Best budget 6GPU motherboard?

[SuperDerpBro]

Looking for the cheapest board known to support 6 GPUS. I am in Canada and the best i can find right now is the Biostar TB85 for about 100 CAD (That is about $78 USA). Just wondering if there are any cheaper boards out there that i may be overlooking as i would really prefer not to but a Biostar board. heh

Thanks

[puwaha]

The Biostars are pretty reliable motherboards.  Remember, this is not a gaming PC, but a mining PC.  You don't need wiz-bang features, but a motherboard that just works.

Also, price matters in mining.

[michnern]

I'm a total newbie at mining, but I've worked in I.T. for 25+ years.... Are you doing this as a hobby? I.E. you don't really care how often your rig crashes, or are you looking to build a production setup that you want generating cash for you 24/7? If you care about stability and keeping your rig up and running with the least crashes possible, don't cheap out on your motherboard or your power supplies, they're the heart or your setup. I'm debating between EVGA and Corsair power supplies at the moment.

As a newbie, I can't say which MB is best as I'm still researching that myself... I will say that I wish I could get an Intel branded everything (motherboard, chipset and CPU) because that has provided me the most stability in an enterprise level environment. I remember the old days of 3 different brands and companies for MB, chipset and CPU and how many times our systems would blue screen or hang as a result....

I'm looking at a mining board and in the rudimentary research I've done so far I'm leaning towards Asus. I've never owned a Biostar motherboard so I have no experience with their level of quality. I was looking at the Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ (it was one of the first boards I found using the Google machine), but Asrock as a name has never struck me as top tier and after reading about people having shorting problems on the PCI-E risers because the slots are too close together that has made me shy away from them as a brand.

I've been researching for weeks now, hours a day to ensure when I do make the purchase, I'm getting it as close to right as I can the first time.

If $100 is your target and 6 GPUs, this Gigabyte MB got 4/5 stars on Amazon and NewEgg.ca and is $104 CAD.
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813145016

Also, you're mentioning overclocking... If you're mining, you're probably only going to be overclocking and tweaking your GPUs. To save $$$ on power, miners can go with as little as a low end celeron processor since the CPU in your rig hardly breaks a sweat... GPUs do all the work.

[gregfromo]

The Asrock B85 Anversary and H81 BTC R2.0 are ok, I use some of them. And if you're on windows 10 use only 1703.

[puwaha]

I'm a total newbie at mining, but I've worked in I.T. for 25+ years.... Are you doing this as a hobby? I.E. you don't really care how often your rig crashes, or are you looking to build a production setup that you want generating cash for you 24/7? If you care about stability and keeping your rig up and running with the least crashes possible, don't cheap out on your motherboard or your power supplies, they're the heart or your setup.

All sound advice for a daily driver computer or gaming computer.  But when it comes to mining, the problems you are going to have with stability are more related to the OS, drivers and mining software.  A quality power supply is good advice though.

I'm debating between EVGA and Corsair power supplies at the moment.

Don't split hairs... they are both good.

As a newbie, I can't say which MB is best as I'm still researching that myself... I will say that I wish I could get an Intel branded everything (motherboard, chipset and CPU) because that has provided me the most stability in an enterprise level environment. I remember the old days of 3 different brands and companies for MB, chipset and CPU and how many times our systems would blue screen or hang as a result....

I won't begrudge your preference, but this is mining, not enterprise.  You want your equipment to be cheap and fast.  Reliable is nice, but not necessary, as the CPU, motherboard, and related hardware are not that taxed during mining.

I'm looking at a mining board and in the rudimentary research I've done so far I'm leaning towards Asus. I've never owned a Biostar motherboard so I have no experience with their level of quality. I was looking at the Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ (it was one of the first boards I found using the Google machine), but Asrock as a name has never struck me as top tier and after reading about people having shorting problems on the PCI-E risers because the slots are too close together that has made me shy away from them as a brand.

Asrock is a good brand as well.

