ASUS announces new cryptocurrency mining motherboard with 19 PCI-E expansion slots

Computer hardware manufacturer Asus has revealed a new motherboard with some features specifically geared toward cryptocurrency miners.

The motherboard is called the B250 Mining Expert and was first unveiled last weekend at Asus' high-end motherboard brand ROG Republic of Gamers.

While the product’s release date and price are currently unknown, this is the latest sign that the mainstream hardware industry is expanding its cryptocurrency footprint. In addition, the announcement comes a few months after Asus began launching GPUs designed specifically for cryptocurrency miners — aiming to take advantage of the digital gold rush.

The B250 Mining Expert motherboard itself has 19 PCI Express expansion slots, compared to just 12, 8, or 6 slots on its competitors’ products.

Asus believes that cryptocurrency miners (miners use computing power and large amounts of electricity to add new transactions to a blockchain and then receive newly mined cryptocurrency as rewards) want to run as many graphics cards as possible. According to rumors, this upcoming motherboard has two to three times the graphics card capacity of a normal-sized motherboard.

The 19 expansion slots are divided into three groups, each containing 24 dedicated pins. This allows the miner to be connected to three power supply units at once. The motherboard also has various features that may be attractive to miners, such as real-time visualization of data.

As CoinDesk has previously reported, other large GPU manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD have begun to take advantage of the huge demand for graphics cards created by cryptocurrency mining activities in recent months.

Earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed his optimism about the company’s entry into the mining space, suggesting that cryptocurrency mining could become a long-term revenue driver.

He said:

“Cryptocurrency and blockchain are here to stay.”