Any interest in group buy for a Ryzen mining motherboard from ASRock?

[JustinTArthur]

Just before the last market crash, motherboard manufacturer ASRock designed a Ryzen motherboard targeting GPU miners with 8 full-size spaced PCI Express slots plus an additional 6 PCI-Express-over-USB-cable slots for the typical Chinese riser cards. The design was shelved when cryptocurrency fell in value against state currencies once again.

I've been chatting with ASRock Sales to see if a group buy could be established to have ASRock do a production run and that's why I'm reaching out. I want to see how many of you would commit to purchase units even if just one, and the max price you'd be willing to pay. I won't be passing price points along to ASRock as they've only asked about quantity so far. My initial guess would be this would be just under $200 per board.

The model was X370 Pro BTC+ and the details page with specs is still up here:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X370%20Pro%20BTC+/

Here's a photo of a pilot unit in the wild from a convention:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/8pcy2v/asrock_x370_pro_btc/

Before you raise your hand up for this, there are a few caveats:
- The dimensions of the board are not standard ATX. Custom chassis or framing may be required on your part.
- There is an M.2 SATA port, but not M.2 NVMe due to focusing PCIe lanes on compute devices.
- The board supports more than one ATX power supply for power, but ASRock has provided little technical documentation on usage.
- I will ask ASRock for UEFI updates (including AGESA) for at least a year following the purchase, but there's no guarantee they'll agree.
- If ASRock didn't already print this many units, it could take them some time to produce.
- I would be purchasing for North America territory, but would consider shipping internationally to those with a great deal of patience. If there's enough interest in another non-NA country, I could also inquire about direct-shipping some quantity to a trusted party in that country.

[twan69666]

I'd say Im interested. Not 100% committed, because it'd be a bit of a parts upgrade for me (I dont have a spare set of DDR4 nor M2 SSD around), but I am willing to listen and possibly add my name to the list if you garner enough interest? I am in North America too

At the same time, a new account with 1 post is going to scare some people off

[philipma1957]

Two sets of newbies. Makes it looks as if this could be not legit.

Would be nice if it is available and legit.

I would want 4 of them.

[JustinTArthur]

At the same time, a new account with 1 post is going to scare some people off

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Understandable. I mostly lurk, but I'm around:
https://github.com/JustinTArthur
https://keybase.io/justintarthur
JustinTArthur on bitcointalk.org Forum.
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[twan69666]

Two sets of newbies. Makes it looks as if this could be not legit.

Would be nice if it is available and legit.

I would want 4 of them.

True, I am a newbie, but I've been around for a few years. Even have some trades, but nothing with feedback showing. I just dont post very often at all.

[JustinTArthur]

ASRock has let me know that their minimum order size would be 500, oof. Totally understandable from their perspective, but it could be hard to find that much interest. Definitely continue to let me know if you would want in, though.

In the meantime, I'm reaching out to possible retail partners and mining/learning/passrecovery farms. Without such a partner, I don't see us reaching that number.

If you need to verify my personal details or otherwise establish trust, feel free to PM me with any questions you might have. My own interest is just wanting a couple of these.

[twan69666]

ASRock has let me know that their minimum order size would be 500, oof. Totally understandable from their perspective, but it could be hard to find that much interest. Definitely continue to let me know if you would want in, though.

In the meantime, I'm reaching out to possible retail partners and mining/learning/passrecovery farms. Without such a partner, I don't see us reaching that number.

If you need to verify my personal details or otherwise establish trust, feel free to PM me with any questions you might have. My own interest is just wanting a couple of these.

500? Yikes. Thanks for the update

[DaveF]

Does the fact that it's AMD vs Intel really make that much of a difference?
There are many 6 / 8 GPU Intel based boards out there.
The ones that are out there are known. Do we really want to be diagnosing a limited production board while trying to mine?

-Dave

[JustinTArthur]

Does the fact that it's AMD vs Intel really make that much of a difference?

Depends on your workload. It's my preferred platform for CryptoNight on CPU while the GPUs work on other things. It also has the SHA-NI instructions if you do hash verification on the CPU, and the Intel platform does not.

[FP91G]

$ 200 for a motherboard with 8 graphics cards?
+ you still need to buy a processor, cooler and RAM
It is very expensive, I buy ready-made kits no more than $ 100 (motherboard, processor + CO and memory).
Maybe I don't understand something about mining, but I always try to reduce the cost of those components that do not affect performance.
If we save on raising, we will spend on additional cooling

[PIOUPIOU99]

I don't understand the interest.

[Sebahl]

The one great benefit of this board would be, that you could mine Randomx coins at the same time as GPU coins by using a powerful Ryzen CPU. But 200 is a little steep.

[philipma1957]

$ 200 for a motherboard with 8 graphics cards?
+ you still need to buy a processor, cooler and RAM
It is very expensive, I buy ready-made kits no more than $ 100 (motherboard, processor + CO and memory).
Maybe I don't understand something about mining, but I always try to reduce the cost of those components that do not affect performance.
If we save on raising, we will spend on additional cooling

yeah you are neglecting that this board can mine xmr

is it worth it to you to be able to put in a ryzen cpu and mine xmr then buy the board.

if now you don't want it.

this amd board is very much like this intel board.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Onda-B250-D8P-D4-Ver-1-00-12-GPU-Mining-Motherboard/143840755013?

I did a group buy of 40 of these back in 2017.  they still work well but they are not good for mining xmr.

since I have 4 ryzen 3900 mining xmr
and I have 1 ryzen 3970 mining xmr
and 1 ryzen 3960 mining xmr

I would be interested in this board.

since you are all intel you would not be interested in the least. As intel sucks to mine xmr

I still may not get a lot of these boards as this is grass roots we are not near ready and 500 x 200 = 100,000 usd

If this gets off the drawing board I would get some.

BTW you are correct intel setups are cheaper.

[Marvell2]

brings back memories of asic group buys shows how dead 💀 mining is that we never see these anymore
this community used to have so good, we used to get deals on bulk orders of gpus , asics boards and everything buying in large groups

[PIOUPIOU99]

It will be hard on a single ddr4 slot ,how frequency .

[philipma1957]

It will be hard on a single ddr4 slot ,how frequency .

may need a 16gb stick .

[JayDDee]

For combined Ryzen CPU/GPUs rigs it's probably better to use regular motherboards.
Most have 6 PCIe slots. Most crypto boards expect a minimalist CPU and the BIOS
has little to no CPU OC support.

[mak013]

It might be more memory slots. In such a way you can use it for different purposes. Mining AI, CPU and GPU mining. But in such a way motherboard costs to much to only one purpose. If you want to use it for CPU mining - you`ll have to but expensive CPU additionally.

[sakmsb]

Does this support 8+6 GPUs? A total of 14 GPUs?

If yes, then I will be interested.

[bmoscato]

This board was first release on 8/23/2018. There has to be suppliers that carry it as they did a BIOS update on 12/10/2019. I find it weird that the board only supports up to Ryzen 9 3900, it doesn't specify support for the 3950.