I've been researching for weeks now, hours a day to ensure when I do make the purchase, I'm getting it as close to right as I can the first time.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

[SuperDerpBro]

Thanks guys

I'm a total newbie at mining, but I've worked in I.T. for 25+ years.... Are you doing this as a hobby? I.E. you don't really care how often your rig crashes, or are you looking to build a production setup that you want generating cash for you 24/7? If you care about stability and keeping your rig up and running with the least crashes possible, don't cheap out on your motherboard or your power supplies, they're the heart or your setup. I'm debating between EVGA and Corsair power supplies at the moment.

As a newbie, I can't say which MB is best as I'm still researching that myself... I will say that I wish I could get an Intel branded everything (motherboard, chipset and CPU) because that has provided me the most stability in an enterprise level environment. I remember the old days of 3 different brands and companies for MB, chipset and CPU and how many times our systems would blue screen or hang as a result....

I'm looking at a mining board and in the rudimentary research I've done so far I'm leaning towards Asus. I've never owned a Biostar motherboard so I have no experience with their level of quality. I was looking at the Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ (it was one of the first boards I found using the Google machine), but Asrock as a name has never struck me as top tier and after reading about people having shorting problems on the PCI-E risers because the slots are too close together that has made me shy away from them as a brand.

I've been researching for weeks now, hours a day to ensure when I do make the purchase, I'm getting it as close to right as I can the first time.

If $100 is your target and 6 GPUs, this Gigabyte MB got 4/5 stars on Amazon and NewEgg.ca and is $104 CAD.
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813145016

Also, you're mentioning overclocking... If you're mining, you're probably only going to be overclocking and tweaking your GPUs. To save $$$ on power, miners can go with as little as a low end celeron processor since the CPU in your rig hardly breaks a sweat... GPUs do all the work.

Just a hobby but its not like i enjoy a rig that crashes a few times a day heh. That GB board was my first choice for a cheap board as GB has never let me down. It is out of stock everywhere though.

I have never been in a position of even consider a Biostar board. But im thinking about every dollar for ROI. Reading the reviews for the newer/updated version of the Biostar board. Lots of people talk about how much it sucks and more than a few talk about fires. I have never heard/read anything bad about the older model (the one i will probably buy) but it scares me. heh

[Undefined31415]

I'm debating between EVGA and Corsair power supplies at the moment.

Not to drag this thread too far off-topic, but in general, those brand names don't mean much. What really matters is underlying OEM responsible for the guts of the power supplies in question. Most of the low-mid range Corsair units are done by Channel Well, which has only recently started gaining an "okay" reputation in the PSU area. Many of EVGA's lower-end units are done by HEC, which is in about the same tier as CWT.

The upper-end lines are usually handled by better OEMs, such as Seasonic or SuperFlower.
FSP is another reputable one to note.



Also, while it is subjective, I would agree that system stability should be prioritized. At the very least, I'd like my rigs to run for 2-3 months before I power them down to clear the dust buildup and whatnot.

Of course, when it comes down to it, the reliability of individual components tends to be skewed by the silicon lottery. Going by reviews and past experiences with certain brands & products only gets you so far.

[SuperDerpBro]

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews

[dejan_p]

i actually found that those pcie-usb expansion cards (that provide 4 USB slots out of an pcie slot) function just fine - I found an old motherboard which has 3 pcie slots, added this 15$ pcie card and it works stable for a couple months
so maybe you could go even cheaper

it doesn't work on all motherboards, on some of them it's only able to detect additional 3 cards, and wouldn't boot otherwise

but that's if you're really doing a poor man's variant - I would still suggest biostar tb250 or h81 btc pro
if you're into mining, stay away from budget components, this is your money maker, should have only quality components

[SuperDerpBro]

I have considered those. I just have no idea if one of those and whichever cheap board i grab would work though so its a gamble. I also hear they dont work well with Nvidia cards.. No idea if that is true.

EDIT: The tb250 is the one many people on Newegg say starts fires lol

[RealSwissMiner]

I would also vote for the H81 BTC R2.0.
It is rocksolid - setting it up was easy and the miner runs for weeks without any issues. It's also the cheapest MB in my collection but it has no M2 Slot and also the old CPU socket but its not that relevant for mining only.

[jhon_rambo25]

Not bad. If you want a motherboard that fits your budget.

