Posts Tagged ‘crypto mining motherboard

While AsRock has not yet released for sale their new motherboard AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13 GPU support we already got confirmation that it is working with 13 video cards for mining under Linux and Windows. The sale of the new Pro BTC+ mining motherboard will probably not start before next month, but we already hope to be able to get an in-depth review hopefully by the end of this month or early next month.

Running 13 GPUs on a single mining rig might be a bit of a challenge as it is not only the motherboard that needs to provide you with the base, but you also need to take care of other hardware as well. Hardware such as power supplies that will handle 13 GPUs, we are talking about multiple PSUs for sure. There are also other possible challenges associated with more GPUs such as higher requirement towards the memory/swap as well as maybe even faster CPU to handle additional load coming from the mining software.

We have seen proof of 13 AMD GPUs running on the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard under Linux using the ethOS distribution for mining as well as 13 Nvidia GPUs recognized and working under Windows 10. We are yet to confirm this ourselves by testing the motherboard, but what we are seeing as results already is reassuring that we are going to get a real and working solution for more GPUs per mining rig than what is currently available in terms of 6, 7 and even 8 GPU mining motherboards. Since the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard is designed with crypto mining in mind it should be easy and problem free to setup, unlike some other motherboards that people are using at the moment that need some special settings or tweaks in order to make them work with more video cards than they are originally designed for.

Biostar is apparently planning to release a new version of their TB250-BTC mining motherboard that is called Biostar TB250-BTC PRO. This is a bit confusing naming as the previous model is also from the Pro series of motherboards, so not that great idea, but anyway. The new Biostar TB250-BTC PRO motherboard will have 12 PCI-E slots or double the number of the regular mining version, so it should allow for up to 12 GPUs on a single board… in theory. Biostar has listed the TB250-BTC PRO motherboard on their website, but there is still not much information and even a photo of the actual product available…

AsRock has recently shown their own variant of a new Pro BTC crypto mining motherboard, namely the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ Mining Motherboard with 13 PCI-E slots. It seems that the new trend is to offer higher density of GPUs on a single motherboard, that is of course if you manage to have more than 8 GPUs under Windows as with Linux things get more complicated for many users that rely on the familiar and more user friendly Windows-based tools. We are yet to see the new AsRock motherboard also becoming available on the market and checking it out to see how well it will run with 13 GPUs and what limitations will be there that will go along with the increased number of PCI-E slots and the same will most likely also apply for the new motherboard with 12 PCI-E slots from Biostar as well.

See the official product page of the Biostar TB250-BTC PRO 12x PCI-E motherboard…

AsRock is without a doubt the most popular manufacturers of motherboards designed for GPU mining rigs thanks to their H81 Pro BTC model, however lately the company is having trouble providing enough motherboards for GPU miners. There have been shortages of AsRock H81 Pro BTC motherboards and the demand is pretty high with new GPU mining rigs getting built a lot once more. The H81 chipset is getting old and there haven’t been more up to date BTC motherboards getting released with a newer chipset from AsRock either and this is apparently opening up some opportunities fro other manufacturers…

Entering Biostar with their new model TB250-BTC that is apparently intended for GPU mining rigs with up to 6x video cards and to additional 4-pin Molex power connectors onboard, just like on the AsRock Pro BTC series. To our knowledge this is the first motherboard intended for 6x GPU mining rigs with an up to date chipset, based on Intel B250 and supporting socket 1151 CPUs and DDR4 memory. The motherboard even has an M.2 slot available for installing onboard SSD modules, a feature that might also be interesting for some GPU miners. The only problem with Biostar as a brand is the limited availability on many markets or the total lack of such, unlike AsRock that is available on much more markets worldwide. The Biostar TB250-BTC in not the first attempt at such a solution from the company, they previously had the Biostar TB85 motherboard that also came as an alternative to AsRock’s H81 Pro BTC, but it never got too popular since it was also hard to find on many markets and was more expensive.

It is not like there are no other interesting alternatives available to the popular AsRock H81 Pro BTC motherboard with more recent chipsets, but since they are not designed for GPU mining rigs specifically they may not all work or may need some special settings and tuning. There are some interesting motherboards with the latest generation chipsets from Intel such as B250/H270 that come with 6 PCI-E slots and at a good price, though they may need some tinkering with the BIOS settings in order to make them work properly for mining. The price is important factor when building up a GPU mining rig and you don’t normally want to spend that much on a motherboard and CPU, especially if you don’t need any of the extra features or performance provided by the more expensive solutions… lower cost means faster ROI.

If you want to take a look at these alternative offers for possible good choices for 6x GPU mining rigs take a look at the offers from AsRock, Asus and MSI with B250/H270 chipsets that do have 6x PCI-E slots. On these however you need to switch the PCI-E to Gen 2.0 or Gen 1.0 and also force the TOLUD or Top Of Lower Usable Dram setting in the BIOS to 3.5 GB manually and not leave it to Auto mode as it is by default. You may want to make sure that the BIOS of the motherboard you go for has this BIOS option available, as otherwise the operating system may have issues properly assigning resources for all 6 GPUs and they many not work.

For more details about the Biostar TB250-BTC motherboard for 6x GPU mining rigs…


top