5 or 6 GPU Motherboard Alternative to H81 BTC Pro and ASROCK Anniversary Edition

[securebitven]

hi, I am building a 6 x 580 GPU with msi h270 arctic, My first attempt failed, the mobo only recognized two GPU. what should I do?

[Beroxull]

hi, I am building a 6 x 580 GPU with msi h270 arctic, My first attempt failed, the mobo only recognized two GPU. what should I do?

I'm trying to spin up some rigs with these boards as well with 8GB RAM onboard.

I'm using SimpleMining OS and have four going now. Nothing I have tried has allowed me to get the last two working. I have tested all risers and cards and can confirm that they all work.

I've followed tips and instructions from this forum and others six ways to Sunday. Here's a good example:

For those waiting on the info for the MSI Z170A M5 Gaming board and 7x GPU support I finally have it working on both of my boards.

1) Make sure you're running the latest BIOS!
2) Enable 4G
3) Set PCIe support to "Auto" - DO NOT MANUALLY SET TO GEN1. THIS CAUSES MAJOR ISSUES
4) Enable onboard graphics startup as first! I believe this is changing "PEG" to "IGD" or something in the Advanced BIOS
5) Plug your monitor into the ONBOARD graphics
6) Use either simpleminer-RX-v1093-4.11.rc8-16.60-enableexe0ANDips0.imgc or simpleminer-RX-v1093-4.11.rc8-16.60-enablerc60.imgc (sorry, I don't remember which I used!)

My 14x GPUs have been stable all night long!

In addition to this, I 've flashed the bios with the most recent version (7A68vA2) and even jumpered the PCI-E slots as shown here:
https://www.gobitgo.com/_images/_articles/PIC-E-1X-Jumper-Wire-Step-2.jpg

I'm about to throw in the towel on this board because I've spent what I considered a good amount of time troubleshooting and every minute down is money lost.

Anyone else get this board going with 6 (or preferably 8 with m.2 adapters) GPUs?

[ifigureditout2]

Anyone else get this board going with 6 (or preferably 8 with m.2 adapters) GPUs?

I believe that this board is the same as the Pro Carbon only different color scheme.
The thing that gets most people tripped up is UEFI mode but I'm not sure that that applies to Simpleminer OS.
I'll give you the Windows 10 instructions maybe that will spark something.

Create a USB bootable UEFI windows image.  You can download Windows and there's a program called Rufus for making the bootable USB.

Install latest BIOS for motherboard.
Set Win 7/10 startup and turn off Win 8 startup.
Save BIOS and restart.
Hit F11 while starting up.
Choose your USB drive but make sure it is preceded by UEFI.  Example : "UEFI: Sandisk Cruizer"
At the Windows installation screen where it shows drive storage I delete any existing partions to ensure that a UEFI partition is created.
Windows will start.
Shut down.
Start up but keep hitting DEL so that you enter the BIOS.
Set both PCI 1 and 2 to Gen 1.
Turn on 4G Encoding.
Turn off computer.
Install one video card in the main pci-e video card slot.  HDMI needs to be connected to the card connected to this slot from here on out.
Start computer.
Windows loads.
Go into device manager and manually choose "update driver" for anything with a question mark next to it other than the video card.
Turn off Windows update by opening task manager, going to the services tab, opening services (at the bottom), and turning off the Windows Update service.
Install AMD drivers.  Be sure to unselect "auto-update drivers" before closing the driver installation program.
Shut down computer.
Put card on riser and add 6 more cards on risers to motherboard.
Start up Windows.
The screen will flash a million times.  (This seams to go quicker if you don't add all 6 cards at the same time but requires another restart so that you can add the final cards.)
You'd then have 7 cards installed in Windows.

All that said, I've had a horrible time with my Carbons.  But I have no other board to compare it too so it could be some flaky cards or too much overclocking or something else other than the board.  I can't be sure just yet.

[Breesus]

Hi guys,

instead of creating a new topic I thought I could just use this one.

At the moment, this motherboard ASUS Prime H270-Plus (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-H270-PLUS/specifications/). At around $100, it's one of the cheapest and one of the few 6xPCIE card available at the moment.

I couldn't find much information regarding this card, is anyone actually mining on it with 6 GPUs ? Did you have any difficulty to set it up ?

Any info regarding this card would be much appreciated ! Thanks !

