this whole mining thing is making me go **** crazy. as a consumer of electronics its awful, prices going up on litterally everything from ram to graphics cards all because some upper middle class junkies herd they could make money off this crap. IT'S TIME TO STOPPP
Well, memory prices were bad even before the mining craze started. That's partially due to instability and insufficiency in supply in the DRAM market for a while now, and Toshiba's attempt at selling off their memory business isn't helping either.
The GPUs are totally miners' fault though.
Right now's just a really bad time to be building PCs, moreso than it has been in a really long time. Memory's expensive. Intel X299 platform is kind of a mixed bag. AMD hasn't been very competitive for the past few years in the CPU space, up until the Ryzen launch, but there may be some teething issues with compatibility still. Nvidia and AMD GPU shelves are empty due to miners and stock issues still aren't resolved. AMD hasn't been very competitive in the high-end GPU market lately, and the coming Vega launch may not change much if it's just topping out at potentially GTX-1080-level performance.
Sadly, I work in a hospital and our equipment is so outdated we still print via a parallel port. That we even print clinical information these days is ridiculous but we do it using parallel....
Man, if I was one of the HW companies right now I'd be drawing down production of these mining parts, or at least watching them closely. Mining is still profitable for now, but given that we might be drawing closer to the floor dropping out, they might not want to be left around with mining specific stock.
Since the recent Ethereum difficulty increase and price drop the German Ebay is already being flooded with Polaris cards, as they'd only earn ~10€/month now. People selling now want to cash in on the still-high price, rather than wait for the next WhateverCoin made for GPUs.
You need expanders anyway, because single slot cooling is far too wimpy for these tasks. The higher rpm fans consume more power (few W, but it adds up) and the heated cards consume more power (can be double digit Ws, depending on the model, voltage etc.) and degrade faster.
Blaming the extra power needed for mining for the extra power connectors doesn't really make sense. 1x slots can only draw 25W (15W at 12v 10W at 3.3V) from the mobo vs 75W (65 and 10W) for x16 slots. This means a 3 16x slot board can draw more total power from PCIe slots than this one (225W vs 200). The disparity in 12V is even larger (195W vs 140W), and with 3.3V virtually unused today the 24pin connector provides a large excess of power there.
By the spec 1x devices are limited to 25W however 16x cards using expanders aren't following the spec. They are going to pull whatever they pull from a 16x slot and if the MB can't handle it you are going to end up with melted cables at the ATX and/or EPS connector.
All the 1x to 16x risers I see have power hookups on the x16 end, presumably to prevent frying the mobos.
IIRC from last summers AMD GPU powergate fiasco the PCIe power traces on the card tabs were getting burned too not just the mobos, because they weren't designed to carry that much current any more than the mobo was intended to deliver it; and that was only an ~50% excess draw on 12v. A card trying to draw 75W over a 1x slot would be overdrawing the 12v traces that were connected by >4x; far over what the PCB traces could handle without melting.
This whole mining craze is really stupid. Once you start hearing about these coins being mined in the news it's already too late to get in on it. I think a lot of stupid people are going to have to lose a lot of money before they figure that out.
That's their money to spend, I mean if you live somewhere where you don't pay the electric bill and people are willing to pay for this stuff for you, it might be a decent additional income.
What's sad is how brick and mortar stores are jacking up prices on video cards as well. I went into Best Buy yesterday and they had an RX 570 for $319. It used to be you could find things at MSRP in B&M stores when Internet prices got all crazy, but I guess not anymore.
Can anyone confirm whether this motherboard should also work with Coffee Lake processors? I was thinking one of these with an i3-8100 and a bunch of DVB-S/S2 satellite cards would make for a great TV headend server.
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austinsguitar - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
this whole mining thing is making me go **** crazy. as a consumer of electronics its awful, prices going up on litterally everything from ram to graphics cards all because some upper middle class junkies herd they could make money off this crap. IT'S TIME TO STOPPPJoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Well, memory prices were bad even before the mining craze started. That's partially due to instability and insufficiency in supply in the DRAM market for a while now, and Toshiba's attempt at selling off their memory business isn't helping either.The GPUs are totally miners' fault though.
