Asus made a crypto-mining motherboard that supports up to 20 GPUs

Asus announced the H370 Mining Master motherboard today, which is specifically designed for cryptocurrency mining. It supports up to 20 graphics cards — yes, 20 — along with streamlined connectivity by allowing USB riser cables to plug directly into the PCB over PCIe.

Asus’ approach here is going to make maintenance easier, ensure fewer PCIe disconnects, and more accurate diagnostics. This is a better format than just plugging in graphics cards to the motherboard via PCIe, like you would in a gaming desktop, the company says.

The H370 mining motherboard is so focused on optimizing crypto mining that it includes tweaks specific to GPU-based data crunching by default. It’s a State Detection graphical user interface that identifies the location and status of each port (seen above) and assigns alphanumeric codes for easy identification.

The arrival of cryptocurrency mining has changed the PC hardware industry drastically — not only by hiking up the costs of GPUs themselves but inviting hardware OEMs to manufacture specialty crypto-mining parts.

Asus is not the first company to debut a mining motherboard, but it’s been leading with the number of GPUs allowed in a single board while presenting them with aggressive pricing. Most boards on the market today range from $50 to $400, much like their regular counterparts. While Asus hasn’t confirmed pricing, the H370 shouldn’t be too far off from that range when it becomes available starting in Q3 2018 in North America.