Reddit mentions of Sapphire Radeon Vapor-X R9 280X 3 GB GDDR5 DVI-I/DVI-D/HDMI/DP TRI-X with Boost PCI-Express Graphics Card 11221-20-20G

Here is another resource: GPUShack I heard a lot of FUD against them on certain forums way back last year, but I've had nothing but good service and cheap equipment from them which I was able to re-sell (see my other post on this thread) for the exact same price I bought at.

They are refurbed, but why would you want to use brand new cards at brand new prices anyway? If they have any, I recommend the 280x chip for good hash/cost ratios. Cost being electricity/cooling as well as price of the chip. 290x doesn't do too bad either. I've tried almost all the cards. Had a few r9 390 rigs, some 380's, also Had some r7 370's but they need some pretty heavy overclocking to get only about 14 Mh, which isn't bad, but I was limited on space so wanted more Hash density. Also had three rigs of six cards all running the R9 290x Trix. Those suckers pull waaayyyy too much power and put off TONS of heat, so unless you have an industrial space with a good AC and cheap electricity I don't recommend them as highly.

My best card recommendation for price and hash vs. electricity and heat are the 280x VaporX. Link . Love those cards. They stay minimum 10 degrees cooler, and I only sacrifice maybe 5 Mh per card compared to the 290's. You also probably need at least 3gb to stay with the current DAG, 2gb cards may not work for much longer.

I'm using this R9 280x without issue. For the life of me I could not get an Nvidia card to work in mine at all.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RXA5G5O?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

Since R9 270 serves well for gaming, for that budget you can nail an G3258 plus an H81-B85-H97 motherboard, FX-4100 is a pretty "old" chip and may be an slightly bottleneck.

At most, you can get:

GPU

Green Side: EVGA GTX 960 starting at $200 dls may be an 25-35% faster than your current GPU.

Red Side: R9 280X Vapor X Same story, but performs a little better than the GTX 960.

CPU

]Blue side:] One of the best performers is the G3258 it's a Haswell unlocked chip, you can get this little monster up to 4,2 ghz easily with the proper cooling, also to note you need a new motherboard for this chip, ANY ASUS branded board (H81, B85, H97, Z97) is able to overclock unlocked mutiplier chips since last year i think, it from $69-89
one of the best price-performance chip, don't get fooled by the "Pentium name".

Red Side: FX-6300, a bit "old" but also one of the best price/performance chips, it doesn't even bottlenecks a top tier card. And you won't need to change you Motherboard.

So: ($69 G3258 - $55 ASUS H81-M ) If you go Intel side, so you'll left $174 for the gpu

and for the red side FX-6300 and spare $198 for gpu

No worries, just trying to give back to the community here :)

That should work, technically, but these are tried and true (the ones with 3 fans.)

You can't skimp out on the GPU with FCPX because it's essential to it's performance. I understand your budget concerns :) I would also recommend an SSD for your OS drive, maybe a 240/250GB and the rest could go on your HDD. SSDs are a crucial part in speeding up your whole system. I think you should be able to find 250GB SSDs for around $50-70.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Sapphire-Radeon-280x-Vapor-X-OC-Tri-X-3GB-GDDR5-PCI-Express-x16-GPU-Video-/162113395158?hash=item25beb619d6:g:X6UAAOSwM4xXasb4

Also look here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00RXA5G5O/ref=sr_1_2_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1468459613&sr=8-2&keywords=trix+280x&condition=used

then your looking in the wrong place. http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-VAPOR-X-PCI-Express-Graphics-11221-20-20G/dp/B00RXA5G5O/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1427578881&sr=1-1&keywords=r9+280x

There you go, the 280x with the best possible cooler,