[Breesus]

I'm using the Asus Z270-P https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-Z270-P/
Works well.

All I needed to do was update BIOS to get the "above 4g encoding" option, and enabled it!
PCIe gen is set at auto.
Running 6 GPUs without problems with smOS / simplemining.net.

Happy mining

Is there a minimum amount of RAM you need to use on this Mobo or could you run it with just one 4GB stick ?

[hanskan]

I must be going blind but i can't find "enable above 4G decoding" in bios (updated via internet)

MOBO - asus prime h270-pro

anyone ?

[blueMoonshine]

There are a ton of other threads that have solved the problem of which motherboards work with 6 or 6+ GPUs.

It's a misconception that there is a small subset of motherboards compatible with 6+ GPUs.

settings like TOLUD, and enable 4G decoding solve these problems.

Every 6/6+ PCIe slot board I've bought (MSI, ASUS, AsRock, and Biostar) needed BIOS config tweaking to fix the issue. They all work z170, z270, b250, b350.

 

[Htgan]

ASUS PRIME H270-PLUS 109$
MSI H270 TOMAHAWK ARCTIC 125$
ASROCK H270 PRO4 112$

both 1151 socket & 6 PCIe 3 slots (same Offer as Biostar which should be much cheaper), reference price from AMZ

Gonna be hard to drive 6 GPUs from 5 PCIe slots.

Please only recommend boards you know work.

For instance I have a board with 7 PCIe slots and 2 m.2 slots that theoretically could drive 9 GPUs.

Realistically it can only drive 4.

First you cant populate any M.2 with NVMe w/o account for PCIe lines (and PCIe slots), you should use M.2 Sata SSD.

Whatever nobody who want to earn money will put nothing more than a cheap usb3 16gb flashdrive on it, so discard the M.2 interference.
You should setup PCIe to PCIe v2.0 in bios.

Specifications for Asrock H270 Pro4 are wrong at amazon.

but these are verified:

ASUS Prime H270-Plus
>>> 6 PCIe slots: 1:x16 1:x4(x16 slot) 4:x1
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-H270-PLUS/specifications/


MSI H270 TOMAHAWK ARCTIC
>>> 6 PCIe slots  3:x16 3:x1
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/H270-TOMAHAWK-ARCTIC.html#productSpecification-section

All based the on Intel H270, better chipset than as Biostar's TB250 H250.

However, I suggest caution to invest on these MoBos as soon will be available cheap PCIe Switches for 8+ GPUs from at least two vendors, one of these seems is regular to bitcointalk.

First of all I would like to thank you since these boards look awesome
ASUS PRIME H270-PLUS
MSI H270 TOMAHAWK ARCTIC

I am leaning towards Asus but MSi is a good option too.

Are you positive that all 6 pci-e slots can be used with these boards?

Im asking my self the same question, will the msi support
6 gpus, has anyone got them running using the same motherboard mentioned above.



Thanks

Don't know if this is too late for you. I read his post and went and bought the MSI Tomahawk Arctic H270 and it turned out to NOT WORK. It disables PCI-e Slots 2 and 5 if you plug any card into 3 and 6. It also disables PCI-e 4 if you plug in an m.2 ssd like I did. so screw that guy he doesn't know what he's talking about and made me waste money and time.

[positiveeddy]

those of you having trouble with getting more than 2 GPU's working on the Asus Prime H270-PLUS - follow these instructions and you can upgrade to 8 GPU's no problem...

the issue is the bios & drivers are not going to support more than 2 or 3 GPU's unless you update them

1st, update BIOS to the latest version

2nd, go to Asus.com and look up the H270-PLUS and find the latest VGA driver  (while you're there you might as well download all the drivers and make sure you're running the latest, chipset, audio, lan, etc..)

once you download the VGA driver, extract the file in windows, then run it.... let it update your VGA driver

Now go in to BIOS change the M.2 to PCI-E if you have the M.2 to PCI-E adapters installed

Go to Advanced > System Config or whatever it's called > turn 4g decoding ON

(you may need to install 1st GPU in the pci-express x16 slot before turning 4g decoding ON)

Then > DIM > change speed to GEN 1

All the others (PEG, PCH) put on Auto...

This seems to do the trick... also, i am not sure if it will install all GPU's if you plug them all in at the same time - i just go 1 by 1, that way i know if i need to replace a bad riser etc..

Hope this helps...