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If you can find an Asrock 870 extreme3, it will be cheaper, but still have enough slots.

Kinda. Plus, it seems like no one else has heard of the brand, as I have seen zero professional reviews. The safest bet is to go with a trusted brand like Corsair, Antec, or Seasonic. 750w is enough for 3 6850s though.

As for the motherboard, if you are going to be housing this in a proper computer case, then you will need to find one with 3 x16 or open-ended x1 slots with no components blocking the way that have the proper spacing. (and a 9-slot computer case) If you are going the DIY open frame route you have more options as you can just buy a board with as many PCIe slots as you need, of any type, of any spacing and just use riser cables to keep the cards above the motherboard and spaced apart for cooling purposes.

If you're only going to be using 1 gpu, it should be ok.  If you plan on expanding later on, it'd be better to just buy a bigger one now.

Rule #1:  NEVER EVER EVER go cheap on the PSU.  You'll get screwed in no time and then you'll be out more money than if you had paid to get a nice one.

How many video cards will you be putting in there at most if you do decide to expand in the future?

Make sure you buy a GOOD PSU.

As has already been said, cheap CPU, low amount of ram and if possible either a laptop or SSD for hard disk, maybe even usb pen if you are running linux rigs, i would say spend sensible money of a Mobo with 4/5 PCIe slots as 2 is just never enough and spend out on a decent PSU. Running 3 rigs here and 5850/5870's IMHO are they way to go if you cant find any 5970's cheap

Savycoop and QuantumFoam have nice setups. The 2 most important elements of any mining rig are the GPUs and the power supply. Get the cheapest mobo and cpu and ram you can find; they have no impact on mining. That usually means an AMD mobo and cpu (Athlon x2 or Sempron are a common choice).

You want a mobo with at least 2 PCIe slots because it won't be cost effective to run a single card (unless you have free electricity). Being able to run a 2nd (or 3rd) card will increase your net $/Mhash ratio. If the mobo has only 2 slots, try to make sure they are separated by at least 3 slots to help with cooling. A gpu running 24/7 needs good cooling. You can also run PCIe extenders as an option, so this may not be a big issue.

The best GPUs are the 58xx series, if you can find them cheap. A 5870 for $150 is good (400Mhash). So is a 5830/50 for $75/$100. If you don't mind the noise and heat, a 5970 for $300 is another good choice (750Mhash). A 6870 is also a decent card that will get you 300Mhash when overclocked to 980MHz or so. Forget the 69xx series unless you can find them cheap; a 6950 will get you 350Mhash ... so if a 5870 is $150, the 6950 isn't worth buying unless it is cheaper than that. I wouldn't recommend the 57xx series ... their hashrates are too low to be very useful miners; along with the rest of the PC, the power used will likely cost more than a 5770 can mine.

You want an efficient and high-quality PSU since it will be running 24/7. Don't skimp here, or you are just asking for problems. Look for 80PLUS Bronze at least; Silver and Gold are even better.

you are in Australia so the prices won't be the same obviously, but I recently completed my first dedicated mining rig with the following

MB: MSI 890FXA GD70
PSU: Corsair AX 1200
RAM: 2GB
CPU: AMD Sempron 140
GPUs: Radeon 5870 x 4 (refurbished)
HD: 8GB USB stick
OS: Xubuntu 11.04 boot off usb stick, runs cgminer automatically on startup.

Rig is headless and I ssh in to manage it. It runs very nicely so far. I was able to put it together for about 1k, due to low prices on the refurb 5870s. I'm debating whether to add a 5th 5870 (if I can find one for a good price) or if that would overload the ATX power connector on the motherboard and/or tax the power supply too much. Also want to build a simple wooden frame for the cards once my pci-e extenders arrive.

what is your current pc?
why not just buy a good gpu for it? the rest doesnt really matter for hashrate
I am mining with a pc i bought for gaming about a year ago with an ATI 5770

Hi. I have a similar setup, but only with the following parts:

Mobo - MSI 790FX-GD70 - $120 cdn
RAM - 2GB - $20 cdn
CPU - AMD Athlon II X2 250 - $67 cdn
PSU - OCZ 1000W power supply (refurbished) - $60
Video Card - ATI 5830 (I actually got 2 of these) - $80 cdn / card (I got it used)

Except for the video cards, I got the other parts for 75% of the price listed. So my total setup is about $200 + $160 (2 x 5830) = $360

I don't have a case for it as I have it just sitting bare on top of my desk/shelf. I just plug it into my existing LCD monitor and keyboard to boot it up and to get it going, then I unplug them and plug them back into my other system that I use regularly. I just SSH into the box to check on it regularly.

I am booting my miner using Linuxcoin 2.1b in persistent mode with Phoenix Miner on a 1GB USB stick. I have the ATI GPU @ 900, Mem Clock @ 275, Voltage @ 1.125 and getting ~272 Mhash/s. So with the 2 cards in the miner, I get ~540 Mhash/s. Temperature wise, it's about 70 celsius on one card and 67 celsius on the other. So not overly heated.

This is also my 1st miner. I'm happy with the setup

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