[Vann]

You are really over-thinking this. In reality, any motherboard with PCI-E v1.1 slots and up will work. Prior to this year I was mining on a Dell XPS 700 with PCI-E v1.1 solts from 2007. It worked flawless with up to four cards and I still use it as a test bench. What matters is you want a motherboard that is known to support the number of cards you want for the rig, without giving you tons of grief and it fits your budget. In that respect, the ASRock H81 Pro BTC, Biostar TB85 and TB250 are among the best known choices you can make for a good 6-7 card mining rig OOBE . There are thousands of these motherboards currently in use as can be seen on the ethOS motherboard stats page.

http://ethosdistro.com/versions

I have a Biostar TB85 and it's been flawless with up to 7 cards, including mixing AMD and Nvidia cards. I also have a 13 card AMD rig on the ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ and it's been rock solid as well. The PCI-E slots being too close together is a dumb design flaw, but it's nothing that can't be easily solved by wrapping the riser x1 connector with two pieces of electrical tape on the back. The ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ also gets my vote as the best mining motherboard currently in production as the Asus B250 mining expert motherboard  is neutered by design in requiring you to have a minimum of 6 P106 mining cards if you want to run over 13 cards.

[jmigdlc99]

Looking for the cheapest board known to support 6 GPUS. I am in Canada and the best i can find right now is the Biostar TB85 for about 100 CAD (That is about $78 USA). Just wondering if there are any cheaper boards out there that i may be overlooking as i would really prefer not to but a Biostar board. heh

Thanks

The suggestions people mentioned are great, I personally would recommend the BIOSTAR TB250s as well since i've been using them flawlessly in 2 of my rigs months now. However, i'd also like to ask why you are limiting yourself to a 6-GPU motherboard when it would be much more efficient to build a rig on as 12-GPU or even a 19-GPU motherboard? Just some food for thought.

[SuperDerpBro]

Promised myself i wouldn't spend any more money after this rig lol. I have 4 cards ready/waiting and buying 2 more is the most i want to spend (also don't want to buy another PSU) right now.. or ever again

[Ascredo]

I bought it on Ebay 6 gpu, dddr3, but the only drawback is that he's on LGA 1150, and there are processors expensive

[michnern]

I'm a total newbie at mining, but I've worked in I.T. for 25+ years.... Are you doing this as a hobby? I.E. you don't really care how often your rig crashes, or are you looking to build a production setup that you want generating cash for you 24/7? If you care about stability and keeping your rig up and running with the least crashes possible, don't cheap out on your motherboard or your power supplies, they're the heart or your setup.

All sound advice for a daily driver computer or gaming computer.  But when it comes to mining, the problems you are going to have with stability are more related to the OS, drivers and mining software.  A quality power supply is good advice though.

I'm debating between EVGA and Corsair power supplies at the moment.

Don't split hairs... they are both good.

As a newbie, I can't say which MB is best as I'm still researching that myself... I will say that I wish I could get an Intel branded everything (motherboard, chipset and CPU) because that has provided me the most stability in an enterprise level environment. I remember the old days of 3 different brands and companies for MB, chipset and CPU and how many times our systems would blue screen or hang as a result....

I won't begrudge your preference, but this is mining, not enterprise.  You want your equipment to be cheap and fast.  Reliable is nice, but not necessary, as the CPU, motherboard, and related hardware are not that taxed during mining.

I'm looking at a mining board and in the rudimentary research I've done so far I'm leaning towards Asus. I've never owned a Biostar motherboard so I have no experience with their level of quality. I was looking at the Asrock H110 Pro BTC+ (it was one of the first boards I found using the Google machine), but Asrock as a name has never struck me as top tier and after reading about people having shorting problems on the PCI-E risers because the slots are too close together that has made me shy away from them as a brand.

Asrock is a good brand as well.

