Building a budget rig, with room for upgrades. Help appreciated.
#1
Hey guys,

Hope your all having a decent time n the forums. I'm sorry to bother you all, but I am very new to the world of hashcat, and am going to be spending a fair amount of money, at least to myself, and I am not in a position where I am able to take risks with cash.

Anyhow, before I get to the real info, I'd like to warn you that some of these questions have been asked before, and though I have read through the posts, I am still in need of more information.

My plans as of right now, are probably going to be viewed by some as ***tty, though It is the best I can do with the budget I have. I have been using self made scripts involving aircrack at 5000 keys per second so anything will be a boost lol.
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Okay so here goes, essentially I have a budget of 600-800, preferably 700 max. I am planning to buy a scrap large tower pc for 100-200 bucks used somewhere, and use that for the case and any of the simpler parts like sound and ethernet or wifi cards, things like that. I've never built a pc before but it seems cheaper to buy used, and replace cpu, motherboard and gpu.  I would love to hear your guys opinion on that.

I am hoping this is the best option but I am not sure, it only saves me seventy five dollars or so from buying parts separately, so if this is a bad Idea please feel free to let me know. 
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aside from that, providing that my pc base would be adequate, I will now list, cpu choices, motherboard, and gpu choices.

I have found many lists of preferable GPU's, and from those I will either be using a,
-radeon hd 7970
-radeon r9 290
-gtx 950
-gtx 750 ti
-gtx 970 ti

I will probably be choosing from those. Would appreciate any better suggestions, but please remember I have a low budget. I also did have a question, from the research I did online, I have been told that amd beats nvidia, but I feel that is old information.

Another thing I have heard is that reference design video cards is the only way to go for hash cracking. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
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Allright, now for the CPU. This is the real reason for this post. my cpu's are looking to be more expensive than my gpu, which is just ridiculous. I have read online that you do not need a very good cpu for hash cracking. I don't know if I believe this, because I have also seen many posts of supposed bottlenecking from CPU to the GPU.

For this reason, and the fact that I would like it to function as a PC as well, I am thinking I will need a half decent CPU at the very least. i7's are out of the question completely.

-i5  / most expensive option, supposedly the most powerful. little  over budget.

-i3 / exact same cpu in my very average laptop, affordable, but I am afraid to get it, as my laptop is cr*p.
then again, laptop is older than skylake gen so maybe that would be an option. thoughts? ; in retrospect, laptop has gotten me through several years of poor care, so that may not be the i3's fault.

-amd fx 4300
-amd fx 6300
-amd fx 8300
-amd  fx 8320
-amd a10 series? /actually only just read about these APU's, and am curious which would be stronger.

I am hoping AMD would be sufficient, as they are cheaper, and from what I have heard, hashcat did not run very well on INTEL processors in the past. Have also seen people setting up phenom 2 rigs, and I wonder if perhaps this processor would be more useful in this task.

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As for the motherboard, I am pretty much gong to be going for the cheapest standard ATX board. I was thinking MICRO ATX, but I think the larger size would be better. Again, any knowledgeable opinions would be welcomed here.  Don't think you really need to know which one, provided it is compatible, but for now I am thinking

- Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/wVMF...-ga970ad3p
[url=https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/wVMFf7/gigabyte-motherboard-ga970ad3p][/url]

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Allright, thank you guys so much if you made it through all of that lol. I hope I presented my info properly, and I do hope I didn't embarrass myself too much. again I am very new, and still eager to learn. Please, I am in no rush, but any input you guys may have on which cpu I should choose, or just general advice would be greatly appreciated. Have a good one Smile
#2
Anybody have any oppinions? Merry Christmas btw Smile
#3
It's pretty simple. If you want to buy hardware for cracking, use this:

CPU: Minimum I7 CPU with Haswell microarchitecture or better
GPU: NV with Maxwell chipset, AMD with amdgpu-pro compatibility

Also: cheap = expensive
#4
Thanks Smile yeah over the last couple days I've pretty much decided I’m just going to get an i7. It's not worth trying to save money ill build it slowly.