09-20-2011, 06:05 PM
Well......GPU power is what you want. If you were going to go with sandy vag, look at the MSI Big Bang. You would be able to fit 4 cards, with the potential to go 7 if you decided to watercool them. It has 8 PCI-e slots, but IIRC you cannot run 8 cards without running into BIOS level memory allocation issues. You will also not need tons of ram.
If this is going to be a work/play computer then stick with windows, otherwise go with ubuntu 10.04LTS since hashcat is built/tested on it most.
The AMD/nVidia thing is up to you. nVidia looses less speed on large lists, but AMD is cheaper and faster for the small stuff. nVidia tends to have better drivers but there is also a nasty little bug that pops up every once in a while that atom is still hunting down.
If this is going to be a work/play computer then stick with windows, otherwise go with ubuntu 10.04LTS since hashcat is built/tested on it most.
The AMD/nVidia thing is up to you. nVidia looses less speed on large lists, but AMD is cheaper and faster for the small stuff. nVidia tends to have better drivers but there is also a nasty little bug that pops up every once in a while that atom is still hunting down.