Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

Innosilicon A9 ZMaster 50 Ksol/s Equihash ASIC Miner

7, Jun 2018

Innosilicon has just announced their A9 ZMaster ASIC miner for the Equihash algorithm used by Zcash (ZEC) and other coins that is apparently capable of 50000 Sol/s with just 620W of power usage. This significantly outperforms the already announced Bitmain Antminer Z9 mini that should be offering 10 Ksol/s with 300W of power usage, but what makes us frown here is the price that Innosilicon wants to charge you for this device. The Innosilicon A9 ZMaster should cost $9999 USD with a PSU included even though the miner is apparently already available in limited quantity of 300 units with shipping scheduled to start on June 10th.

The A9 ZMaster is pretty expensive at least for batch 1, but apparently Innosilicon wants to beat Bitmain in releasing first a more powerful product, even in limited quantities and charging a pretty expensive price for the device. The second batch shipments are planned to start on August 15th, but by then the price should be significantly lower, especially considering that even Bitmain has already announced lower prices for its upcoming batches of the Z9 mini devices. Meanwhile we are probably soon going to see more ASIC manufacturers coming out with Equihash-based devices and this should further drive down prices, especially if there isn’t that much of a demand for the hardware with the current market conditions. The only problem with ASIC manufacturers trying to fuck up each other is that in the end the one often getting fucked up is usually the miner that buys one or the other of the devices…

GMO Miner B2 is an Upcoming 24 THS 7nm Japanese ASIC Miner for Bitcoin

5, Jun 2018

The Japanese company GMO Internet Group that has announced plans to get into crypto currency miners a couple of months ago is apparently getting ready to start producing the first 7nm Bitcoin ASIC mining chips (GMO 72b). The chips will be used in the upcoming GMO Miner B2 that the company promises to be able to deliver 24 THS hashrate with about 1950W of power usage and to cost $1999 USD when they start shipping it by the end of October this year. Hopefully this will push other ASIC manufacturers to work a bit more on power efficiency and performance of their BTC ASIC mining hardware in order to be able to remain competitive.

– For more details about the upcoming GMO Miner B2 visit the official website…

New 20 GPU Motherboard – The Asus H370 Mining Master

30, May 2018

It seems that Asus is upping their mining motherboard game with a successor of their Asus B250 Mining Expert Motherboard with 19 PCI-E Slots. The new mining motherboard is called Asus H370 Mining Master and comes with support for up to 20 GPUs using direct PCIe over USB connections. The presence of USB connectors directly fitted on the motherboard simplifies connectivity by letting USB riser cables plug directly into the PCB and this direct connection is sturdier than using a PCIe card, with less chance of inadvertent disconnects, and it also reduces the total number of parts in your rig.

You may notice that aside the 20 USB 3.0 connectors on the motherboard there is also a single PCI-E x16 slot, however this does not mean you are able to have a 21st GPU. The PCI-E x16 slot and the first USB 3.0 connector are labeled A01 and that share the same PCI-E lane, so you can have only one of them working with a GPU, not both at the same time.

The Asus H370 Mining Master motherboard includes a suite of diagnostic features designed to make your farm easier to diagnose and manage in case of problems. A very useful one is the GPU State Detection (available in the Asus B250 Mining Expert as well), which scans the system at boot and indicates whether each riser port is empty, connected to a functional graphics card, or experiencing problems. The updated State Detection GUI clearly identifies the location and status of each port along with the alphanumeric code that identifies it. To further streamline troubleshooting, the board will ship with matching alphanumeric labels to stick onto corresponding riser cards. You’ll be able to quickly look at the labels to find flagged GPUs instead of being forced to trace the path of cables connected to affected ports.

Asus H370 Mining Master Specifications:
– Size: ATX, 12″ x 9.1″
– Socket: LGA 1151 for Intel 8th Gen Core, Pentium, and Celeron processors
– Memory: 2 x DIMMs (max. 32GB), DDR4 2666/2400/2133MHz, Non-ECC, unbuffered memory
– Slots: 1 x PCIe x16
– Storage: 2 x Serial ATA 6Gbps
– Networking: 1 x Intel Gigabit LAN
– GPU riser ports: 20 x PCIe over USB (vertical)
– USB ports: 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 4 x USB 2.0/1.1
– Other: 1 x COM header

Efficient mining also requires a few UEFI tweaks that are consolidated in a special Mining Mode on the motherboard. The PCIe lanes are set to run at Gen 1 speeds to improve compatibility and stability with USB riser cards, the Above 4G Decoding is enabled, which is critical for supporting lots of graphics cards, and Launch CSM is disabled, which lets the motherboard and graphics UEFIs synchronize with each other. Mining Mode is activated by default, so you’re ready to go right out of the box, without having to mess around in the firmware interface… after all this is a dedicated mining motherboard and it should be ready out of the box.

Just like the predecessor B250 Mining Expert the new H370 Mining Master comes with a trio of 24-pin primary power supply connectors, so you can connect to up to three PSUs simultaneously. Each one is tied to a separate bank of riser ports, allowing you to scale up the number of GPUs gradually and add more power as needed. Some motherboards require modifications and special startup sequences to run on multiple PSUs, but the Master is tailored for the task. All that’s required is for the PCIe power connector on each graphics cards to be plugged into the same power supply as the corresponding riser port.

There is no information yet about pricing and availability of the motherboard, just that Asus plans to have it be available later this year. However Asus H370 Mining Master will be demonstrated running at full capacity in a custom mining rig being unveiled at Computex 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan from June 5-9.


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