Crypto Mining Motherboards Are On The Way!
14 GPU Mining !?!
Computex 2017 motherboard coverage was largely dominated by X299 and X399 boards, but ASRock and Biostar were also showing rigs mining Ethereum and other altcoins.
First up is the ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ that brings an insane fourteen PCIe x1 slots. You'll need riser cards to actually install GPUs into all those slots, and some beefy power supplies too, but ASRock was able to get 180 Mh/s using only 8 AMD RX 470 cards in their demo. Theoretically, you could see 315 Mh/s by populating all the slots.
AM4 Mining Beasts
Biostar is also getting into the game with not one, but two AMD AM4 mining-centric motherboards. The TA320-BTC is based on the older A320 chipset, but the TB350-BTC supports AMD B350 chipset. This comes after the release of the LGA 1151 socket TB250-BTC. Support of Ryzen processors is huge for those looking to do CPU mining, and since these boards are positioned specifically for crypto, we shouldn't see the premium associated with gaming or enthusiast parts. The breakdown is as follows:
- TA320-BTC - A320 chipset w/ support for Ryzen - 1 PCIe x16 3.0 slot, 5 PCIe x1 slots
- TA350-BTC - B350 chipset w/ support for Ryzen - 1 PCIe x16 3.0 slot, 5 PCIe x1 slots
- TB250-BTC - B250 chipset w/ support for 7th gen Core - 1 PCIe x16 3.0 slot, 5 PCIe x1 slots
With Ryzen EPYC breaking records in Monero mining, there's definitely some big potential behind AMD's offerings right now. With enough power, you could be crushing CPU-friendly coins like Monero while letting your 5-14 GPUs rake in the cash on ETH, ZEC, or something else. With that many cards, it makes a lot of since why many manufacturers are putting out mining-specific GPUs.
For other hardware & mining related content, see my last post about AMD Threadripper & EPYC processors, mining GPUs and how they could change the cryptocurrency mining game very soon.
I wish I could understand this .. looks so cool :(
If only AMD would start making ASICS...