Asus and AMD paving the way for crypto mining
Asus has just unveiled its newest upcoming motherboard aimed at cryptocurrency miners, the B250 Mining Expert.
This board supports an incredible 19 GPU's.
Although other mining motherboards exist, this motherboard is a cut above the rest with 18 PCIe 3.0 x1 slots and a physical 3.0 x16 slot.
It works with the B250 chipset and features an LGA1151 socket that supports both Intel 6th and 7th generation processors.
The board hosts up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM in dual-channel mode at an impressive speed of 2400 MHz. There are also four SATA3 ports for storage purposes.
What makes this motherboard truly unique are a series of mining tweaks. As already mentioned, the support for up to 19 graphics cards.
The actual release, or even expected release date for this motherboard has not been announced. At this point it has been more of a teaser of what is yet to come.
One thing to keep in mind with such a board, is it will not come without its challenges.
With that many GPUs in one board, there will be some challenges when building the mining rig.
Things like cable lengths, connector spacing, enough space for proper cooling and so on are not going to be typical industry standards.
The more video cards one uses in their setup, the harder it is to make things work as expected - at least the first time they set it up. After they have a clear working mining rig setup, recreating it is much easier.
At the moment this board can support eight Nvidia and eight AMD cards for a total of 16 graphic cards, however AMD drivers will be coming up with an update soon to increase support up to 11 cards, taking the total up to 19.
The board features three 24-pin PSU connectors and three 4-pin Molex connectors which supply the power it needs to keep running.
The idea behind the B250 Mining Expert motherboard is that it allows cryptocurrency miners to save money by consolidating multiple mining PCs into a single system.
Really those numbers all say very little to me, not a technical mind at all ^^ Is mining still that profitable? Suppose something like this is pretty expensive.
Mining can still be profitable, if one can keep their electric bill down so it doesn't eat up all their earnings.
From the non-tech standpoints its like this....
Cheap little $20 miners - have a single GPU inside that mines for them. People setup dozens and dozens of these so that they can mine a LOT at one time. The problem is, its like running dozens of computers non-stop. It eats electricity. And its not like idle computers, its like computers doing the hardest heaviest work they can (imagine your fan being loud and never stopping). But housing upto 19 GPU's in one system, the electric bill will still take a tole cause its still 19 GPU's running at once - but its not 19 different electric cords and units - so its still considerably considerably cheaper.
Is mining profitable is a BAD question. The problem with that line of thought is, as long as people have it, there will never be stability in cryptocurrency. The reason is because if every time the mining becomes difficult and less profitable people stop mining (or more likely switch to a coin that is more profitable) then effective no coin ever stands a chance at long term... because when mining stops - so with it goes processing the transactions.
Hope this helps in some small non-technical way explain things.
It does ty. And yeah I get ur point, that is what is happening to BTC and BCH right now. People switching betweent the two when it's the most profitable bringing a lot of harm to both.
Is it effective to mine with a decent gaming PC? I currently don't really game with it, just Steeming and watching videos and such, so nothing that really requires a lot. I am wondering if it be possible to mine while I do those things and if it brings any harm to the PC on the long run (or that it is even worth it).
Honestly I would say no one asking the questions you are should be mining - but the answer is yes it can be very profitable and it can be very worth it - but it can also be a complete waste of time and not worth it at all if you don't know what you are doing.
Its about finding the right coin, that has the right specs for the type of mining you are doing do. Its about knowing if you are better off doing CPU mining or GPU mining. It takes knowing if the coin is POW, POS, or Hybrid. It takes knowing the difference in scrypt, sha256, X11, X13, and X15 hashing algorithms.
Is it worth learning - yes. Is it worth doing before you learn - not in my opinion. So I would suggest to start, learn the difference in the the coin proofs, types, and hashing algorithms. When you do, you will be able to answer all these questions yourself - and I promise despite all the words and terms you don't understand - its not really that hard to learn. 4 or 5 articles on the subject should set you straight. Just look up the terms ;)
The thing is, I am not really that interested (or for that matter motivated) in that kind of expertise, I was just wondering if a newbie like me could use his computer to mine some while it's turned on anyways. But taken from your response I shouldn't bother :P. Actually those were my thoughts already, just figured I should ask someone that actually has some knowledge ;)
There are various ways you could use your computer for mining type activities but if you're not interested in the technology then I would say don't bother because unless you know what you're doing you would only mine a little and you wouldn't be able to keep track of whether it was making or losing you money.
