03-06-2014, 12:21 AM
It really depends on what you're trying to do.
Things that matter most:
- GPUs. Buy Radeon 290x cards unless you can get a killer deal on used 7970s (which you probably can't, because Litecoin/Altcoin miners - the cards are worth more now than they were a year ago).
- Power supply. Don't cheap out. The Lepa G1600, while expensive, is probably the best PSU on the market right now for a general cracking system. It's also very efficient, which makes a big difference when you're feeding 1000+W to a system.
- Case. If you're putting it in a data center, you'll need a rackmount case. Otherwise, you could go open air if you wanted, but I generally prefer cases. The Chenbro Tesla GPU case is a nice 4U chassis, and can cool 3-4 GPUs very nicely with a few fan upgrades.
The mainboard needs to have the proper number of slots and spacing. You should be able to do a 4 GPU build for $8k, which will limit you on mainboard options significantly. The CPU doesn't matter as much - I tend to prefer Xeons for ECC memory, but a cheap AMD CPU and mainboard will work just fine as well.
Avoid PCI extenders. They're not worth the months of pain they typically cause.
Things that matter most:
- GPUs. Buy Radeon 290x cards unless you can get a killer deal on used 7970s (which you probably can't, because Litecoin/Altcoin miners - the cards are worth more now than they were a year ago).
- Power supply. Don't cheap out. The Lepa G1600, while expensive, is probably the best PSU on the market right now for a general cracking system. It's also very efficient, which makes a big difference when you're feeding 1000+W to a system.
- Case. If you're putting it in a data center, you'll need a rackmount case. Otherwise, you could go open air if you wanted, but I generally prefer cases. The Chenbro Tesla GPU case is a nice 4U chassis, and can cool 3-4 GPUs very nicely with a few fan upgrades.
The mainboard needs to have the proper number of slots and spacing. You should be able to do a 4 GPU build for $8k, which will limit you on mainboard options significantly. The CPU doesn't matter as much - I tend to prefer Xeons for ECC memory, but a cheap AMD CPU and mainboard will work just fine as well.
Avoid PCI extenders. They're not worth the months of pain they typically cause.