ASRock Unveils Motherboards Made for Bitcoin Mining
ASRock wants to help you get in on the bitcoin mining trend.
ASRock is jumping on the bitcoin bandwagon with the unveiling of two new motherboards it says are designed for mining the increasingly popular virtual currency. The company is hoping to help customers make some cash with the H81 Pro BTC and H61 Pro BTC, both of which feature a total of six PCIe slots and two extra 4 pin power connectors for extra mining power.
The H81 Pro BTC packs five PCIe 2.0 x1 slots and one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and supports Intel's 4th generation of Core i-series as well as Xeon, Pentium, and Celeron in LGA1150 packages. There's also dual channel DDR 3 1600, dual VGA output (D-Sub, HDMI), Realtek Gigabit LAN, 5.2 CH HD Audio (RealTek ALC662 Audio Codec), two SATA3, two SATA2, two USB 3.0, and six USB 2.0 (four up front, two in the back). There's also support for A-Tuning, XFast LAN, XFast RAM, Easy Driver Installer, FAN-Tastic Tuning, and USB Key.
The H61 is for second and third generation Intel Core i-series, Xeon, Pentium and Celeron in LGA1155 packages. It also has five PCIe 2.0 x1 slots and one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot as well as dual channel DDR2 1600, dual VGA out (D-Sub and HDMI), Realtek Gigabit LAN, 5.1 CH HD Audio (VIA VT1705 Audio Codec), four SATA2, ten USB 2.0 (four up front, six in the back), and supports XFast 555, Dehumidifier, OMG, Fast, and Restart to UEFI.
Of course, the chance that you'll earn a significant amount of money mining bitcoin alone is small, whether you have one of these boards or not. Mining bitcoin is resource-intensive and is designed to make new currency available at a slow and steady rate. Though using GPU power to mine is faster than using CPU power, as more people start mining, it's become less rewarding. As such, your best bet is still to join a bitcoin mining pool (a group of other miners), and share the load as well as the acquired wealth.
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In terms of this motherboard, it's way too late for it to make a difference in the mining network, and if you get it expecting to mine, you're throwing your money away.
That paper in your wallet has "real value"? Oh yeah that's right I forgot, we've never seen a government backed currency crash into the ground.
Anyways, obviously bitcoin is still experimental. Nobody should be investing money they can't afford to lose. And nobody should be bothering with it with GPUs. The days of cheap/amateur BTC mining are over.
it may not have 'real value', i understand that but at least its legal tender for debts and can pay my taxes with it. its a real currency, bitcoin is just a script kiddies wet dream.
More and more "legit" places accept bitcoins, and there is no sign bitcoin exchanges will disappear any time soon. So having bitcoins is like having any foreign currency: you have to exchange it to pay your bills, of find a provider that accepts it. There are even bitcoin ATMs now.
Now try and buy bitcoins ..... Don't try and use PayPal, a bank, credit cards. Buying them is just weird, it's not easy or fast; however it can be done. Mail a cheque or wire money and... wait. (yes ATM's are popping up, = insert real money).
Now try selling them, ...good luck. Kijiji and go meet a stranger, or eBay on a small scale.
The more I look into it, the more I think a small group of people have millions of these coins and they are making a fortune in real money; unloading them on the public. The idea was/is brilliant! A Ponzi on a scale never before scene?
old pci slots and odd spaced 16x @ 8/4x electrically are worthless.
The way it is done now is a 50 port USB hub, and a bunch of USB based miners
USB asic miners use about 2 watts of power and can do 300-400 MH/s, compare to a GPU doing around 500-600MH/s but at nearly 200 watts.
A single USB 2 connection to a PC from a HUB handling 50 USB ASIC miners, can be handled with bandwidth to spare.
bitcoin mining is extremely computationally expensive but it is also very low bandwidth and thus does not benefit from a very fast connection.
USB is the interface of choice as it is easy to swap in faster hardware.