Topic: Whats a good motherboard to start with? (Read 395 times)

Great boards, I agree. And I've use the Asus z270 Prime P in the past because it was cheap and good - used to be $95. But today both the A and the P boards seem too expensive. The Asus Prime A@$150 and the P@$140.

Is there value to a miner at that price? Are there better ROIs at the lower price boards? If so, which ones have people used and like?

why limit urself on buying a 6 slot gpus if u can buy a mobo with more slots and just add gpus later on?

While I know you can, not really my style. I like to run 5 or 6 GPUs per board, mostly due to electrical wattage issues with my house, so if one rig stops for any reason, the others are still working away. I like to keep the GPU support cost as reasonable as possible: MB, CPU, Memory, and PSU run about $350 dollars. That's $58,34 per GPU based on 6 GPUs. Adding more GPUs doesn't really cut the support costs enough to justify the risk and problems - at least in my mind. 

Another option might be to take a motherboard that support PCIe bifurcation, you would then be able to plug more than 1 GPU on one slot. I checked if my Asrock could do that but it can't, there other smaller models from Asrock that can.

With this type of hardware: PCIe to 8 PCIe you could potentially do some crazy stuff

What a wild and fluid market, the "Gold Rush" is full on - everything in the computer component world is in flux (good time to be a seller I guess). Parts availability and price are moving so quickly. By the time I push "post" some of my favorite MB's will be gone for good. Back in November I bought a couple of Asrock H81 Pro BTC boards for $85 - no more; also bought a couple Asus Prime Z270-P for $95 - now they are asking $140, YIKES! Never mind you can't find any GPUs, and if you do, prices are up at least 20% from last month!

I'm looking for a good, stable 6 GPU board that is good enough for mining. Like most people here, I start with PC Parts Picker and NewEgg, filter down to the specs I need: 6 PCI express in some combination of X1 or X16 plus a M2 slot or two. Then I come over here and search to see how many issues other miners have posted.

Here is my short list based on price and availability right now:
ASRock - B250 Pro4 - $87
Asus - PRIME H270-PLUS-CSM - $99
MSI B250 PC MATE - $94 ($74 after $20 MIR) holds 5 plus 2 M2
MSI B250 GAMING M3 - $109 ($79 after $30 MIR) holds 6 plus 2 M2
MSI Z370-A PRO LGA  - $109 ($99 after MIR)
MSI Z370 GAMING PLUS - $119 ($109 after $10 MIR)
Any others?

So if anyone has any thoughts and/or experience with setting up a 6 GPU 1070ti/1080 rig with any of these boards, I would rally like to hear about your experience.

Some well known motherboards out there:

6-8 cards (natively supported)

-MSI Z170A SLI Pro
-Gigabyte H270-ud3p
-Asus Z270P/A/AR Prime plus and CSM (the latest 370 series is pretty good too but expensive)
-BIOSTAR TB250-BTC/BTC+
-BIOSTAR TB350-BTC
-AsRock H81 Pro BTC

Honourable mention: gigabyte EP45-UD3P (j/k ...somewhat. it works for 5 cards)

12-13 cards:
-Asrock H110 Pro btc
-Biostar TB-250-BTC Pro

19 cards:
-Asus mining expert

Pretty sure Ive left out a few of the good ones but its a start.

I'm not at all tempted to go that far.  Maybe when they get their shit together.

you can avoid this by putting your cards further away from your motherboard. Mines are in vertical position around the motherboard, keeps them "fresher" without blocking the access to my motherboard. If you intend to grow your rig, a 13 GPU motherboard will be cheaper than buy all the hardware twice. Of course you put more dependency on one set of hardware.

For the same reason, I'm now tempted to buy a 19 GPU motherboard instead of building a second rig.

One of the cheapest MoBo is MSI Z270A-Pro. It supports up to 7 GPUs (6 via PCI-e and the one rest via M.2 slot by M.2 to PCI-e adapter)

thats a thought.  My goal was going to be around 6 cards per rig.  I wanted to space the cards out for heat issues.  if I tried to squeeze more cards in I figured they would get to hot being so close together

If you want to evolve, you should also add the H110 pro btc from Asrock with 13 pci slots. I'm using this one and price has seriously gone down which makes it more attractive than 6 months ago.

All you really need to look for in a motherboard is ensure its compatible with the RAM and CPU you are planning to use and check to make sure it can fit 6 GPUs either by PCIe slot of potentially using molex adapters for the risers.  You can almost use any board if they meet all that criteria.  When you start looking for 8+ GPUs that is when you really need to look at specs to see what board would be the best.

I don't understand what's meant by Lenovo PC. But for the motherboard, I'll explain in a nutshell. Ex: Asrock H81 PRO BTC R2.0 LGA 1150. For Processor can use i7 / i5 / Xeon / Pentium / Celeron (most importantly its Socket Intel LGA 1150). For mining is enough to use Celeron to reduce spending.

If talking motherboards for mining, some people are looking at PCIe slots that will be used for GPU. For the above motherboards it has: 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16, 5 x PCIe 2.0 x1. Which means it can be used for 6 xGPU

I like the 7 slot asus boards with two M.2 slots

Couldn't agree more. You're not getting gains by not putting in the work. You're not Led Zepplin by picking up the guitar once a month. etc.

etc

etc

etc

Every response before your reply was helpful (although they were not all politely worded and covered with sugar).

I would recommend the Asrock H81 Pro with the caveat that the board has issues booting sometimes if no monitor is plugged in (it's a common problem posted on forums and I've experienced it myself). The board is usually easy to obtain and works without much fiddling unlike some of the others on the list.

Having said that, I would recommend you really spend 3-5 days reading through all the major threads here and in other subforums. Mining is work, and people who invest their time researching information often have light bulbs go off that can't be spoonfed. If you have lots of money just order a board and read while waiting for it to arrive. Otherwise research first and then order. Other people have posted their results and headaches. If you don't have to time to parse through their output then maybe mining isn't the best choice.

I have 55 days logged into these forums since 2011 and I wasn't even logged in half the time I was reading. I'm not an expert but I can tell you the time spent was worth every satoshi I've earned.

Just buy them all.

I'm not even going to lie, I LOVE testing new gear out. Because 95% of the time I don't like anyways or it doesn't work and I just return it after testing it.

any of this fits for my lenovo pc? i dont have any idea about motherboards.

thank you and the 2 others that were helpful.  This gives me a good starting point.  Ill probably learn towards the Asus.

you can choose:
1. Asrock H81 PRO BTC R2.0 LGA 1150
2. Gigabyte H110-D3A LGA 1150
3. Biostar TB250-BTC
4. Asrock ATX Z97 Extreme4 1150
5. Biostar TB85
6. MSI Z170A
7. MSI Z270 Gaming M7
8. Asus Prime Z270-P
9. Asus Prime H270-PLUS
10. Biostar TB350-BTC
11. Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3