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.

The ability to harness the power of graphics processing units is a key component of Bitcoin mining.Prospectors need the power of GPUs to crunch complex mathematical problems that have to be solved in order to create new Bitcoins.bitcoin joining processOr at least that's the way it used to be.xbox one bitcoin minerThese days, ASIC rigs capable of processing billions of hashes—the end result of those aforementioned complex math problems—per second are becoming the preferable way to mine for the digital currency.ethereum chart coinbaseIf you're not familiar with it, Bitcoin is a digital, peer-to-peer currency gaining popularity in technology circles.bitcoin privates geldBitcoins are created at a fixed rate and mining for the digital currency will cease after 21 million Bitcoins exist.bitcoins kopen online

There are currently about 12 million Bitcoins in existence.(Our Bitcoin primer has even more information about the digital currency.)With the cost of a single Bitcoin recently surging past $600, there's never been a better time to be crunching numbers to create new Bitcoins, but competition is also increasing as Bitcoin mining becomes serious business.bitcoins kopen onlineSo instead of investing in a mining rig, perhaps you're better off buying some stock from the companies selling the digital shovels.To comment on this article and other PCWorld content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.Games of 2017 GTA Mods Hunt: Showdown Destiny 2 Beyond Good & Evil 2 E3 2017 ASRock releases motherboards designed to mine Bitcoins, generate internet moolah I'm about to write a bunch of really weird words in a row, but I need you to hang in there.We'll get through this together.Are you ready?ASRock has just released a new motherboard series designed specifically to mine for Bitcoins.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time PC hardware has been built with Bitcoins in mind.Actually, these are the first PC components built to, theoretically, make you money.Let's back up a little bit.Bitcoins are the internet-based, peer-to-peer currency, as explained in the video above.At about 0:30 in the video, the narrator mentions Bitcoin mining in passing, but it deserves a little more attention.The miner is an application that solves math problems to generate coins, but in order to curb inflation and stabilize this decentralized currency, every time a Bitcoin is created, the algorithms needed to make the next one get a little more complex.After years of this process and over $400 million worth of Bitcoins now floating through the electronic ether, the algorithms are getting brutal enough to make a gaming rig groan as it chews through them.Enter: the ASRock Pro BTC-series motherboards.These babies sport enough room for six graphics cards (GPUs are the mining tool of choice) and some extra power connectors to light up all that hardware.

There's no price listed yet, but considering the rates of return some early Bitcoin adopters have seen, it could be a worth investment for those interested.On the other hand, Bitcoin is prone to wild price fluctuations , so maybe it's best not to joke around with money you can't afford to spare.Still, all that aside, you can keep your flying cars and laser beams; I'm living in a future where computers solve math problems to make money.After we sort out the Holodeck, I'm pretty much set as far as technology goes.STH was at Computex 2017 and while touring the Nangang 4F hall on three different days, there were two booths that had a substantial amount of traffic: ASRock and MSI.While many of the motherboard manufacturers were showing off X299 (Intel) and X399 (AMD) motherboards that drew crowds, ASRock and Biostar had rigs mining Ethereum and other altcoins that garnered large crowds.Perhaps the most interesting display was a 14x PCIe motherboard, the ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ which was mining with 8x GPUs on the show floor and “earning” over $30/ day doing so.

Ethereum is the number two (or three depending on the day) cryptocurrency at the time of this writing.While Bitcoin may be the best known, Ethereum has about half the market cap of Bitcoin and is seeing broad adoption.That makes the total value of outstanding Ethereum over $20B at the time this is being penned.There are plenty of in-depth pieces out there on mining mechanics, but the easiest way of conceptualizing mining is being rewarded for providing some compute capacity for transaction processing.In return, one receives Ether which then can be traded for Bitcoin, traditional currencies, or goods/ services.Unlike Bitcoin where mining is dominated by ASICs, Ether can be mined efficiently using modern GPUs.If you were to build a pure Ethereum mining rig you would essentially look to maximize raw performance per watt and performance per dollar invested.Mining on GPUs, unlike deep learning applications, works well even on PCIe x1 connectivity.CPU performance is relatively unimportant.That combination means that the ideal platform can support a large number of PCIe devices and utilize a low-cost consumer chipset / CPU.

Here is an example of what a commercial data center mining operation looks like to give you a sense of the overall architecture: As a result, many mining setups seek to maximize the number of PCIe x1 slots that can be found on a platform.Since the power used and therefore heat generated can be significant, utilizing cards with non-reference double width (or more) coolers is common.It is extremely popular to place GPUs on PCIe x1 risers and then mount the GPUs away from the motherboard.On the show floor, ASRock Rack had thirteen GPUs (8 connected) to its new ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard in an open frame rack with three FSP power supplies: Here is the placard showing 3.2kW of PSUs which were more than the show floor was providing for the demo.Perhaps the standout was the ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard with 14x PCIe x1 slots: The demo had eight GPUs running so there were eight PCIe x1 to x16 risers installed leaving six slots open.The PCIe x1 to USB to PCIe x16 riser assemblies are very popular with miners.