Building my first 5.3MH/s litecoin mining rig

Component	Desc	Cost
GPU	5x Sapphire R9 290	$2495
GPU	1x MSI R9 280x	$399
Motherboard	ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer LGA 1150	$125
CPU	Pentium G3220	$59
RAM	G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB	$85
PS	2x Thermaltake Tough Power TP-750P	$160
PS	1x CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750	$109
Case	HDX 24 in. W x 14 in. L x 30 in Rack	$20
Case	8ft aluminum angle piece	$10
Risers	3x PCIE 16x to 16x	$39
Risers	6x PCIE 1x to 1x	$47
	TOTAL	$3548
	Potential KH/s	5300KH/s
	$/KH	$0.669

I did my homework on this and didn't take the decision regarding which motherboard to get lightly. Most of the guides I found suggested staying away from anything over 4 gpu's on a single motherboard but I really wanted to get 6 running on a single motherboard for a number of reasons. It would be cheaper than having two systems, less overall power than two systems and less to manage. Most guides for 5-6 gpu systems suggested only a few motherboards would work but they were really last gen boards and I really wanted to use a Haswell chipset. The ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killerlooked like a perfect match and with a total of 7x PCIE slots left room to expand :) As far as I could find no one else has been using it to mine scrypt currency so I'm taking a risk this motherboard might not work however I think the potential reward of discovering a perfect motherboard is worth the risk.

I decided to go with the R9 290's because I was able to get 5 of the battlefield 4 edition cards  for $499/each from newegg (They had a 48-hour purchase limit of 5 cards or I would have gotten 6). I planned to use my existing R9 280x in the setup as well.

First: I waited before newegg actually shipped the GPU's to make sure they were mine before I bought everything else. Then I put my order in for everything else and got a pretty good deal from newegg(cyber week specials).

Second: Once I got everything I started my build

 

STEP 1: Make a stencil and drill the holes for the standoffs

STEP 2: Screw in the standoffs

STEP 4: Mount the motherboard

STEP 5:Admire it

STEP 6: Install CPU and heat-sync with lots of thermal paste

STEP 6: Add RAM, HDD and PS and use a paperclip to turn it on

STEP 7: Install windows and make sure there are no issues with the motherboard

STEP 8: Add motherboard to the rack and measure for the GPU support bars

STEP 9: Mount GPU support bars and measure to drill holes to mount the cards

STEP 9.5: Grind off an end of the PCIE 1x extenders to fit on the cards

STEP 10: Check the cards are spaced evenly and screw them in

STEP 10.5: Try to avoid looking at the pile of packaging trash building up

STEP 11: Mount everything, run power to the cards (2 cards/ power supply) and start it up

Geting Started with Litecoin

My venture into Litecoin started about two weeks after I bought my first ASICminer Blades. I couldn't stop reading about Bitcoin and trying to think of different ways to make money with it. Since I purchased my first ASICminer blades, the price of them had doubled every other ASIC miner was either sold out or way over inflated. I had three options now:

1. Invest in one of the next generation ASIC miners that are said be released in March/April with the risk that the difficulty would increase exponentially and an indefinite ROI.

2. Try to start a mining pool... a lot of unknowns here and with the abundance of recent "hacks" could take some time to make sure its secure.

3. Buy the currency outright... boring and still a big risk.

4. Build an scrypt miner with the new radeon R9 cards and try to mine profitable altcoins. Possibly less risky since the hardware should still be worth something if shit hits the fan with virtual currencies. Unknowns: how much current it will draw... hopefully less than 20A, noise?? heat?? cost??

After thinking it over for a few days I decided to throw my hat in the scrypt mining ring and bought an MSI R9 280x to test the waters before I invested in a larger setup. After a week of tweaking and playing with the best graphics card I've ever owned I decided to make a bigger investment and buy 5 more Sapphire R9 290s.