Need Advice on ZCASH Mining Rig

Mining
1

Greetings,

I am interested in getting started in mining as a hobby.
I am a retired vet, and need another hobby.
This is what was recommended as an initial setup.
What do you all think?

2- 4 gpu MSI R7950 TF 3GD5/OC BE Radeon HD 7950 3GB Twin Frozr OC Boost Edition 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Specifications for M7950TF
memory size: 3gb, core clock: 880mhz, tdp: 200w, crossfire: 4-way, length: 10.28" (261mm), dvi-i dual-link: 1, hdmi: 1, mini-display port: 2, recommended psu: 550w+.

2

There’s a lot that goes into a mining rig - are you asking the opinion of the graphics cards, or your whole system?

3

I would recommend reference cooler cards if price is the same, they are louder but their ball bearing fans last longer. Have 3 of those 7950s and fans are dying on two of them. This is an issue with practically all aftermarket coolers, but is particularly problematic on cards as old as the 7950s.

I’m running two rigs of 4 7950s each, with modded bios for lower power consumption. Doing 980 sol/s each at 750w from the wall with optiminer 1.6

4

Thanks for reply.
I am mainly concerned about vid cards, but any recommendations are appreciated.
My main concern is losing money.
Would appreciate any advice on entire setup.
I was looking at gpu shack
they recommended the 7950 cards.
I am wondering a few things.
If I buy the six gpu bundle, I can start with 2 cards and work my way up to 6?
can you use 6 different cards, or should they all be the same?
Thanks again for any advice.

5

Thanks for reply.
Will check out reference cooler.
I am new to all of this, not sure what those are.

6

A GPU is a Graphic card.
Here is what I recommend for a high quality starter rig at low cost.
ASRock H81 ProBTC V2.0 Motherboard - These are made for mining (hence the term BTC even though you cant mine BTC on GPUs anymore - you could when this mobo debuted). It has 6 PCI-e (Graphic card) slots.
Intel G1820 (or 1840 or 3220) CPU
16-32 GB SSD
4GB DDR3 RAM or more
GetPimP.org’s bootable mining platform which now includes ZCash
RX 480 graphics card(s)
Corsair or EVGA 850-1000W power supply.
PCI-e risers
and a Mining Rig frame. I build these:

7

Here’s a blog post I wrote on what I recommend. R9 fury is going to give you best performance, R9 Nano best performance for power, and RX480 probably best power for price.

Sol/S using optiminer on linux will be about:
R9 Fury - 460
R9 Nano - 400
RX 480 - 300

You can also use Windows if you don’t like Linux. Probably want to use Claymore’s miner for Windows.

That reminds me, I’m a veteran too. I’ll find an old picture and put it in the about section on my website.