Quote from: marcinpl87 on November 02, 2016, 11:28:06 PM

(dear mod, I hope this is good forum for this topic - if not - please move)

Hi, I use my main computer for mining, I use NiceHash Miner software and I mine ~37Sols/s (i7 + gtx970). After few days of mining I'm ready to invest some mBTC or $$$ to build PC dedicated for mining.

I dont need case/screen/mouse/keyboard, I will buy cheap 4gb DDR ram and cheap HDD.

My biggest concerns are about motherboard, power supply, CPU and GPU.

I don't want to risk big amount of money ( $200-250 ), so for the beginning I'd like to buy cheap motherboard with 4 PCIe slots, and one GPU, and PS and CPU.
motherboard Asus H81M-Plus - $50, 1 x PCI Express x16, 3 x PCI Express 2.0 x1, chipset LGA 1150 (so i3/i5/i7)
power supply opengate 600W - $25 , or I can buy two opengate 400W $15 each - what do you think?
CPU - here I don't know if i5 is enough for 4 GPUs? or should I expect that CPU will be a bottleneck in this build and it's better to spend more on i7 ?
GPU - I found on ebay used gtx970 for $100 and I think that solid 25Sols/s for this price is a good deal - or do you think that AMD is better?

So what do you think about this build? Is that motherboard good for 4 GPUs? How to calculate power consumption for these GPUs? And how to calculate CPU "demand" for each GPU?

If you want my honest opinion, don't get into mining if you can't afford to loose cash or invest a bit. There's not point in investing 200$ for some entry level crap hardware that will not return a lot of coins. If this is the maximum you can afford, I would suggest you do something else with those 200-250$.

If not, well here's my advice:

- Recycle. Do not invest in a PC case. I use an ikea dish holder for one of my rigs...
- You can go cheap for CPU unless you want to use it for CPU mining. A Celeron will set you back 40$. You do not need a core i# for a 4 rig GPU, at all.
- you can go cheap for RAM, but stick with good brands. 4Gb would be a minimum for a mining rig
- Motherboard, you can go cheap as in there are quality mining boards from AsRock that cost very little (BTC pro, z97 anniversary etc.). Get one with several pci-e slots and buy some good usb risers (5 for ~20$).
- do NOT go cheap on power supply. The quality of your power supply will impact on your power consumption AND stability of your rig
- GPU: go for AMD cards, they have better mining support. I love nVidia, but their cards are way to expensive anyway. The latest AMD cards are a lot more power efficient too. An RX470 4Gb will hash ETH at 28.5 (optimized) at around 110-120W or 30S/s for zcash. This is I think the cheapest yet best GPU you can buy atm (for mining at least).