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We got an interesting tip about some new motherboards intended for GPU mining rigs. Colorful, a Chinese manufacturer of video cards and motherboards as well as some other computer related products, seems to be joining the GPU mining market as well with three different motherboards for miners. Colorful is apparently focused mostly on the local Chinese market, though some of the company’s products are available in other parts of the world, their English website however is nothing much to be proud with. There are not that many details about the three mining motherboards in question in English, but you can still get a decent idea on what they offer and what to expect. If you don’t live in China the chances of being able to find these motherboards on the local market are actually not that high anyway…
The first motherboard Colorful C.H81A-BTC V20 is essentially not entirely new, it was announced a while ago and should already be on the market, while the other two new models will most likely be available later this month. The C.H81A-BTC V20 is based on Intel H81 chipset and is intended for Intel LGA1150 processors, providing support for up to 6x GPUs. A pretty basic alternative to other popular solutions like AsRock’s H81 Pro BTC for example that this product from Colorful kind of seems to be designed from. For more information visit the official English product page of the C.H81A-BTC V20.
The next model which is more up to date in the form of chipset and features is the Colorful C.B250A-BTC V20. It is an Intel B250 based motherboard intended for the more recent Intel LGA 1151 processors with support for up to 12 video cards, though that 12 GPU support may be limited depending on the operating system you use (up to 8 AMD/Nvidia under Windows). What is more interesting here is that the motherboard actually has just 6x PCI-E slots and the other 6x GPUs connect via USB 3.0 connectors. This simply means that you do not need to use the small PCB board that plugs in the PCI-E slots from the usual package of PCI-E riser boards that rely on USB 3.0 cables for data. For more information visit the official English product page of the C.B250A-BTC V20.
The third offer is with a non-standard motherboard in terms of size and features as it is probably originally intended to be used in dedicated GPU miners like the ones with 8x GP106 mining edition cards from Nvidia. The Colorful C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20 is based on Intel B250 chipset and is intended for 8x GPUs without the need of any PCI-E risers as the board comes with full size x16 PCI-E slots with enough space in between them. The presence of two rows of 8x PCI-E power connectors suggests that the motherboard is designed to handle higher power loads, there are some more specifics about this product as well like the use of SO-DIMM memory slot. The connectivity of the backplane is more limited in terms of connectivity and there is no traditional 20/24-pin ATX motherboard power connector apparently being used here. For more information visit the official English product page of the C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20.
It seems that BitMain is willing to extend its presence from just the ASIC mining market as the company is apparently releasing two new devices for miners that are essentially dedicated GPU miners. For now the devices dubbed G1 with 8x GeForce GTX 1060 GPUs and G2 with 8x Radeon RX570 GPUs are only listed on the Chinese website of the company with prices only in CNY. This means that they are most likely targeted initially for the Chinese miners market and may not be sold outside of the country. Inside the server like cases we are expecting to see mining versions of the GPUs being used as this is the way to go with such solutions intended for large scale mining operations and not for small home miners. As one would expect the devices are targeted at Ethereum (ETH) miners with hashrates listed for the Ethash mining algorithm, though you should in theory be able to mine pretty much any other cryptocoin that can be mined with GPU. The first batch of GPU miners from BitMain is apparently for 500 units of each.
BitMain G1 8x GTX 1060 GPUs:
– CPU: Inter Broadwell-u 3215 or 3205
– Memory: 4GB SO-DIMM, DDR3 / L-1600
– Hard disk: 1 x Msata 64G SSD
– Ethernet: 1 x 10M / 100M / 1000Mbps (Intel I210-AT)
– USB interface: 2 x USB 2.0
– Display interface: 1 x HDMI
– Graphics card: 8 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX1060
– Hashrate: ETH Hash Rate: 200MHash ± 10%
– Carton size: 530mm x 320mm x 160mm
– Weight: 12.5Kg (without power)
– Price: 18700 CNY or about $2863 USD
BitMain G2 8x RX 570 GPUs:
– CPU: Inter Skylake-s G3900-LGA1151, PCH-B150
– Memory: 8GB UDIMM, DDR4 -2133
– Hard disk: 1 x 2.5inch Sata 128G SSD
– Ethernet: 1 x 10M / 100M / 1000Mbps (Intel I210-AT)
– USB interface: 2 x USB 3.0
– Display interface: 1 x VGA
– Graphics card: 8 x AMD Radeon RX570, GDDR5
– Hashrate: ETH Hash Rate: 220MHash ± 10%
– Carton size: 555mm x 445mm x 132mm
– Weight: 15Kg (including power)
– Price: 19700 CNY or about $3016 USD
There is no mention of power usage and what power supplies are included in the miners or you need to take care of this on your own. Based on the description of the miners it is possible that the G1 does come without a PSU (there are external PCI-E power connectors on the chassis) while the G2 may actually have one built-in (judging from the photos), but it is not very clear. No information of the GPUs inside are mining edition cards or not, nor what is the amount of video memory of the video cards used 3/6GB for Nvidia or 4/8GB for AMD. These are all things that people interested in GPU miners would really be interested in and currently they are not being listed as details.
The chances are not many of you have heard about the Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A motherboard that is intended for 6x GPU mining rigs and the reason for that is probably the fact that Gigabyte hasn’t been promoting this product much as a mining motherboard. Gigabyte is a bit late on the GPU mining front with a motherboard designed for mining rigs with the GA-H110-D3A, even though the motherboard comes with up to date specs. That however does not mean that the company hasn’t been offering other higher-end products that are good to go for use for crypto mining, there are quite a few of these already and we have been using some of the models ourselves. The GA-H110-D3A however is still new for us and we are going to be giving it a try and sharing our experience with the motherboard pretty soon anyway.
The key thing about the Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A is that it comes at an attractive price and has all the features you need in order to build a regular GPU mining rig with 6x video cards. It is a basic motherboard with 6x PCI-E slots (single x16 and five x1 slots) that needs to be durable and reliable and be cost effective, so no shiny extras that you won’t be needing anyway for mining. The motherboard comes with a M.2 slot allowing you to use SSD in that format and save some extra space and cabling, especially power cables as they may be a problem in some situations. There are also a couple of things to make the product more attractive marketing wise, though you probably won’t benefit much from them such as USB 3.1 Gen1 support, high quality onboard audio design or a Realtek Gigabit LAN with cFosSpeed internet accelerator software. Some of the extra features might be actually helpful however such as Humidity Protection Glass Fabric PCB, High ESD Ethernet & USB Port Protection or High Temperature Protection Lower RDS(on) MOSFETs Design as often mining rigs are not working in the best possible conditions.
Gigabyte has an interesting microsite for mining that is centered on the H110-D3A motherboard, but also has some more useful information for other of the company’s products that can be used for mining. The most interesting part is probably the table listing 12 different Gigabyte motherboards with information on what BIOS version to use for mining and how many GPUs can be used on the specific model. Do note that there are some motherboards that do require the use of additional M.2 to PCI-E adapter in order to reach the listed number of GPUs. For example the Z170-Gaming K3 is one of the board that we have used a lot for 6x GPU mining that did not have support for more than six video cards up until BIOS F22, but now Gigabyte seems to be saying that it will work with F23a using an additional M.2 to PCI-E adapter (something we need to test). There are even some motherboards for up to 9x GPUs with dual M.2 adapters like the Z170X-Gaming 5 and Z170X-Gaming 6, though you might actually have a problem using all 9 under Windows for example.
– Here is the Gigabyte microsite with some information and tips regarding mining motherboards…