Some photos of that fascinating ASUS H370 Mining Master with 20 USB Ports
Remember that weird looking ASUS H370 Mining Master motherboard announced a couple of weeks ago? It's on display at Computex and I haz got some photos. Despite its functionality, this just tickles my hardware senses as it can utilize 20 GPUs Over USB with PCIe riser.
The H370 Mining Master increases density with support for up to 20 graphics cards, simplifies connectivity by letting USB riser cables plug directly into the PCB, and reduces downtime by making problems easier to diagnose. Mining is a numbers game; it’s only worthwhile if the value of the cryptocurrency you generate exceeds the cost of producing it. Increasing the number of graphics cards per node is a great way to stack the deck in your favor. This allows you to allocate more of your hardware and power budget to the GPUs that create wealth rather than motherboards, CPUs, and other system components that act as the supporting cast.
With 12 Radeon RX 470 and eight NVIDIA P104 cards tied to a single motherboard, an ASUS test rig highlights how much horsepower can be harnessed by the H370 Mining Master. The graphics cards are mounted in a special rack built just for this machine by their partners at Cooler Master. Spacing out the cards gives the GPU coolers room to breathe, which is vital when the underlying chips run continuously at full tilt. PCIe risers make configurations like this possible by connecting each graphics card to the motherboard with a length of flexible cable.
Crunching crypto blocks doesn’t require a lot of interface bandwidth, so each card can get by with a PCIe x1 link routed over USB 3.1 Gen 1 wiring. The risers responsible are typically made up of three pieces: the x16 slot that hosts the graphics card, the x1 card that plugs into the motherboard, and the USB cable that connects them. The H370 Mining Master simplifies this chain by replacing its predecessor’s x1 slots with banks of vertical PCIe-over-USB ports that let riser cables plug right into the motherboard.
Specifications | |||
H370 Mining Master Motherboard | |||
Size | ATX, 12”x9.1” | ||
Socket | LGA 1151 for Intel 8th Gen Core / Pentium / Celeron processors | ||
Memory | 2 x DIMMs (max. 32GB) DDR4 2666 / 2400 / 2133 MHz Non-ECC, unbuffered memory |
||
PCIe | 1 x PCIe x16 slot | ||
Storage | 2 x Serial ATA 6.0 Gb/s connectors | ||
Networking | 1 x Intel® Gigabit LAN | ||
USB GPU Riser Ports | 20 x Vertical USB ports over PCIe | ||
USB Ports | 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 4 x USB 2.0 / 1.1 ports | ||
Other Ports | 1 x COM header |
The vertical USB ports are made specifically for riser cards. They’re fed by PCI Express lanes in the Intel H370 chipset, so they’re incompatible with ASIC mining modules that require a true USB connection. We built this board to master the art of mining with GPUs, whose general-purpose computing prowess can chew through new algorithms long before purpose-built silicon is announced, let alone available. One graphics card can also sit in the available x16 slot on the motherboard, but installing it there disables the first riser port, so the maximum is still 20 cards total.
Senior Member
Posts: 124
Joined: 2016-11-08
Once they do that, they have said they will change the way the algorithm works. So it will make the miners defunct. The problem is, Bitmain sells this technology to miners about 6 months after they have been using it, which means, once released, they will already be using 400mh/s machines in their factories. That's why the mining community hopes they will change the algorithm.
Mining was a chance for "relatively normal people" to make some money... not huge businesses.
Senior Member
Posts: 3373
Joined: 2013-03-10
Once they do that, they have said they will change the way the algorithm works. So it will make the miners defunct. The problem is, Bitmain sells this technology to miners about 6 months after they have been using it, which means, once released, they will already be using 400mh/s machines in their factories. That's why the mining community hopes they will change the algorithm.
Mining was a chance for "relatively normal people" to make some money... not huge businesses.
I hope the Ethereum price totally and utterly crashes if they change the algorithm. 2 dollars would be a nice price.
Senior Member
Posts: 2068
Joined: 2017-03-10
I guess this board might be of use to professional miners. For small home miners, it is practically useless (good luck trying to find a circuit that can handle 20 GPUs without blowing). Interesting design though.
Once they do that, they have said they will change the way the algorithm works. So it will make the miners defunct. The problem is, Bitmain sells this technology to miners about 6 months after they have been using it, which means, once released, they will already be using 400mh/s machines in their factories. That's why the mining community hopes they will change the algorithm.
Mining was a chance for "relatively normal people" to make some money... not huge businesses.
Well, the E3 miner isn't really that much more efficient than a multi-GPU rig. The difference mostly comes down to the price (although that was apparently just a low introductory price). Furthermore, with GPU prices coming back down, the price advantage of the E3 mostly disappears.
It's no surprise that the ETH developers decided to hold off on any changes, as it would be an overreaction at this point and would probably do more harm than good. ETH is eventually going to go POS as well, although POW mining should still be possible for a while.
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Posts: 53
Joined: 2017-05-08
Behold, here lie thou graphical adaptors.