Biostar's BTC-24GH ASIC Board is Equal to 30 Radeon 7970s
Biostar's new BTC-24GH board has a hashrate of 24 GH/s.
Biostar has announced a new motherboard, though we question the use of the word motherboard. The new board that Biostar has announced is the BTC-24GH which, as its name indicates, is a board built for mining bitcoins and features a performance level of 24 GH/s – equivalent to about 30 Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards. It is made using ASICs and works over a COM interface connected with a USB to COM dongle.
The board itself will consume about 130 W under full load, which is notably less than what 30 HD 7970s will consume. In fact, it is roughly 50 times less power. This might just make bitcoin mining brutally profitable again, though it is known that the more computational power that is available in the world, the harder it becomes to mine bitcoins.
The BTC-24GH boards can also be stacked with a recommended height of up to four boards, though the entire system can be expanded to an array of about 50 boards. Do the math, and you'll realize that's a staggering 1200 GH/s.
What will this cost? Well, that remains unknown; it also remains unknown how attractive it is to buy these units. That said, even if a single board costs the same as 30 HD 7970s, it is the significantly lower power consumption that will help you earn bitcoins. The company did indicate that the BTC-24GH boards are shipping immediately.
Hopefully, these boards will become popular enough to allow prices of graphics cards to settle a bit again...
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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brandonjclark I really hope this works for them. If so, Biostar has my thanks and my next true mobo purchase.Reply -
CaptainTom Graphics card prices are high because of Litecoins, which can not be mined with this board. Duh.Reply -
Lamontiego I just bought CryoVenom R9 290 graphics card... because I couldn't wait for the price to dropped. Then, of course, they come out with this the day after I order it... the universe hates me.Reply -
qlum I really wish that a better solution is made for light coins as that would be a big relief on the gpu prices.Reply -
meluvcookies I hope this works purely for the sake of gamers who want to see gpus come back down in priceReply -
CaedenV I would really like to upgrade my GPU this summer... it would be nice if all of the miners would move to a platform like this so that we can see GPU prices correct down to where they ought to be.Reply -
InvalidError Bitcoin has been dominated by ASIC miners for about two years already so this new Bitcoin-oriented board is unlikely to have that much of an effect on GPU mining - people who wanted ASIC miners for BTC already own one or more similar boards.Reply
For people doing Scrypt mining like Litecoin, that new board is completely useless and GPUs remain the most cost-effective off-the-shelf option. -
shardey This is for BTC.. No one who mines with a GPU mines BTC with it.Nvidia has maxwell performing well for mining efficiency. Lately, prices of r9 series have been seen at or almost near MSRP, you just have to keep looking on Newegg and other places constantly.Reply -
chaosgs If I were AMD, i'd buy the rights to this and seal it shut. But in all honesty I hope it works and is cheap. Its about time a major corporation starts building these, Scam artist Butterfly labs is making a killing.But another thing to consider is why doesnt Biostar just make their own mining team with these? Should be more profitable.Reply