The plan: Make a mining rig with random Radeon cards I see for sale on craigslist. When ASIC takes over BTC mining I plan to mine LTC.
My question to you, the good people of Tek Syndicate, what motherboard, PSU and CPU would you guys recommend? The cheaper the better.
I would like the mobo to have 4 PCI-E slots. Would it also be more important to have a PSU with 1 or multiple rails if I plan to use different vid cards?
CPU will not matter. But if you want a compatable motherboard with 4 PCI-E slots then you might have to spend a bit more on the CPU. I would recommend these items if you plan to use all 4 slots. Of course the PSU depends on the types of cards in the system but this is given you would run something like 4x7970s.
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103996
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128509
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171055
PSU rail won't matter. And you want to make sure it has a high efficiency.
Does the PCI-E port speed make a difference? Like the mobo you linked me too with 5 PCI-E ports 2 of which are 4x. If i plug 5 identical vid cards into there will they all have the same MH/s rate?
Yes. And the difference between 2.0 and 3.0 slots in mining is little to no difference.
Thank you very much you've been a great help.
The parts are slowly trickeling in. I ordered all the components you suggested but I am having a hard time finding good deals on the right video cards on craigslist. Moving on to my question which I probably should have asked earlier; How difficult will the driver situation be if I got lets say one 7xxx card, one 6xxxx card and one 5xxxx card in the machine?