Mining Rig Advices?

[NeonFlash]

Hi All,

I am planning on building my first mining rig. The sole purpose of building this is for Mining. Which means, I would like to invest as much as possible in the GPUs and at the same time other components like CPU/RAM shouldn't be a bottleneck for my GPU.

I also plan to have multiple GPUs on my M/B. It would be 2 GPUs, probably, ATI Radeon HD 5870.

Here's my config and after reading several threads on the forum, I have decided to go for it. I am not mentioning the exact model names of the components since I would be purchasing them from the local store here. So, what might be readily available online may not be at my local store. However, you can suggest me brand names to go for. For instance, motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte or something like that.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to go through this thread and providing me your suggestions.

Here's the config I have decided for my mining rig:

CPU: AMD Sempron 140
If the above is not available then a dual core Athlon Processor.
GPU: ATI Radeon 5870 (2 of them)
RAM: 2 GB @ 1333 Mhz
HDD: 500 GB @ 7200 RPM (there's not much price difference here between 250 GB and 500 GB)
PSU: at least 850W of Power Supply (80 plus bronze). How much difference would 80 plus Gold make? Some brands, Cooler Master, Corsair.
UPS: What rating to go for? Would a 600 VA be sufficient?

OS: Windows 7 64 bit. Would a Windows 7 be able to run on the config above, considering the low end CPU and RAM? I am more comfortable with Mining on Windows 7 platform and already have a GUI Miner running on Windows 7 with an ATI Graphics Card.

[mike678]

Hi All,

I am planning on building my first mining rig. The sole purpose of building this is for Mining. Which means, I would like to invest as much as possible in the GPUs and at the same time other components like CPU/RAM shouldn't be a bottleneck for my GPU.

I also plan to have multiple GPUs on my M/B. It would be 2 GPUs, probably, ATI Radeon HD 5870.

Here's my config and after reading several threads on the forum, I have decided to for it. I am not mentioning the exact model names of the components since I would purchasing them from the local store here. So, what might be readily available online may not be at my local store. However, you can suggest me brand names to go for. For instance, motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte or something like that.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to go through this thread and providing me your suggestions.

Here's the config I have decided for my mining rig:

CPU: AMD Sempron 140
If the above is not available then a dual core Athlon Processor.
GPU: ATI Radeon 5870 (2 of them)
RAM: 2 GB @ 1333 Mhz
HDD: 500 GB @ 7200 RPM (there's not much price difference here between 250 GB and 500 GB)
PSU: at least 850W of Power Supply (80 plus bronze). How much difference would 80 plus Gold make? Some brands, Cooler Master, Corsair.
UPS: What rating to go for? Would a 600 VA be sufficient?

OS: Windows 7 64 bit. Would a Windows 7 be able to run on the config above, considering the low end CPU and RAM? I am more comfortable with Mining on Windows 7 platform and already have a GUI Miner running on Windows 7 with an ATI Graphics Card.

You forgot what mother board your going to use. If you think you will ever expand the amount of cards running in this one machine I highly recomend the 890FXA-GD70. I can confirm it works with 5 cards and most likely 6.

850 watts is fine (probably more then you need for your specs didn't calculate it though) but if you ever want to expand you'll have to waste more money for an upgraded psu. As for the gold go for that because you will be saving money on each electricity bill and in less then a year the psu will pay for its self.

If you want to cut costs some more I'd recommend running linux and dropping to 1 gig of ram. With linux you could also run off an 8 gb flash drive which is much cheaper then 500 gb's. Flash drives also require less electricity.

Your going to need a case of some kind I personally use the case design in the hardware section that's stickied. Costs around 50-60 bucks to make and it keeps the cards wicked cool.

[deslok]

if you're going to buy 2 5870 you may be better off with 1 5970 depending on your abilities to build a good cooling solution, newegg has them around 400usd currently

[NeonFlash]

@mike: thanks for the mother board suggestion. I'll check it out in my local stores.

I would prefer to setup my mining rig on Windows as of now. Next time, I'll be going for Linux definitely.

@deslok: I was thinking of the same. Comparing the hashing rates as they appear on the wiki:

Each 5870 Card = 400 Mhashes/sec
5870 x2 = 800+ Mhashes/sec

Each 5970 Card = 700 Mhashes/sec approx.

Speaking of the cooling solution. What sort of cooling solution would be advised to go for?

