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  • fanofanand - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    Do people still try to mine bitcoins? This product seems about 5 years too late.
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    AFAIK serious GPU mining is limited to various me-too coins that don't have ASIC miners available. (Yet!)
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    Yeah, a dedicated ASIC designs are much more impactful than general purpose GPU or CPU mining.

    Also, kind of feel that that the whole crypto-currency thing has been a get-rich-quick meme that needs to die off already. Yeah, I understand that there are plenty of people that do make a quick buck on it, but the reality of the situation is that cryto-currency mining is such a saturated field that to get any crypto-currency at profitable rates (to not only pay off the capital or dedicated machine(s) designated to mining, but also the electricity costs incurred with the machine(s) and A/C costs) you need a pretty massive investment to "get rich quick" and you're still subject to the awfully variable values of the crypto-currency day-to-day.

    Using crypto-currency as a pseudo-stock market is a bit better, because at least you're not dealing with the baggage of mining it yourself (where any crypto-currency worth its salt has such a high complexity for resolving chains that you'd need weeks to get 1 bitcoin, for example, or join a mining team where the bitcoin is shared amongst miners, but always in favor of the organizer of the mining team). But at the end of the day it's still such an absurd fluctuation where for every 1 person that "got rich quick" 5 others probably got real poor, real quick.

    A sane and rational person wouldn't suggest crypto-currency mining to replace your day-to-day job. Might be OK as a side-hobby if you like doing this sort of stuff, but long gone are the days of "Hey you got a PC with a graphics card? Run this while you're not using your PC to get free money!"
  • boozed - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    Also electricity thieves
  • Ian Cutress - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    There's still a few *coins that work on CPUs. I know Patrick at ServeTheHome does some articles on Monero mining with CPUs as one of his burn-in tests for servers.
  • Venya - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    Ethereum (ETH) is the currently most profitable crypto-currency which can ONLY be mined using GPUs, because algorithm developed in such way that creating ASIC is not possible (or feasible)
  • Skinandbones - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    Z-cash, which was released October 28, 2016, is specifically designed against ASICS chips and favors AMD GPU cards. I don't understand how it all works, but the RX480 GPU was in hot demand by the farming community and has probably switched to the newer RX580. A quick search to get any one who is interested: http://cryptomining-blog.com/8349-claymores-zcash-...
  • boozed - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link

    Hahaha
  • edzieba - Thursday, May 11, 2017 - link

    Why on earth build a board designed to be overloaded with x16 cards, and not either use actual X16 physical slots (that are x1 electrically), or at the very least use x1 open-ended physical slots? While it satisfies the current x1-to-x16 riser situation, if they were to change (e.g. if a single-slot x16 card became the popular mining card) this board then becomes obsolete without modification.
  • Manch - Thursday, May 11, 2017 - link

    Purpose of the risers/cables is to keep the cards away from each other due to heat. I do wonder why they didn't include them though.
  • ArcanuS - Tuesday, June 6, 2017 - link

    I'm not engineer, but I'm into mining and as such I have 'field expertise' owning several dozens risers. Feel free to correct me where appropriate.

    First of all, most of us are using 'active' risers. This means that risers are supplying power to VGAs via power supply, not from MB's PCIe slot. Passive risers are supplying power to VGA from PCIe slot (before the notch pins 1-4 I think). Problem (read: real life fire hazard) with passive risers is that they need to pass on to VGA 66W@+12VDC=5.5A. That means +12VDC Cu wire should be at least 0.51mm (AVG24) at ~60cm/2ft. That's theory. In real life usage wires are not Cu, soldering is bordering on criminal intent, isolation is... well not isolation. I saw many melted passive risers bought from Ali or eBay for 3€. Also, if you put 6 VGA on the board and use only passive risers that means, MB must provide 33A@+12VDC. That is fine and well except you overload MB power lines and in some cases even PCIe holders on MB melt. Not to mention RX480 regularly draws 75W from MB's PCIe slot (without 3.3V SB power calculated)
    Enter 'active' risers: They connect MB to VGA with only first signal portion of PCIe (pins 12-18, 9 wires). Pretty much all of active risers use USB 3.0 cable for this. That's why people call them USB risers. Power comes from risers. Every riser have PICe16 slot, USB type A connector and some form of PS connector (molex, 6-pin, SATA power). This power connector is used for 'cheating' VGA card and providing power to it, so VGA card thinks it's getting power from MB. Now, there are multiple types of riser power and there are reasons for using them. Some use Molex and +5VDC and do overstepping in order to supply +12VDC@5.5A. One reason for this is to relax 12VDC rail on power supply (to left it to 6-pin VGA connector). Some risers are using Molex and combine both +5VDC and +12VDC from Molex in order to supply 66W to card. Some are using SATA power connector - I presonally do not reccomend this, since SATA power connector is not designed for 66W and there are cases all over the net of melted risers and/or SATA power cables. The best ones are using +12VDC 6-pin VGA connector. Problem with them is that people who use regular PC power supply do not have, for example, 12x 6-pin connectors on their power supply for 6 cards. But you can always buy high efficency 2.6KW +12VDC power supply and use it to power both risers and cards. One note: NEVER use cheap SATA to Molex cable - that can be fire hazard.

    Long answer shorten: No MB manufacturer would risk and provide cheap risers when they can not control type of cabling, PS you will use or envroinment.
  • ArcanuS - Tuesday, June 6, 2017 - link

    This board is primarily for mining. Let's say it costs ~150€. It will pay for itself in less then a week mining with 6x480 8GB. Believe me, any Ethereum miner does not bother with cost of MB, RAM, CPU or SSD. That's like 250€ which is, at current rate, 10 days worth of mining. After 10 days I do not care if it's obsolete or not.
  • helvete - Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - link

    They should add a saw into the bundle:-)
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