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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