I've been researching for weeks now, hours a day to ensure when I do make the purchase, I'm getting it as close to right as I can the first time.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Thanks for the detailed reply. Not to get further off topic.... But one thing I forgot to mention was from all the research thus far, seems like Linux is the more stable option once you get into 8+ GPUs (Though I've heard Windows 10 has an easier time of recognizing more than 8 GPUs with recent driver updates). Overall though, Linux is more stable than Windows. That's fine, also been using Linux since the 1.1 stable / 1.3 beta kernel days . I personally prefer Ubuntu LTS versions since they typically have 5+ years of support and updates. For anyone shying away from Linux if the have no experience, a paid distro like EthOS would probably take a lot of the guess work (and fun) out of using Linux... As you said, this is a hobby so you may want to try a regular Linux distro like Ubuntu and download / install and sometimes compile the packages yourself for the experience.

Thanks for also bringing up ROI (something I'm thinking about in the back of my head, but failed to mention as a newbie). Enterprise grade stuff would be wonderful but if it suddenly makes your ROI 1.5 years instead of 180 days, that isn't nearly as good of an investment. The veterans here give good advice, make it good enough that you're not going to have to babysit the rig constantly, while at the same time ensuring you get the best prices possible in order to have an acceptable ROI period on your investment. I've found whattomine.com to be a very good source to calculate ROI and revenue in general. They seem to have the hashrates of the more common GPUs against each of the common crypto algorithms stored in their database. All I needed to do was select my GPU model and how many will be in my rig and it will calculate the daily profit and the best cryptocurrency to mine at the moment. Just remember that the numbers spit out by many profit calculators don't always factor in things that can change profit over the longer term such as difficulty changes, overall network hashing capacity, etc... so take the numbers with a grain of salt.

[puwaha]

I have considered those. I just have no idea if one of those and whichever cheap board i grab would work though so its a gamble. I also hear they dont work well with Nvidia cards.. No idea if that is true.

EDIT: The tb250 is the one many people on Newegg say starts fires lol

I have a TB250 running six 1080tis with no problem.  No fires.  LOL!  Most likely an idiot who doesn't know how to build a computer.

Where do you guys get your information?  User reviews are not the gospel... just a guide.

[puwaha]

Thanks for the detailed reply. Not to get further off topic.... But one thing I forgot to mention was from all the research thus far, seems like Linux is the more stable option once you get into 8+ GPUs (Though I've heard Windows 10 has an easier time of recognizing more than 8 GPUs with recent driver updates). Overall though, Linux is more stable than Windows. That's fine, also been using Linux since the 1.1 stable / 1.3 beta kernel days . I personally prefer Ubuntu LTS versions since they typically have 5+ years of support and updates. For anyone shying away from Linux if the have no experience, a paid distro like EthOS would probably take a lot of the guess work (and fun) out of using Linux... As you said, this is a hobby so you may want to try a regular Linux distro like Ubuntu and download / install and sometimes compile the packages yourself for the experience.

Nothing wrong with using linux as the OS of your mining rig.  Though, I might interject... with you having lots of enterprise experience, you know this is not the early days of Windows.  The modern windows kernels are just as stable as linux.  Where linux shines more is in the handling of bad conditions, like poorly coded software and drivers.

The point I'm trying to make is you shouldn't be scared off by using either one.  They both have their good and bad points.  Use what's comfortable to you.

Thanks for also bringing up ROI (something I'm thinking about in the back of my head, but failed to mention as a newbie). Enterprise grade stuff would be wonderful but if it suddenly makes your ROI 1.5 years instead of 180 days, that isn't nearly as good of an investment. The veterans here give good advice, make it good enough that you're not going to have to babysit the rig constantly, while at the same time ensuring you get the best prices possible in order to have an acceptable ROI period on your investment. I've found whattomine.com to be a very good source to calculate ROI and revenue in general. They seem to have the hashrates of the more common GPUs against each of the common crypto algorithms stored in their database. All I needed to do was select my GPU model and how many will be in my rig and it will calculate the daily profit and the best cryptocurrency to mine at the moment. Just remember that the numbers spit out by many profit calculators don't always factor in things that can change profit over the longer term such as difficulty changes, overall network hashing capacity, etc... so take the numbers with a grain of salt.

ROI is king in mining.  You are investing a lot of money to offset gains you could have had by just buying a coin.  Where mining has an additional bonus is that the hardware retains some value that you can exchange either for better equipment or cash/coins.

[SuperDerpBro]

I ended up going with the ASRock H81 PRO BTC R2.0 (125 CAD)