Motherboard Asus H370 Mining Master - It seems Asus is raising their motherboard mining game with their Asus B250 Mining Expert Motherboard successor with 19 PCI-E Slots. This new mining motherboard is called Asus H370 Mining Master and comes with support for up to 20 GPUs using PCIe directly via USB connection.
The presence of a direct USB connector mounted on the motherboard simplifies connectivity by allowing the riser USB cable directly into the PCB and the direct connection is stronger than using a PCIe card, with less chance of accidental disconnection, as well as reducing the total number of parts on your rig.
You might notice that in addition to the 20 USB 3.0 connectors on the motherboard there is also one PCI-E x16 slot, but this does not mean you can have the GPU 21. The PCI-E x16 slot and first USB 3.0 connector are labeled A01 and share the PCI-E so you can only have one of them working with the GPU, not both at the same time.
Motherboard Mining H370 Mining Master includes a set of diagnostic features designed to make your field easier to diagnose and manage if there are problems. A very useful feature is the GPU State Detection (available on Asus B250 Mining Expert as well), which scans the system at boot and indicates whether each riser port is empty, connected to a functional graphics card, or encountered a problem.
The updated Status Detection GUI clearly identifies the location and status of each port along with the alphanumeric code that identifies it. To further simplify troubleshooting, the board will be sent with the same alphanumeric label to stick to the appropriate riser card. You will be able to quickly see labels to find a flagged GPU instead of being forced to track the path of the cable connected to the affected port.
Specifications Asus H370 Mining Master:
- Size: ATX, 12 "x 9.1"
- Socket: LGA 1151 for Intel 8th Gen Core, Pentium, and Celeron processors
- Memory: 2 x DIMMs (max 32GB), DDR4 2666/2400 / 2133MHz, Non-ECC, unbuffered memory
- Slots: 1 x PCIe x16
- Storage: 2 x Serial ATA 6Gbps
- Networking: 1 x Intel Gigabit LAN
- GPU riser ports: 20 x PCIe over USB (vertical)
- USB ports: 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 4 x USB 2.0 / 1.1
- Other: 1 x COM header
Efficient mining also requires some UEFI tweaks that are consolidated in Special Mining Mode on the motherboard. The PCIe path is set to run at Gen 1 speeds to improve compatibility and stability with USB riser cards, above 4G Decoding enabled, which is vital to support multiple graphics cards, and CSM Launch is disabled, allowing UEFI motherboards and graphs to synchronize with each other.
Just like its predecessor, the B250 Mining Expert, the new H370 Mining Master comes with a trio of 24-pin main power supply connectors, allowing you to connect to up to three PSUs simultaneously. Each is tied to a bank separate from the riser port, enabling you to gradually increase the number of GPUs and add more power as needed.
Some motherboards require special modifications and startup sequences to run on some PSUs, but the Master is customized for the task. All that's required is for the PCIe power connector on each graphics card to be plugged into the same power supply as the corresponding riser port.
No information about price and availability of motherboard, only Asus plans to issue by the end of this year. However Asus H370 Mining Master will be shown running at full capacity in a custom mining rig unveiled at Computex 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan from 5-9 June.