Remember me saying that mining rigs with more than 6 GPUS are a mess to configure? Well, the new Asus H370 is here to prove me wrong.
Being the first motherboard to support up to 20 GPUs, the H370 is also hands down the most miner-friendly mobo available on the market.
Unlike most other mining-oriented boards, the H370 comes pre-configured to be used in a mining rig; it features inbuilt risers and comes with diagnostic utilities. Let’s take a closer look at this upcoming motherboard.
Asus H370 Mining Master Specs
Socket: Intel Socket 1151 for 8th Generation Core i7/Core i5/Core i3/Pentium/Celeron Processors 14nm Coffee Lake CPU
Memory Slots: 2 x DIMM, Max. 32GB, DDR4 2666/2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, unbuffered memory
Multi-VGA output support : HDMI/DVI-D ports
Expansion Slots: 1 x PCIe x16*
GPU riser ports: 20 x PCIe over USB (vertical)
Storage: 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s)
USB Ports: 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 up to 5Gbps port(s) (4 at back panel, blue, Type-A, 2 at mid-board) 4 x USB 2.0 port(s) (2 at back panel, black, Type-A, 2 at mid-board)
ASUS 5x protection
ATX Form Factor 12 inch x 9.1 inch ( 30.5 cm x 23.1 cm )
(*) While there is an additional PCIe slot, it sits on the same lane as the A01 riser port, which is why it is not possible to install 21 GPUs on this board.
The innovation in the design of this board is that it has inbuilt PCI-e x1 to USB converters. This means that we no longer need the PCIe x1 link of the riser to plug in our GPUs into the board. We simply discard that riser part and plug in the USB part of the cable straight into the board. Less mobile parts translates into less possible problems, which is why I believe this design feature is quite a nice addition.
What else do we have on the menu?
ASUS GPU State Detection
On boot, the system scans the risers and shows which ones have a GPU connected, which ones are empty and which ones are having an error. Furthemore, every slot is labeled to be able to find easier a troubled GPU. Individual debug LEDs further help to identify any GPU or memory issues. The B250 Mining Expert has a similar diagnostic tool, which is critical for a board that has to manage so many GPUs at the same time.
Instead of tweaking the UEFI of our freshly-bought motherboard, we can now simply plug the GPUs in and start mining. The H370 comes pre-configured to work in a mining rig and requires no tweaking. Of course, we can always switch it back to normal mode in the config menu in case we’d want to use it for gaming.
Three 24-PIN Power Supply Connectors
This feature speaks for itself. We can connect up to three PSUs simultaneously to the board. Each connector is linked to a certain amount of riser ports. This means that if we decide to use less than 20 GPUs, we can use less PSUs too without the need to change anything in the options. We do have however to make sure to plug the cards to the same PSUs that go to the risers.
ASUS H370 Mining Master 20 GPU Mining Rig 2ASUS H370 Mining Master 20 GPU Mining Rig 2
ASUS H370 Mining Master Presentation 2ASUS H370 Mining Master Presentation 2
Availability
First announced in May of this year, the board was first shown to the public in the Computex 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan that took place between June 5 and 9. Bloggers from all over the world have seen the board in action with their own eyes. For example, a Spanish blogger writes that the performance of the board equipped with 20 GPUs was impressive and watching the rig work was a show on its own.
Asus promises to release the board by the end of the year. I am definitely looking forward testing this new board out as soon as I can. Hopefully, I will get one from Asus to test and review before it gets on the market. I will keep you guys up to date.
In Conclusion
Most mining-oriented boards out there are okay, though apparently none of them can be compared to the H370. If all goes well, soon we will be able to purchase a board that is relatively easy to set up and manage. If you have already dealt with 12+ GPU mining rigs, you know how much of a hassle it can be to make it work as intended. If the H370 stands to the hype, I might get back to assembling huge mining rigs as I used to do back in the day.