ASUS B250 Mining Expert MB - 19 Cards!

[mastersak]

Has anyone figured out what PCI slot # (or GPU#) corresponds to the physical slots on the board when using 13 cards?  Very tough to troubleshoot when the GPU#'s change when you disconnect a card.

Posting for future reference (13 cards):
A01 - GPU9
A02 - GPU12
A03 - GPU10
A04 - GPU8
A05 - GPU2
A06 - GPU4
B07 - GPU6
B08 - GPU0
B09 - GPU11
B10 - GPU7
B11 - GPU3
B12 - GPU1
C14 - GPU5

These are my GPU#'s if I insert into slots 1-12 and 14 (ignoring the x16 slot).  If I insert into different slots, the GPU#'s will change.  

Also, DO NOT use the molex power connections.  I was following BBT's video (60 card build, part 1) and he said to insert the molex connections even though I've read that you do not need to if you're using powered risers.  In my frustration to fix things, I connected a molex strand into the 3 connections (BBT did this as well) and my strand almost melted within a minute.  Luckily i pulled it out in time.  So WARNING TO ALL!

[1715578727]

1715578727

[Boriss]

This is from Asus blog and even they are not using molex for powered risers so not sure why would BBT connect them in first place

[Bigdrago]

Damn. Hard to know if we are supposed to insert power or withdraw power from these molex.
Thanks for the heads up. Waiting for my 3x b250 so I can install my 39 radeon 570

[starrbuck]

What screws are included with the motherboard?

Need to know since I am going to mount motherboard risers on the aluminium rig.

Cases come with screws, not motherboards.

[Bigdrago]

What screws are included with the motherboard?

Need to know since I am going to mount motherboard risers on the aluminium rig.

Cases come with screws, not motherboards.

K. Then I'll just use wood to fit on the aluminium.

[adi1972]

Damn. Hard to know if we are supposed to insert power or withdraw power from these molex.
Thanks for the heads up. Waiting for my 3x b250 so I can install my 39 radeon 570

I use the molex for my 120mm fan. So it withdraw power.

[Kozlov]

Eek @ the guy with 39 RX570s and no boards to run them on.

Why didn't you build smaller rigs? That's ridiculous :O

Can I ask what brand you went for?

[Bigdrago]

Eek @ the guy with 39 RX570s and no boards to run them on.

Why didn't you build smaller rigs? That's ridiculous :O

Can I ask what brand you went for?

Hehe. There are no other boards to get. Got 53 cards (returning or selling the rest), 6x evga g2 1600w, ram cpu etc
Just missing the boards and risers, arriving in 2 weeks.
Building 13gpu rigs. Who knows, maybe there will come an update in the future allowing us to use all 19 pcie to regular cards.

Sapphire radeon 570 nitro+ (half is 4gb, the rest 8gb).

[darkneorus]

Can anyone confirm that P104-100 (like this one https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-NP104D5X-4G#kf) Can run as 14-19 card?

yup, it works fine

[TheLastSpicyTuna]

i have heart about the 8 GPU Nvidia limit is gone from Windows 10 v. 1709+ can enyhow confrim this or its still 8 Nvidia and rest AMD?

[klintistwood]

13 nvidia gtx 1060 6g is ok(fill in zone A, and zone B), zone A PSU 1350W, Zone B PSU 850W,virtual mem 80GB.
But add 14th gtx 1060 will show err....still wait ASUS to support it.

I contacted asus for this topic before buying, they told me it's a limitation per model. If you have those specific mining cards it should not be a problem to go above 13 but if you have regular consumer cards, they say it's not going to work for some obscure reason.

[TheLastSpicyTuna]

13 nvidia gtx 1060 6g is ok(fill in zone A, and zone B), zone A PSU 1350W, Zone B PSU 850W,virtual mem 80GB.
But add 14th gtx 1060 will show err....still wait ASUS to support it.

I contacted asus for this topic before buying, they told me it's a limitation per model. If you have those specific mining cards it should not be a problem to go above 13 but if you have regular consumer cards, they say it's not going to work for some obscure reason.

Thanks a lot both, my idé its only use 12 for each rig in this MB so 13 as limit right now its okay, thanks so much for info the i will test the next level.

