ASRock Unveils Two Motherboards Made for Bitcoin Mining

[Cristian_25H]

Dig the fact that there's probably no way you're ever going to end up dirty rich overnight, not unless you hit the jackpot or discover Davy Jones' treasure. Or maybe what you could try is to mine for the legendary peer-to-peer digital currency bitcoin.

Recently, bitcoin is gaining more and more popularity and value around the globe. A Norwegian man that invested in $27 of bitcoin back in 2009 fluctuated into $886,000 windfall. There's also a new permanent bitcoin ATM installed in Canada. The process of obtaining these digital coins through computing is called "mining", and ASRock is here to assist you to jump in the gold rush immediately with two new motherboards designed for bitcoin mining - H81 Pro BTC and H61 Pro BTC!





ASRock H81 Pro BTC is specifically tailored for bitcoin mining. It boasts a total of six PCIe slots for multiple mining graphics cards, plus two extra 4 pin power connectors for extra mining power. It's never too late to try, who knows what might happen, maybe you'll make a fortune out of it!

For more information, please check:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H81%20Pro%20BTC/index.asp
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H61%20Pro%20BTC/index.asp

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[dj-electric]

Uuhm.... what about PCIE X1 3.0 slots? that won't be a hard thing to make, right?

Anyway, a quick look at the specs tells me these motherboards are good for nothing except bit-mining

 

[Slomo4shO]

And no on-board power or reset switches...

 

[Jack1n]

Lol any pro bitcoin miner will just start the pc with a screw driver.

 

[john_]

Isn't it too late to play the mining game?

 

[Armourcore9brker]

Too bad these things are going to be practically useless with all the ASIC and FPGA boards that are populating the bitcoin scene.

 

[qubit]

I can't believe AsRock wrote a PR with wording like this. How embarrassing.

They don't even say such basic stuff as what CPU they take without clicking the links.

 

[MyTechAddiction]

I guess that somebody should have told AsRock that Bitcoin mining on PC is DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD.I only hope that this is not a sign of how fast Asrock adapts to trends.

 

[BigMack70]

This would have been useful 12-24 months ago, but not now. GPU mining is dead, and nobody is going to be making any money off of it at all.

 

[qubit]

This would have been useful 12-24 months ago, but not now. GPU mining is dead, and nobody is going to be making any money off of it at all.

From what I read about bitcoin, there can only be so many created - a hard limit and creating them gets harder and harder as more are discovered so this looks like a hiding to nothing.

I guess a pertinent question is just how many bitcoins can be created? If it's several trillion for example, then this remains viable, but if it's just many millions or a few billion then it won't

 

[joyman]

For Bitcoin it is not viable, but for all other scrypt based cryptocurrencies it is. For example Litecoin or Feathercoin are 1000% more profitable. It is late to the market but not that late. Modding PCI-E extenders will be thing from the past. Good Job AsRock.

 

[buildzoid]

From what I read about bitcoin, there can only be so many created - a hard limit and creating them gets harder and harder as more are discovered so this looks like a hiding to nothing.

I guess a pertinent question is just how many bitcoins can be created? If it's several trillion for example, then this remains viable, but if it's just many millions or a few billion then it won't

The limit is 21 million but if people modified the code and redistributed it, it could be limitless.

 

[Nordic]

This would have been useful 12-24 months ago, but not now. GPU mining is dead, and nobody is going to be making any money off of it at all.

If asrock had this out then they would of sold many many thousands. Every bitcoin miner would be wanting these.

From what I read about bitcoin, there can only be so many created - a hard limit and creating them gets harder and harder as more are discovered so this looks like a hiding to nothing.

I guess a pertinent question is just how many bitcoins can be created? If it's several trillion for example, then this remains viable, but if it's just many millions or a few billion then it won't

From what you read.... you did not read enough. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. Back when I used to mine my 7970 alone made me, at the market prices back then, $60 a month. Now my 7970 could make me $2.25 a month. It is no longer a small mans game. I would need probably about 5 of these asrock motherboards all filled with 7970's to make that much again.



These boards might find use outside of bit coins. Other crypto currencies might find this pertinent. Even distributed computeing projects might find these useful.

 

[qubit]

21 million - basically peanuts. Thanks guys it was a while since I'd read about it.

And thanks for clarifying about the other crypto uses.

 

[dick_cheney]

The amount of coins to be produced has nothing to do with why GPU mining is not viable anymore. With ASIC mining the difficulty to solve a block is to high, if you mine with GPU's now you will be mining at neutral or a slight loss profit even if you have free electricity.

