Posts Tagged ‘GPU mining’

We Got Our Hands on an AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ 13x GPU Mining Moitherboard

3, Jul 2017

Thanks to AsRock we already have a sample of their new H110 Pro BTC+ crypto mining motherboard with 13 PCI-E slots for testing, so you can expect a review soon. The motherboard should start appearing on the market sometime later this month, so it is not yet available in the retail channel. It is a really interesting design and definitely something that AsRock had to do in order to “show muscle” after the competition in the crypto mining motherboard space started to heat up with shortages of the hugely popular AsRock H81 Pro BTC and other brands like Biostar announcing multiple new mining motherboards.

The AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard is pretty interesting with the 13 PCI Express slots available for use with video cards with the help of PCI-E extenders, but this also comes with some challenges. Initially we got information that the motherboard should work out of the box with 13 GPUs under Windows and Linux, and although that might be true indeed there seem to be some limitations. It seems that the 8x GPU limit is still a problem, however you should be able to run 8x AMD with 5x NVIDIA GPUs under Windows, but not all 13 from the same type out of the box (it could still be possible to overcome this limitation). For Linux users 13x GPUs do not seem to be a problem or at least thirteen ADM GPUs with the ethOS mining distribution.

Building a 13x GPU crypto mining rig could also bring some other challenges including problems with the power supply or to be more precise power supplies now that there are shortages and it is hard to source higher power models. Of course it depends on the type of video cards that you are using for your mining rig, but in general the new H110 Pro BTC+ crypto mining motherboard from AsRock seems to be more useful for builds that have mid-range GPUs and not high-end ones. Builds such as 13x AMD Radeon RX 470/480 or RX 570/580 that use single PCI-E power connector or Nvidia GTX 1060/1070 again with a single PCI-E power connector (sub-200W power usage) seem more reasonable.

Imagine what a challenge it will be if you want to build a mining rig with 13x Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. At 250W for 100% TDP per card you are looking at 3250W of power required just for the video cards, there are simply not much options for dual PSU setups that can handle that, so it is more at least a three power supplies setup. In this configuration it is not just the power requirements, but also the number of PCI-E power connectors that you would need for the video cards. You would need 13x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors and 13x 6-pin PCI-E power connectors, then also 13x 4-pin Molex connectors for the PCI-E extenders. You also need to be careful not to overload any of the power lines of the power supplies by connecting too much components on to a single cable.

– You can check the official AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ product page for more details…

AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13 GPUs Under Windows and Linux

15, Jun 2017

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.

Be Careful Where You Buy Your Mining Hardware From

9, Jun 2017

We are getting reports for a new trend that is peaking up recently with all of the shortages with hardware due to the boom in mining. It seems that some retailers will happily sell you their stock of GPUs and will then tell you that they will not give you any warranty or accept RMA in case of a problem if you are going to be using the video cards for mining. At the same time they are happily willing to sell you not only the GPUs, but all other hardware that you may need to build a mining rig. The problem here is that instead of clearly pointing that they will not hold any warranty for products used for mining, they take your money, ship you the goods and then inform you that there will be no warranty if the hardware is used for mining. This is just not the correct way of doing business… though it is hard to confirm what a GPU was actually used for anyway, it sounds more like a threat to the customer than something that can be truly enforced.

The main concerns with hardware used for mining are regarding the GPUs working under heavy load 24/7. This makes them prone to more issues as they hold higher operating temperatures, fans are more susceptible to failure (especially if not good quality ones) and as a result the cards can fail. Base on our experience however if properly cooled and maintained the fact that a good GPU is used for mining instead of occasional gaming is not really a problem. Most of the GPU failures usually happen in the first few days and are often caused by some small defect that is prone to result in an issue sooner or later anyway. All in all it is important that miners take a proper care of their mining hardware in order to ensure its long and reliable operation and if they do it good enough, then the trouble they will have are going to much less than if they don’t…

The problem is that there are a lot of people that are getting into mining that do not care about anything, they just throw a bunch of video cards somewhere and start mining and when there is a problem they just RMA them. They do not care about proper cooling, optimizing settings for efficiency or performance or anything else, they just want to mine and make profit from as easy and as fast as they can. We know for a fact that one of the most common RMA reasons are failed fans of video cards that are under warranty, again here some vendors are to blame as they are putting cheaper and lower quality fans. If you have good dual ball-bearing fans that are well protected from dust and do not have an issue with increased temperature you are much less likely to get into trouble. We are however still seeing cheap fans with bushings instead of ball bearings and not very tolerant to higher operating temperatures being widely used on not so cheap GPUs.

This brings us to the 3 month warranty that Nivida is planning to offer for their GeForce GTX 1060 9Gbps based mining GPU. It seems that they are also worried that a longer warranty might not be cost effective for products dedicated for mining, but then again it also shows that they may not be that ready for properly making mining GPUs… just more cost effective solutions. On the other hand if you look at the warranty that ASIC miners do come with limited warranty. For example the Bitmain Antminer S9 ASIC miner does come with a 180-day warranty starting from the date the unit is shipped to you. Baikalminer has just a 30-day warranty for miners. In general the warranty you get for dedicated mining hardware may vary from none to up to about 6 months period. However this is clearly stated before you buy the product, and not you getting a nice and not so pleasant surprise after you pay for it and get it shipped to you for example.


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