Monday, September 11th 2017
Colorful Intros a Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
Colorful today introduced an non-standard form-factor socket LGA1151 motherboard for crypto-currency mining builds, the C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20. This board is 485 mm in length, and 195 mm in width, and probably won't fit in even HPTX cases for its intended use, but is suited for custom rack-type setups. It only includes the most bare-essential features to set up a mining rig with up to eight graphics cards, with 2-slot spacing between each card. The board lacks a 24-pin power input, so you can share your high-wattage PSU with multiple machines based on this board.
It features two 4-pin ATX power inputs for the CPU, and sixteen PCIe power inputs, of which eight can be populated at any given time to supply power to the PCIe slots, optionally all sixteen can be plugged in. The topmost x16 slot is gen 3.0 x16, and wired to the CPU, the remaining seven are gen 3.0 x1, and wired to the Intel B250 Express PCH. The CPU is wired to just one DDR4 SO-DIMM slot, since system memory isn't that big a bottleneck with GPU mining. The board's connectivity, too, is bare-essential, with just a couple of USB ports, an HDMI display output, and a single 1 GbE network connection. The company didn't reveal pricing.
It features two 4-pin ATX power inputs for the CPU, and sixteen PCIe power inputs, of which eight can be populated at any given time to supply power to the PCIe slots, optionally all sixteen can be plugged in. The topmost x16 slot is gen 3.0 x16, and wired to the CPU, the remaining seven are gen 3.0 x1, and wired to the Intel B250 Express PCH. The CPU is wired to just one DDR4 SO-DIMM slot, since system memory isn't that big a bottleneck with GPU mining. The board's connectivity, too, is bare-essential, with just a couple of USB ports, an HDMI display output, and a single 1 GbE network connection. The company didn't reveal pricing.
31 Comments on Colorful Intros a Non-standard Motherboard with Eight PCIe x16 Slots
I wish other people could think outside the box on this here, even as a form factor. I hope Colorful sells enough of these and they read this. I'm serious about buying one or two if they make it a tad shorter to fit in a standard 19" rack.
www.broadcom.com/products/pcie-switches-bridges/pcie-switches/
The 24 lane is more than 4x the cost of the 12 below.
www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/broadcom-limited/PEX8714-AB80BI-G/516-3569-ND/6139489
www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/broadcom-limited/PEX8796-AB80BI-G/516-3573-ND/6110849
Maybe those are "carrier class" or something.
I wonder who else might make them at a lower price.