[seanverlast]

I have two of these boards, I run 13 GTX 1070's on one and 9 on the other. I use i3 processors and 1000W FSP Aurum PSUs, plus SATA powered risers. My findings:

- Must enable CSM in bios in order to detect the SSD/HDD and boot up.
- will not start with 2 DDR4 modules (corsair vengeance 8gb at 2400 MHz each), in fact not only it won't start it behaves as if something shorted and won't start up sooner than 30 mins after pulling out the 2nd module
- will not start with more than 13 video cards plugged in no matter what. cards and risers powered from the PCIe PSU cables ofc.
- Asus customer support is a f****ing sad joke, the most interesting "reply" I got was to RTFM along with 3 screens of canned garbage and disclaimers that took them a week to send.
- online manuals are useless, possibly compiled in india or paki or something, even a 15 year old's common sense does a better job at solving issues.
- PCIe 1x connectors are low quality and poorly soldered to the board, didn't see a manufacturer such as asus building a heavy duty niche board without paying more attention to these "details".
- board has no power button, annoying.
- couldn't get wake on LAN to work yet, possibly bios issue.
- board price should have been $160 or so but often retails at $400 or so, that's another bad joke and definitely not worth buying at $400.

The rigs are somewhat difficult to manage due to lack of space that quickly becomes a problem with so many GPUs. So you will probably want to build a custom chassis for this toy and use PCIe extenders, longer riser cables (the 60 cm version), possibly forget about plugging the PSUs in the mobo ATX connectors and do a bypass that will also allow you to use multiple 650W PSUs that are more cost efficient if you throw in some PCIe splitters, just be careful with the amps. https://howchoo.com/g/nmu4mtjjnzq/how-to-diagnose-a-psu-without-any-tools

Once these annoying gimmicks are out of the way it all runs smooth and stable at some 32-33Mh/s with ETH per card (zotac and KFA2 cards)

But I will not buy more unless they fix the 13 GPU "limit" or bug or whatever it is...because the component cost saving promise turns into wasted time managing difficult rigs and guessing fixes for various snags.

cheerios

[mshordja]

I have two of these boards, I run 13 GTX 1070's on one and 9 on the other. I use i3 processors and 1000W FSP Aurum PSUs, plus SATA powered risers. My findings:

- Must enable CSM in bios in order to detect the SSD/HDD and boot up.
- will not start with 2 DDR4 modules (corsair vengeance 8gb at 2400 MHz each), in fact not only it won't start it behaves as if something shorted and won't start up sooner than 30 mins after pulling out the 2nd module
- will not start with more than 13 video cards plugged in no matter what. cards and risers powered from the PCIe PSU cables ofc.
- Asus customer support is a f****ing sad joke, the most interesting "reply" I got was to RTFM along with 3 screens of canned garbage and disclaimers that took them a week to send.
- online manuals are useless, possibly compiled in india or paki or something, even a 15 year old's common sense does a better job at solving issues.
- PCIe 1x connectors are low quality and poorly soldered to the board, didn't see a manufacturer such as asus building a heavy duty niche board without paying more attention to these "details".
- board has no power button, annoying.
- couldn't get wake on LAN to work yet, possibly bios issue.
- board price should have been $160 or so but often retails at $400 or so, that's another bad joke and definitely not worth buying at $400.

The rigs are somewhat difficult to manage due to lack of space that quickly becomes a problem with so many GPUs. So you will probably want to build a custom chassis for this toy and use PCIe extenders, longer riser cables (the 60 cm version), possibly forget about plugging the PSUs in the mobo ATX connectors and do a bypass that will also allow you to use multiple 650W PSUs that are more cost efficient if you throw in some PCIe splitters, just be careful with the amps. https://howchoo.com/g/nmu4mtjjnzq/how-to-diagnose-a-psu-without-any-tools

Once these annoying gimmicks are out of the way it all runs smooth and stable at some 32-33Mh/s with ETH per card (zotac and KFA2 cards)

But I will not buy more unless they fix the 13 GPU "limit" or bug or whatever it is...because the component cost saving promise turns into wasted time managing difficult rigs and guessing fixes for various snags.

cheerios

some of your points are correct other not so much.
Starting from the price, the 400$ is not the price from asus, i get this board with 220euros (price of the retail), and i get a lot of them.
Then this board has 3 power connectors for 3 PSU and this feature is amassing, you are right for the build quality they will have to make more premium. The 13 GPU limit is not from ASUS, its a chip problem, also remember some time ago windows has 8GPU limit.
I am very happy to get ASUS mining exert better that building 2 system with 6 cards.
And the mos great thing is that is optimized for miner. Get from the box update the bios and you are ready to go.
In my opinion is perfect.