I have quite a few mining rigs and they all make me at least $200 a month of profit, that has been up as high as $800 but I don't "need" them to do anything except mine what I point them at and because I love this technology and crypto I enjoy the process as well as the results.
I feel like mining is a dead hobby. But the network continues to function, so it must quietly be thriving.
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Not sure why you would say that - My mining rigs make me more than many people earn in a full time job each month and they just sit there printing crypto for me 24/7/365
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As with the Bitcoin mining craze, when it was profitable to mine with graphics cards a few years ago, miners bought graphics cards by the thousand, and this caused supply shortages of specific models. The exact same thing is happening with models particularly adept at mining Ethereum, such as AMD's Radeon RX 580, which has disappeared from many online stores and often retails for considerably higher prices than it cost at launch.
That only means the card marketers are thrown off their game cause its no longer about "how many pc's exist". However with board makers coming out with 19 slots for GPU's - you can bet the demand is going to be filled.
Exactly.
Many people are saying (yet again) that mining is now dead or dying - but if the big Mobo suppliers are paying a lot of money to design/build new Mobo's for miners - that sort of gives a sign that they think it's here for a bit longer :)
Sweeet!
19 GPUs on a mobo, that's crazy stuff. How many PSUs will you need to power that?!?!? It's not just GPUs getting pricey, PSUs over 850w are getting pretty expensive these days too.
As can be seen in the datagram, the expansion slots are divided into 3 groups. Each group has its own dedicated 24 Pin ATX12V power supply which makes operations stable in multi-GPU use.
The total power-handling capacity of this connector is 373 watts using standard terminals or 560 watts using HCS terminals. Combining the 24-pin main and the four-pin +12 V power connector results in up to 565 watts (standard terminals) or 824 watts (using HCS terminals) total power available to the motherboard and processor! (from http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/power-supply-specifications-atx-reference,review-32338-8.html)
I have rigs with 6 GTX1060's in that draw less than 600W so, you could easily run this many GPUs with 3 'normal' PSUs.
I'm using 1600W PSUs for most Rigs now - but they're not expensive as I get them from the big Chinese suppliers, or buy chassis which come with them already provided.
If people are going to their local PC suppliers they won't find much over 1000W and will pay high prices, but you can get decent PSUs for mining at decent prices now. Especially for Mobo's like this one where the GPUs are split into groups again.
Whats teh best way to connect these to cards? Do you have to worry aobut extra power for the PCIe connectors or is that waht the 3 ATX supplies takes care of?
Also, with these boards, do you use an extender or card in the 16x slot?
These Mobos are designed to provide stable suppliers to all of the PCIE slots (more than previous Motherboards - which are already decent). The 3 ATX supplies means you're effectively building 3 Rigs but only need one motherboard to do the job that you'd usually need 3 (plus 3CPUs and RAM) for.
Yes - you would use USB risers to place the cards in better positions for space and airflow - not in the slots directly.
what happens though when crypto is preferred which is not based on proof of work? POW seems very inefficient and not sustainable to me.
The proof systems are an ever changing economy. Gambling on such hardware is in fact a gamble on HOW LONG, not forever. That is 100% for certain. Proof of work is still the most trusted method of cryptocurrency creation, but quickly catching up is the proof of stake concept - and still off in the shadows a still better method (IMO) of proof of burn systems.
Much like 'what cryptocurrency will truly be "the one" if any', I think the same can be said of proofing.... only time and gamble will tell.
yes, I agree. I am just not sure if AMD and NVIDIA may consider this trend to go on for much further than it is actually taking place. Already electricity consumption of bitcoin is equivalent to a small country after all.
It doesn't matter whether they think it or not. What matters is if people keep creating crypto that require it (many have it as the initial phase in order to get their blockchain distributed and secured quickly).
When you're mining you have to understand what phase each crypto is in regarding EPOCH, Difficulty curve, POW>POS timings etc.
It's not point at one crypto and hope it lasts forever thing - there are many GPU mined cryptos and more coming, so you just need to have a bigger strategy and understand that watching the landscape and adapting to what's coming is part of the game.
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