Great thread here guys... really fascinating stuff! Probably especially since I am specifically looking to build a GPU rig to mine XMR and Ether, so I have read and seen a lot of great nuggets within this thread to both educate me and further pique my curiosity!
So, before asking a few questions, I want to see if I have at least gleaned a reasonable understanding of expected hash-rates for these 2 coins... mainly in reference to RX 470/480's since it seems like those are the 2 most commonly used/mentioned, and also what I am considering for my rig.
XMR: looks like around 700-800 H/S per 470/480? based this partially on Phil's latest 2-card rig with 1 470 & 1 480 but also remember seeing similar rates posted elsewhere. Is this pretty close?
ETH/ETC: is 20-25 MH/S un-tweaked about standard for Ether mining? have seen this a few places... ~50 for a 2-card rig and ~100 for 4-carder. Is this about right?
Now to some questions:
1- Is there a notable difference between the 470 & 480? seems like 480's cost more and draw more wattage, so trying to figure out what kind of hash-rate bump to expect to help with ROI calcs.
2- Is there a notable difference between 8GB & 4GB? I looked at the specs between the MSI 470 8GB and the Saphire & Gigabyte 4GB... but cannot really discern what the difference might be in relation to hash-rates.
3- Regarding CPU mining... my understanding (and experience from using MinerGate on a couple PCs over the past 2 weeks) is that CPU mining is effectively useless for Ether but still reasonably decent for XMR, especially with a current CPU. My old 2nd gen i7-2600K even gets about 115 H/S, and I have seen on the spreadsheet below that more recent CPUs can pull out 400 or more... and this is an older list.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MI-ic0Os25hgGUImW54sUIjZY_pUNQNa_W8Se5pRGBs/edit#gid=0So, the question is, for the screenshot that Phil posted about his new 2 card rig on page 7... was that 1.58 KH/S purely from your 2 GPU's? Or does that also include some CPU-based hashes? if the latter, what CPU are you running this with and about how much HR would you say is attributed to it?
I am curious about this mainly because I can get Intel chips at about 50% off, so really wondering if I get something like a 5th or 6th gen i7-x800K processor, if it could contribute reasonably (like 400-600 H/S for XMR) to my mining operation.
4- Phil at one point was looking at the Rosewill Thor V2 chassis. Ironically, I had put that exact one into my NewEgg cart a few days before i read this thread (on sale for $80) but didnt compelte checkout in time so its still in there but now at $130! But... did I read right that that case did not work for your 4-5 card build? if that is indeed true, what would people recommend for a 4-5-6 GPU build? Is there any chassis that can handle that config?
I am trying to be smart about this so would ideally like to do an initial build with probably a pair of MSI RX 270 8GB GPUs, but would also love to be able to build it in a way that I could just add 2-3 more cards, after confirming expected profit margins. Not sure if this is even possible due to space limitation concerns that I keep reading about, but would REALLY like to build to accommodate more than 2 cards if needed in the future, as even a bit of extra initial expense would certainly be less than building a full 2nd rig.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions and info!