[TheLastSpicyTuna]

I have two of these boards, I run 13 GTX 1070's on one and 9 on the other. I use i3 processors and 1000W FSP Aurum PSUs, plus SATA powered risers. My findings:

- Must enable CSM in bios in order to detect the SSD/HDD and boot up.
- will not start with 2 DDR4 modules (corsair vengeance 8gb at 2400 MHz each), in fact not only it won't start it behaves as if something shorted and won't start up sooner than 30 mins after pulling out the 2nd module
- will not start with more than 13 video cards plugged in no matter what. cards and risers powered from the PCIe PSU cables ofc.
- Asus customer support is a f****ing sad joke, the most interesting "reply" I got was to RTFM along with 3 screens of canned garbage and disclaimers that took them a week to send.
- online manuals are useless, possibly compiled in india or paki or something, even a 15 year old's common sense does a better job at solving issues.
- PCIe 1x connectors are low quality and poorly soldered to the board, didn't see a manufacturer such as asus building a heavy duty niche board without paying more attention to these "details".
- board has no power button, annoying.
- couldn't get wake on LAN to work yet, possibly bios issue.
- board price should have been $160 or so but often retails at $400 or so, that's another bad joke and definitely not worth buying at $400.

The rigs are somewhat difficult to manage due to lack of space that quickly becomes a problem with so many GPUs. So you will probably want to build a custom chassis for this toy and use PCIe extenders, longer riser cables (the 60 cm version), possibly forget about plugging the PSUs in the mobo ATX connectors and do a bypass that will also allow you to use multiple 650W PSUs that are more cost efficient if you throw in some PCIe splitters, just be careful with the amps. https://howchoo.com/g/nmu4mtjjnzq/how-to-diagnose-a-psu-without-any-tools

Once these annoying gimmicks are out of the way it all runs smooth and stable at some 32-33Mh/s with ETH per card (zotac and KFA2 cards)

But I will not buy more unless they fix the 13 GPU "limit" or bug or whatever it is...because the component cost saving promise turns into wasted time managing difficult rigs and guessing fixes for various snags.

cheerios

sound great, but why i3 and not jsut a Celeron G3900?

[Boriss]

Minor annoying facts:

Power button
I really don't understand why they didn't include some kind of power button on this board, or at least include some kind of cable with button.
I usually have some old cases around so i take buttons of them.

HDMI port
This connector is really fragile, it would be much better they include VGA port also, because if this snaps off it will be problem to solder it back.


Good things:

Multi PSU feature
Really like the feature that I can use more than one PSU without any adapters and plugs.



Annoying fact is also one more thing that is also the best part of this board, and this is the lack of space when you start using more than 7-8 cards. It becomes big problem with cables and stuff, suddenly you start appreciate 6 GPU builds  .

I have managed to get this board for 170EUR so it was a steal deal

[BountyKillerz]

wow i'm really jealous with you guys whose already started with those kind of hardware. i wanna make something like that too. today it's completely hard to find a new GPU in my country. i really really want to start my rig too 

[yandi]

Hey Guys,  

My hashrates are 10% lower with this Mobo.  Anyone experiencing this?  Same GPUs on ASrock or MSI board perform better.  Any advice is appreciated.  Also, my afterburner (4.4 beta 16 & 19) is not working anymore

RX580 x 8, 8 gB ram, Intel Celeron, Windows 10 pro.  

Hi,

i'm also having this problem,

My 1070ti hashrate only 470 sols on ZCL mining, same card on another mobo( gigabyte) performance can do 500 sols.

any solution ?

thanx before

[stn1]

Will ETH os run 18 or 19 nvidia cards on Asus B250 mining expert? Very little information available online.

If u have 13 amd and 6 nvidia p106 mining cards.

is there any step by step 19gpu mining build floating around, i'm a bit struggling to find one? What cards and OS is suitable for this build? i heard that you can build it on win10

[darkneorus]

Will ETH os run 18 or 19 nvidia cards on Asus B250 mining expert? Very little information available online.

If u have 13 amd and 6 nvidia p106 mining cards.

is there any step by step 19gpu mining build floating around, i'm a bit struggling to find one? What cards and OS is suitable for this build? i heard that you can build it on win10

yes you can.

sound great, but why i3 and not jsut a Celeron G3900?

Celeron will be a bottleneck and mining performance will suffer.