Topic: Mobo for R9 290 mining. (Read 877 times)

I've got 2 x R9 290s in an ASRock FM2A88X Extreme 4+ - though I prefer the Extreme 6+ varient on that MB for the extra PCI-E 16-bit slot over the pair on the Extreme 4+.
My "Big Rig" is 3 x R9 290s in an ASRock 990FX Extreme3 motherboard - this is one of the old "Avatar Litecoin mining" rigs Newegg was selling for a while, and the ONLY rig I own that has a riser (the case it came in is a huge *10 slots for cards* design). The rig came with 3 x R9 280x but I swapped those out a while back (rig came with a 1200 or 1300 watt titanium PS which is plenty for 3x R9 290s even stock).


 I've had very good luck with the ASRock boards so far, to the point that the FM2A88X Extreme 6+ is now my "go to" board. It does have a pair of PCI-E 1x slots too if you want to go riser and 5 cards.


 I also don't understand why folks continue to recommend that H81 board or ANY of the "Pro BTC" line, they ALL have been OUT OF PRODUCTION for close to 2 years now with no indication they will ever be back.

 I do NOT recommend trying to run R9 290s (or 390s or 290Xs or 390Xs) in a 4-card rig on that Biostar 4xPCI-E 16 slot MB - they need too much airflow THEY CAN'T GET when they have no space between them to avoid massive overheating problems. They're bad enough in 2 and 3 card rigs where there IS space between them.
 Riser-type rigs with powered risers though they should be fine with as long as there's a fair bit of spacing between them.

i recommend MSI H97 PC Mate

it is cheap,enough recent and stable.

Basically my MSI MS-7681 have 5 PCIE slots (2x16 and 3x1), so it could be nice, but it doesn't work with R9 and I don't know what would work. I know I will not get maybe the best mobo for mining, but if someone could for example give me a list of mobos that are 100% sure to work well with R9 290 I'd be really grateful 

So this is where you figure out what is available in your country for a price you are OK with, and build up from there. Will it be The Best™, maybe not, but maybe for your country and your limits, it will be.

Since you want to scale up, maybe try building a four GPU setup first, and get that stable, and then build a bigger rig. You are also likely going to want/need powered risers, so don't worry if the slots are X1 or X16, unless you are getting X16 to X16 risers.

So start with which motherboards are available to you and go from there.

Any more ideas? 

Both are not regularly available in my country 
Maybe I can try to buy second hand asrock, but biostar is totally out of my range if I don't want to pay a lot for shipping from USA or waiting long because of shipping from China.

Why in hell everyone is proposing a motherboard that isn't available anymore?!?

My suggestion:

Biostar TB85: up to 6 pcie

asrock pro btc

I bought cheap one R9 290 and decided to start minig. I have relatively cheap electricity so high power consumption of R9 290 is not a problem. Currently I'm an owner of MSI MS-7681 motherboard, but I cannot make them working together. I read somewhere on the internet, that running radeon on this mobo may cause problems so I'm probably gonna give it up and buy new mobo. I'd like to get around 3-4 PCIE slots. Which one would you recommend?
My PSU is fortron 800W so I hope it will do fine.