Motherboard Crazy Bitcoin motherboard - but what's this ?!

[Phuncz]

https://www.techpowerup.com/236961/...tandard-motherboard-with-eight-pcie-x16-slots

Colorful today introduced an non-standard form-factor socket LGA1151 motherboard for crypto-currency mining builds, the C.B250A-BTC PLUS V20. This board is 485 mm in length, and 195 mm in width, and probably won't fit in even HPTX cases for its intended use, but is suited for custom rack-type setups. It only includes the most bare-essential features to set up a mining rig with up to eight graphics cards, with 2-slot spacing between each card. The board lacks a 24-pin power input, so you can share your high-wattage PSU with multiple machines based on this board.

So this happened. Not surprised at all but the one thing that stands out to me as an SFF addict is the lack of a 24-pin ATX connector. Next to the sea of PCIe 6-pin connectors, the only power connector is a 4-pin EPS connector up top (black) and one on the bottom (white). So basically this board just needs 12V DC, period.

Now I'm even more curious if we can't finally ditch that annoying non-SFF-conform connector. Calling
@ASRock System to start the motherboards and @Corsair Johan for the power supplies.

 

[wiretap]

To be fair, there already are some ITX or smaller motherboards that don't use a 24-pin ATX connector. Some have the 4-pin 12V input, others have a DC jack on the rear for a power brick. I own 3 SFF PC's that are like this. One is my pfSense firewall, another is my NUC sized PC out by the pool, and other is my wireless bridging PC.

 

[aquelito]

Industrial mini-ITX boards for instance :

 

[wiretap]

Advantech AIMB-275, for socket 1151 with PCIe x16: http://www.advantech.com/products/6...-275/mod_340f9d4a-17ed-44ac-9f00-5e96729ed7a7

 

[wywywywy]

Even if we can reduce it to just 8-pin from 24-pin, it's still much better than it currently is.

12V
5V
3.3V
Ground x2
5VSB
PS_ON
PWR_ON

Motherboard manufacturers can just bundle a 8-to-24 adapter in the box.

 

[Overtek]

lol. You'l want one of these then. 2800W PSU. (If that can do 2800W on the output then it would need to be over 93.33% effcient) so the 13A mains connector (max power of 3000W) can handle it. At less that £200 GBP enyone else doubt it can truely deliver. lol. THere's also 2 more fans at the other end.

They should have gone for the chunky square 16A mains connector

 

[robbee]

How do the PCIe 6-pin connectors word though? There can't be so much power going through the board, right? Especially when there's only 2 small inputs...

 

[wiretap]

I don't see any documentation on their website, but it seems kind of weird. Either they are using 8 for inputs and 8 for outputs for the power, or you connect all 16 and the card is fully powered through the PCIe slot -- which would violate the PCIe specification. (and probably blow traces on your graphics card PCIe I/O fingers) But if 8 were for inputs and 8 were for outputs, I don't see what benefits you'd have from routing the power through the motherboard other than voltage and current monitoring. (which would be nice to have for tuning individual cards for mining) It could be done, but would require some really fat traces on a whole layer of the PCB.

 

[jØrd]

Fromn the article linked in the OP

It features two 4-pin ATX power inputs for the CPU, and sixteen PCIe power inputs, of which eight can be populated at any given time to supply power to the PCIe slots, optionally all sixteen can be plugged in.

 

[wiretap]

Yeaaa, I can't see that working out too well.. lol.

 

[msystems]

Perhaps it doesn't break pci e spec at all and each card has its own dedicated pci power feed for 75 watts. And 16 power slots, so that each card has an optional feed from a backup power supply in the event of psu failure.

 

[wiretap]

Possibly.. it would be interesting to see some vendor documentation for their intended use case. If you lost a power supply though, the system would likely crash, since just 75 watts won't be sufficient for most mining cards. You'd still need the GPU power ports plugged in.