come with 8 cards we will prolly be getting the same

tell you what we should have took our £1200 each and spent it on LTC we could have got 200ltc when they were cheap on Sunday and sell em yesterday for $15 dollars each profit would have made $3000 rather then £40 back from £1200 and alot of rigmarole plus the way this dificulty is going it won't be worth gpu minning soon my only hope will be that the price of LTC rises due to dificulty?
Also can sell the cards too

Don't waste your time and money 1 card is 600kh it will take you a week to make a coin in 2 days time maybe 10 days
Spend it on cheap LTC and trade