 

[Breit]

Just wondering: Why didn't they split the 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes from a decent motherboard/CPU up to get 80 PCIe x1 2.0 slots using a bunch of PCIe bridges and converters? I guess 80 GPUs can get you some serious crunching numbers (considering you don't need bandwidth during crunching). This would also double as a decent heater for your house...

Oh wait, this could be really expensive... hmm. Maybe next time they'll design a simple mining card with a bunch of specialized ASICs on it in PCIe x16 format and call it version 2.0... but I guess they figured that this idea is someone else's already.

 

[Nordic]

21 million - basically peanuts. Thanks guys it was a while since I'd read about it.

And thanks for clarifying about the other crypto uses.

It is deflationary so those are some expensive peanuts. The price is $400 a coin at this moment and we haven't even mines them all yet. Deflationary in theory means they will go up in value over time. Even if 400 is just a bubble right now, it should be back and pass that in the future.

Just wondering: Why didn't they split the 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes from a decent motherboard/CPU up to get 80 PCIe x1 2.0 slots using a bunch of PCIe bridges and converters? I guess 80 GPUs can get you some serious crunching numbers (considering you don't need bandwidth during crunching). This would also double as a decent heater for your house...

Oh wait, this could be really expensive... hmm. Maybe next time they'll design a simple mining card with a bunch of specialized ASICs on it in PCIe x16 format and call it version 2.0... but I guess they figured that this idea is someone else's already.

Cost. These are going to be pared up with the cheapest cpu's one can find.

 

[Breit]

It is deflationary so those are some expensive peanuts. The price is $400 a coin at this moment and we haven't even mines them all yet. Deflationary in theory means they will go up in value over time. Even if 400 is just a bubble right now, it should be back and pass that in the future.


Cost. These are going to be pared up with the cheapest cpu's one can find.

All I'm saying is that anything other than designing specialized hardware for mining is not worth the effort anymore.

 

[SaltyFish]

Go back to making regular computer motherboards, ASRock. You missed the Bitcoin mining computer train by a few years.

 

[Nordic]

All I'm saying is that anything other than designing specialized hardware for mining is not worth the effort anymore.

You are right. So what will these be used for? Other crypto projects and maybe even some general compute. They are advertised wrong but I do see a use in them.

 

[qu4k3r]

...Even if 400 is just a bubble right now, it should be back and pass that in the future...

Exactly, You can see that behavior in the chart.
The first BOOM was in june 2011, the second in april 2013, the third a couple of weeks ago, and so on.-

 

[xvi]

There are 2.5 watt $30 USB ASICs that manage about the same output as a 7870. Get a raspberry pi, a hub or two, and then do this:

Costs WAY less, uses WAY less power, and is much smaller/cleaner.

I have to price this out even if just for my own curiosity. One of those hubs holds 9 ASICs and a fan.
9 ASICs = $30x9 = $270
10 port hub = $40 for a good powered one, it seems
USB fan = $3

Total, $313
Total output, 2997 MH/s
Total power consumption, 22.95 watts

To match that output with GPUs, you'd need 4.6 (round up to 5) Radeon HD 7970s (or 280x, I suppose).
5 Radeon 7970s = $300*5 = $1500 in GPUs alone
..and then you need CPU, PSU, RAM, storage..
Powering it? Upwards of 1250 watts worse case (ignoring the rest of the computer)

I like you, ASRock, I really do. You're just way too late to the party.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I haven't mined BTC in months using my 7970s; I switched them over to mining scrypt coins. It became completely unprofitable for me to mine BTC with GPUs once difficulty exceeded 50 million (It's over 0.5 billion today). xvi has the right idea - all the affordable BTC ASICs are USB based, so I would expect a current BTC mining oriented motherboard have a boatload of USB ports, not PCIe ports. At this point, ASRock could legitimately market this motherboard for litecoin or generic scrypt mining, but using BTC as a marketing gimmick (even if no smart person would buy it for that reason) will probably sell more. Scrypt mining (e.g. litecoin, but there are many others) is still profitable with GPUs since the algorithm is extremely memory bandwidth sensitive; because of that memory bandwidth requirement it's hard to make an ASIC that is cheaper than a GPU.

 

[de.das.dude]

Modding PCI-E extenders will be thing from the past. Good Job AsRock.

you can buy them now. and being asrock, im sure they will be supplying a few.

they supplied, the fan, screws, and even the screw driver for the vrm cooling on my board.

 

[spawnbsd]

As has already been mentioned, no one is going to buy this to mine Bitcoin on a GPU. Bitcoin mining on GPU's is dead, anyone doing mining on PC's is mining scrypt currencies like LiteCoin, NovaCoin, etc. The profitability of mining scrypt is around 800-1000% higher than Bitcoin.