The cases here come with 1 fan by default and you can add up to 1-2 extra fans. Any important points to consider when purchasing the extra fans regarding their variety and placement inside the case?

[deslok]

The important thing is to get the hot air out of the case (if you use a case) you want to generally pull in air from the front assuming there's no drivecages in the way and such, cases with a fan on the side are generally using that as an intake although depending on the cards cooler design an exhasut there works as well, consided slot fans if you're going to use case, one like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150006
with an intake on the side and on the front of the case would be a potent combination

[NeonFlash]

Thanks, I'll try to get some slot fans and then see how it works out for me.

Regarding the processor, AMD Sempron 140 or a dual core Athlon. I want to know if there will be any issues of bottleneck if I happen to put 2 GPUs on the board?

I noticed that there are several users on the board running 1 GPU like a 5870 on a Sempron 140 CPU without any issues. But how about 2 GPUs? Wouldn't there be any issues with that, like a High CPU usage or so?

For GPUs. On the wiki, it shows a wide variety of Hashing speeds for the same model of the GPU. I wanted to know, what are the good brands for GPU?

XFX, Zotac, Gigabyte are some of the ones we get here. Which ones would you recommend for an ATI Chipset?

[fivebells]

Suggest you wait a couple of months and reassess then before investing serious money in this project, unless you're just doing it for fun.  A new generation of GPUs is coming out, as well as commercial FPGAs.  The difficulty/price ratio is likely to get harder.

[mike678]

@mike: thanks for the mother board suggestion. I'll check it out in my local stores.

I would prefer to setup my mining rig on Windows as of now. Next time, I'll be going for Linux definitely.

@deslok: I was thinking of the same. Comparing the hashing rates as they appear on the wiki:

Each 5870 Card = 400 Mhashes/sec
5870 x2 = 800+ Mhashes/sec

Each 5970 Card = 700 Mhashes/sec approx.

You're a little off on your numbers 5870's can usually generate about 440 especially if theres only two of them in a case. If its a reference card you might even be able to push higher (the limiting factor tends to always be heat.) As for the 5970 you can expect about 800 megahash without too much heat. As for which one you can get I'd recomend the 5870 if you can get them around 200 if not go for the 5970.

Regarding the processor, AMD Sempron 140 or a dual core Athlon. I want to know if there will be any issues of bottleneck if I happen to put 2 GPUs on the board?

You wont be bottlenecked I run 5 5850's off a semperon and I get good results.

For GPUs. On the wiki, it shows a wide variety of Hashing speeds for the same model of the GPU. I wanted to know, what are the good brands for GPU?

XFX, Zotac, Gigabyte are some of the ones we get here. Which ones would you recommend for an ATI Chipset?

I personally like saphire card they tend to be reliable. I've heard xfx is good too but don't personally own one. For the most part though there wont be much difference between cards except when it comes to reference/non reference. Reference cards have the fan to the far right and they blow all the air out the back of the case. Non reference usually tend to have their fan in the middle and blow hot air every where so air will be reused which makes the cards run hotter and makes it harder to overclock.

[mike678]

Suggest you wait a couple of months and reassess then before investing serious money in this project, unless you're just doing it for fun.  A new generation of GPUs is coming out, as well as commercial FPGAs.  The difficulty/price ratio is likely to get harder.

The kind of machine he is building isn't really serious money as long as you have a job. He is probably looking at around a grand investment but that really isn't that much. As for the fpga's they are a joke. Unless you live in europe where the price for electricity is .30 cents + it will take you years to recoup the cost you gain from the lower electricity.

I'll give you an example say you have that X6500 from the marketplace (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40058.0) and a 5830 the card that consumes a huge amount of electricity. If we use my electricity cost (8.5 cents a kwh) it costs the x6500 .03 cents a day and the 5830 costs 41 cents.

Now I'll calc how many bitcoins you will generate a day by each.
5830 - 0.1891 BTC
X6500-0.1031 BTC

Lets say the difficulty stays the same for simplicity sake. Two years from now the 5830 will have generated 138.043 btc and the x6500 75.263.

Lets say the price is still 5.5 2 years from now. That's $759.24 for the 5830 and $413.95 for the x6500.

Now we deduct original cost of equipment.

759.24-130=629.24

413.95-610=-196.05

After two years you still have lost money with fpga's. So like I said at the beginning fpga's are a waste unless you have ridiculously high costing electricity.