IMO, hardware beef correlates with interest/focus on password cracking.
If you just want to improve general cracking throughput, you'll be fine following everything that undeath says. Most of the non-GPU-speed factors don't matter. The RAM=VRAM thing is good.
But as you start getting more focused on cracking, you'ill want more CPU (for processing wordlists, or using tools that generate password candidates and pipe them into hashcat; one core per GPU also good there), more RAM (for faster sorting/sifting of large wordlists/cracks/output/inputs; the RAM=VRAM thing is probably a fine match there anyway) and more and faster disk (same reason as RAM; useful to have both medium-sized SSD for processing data, and a large HDD for storage of large data).
Also, I was telling people PCI-E x4 is the minimum, but I was told recently by evilmog that eventually, you hit some bottlenecks that make x8 the sweet spot. But you have to go quite a ways down the cracking rabbit hole before you get there, I think.
If you think you might get into it more, you can at least make sure that you have an upgrade path -- getting a board that's capable of a faster CPU, more RAM, etc. That way, you can save money on the other stuff until you get the point that you want more - and then you'll know better what else you need.
If you just want to improve general cracking throughput, you'll be fine following everything that undeath says. Most of the non-GPU-speed factors don't matter. The RAM=VRAM thing is good.
But as you start getting more focused on cracking, you'ill want more CPU (for processing wordlists, or using tools that generate password candidates and pipe them into hashcat; one core per GPU also good there), more RAM (for faster sorting/sifting of large wordlists/cracks/output/inputs; the RAM=VRAM thing is probably a fine match there anyway) and more and faster disk (same reason as RAM; useful to have both medium-sized SSD for processing data, and a large HDD for storage of large data).
Also, I was telling people PCI-E x4 is the minimum, but I was told recently by evilmog that eventually, you hit some bottlenecks that make x8 the sweet spot. But you have to go quite a ways down the cracking rabbit hole before you get there, I think.
If you think you might get into it more, you can at least make sure that you have an upgrade path -- getting a board that's capable of a faster CPU, more RAM, etc. That way, you can save money on the other stuff until you get the point that you want more - and then you'll know better what else you need.
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