Asus Demos B250 Mining Expert motherboard with 19 pci-e-slots
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allesclar
Holy new forum skin!
Nice review. I would question the comment on the voltage stabiliser picture, surely you should always use a good quality PSU??
David Lake
How could you possibly make a profit by spending so much on all this stuff?
BlueRay
geogan
I can't see how actual graphics cards can fit on that card. They look like PCIEx1 slots and three in each row so how do the cards fit exactly??? Surely only a single high end AMD or NVidia card can fit in each row?
yeeeman
They fit by using riser/extenders.
rl66
http://g01.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1fDvpIXXXXXawXXXXq6xXFXXXn/10pcs-font-b-Pci-b-font-e-PCIe-font-b-Pci-b-font-font-b-Express.jpg
then you put GPU on stand like this:https://i2.wp.com/1stminingrig.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/GPU-Mining-Rig-Open-Air-Frame-Case-with-6-USB-Risers-Review-3.jpg
of course you can't play CS:GO no more with this rig đŸ˜‰
each card stand on a rizer like this one:
vbetts
Moderator
Man if there were higher core count on 1151, this would make a fun little virtual rig too.
sammarbella
Koniakki
No RGB?
Fail.
schmidtbag
At first I was like "what's the point of having the 3x 24-pin connectors?" because the PCIe cards are getting their extra juice from the molex connectors. But then I realized a board like this makes it every convenient to do a multi-PSU rig. However, doing that is primarily only good for cost savings - I doubt such a specialized board is going to be cheap. So it still remains a somewhat strange decision.
As for the amount of GPUs supported, it wouldn't surprise me if that's just a Windows problem. I figure most hardcore miners don't run Windows. Not only could there be driver limitations, but you also have to deal with all those licenses and Windows is a real PITA when it comes to cloning. It's much easier and cheaper to get a bunch of 32GB SSDs, install Linux, drivers, and mining software on it, and then clone it for every rig you've got.
Anyway, this is a very interesting board - I've never seen anything like this. I don't really want it (I'm not into mining), but it is cool.
vbetts
Moderator
Look at ethOS, I could be wrong but I believe it supports 8 RX series, 8 R7/R9, and 8 GTX 9/1X series? So even if you use 16 total of the 2 AMD series they support max of, you still have 3 more slots for Nvidia cards with this board. Or other way around seeing how much more power friendly the Nvidia cards are.
schmidtbag
vbetts
Moderator
Linus Tech Tips kind did that in a VM gaming host machine, but it ran Windows on all the VM's and shared some of the CPU threads, and memory but had their own independent SSD and GPU. Which if you have one giant cpu say a dual xeon setup, and PCIE slots galore wouldn't be such a bad idea.
schmidtbag
Reddoguk
Nice board for miners but i thought that 10gb lan was needed for miners and this board only has 1gb lan.
vbetts
Moderator
geogan
Aura89
D3M1G0D
I find it amazing that companies are still keen on getting in on the mining craze. As someone who is familiar with mining, I find it difficult to justify such expenditures - even if the current price and difficulty remains constant, it will take months before you see a penny in profits. I can't imagine the amount of cards which will flood the second-hand markets after this thing blows over (POS can't come soon enough, IMO).
First of all, OEMs have created mining-specific cards, it's just that supply is not meeting demand. Second, these mining-specific cards are basically variants of gaming cards (the features that make a good gaming card also make a good mining card) so creating mining cards takes resources away from gaming cards. Third, AMD has been burned by the mining craze before (they had to write down tens of millions of dollars in unsold inventory when ASICs replaced GPUs for Bitcoin mining) and they do not want to risk getting burned again (this is why Dr Su was hesitant about fully getting on-board, unlike Nvidia's Huang, who has nothing to lose from mining).
The current mining craze has nothing to do with ASICs. There is currently no viable ASIC solution for mining Ethereum, which is why GPUs are used (GPUs are the perfect Ethereum mining hardware). Profitability is also a genuine issue - from what I've calculated, it will take about ten months just to recoup the costs, and it's getting worse as the difficulty continues to ramp up.
Aura89