18 Nov 2013 / PC World – The one truth of pretty much every gold rush in history is that the people who made out like bandits weren’t the adventurous suckers looking for gold, but the ones selling the shovels and mining pans.
More than a century since the last great gold rush, not much has changed. These days, modern-day prospectors are looking for Bitcoins instead of gold, and trading shovels for application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) rigs and GPU-loaded motherboards.
But just as before, all kinds of companies are rushing in to sell them the latest and greatest mining gear. Even mainstream PC makers are getting into the business.
Taipei-based ASRock recently released two completely insane motherboards specifically designed for Bitcoin mining. ASRock’s H61 Pro BTC and the H81 Pro BTC are supposed to be a Bitcoin miner’s dream, coming loaded with six PCIe slots, and extra four-pin power connectors to support up to six graphics cards simultaneously. The H61 supports up to Ivy Bridge-era Intel Core processors, while the H81 works with the latest Haswell Core chips…… Read more
