Biostar has released a small batch of these boards and I was lucky enough to be offered one to test. I have not yet tried BitCoin Mining but from what I do know ASIC boards are supposed to be more productive than GPU's and use less electricity as well.


Board specs and power requirements.


Biostar says you can daisy chain up to 50 of these boards together but with each one requiring 130W of power 50 would take a massive 6500W of power. Biostar has not yet announced a price for the BTC-24GH.

The box in all it's glory.

The BTC-24GH ASIC board itself.

From left to right are pictured, USB connector, 20 to 24 pin ATX adapter cable, com to com, and com to usb cables.

A quick install guide.

Drivers and Utilities CD


I used some tall motherboard standoffs to raise the board and placed a 120mm fan to the right to blow cool air across it. Biostar recommends the boards IC's be kept under 90C (yes you read that right) so extra cooling is essential. Over 90C and you risk the chance of overheating the board.


The 24 pin ATX and 4 pin AUX power cables connected.


Here is the COM cable connected.


At the other end of the COM cable we have the USB connector which connects to your PC.

Driver and Software Install

Place the driver and utilities CD in your disc drive, run setup, and then choose "Driver". This will install the USB Serial Port Driver. Next go to Device Manager and you should see the following:


Take note of the COM number as you will need it later. Right click on USB Serial Port and choose properties. Then click the port settings tab and advanced.


Click on latency timer and change the setting to 1. Close Device Manager and return to the install disc. This time choose install software and a new folder will be created on your desktop. Open this folder and click ct.exe


Remember that Com Port number I asked you to remember earlier? Click the COM PORT button and enter it there.


Next click Pool, choose which you would like to join, and then click the edit button. Please note that BtcGuard is an error, it should be BtcGuild.


Enter your worker name in the two spots shown as well as your chosen password directly below.


Click the Start button and if you configured everything correctly you will begin getting workers.


I let the program run for 24 hours and this is the result. I just checked my BTC Guild account balance and these are my earnings so far: 0.00047728

Once I discovered I had to join a BTC group and create a Bitcoin wallet then the rest was easy. Biostar has a nice ASIC board here but with the time it now takes to earn BitCoins I'm not sure how profitable running one will actually be. Perhaps if it will work with LiteCoin, or some of the other cryptocurrency alternatives at some point in the future then this may change though.

This was my first time testing a product like this and I have to thank Biostar for the opportunity.