Before mining became a thing, the prospect of running a dozen of the best graphics cards in a single motherboard would have seemed downright insane, and exciting. Surely with the right drivers, such a system would be able to run Crysis, and do so at any resolution you damn well please. But these days? Gigabyte simply joins a growing market with such a motherboard.
So it goes with Gigabyte's new B250-FinTech. It has 12 native PCIe slots designed to make building a badass mining PC a relatively easy affair.
"Using a native configuration prevents video card detection issues that may arise from splitting the PCIe slots. The positioning and spacing of the slots maximizes flexibility when installing graphic cards making installation of PCIe riser cards more convenient for the user," Gigabyte says.
The board sports two 12V auxiliary PCIe power connectors to mitigate potential instability and other power related issues. It also utilizes a 24-pin, 3-for-1 power cable with added front end control switches.
Gigabyte is pitching this board as a way to save costs and streamline a mining operation, especially compared to a motherboard with 'just' six PCIe slots. In case anyone has trouble doing the math, Gigabyte put together this cheat sheet:
Gibabyte's new board also features a mining mode that is supposed to "optimize mining efficiency through the application of fine-tuned mining specific settings."
As indicated by the model name, this motherboard is based on Intel's B250 Express chipset. It's a socket LGA 1151 board with support for 6th and 7th generation Intel Core processors.
Gigabyte did not say when its B250-FinTech will be available or for how much.
