Biostar BTC motherboard

Nice, I was hoping someone else would come out with a board like the Asrock BTC.... and the price is right.
 
I was just looking at that the other day, interested to see how it turns out for you!
 
Me and a friend just purchased that board as well yesterday. It looks promising, I will be using 4 cards to start with.
 
Pitbully said:
Nice, I was hoping someone else would come out with a board like the Asrock BTC.... and the price is right.
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Biostar is better than asrock in my book. I have an asrock but I'll order the biostar before they sell out
 
Interesting. I knew about Biostar coming out with one... hadn't seen any retail.

Gonna purchase one.
 
its $100 on amazon or I'd buy from them since I don't like newegg
 
What's a good CPU to use with this? Is the Celeron G1820 (seems to be the cheapest LGA 1150 CPU available) sufficient?
 
The lower the TDP, the better. Best bang for the buck is usually the 54W Celerons as you noted.
 
Make sure you use powered risers for 6 cards, from what I've read you'll run into issues and possibly fry your board if you do more than 3 cards on unpowered risers.

Though it's supposed to be pretty easy to setup these boards with 5-6 GPU's, no weird bios issues from what I've read.
 
lilfiend said:
Make sure you use powered risers for 6 cards, from what I've read you'll run into issues and possibly fry your board if you do more than 3 cards on unpowered risers.

Though it's supposed to be pretty easy to setup these boards with 5-6 GPU's, no weird bios issues from what I've read.
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Save yourself headaches, use USB powered risers ;).
 
lilfiend said:
Make sure you use powered risers for 6 cards, from what I've read you'll run into issues and possibly fry your board if you do more than 3 cards on unpowered risers.

Though it's supposed to be pretty easy to setup these boards with 5-6 GPU's, no weird bios issues from what I've read.
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I'm assuming this will be the case since I don't see extra 4-pin Molex connections to power the extra PCI-E slots like on the ASRock boards. So, powered risers will be a requirement.

It would probably explain why it's cheaper at $69 also.
 
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I just bought 2x of the Asrock boards from Newegg for $69...so not really cheaper.

I don't really understand why they removed the 12v molex connectors on the board...other than that, the layout of the board looks exactly the same as the Asrock board.
 
Pitbully said:
I just bought 2x of the Asrock boards from Newegg for $69...so not really cheaper.

I don't really understand why they removed the 12v molex connectors on the board...other than that, the layout of the board looks exactly the same as the Asrock board.
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Ah, I thought they were selling for $80 lately. I guess they've gotten lower now.
 
octoberasian said:
I'm assuming this will be the case since I don't see extra 4-pin Molex connections to power the extra PCI-E slots like on the ASRock boards. So, powered risers will be a requirement.

It would probably explain why it's cheaper at $69 also.
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You still should be using powered risers with the asrock one for the cards that have heavy pulls. Without it, you're still sending 75w+ through a ribbon cable.
 
My general (safety) rule for risers is that miners don't let other miners use unpowered risers, regardless of whether unpowered are "good enough" for a situation.

Powered risers are virtually the same price as the unpowered ones, so why not?
 
Jesse B said:
There's a group buy thread in this sub forum :)
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All well and good except for the "quickly" part.

Besides, I found some for $13 shipped. Will report back with how good they are.
 
I have not been able to get this board to see more then 3 cards...... running windows 8.1


My asrock btc boards work fine. playing with settings more. You guys got any ideas
 
Jesse B said:
There's a group buy thread in this sub forum :)
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Yea, i wish I had ordered more but the ones I have left are spoken for and then some.

Besides, it looks like they're only $1-$2 more at other places that already have them state side. I guess the only question is quality (which I think we lucked out on with the group buy) but if they're powered, I doubt most will have any issues.

Back on topic, I find it amusing that they are calling these bitcoin boards when they're primarily used for scrypt mining. Although I'm sure they have to from a marketing perspective.
 
Yeah, I'd love to see confirmation that this board can handle 5-6 cards. Anyone?
 
card was crap for me sending it back tomorrow. I could only get it to see 3 in device manager. I even tried running atiflash -i and it wouldnt view it either so something with the mobo
 
I tried running gen 1 gen2 on pcie speeds and all the different settings it had for pcie in the motherboard. The only reason why I bought this motherboard is because there is a known issue with asrock btc's where 1 card runs slower hash then the others no matter which card/riser. I have 3 friends with same issues and I figured I'd give this biostar mobo a try and see how it would work. i have 2 asus pro btc rigs
 
I have this same board and for some reason I can't get any cards to be recognized by my usb risers. Do you know if I may need to do a presence short for them?
 
nova4005 said:
I have this same board and for some reason I can't get any cards to be recognized by my usb risers. Do you know if I may need to do a presence short for them?
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I have that board, but don't have any USB risers installed in it, just regular 16x to 1x risers, but I didn't need to do the PCI-x short trick on it.

My Asrock Pro BTC board, I did though. When I switched out the regular risers for USB risers the other day, it only recognized 2 of the 5 cards on it. This was after the rig has been running a week, with regular risers in it, so I knew all the slots/cards worked. After messing with it half the afternoon, I finally decided to short the pins on the 1x PCI-X slots and it worked like a top.
 
Biostar board is working just fine with up to 3 cards on risers. Later in the week I will give it a go with 6.
 
Pitbully said:
I have that board, but don't have any USB risers installed in it, just regular 16x to 1x risers, but I didn't need to do the PCI-x short trick on it.

My Asrock Pro BTC board, I did though. When I switched out the regular risers for USB risers the other day, it only recognized 2 of the 5 cards on it. This was after the rig has been running a week, with regular risers in it, so I knew all the slots/cards worked. After messing with it half the afternoon, I finally decided to short the pins on the 1x PCI-X slots and it worked like a top.
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96redformula said:
Biostar board is working just fine with up to 3 cards on risers. Later in the week I will give it a go with 6.
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Could one of you post your bios settings I am thinking I must be setting something wrong, because I don't believe I could have 4 bad usb risers. I have tried gen1 gen2 and the other settings in that section, but maybe I am missing something. I even disabled onboard graphics and set pcie to the default?
 
nova4005 said:
Could one of you post your bios settings I am thinking I must be setting something wrong, because I don't believe I could have 4 bad usb risers. I have tried gen1 gen2 and the other settings in that section, but maybe I am missing something. I even disabled onboard graphics and set pcie to the default?
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I am running default board settings, no changes in bios whatsoever other than time.
 
96redformula said:
I am running default board settings, no changes in bios whatsoever other than time.
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I am thinking that maybe something is wrong with my usb risers then. Can you send me a link to where you purchased your usb riser? I am going to test to see if they are getting power with my multimeter when I get home, but I think maybe I am going to try some different risers.

Thank you for your help!
 
nova4005 said:
Could one of you post your bios settings I am thinking I must be setting something wrong, because I don't believe I could have 4 bad usb risers. I have tried gen1 gen2 and the other settings in that section, but maybe I am missing something. I even disabled onboard graphics and set pcie to the default?
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Running default settings on my board as well. The only thing I can tell you is USB risers are a pain. I messed with mine all afternoon before I got it working when it was running fine before with regular risers.
 
nova4005 said:
I am thinking that maybe something is wrong with my usb risers then. Can you send me a link to where you purchased your usb riser? I am going to test to see if they are getting power with my multimeter when I get home, but I think maybe I am going to try some different risers.

Thank you for your help!
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I am running different risers on this board all w/ no problems:
USB risers from group buy here
USB risers from eBay MagicGrowing
USB risers from eBay ZoomHash
 
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