Scrypt-Based Mining now is just generally dead. I don't see the point anymore, even if you have Mh/s, you're still losing a LOT with electricity costs.
Some people have access to really cheap or even free electricity.
True, however my single card rig (303KH/s) uses 240W solid when mining. I have it on for 9 hours each day during the night since mining scrypt is so unprofitable ~ at least for me anyway. Its around £9 a month now that I'm doing this minus a couple pound due to my solar panels which are grid tied.
Pick up an R9 270 yo! Coupled with a Sempron 145 you can have a low power single rig pushing 430+ Kh/s and fairly low temps...should be under 175w! Also GOLD rated PSU or better helps a bunch.
I have it at 475kh/s, and it's using around 180w. It's a really good card, but instead, you really should get some gridseeds, since they use a lot less power than GPUs.
I have another mining friend of mine who runs Nvidia 750 TI's. They pull 50w under load a piece and run at around 320kh/s. It is a loss as far as kh/s goes, but for the power difference (475kh/s = 180w or 320kh/s = 50w) it is actually a higher profit margin since you pay a lot less electricity. As well as being able to run as many cards as you can get PCI-E cables on 1 psu (he has 6 of them on 1 mobo and 1 1000w psu). Of course, that means you run Cudeminer instead of CGMiner which I have no experience with.
Not to mention the cards are only $150 a piece vs the $300 for the 280x's and such.
Just a thought for you electricity conscious people.
im currently selling my r9 270's and 270x's. 125 a piece. if your friend is interested let me know.