Right now's just a really bad time to be building PCs, moreso than it has been in a really long time. Memory's expensive. Intel X299 platform is kind of a mixed bag. AMD hasn't been very competitive for the past few years in the CPU space, up until the Ryzen launch, but there may be some teething issues with compatibility still. Nvidia and AMD GPU shelves are empty due to miners and stock issues still aren't resolved. AMD hasn't been very competitive in the high-end GPU market lately, and the coming Vega launch may not change much if it's just topping out at potentially GTX-1080-level performance.
sleepeeg3 - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
So buy a card and start mining! It will pay for itself.extremepcs - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Why a parallel port?smilingcrow - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
They are to interface with parallel universes.philehidiot - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Sadly, I work in a hospital and our equipment is so outdated we still print via a parallel port. That we even print clinical information these days is ridiculous but we do it using parallel....Drumsticks - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Man, if I was one of the HW companies right now I'd be drawing down production of these mining parts, or at least watching them closely. Mining is still profitable for now, but given that we might be drawing closer to the floor dropping out, they might not want to be left around with mining specific stock.MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Since the recent Ethereum difficulty increase and price drop the German Ebay is already being flooded with Polaris cards, as they'd only earn ~10€/month now. People selling now want to cash in on the still-high price, rather than wait for the next WhateverCoin made for GPUs.KaarlisK - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Something I do not get: if the ports are not open-ended, how do you plug in a x16 card?Or do you use an expander?
MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
You need expanders anyway, because single slot cooling is far too wimpy for these tasks. The higher rpm fans consume more power (few W, but it adds up) and the heated cards consume more power (can be double digit Ws, depending on the model, voltage etc.) and degrade faster.DanNeely - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
Blaming the extra power needed for mining for the extra power connectors doesn't really make sense. 1x slots can only draw 25W (15W at 12v 10W at 3.3V) from the mobo vs 75W (65 and 10W) for x16 slots. This means a 3 16x slot board can draw more total power from PCIe slots than this one (225W vs 200). The disparity in 12V is even larger (195W vs 140W), and with 3.3V virtually unused today the 24pin connector provides a large excess of power there.TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
By the spec 1x devices are limited to 25W however 16x cards using expanders aren't following the spec. They are going to pull whatever they pull from a 16x slot and if the MB can't handle it you are going to end up with melted cables at the ATX and/or EPS connector.DanNeely - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
All the 1x to 16x risers I see have power hookups on the x16 end, presumably to prevent frying the mobos.IIRC from last summers AMD GPU powergate fiasco the PCIe power traces on the card tabs were getting burned too not just the mobos, because they weren't designed to carry that much current any more than the mobo was intended to deliver it; and that was only an ~50% excess draw on 12v. A card trying to draw 75W over a 1x slot would be overdrawing the 12v traces that were connected by >4x; far over what the PCB traces could handle without melting.
philehidiot - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
"TheUnhandledException" - Can I please just say I love your username. It's awesome.That is all.
Magichands8 - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
This whole mining craze is really stupid. Once you start hearing about these coins being mined in the news it's already too late to get in on it. I think a lot of stupid people are going to have to lose a lot of money before they figure that out.HomeworldFound - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
That's their money to spend, I mean if you live somewhere where you don't pay the electric bill and people are willing to pay for this stuff for you, it might be a decent additional income.richough3 - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
What's sad is how brick and mortar stores are jacking up prices on video cards as well. I went into Best Buy yesterday and they had an RX 570 for $319. It used to be you could find things at MSRP in B&M stores when Internet prices got all crazy, but I guess not anymore.speculatrix - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
Can anyone confirm whether this motherboard should also work with Coffee Lake processors? I was thinking one of these with an i3-8100 and a bunch of DVB-S/S2 satellite cards would make for a great TV headend server.