Question ASRock H510 BTC+ riser-less mining mobo (non-ATX) (Issues?)

[VirtualLarry]

I had a chance to try one of these out. I plan to fill it with RX 6600 cards. I am using a single EVGA SuperNOVA G6 80Plus Gold 1000W PSU. (3x PCI-E pigtail 2x 6+2, 2x PCI-E 6+2, for a total of 8x 6+2 PCI plugs.)

This mobo is different from the Chinese BTC S37 boards, in that the power for the slots (would-be risers), is powered by four spaced molex plugs. Unfortunately, my choice of PSU only has a single strand of 4x molex, and there isn't enough cable length between the plugs to fit all four into the board. So, I've got the 2nd and 4th plugged in.

So far, got it to boot without any cards, with an i5-10400, and a single 8GB stick of DDR4-2666 (yes, it's limited to single-channel RAM, which honestly seemed like a waste of performance, if used in a DC setting instead of strictly mining.) Installed a 256GB SATA SSD onto the only SATA port (there is a SATA M.2 on board as well). Windows 10 21H2 went fine, but the onboard NIC wasn't detected out of the box, TrendNet USB to gigabit to the rescue.

Set up in location, installed one GPU, system beeped 5 times (VGA error) due to me not having a monitor connected to the onboard. (10th-Gen does that.)

Sadly, because I don't have an HDMI dummy-plug handy, remoting in with AnyDesk 7.x, showed me a 640x480 screen, that I couldn't manage to size up. It was basically unusable. That's where I left it, until I can find dummy plugs or a tiny HDMI display.

 

[Shivansps]

A lot of platforms do that of forcing you into having a VGA to boot, not completely sure why, this is actually a problem if you are using Nvida CMP cards, because they arent detected as vgas they still trigger that error if there is no igp.

As for that MB, we have them here, honestely i dont see much point on it, specially for low power GPUs like the 6600s.
I would rather go for 2x A68N-2100K + 2x pcie-multiplier + 8 risers + 2x cheap PSU + splitter cables.

The RX6600 uses so little power that you can even get away with using single sata to pcie adapters to power the riser and other for the gpu, that would burst into flames with other gpus, but the RX6600XT is just 50W. You can power 4 of them with something like the EVGA 600w white, easy. And actually, i did 6 too.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, I can't figure this out.

PCI-E slots other than slot 1 detect RED in BIOS splash screen, and don't detect card in Win10.

Slot 1 is a true x16, supposedly, and is connected to CPU pins, rest of slots are likely chipset x1 slots, with a physical x16 slot.

Card that worked in slot 1 (detected GREEN), won't work in slotrs 2, 3, or 4.

Had to dig out a mini-monitor, and remove both cards I was testing, to flash BIOS. It came with 1.10, I put 1.40 on a 32GB Adata USB3.0 stick, plugged it into the left-most top USB port, went into BIOS, did Instant Flash. Prompt came up, then another prompt came up, to reboot, and then it did, and did a ME update. Inside Windows, it said BIOS was version 1.40, but I didn't remember it taking any time to flash base BIOS. So I did it again. It did the base BIOS flash, but not the ME update.

I had the detection problem before flashing the BIOS, I thought that would be a cure, but apparently not?

Do I have to manually set slot speed / generation, on a mining-specific board? I did enable C.A.M. (Clever Access Memory, aka Resizeable BAR), 4G Decoding was also enabled by default.

CPU is a 10400 non-F.

Cleared CMOS, re-set IGD multi-mon, Onboard default, PCI-E link speed for slots 1-6 at "Gen1". CSM was apparently disabled by default.

Still showing RED detection in higher slots, with a known-good card.

Is this because I don't have all of the 4 molex plugs plugged in? Both of the first two slots are labeled "A", and so is the mobo ATX connector, so I surmised, slot power for those two slots should be coming from PSU ATX "A". The other slots are labled "B,C,D,E", and there are four molex plugs on the top side, labeled "B,C,D,E" as well.

Why isn't a single GPU working in slot 2, aka 2nd "A" slot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/olf55f

 

[legcramp]

It's a riser-less motherboard so you should assume to plug in all the molex on the board to power the cards correctly, I would try that first.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's a riser-less motherboard so you should assume to plug in all the molex on the board to power the cards correctly, I would try that first.

But I'm trying a single GPU, and all of the five secondary slots don't register correctly, even though the 2nd slot isn't powered by the molex.

 

[legcramp]

The easiest/fastest way to troubleshoot is to just plug them in and see imo. Either ways it seems like the general consensus is this board is a pain in the butt to work with.

Found this on reddit: "I have 7 cards mining away on this motherboard. It was a bit finicky at the start but what I did was update the bios via the uefi internet tool, turned in 4G, turned off the Vtd, changed all pcie to gen 1. "

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/olf55f

 

[VirtualLarry]

I did that, still no dice. Tried BIOS 1.40, 1.30, VT-x off, VT-d off, CAM on, 4GB decode ON, UEFI boot mode, just RED in slots other than the primary x16 slot.

Guess either this board was soldered with a bad chipset, the ME firmware update portion of the 1.40 BIOS update went bad somehow, or these boards are just junk.

Leaning towards "just junk".

Should have bought a Chinese BTC S37 board.

 

[legcramp]

I did that, still no dice. Tried BIOS 1.40, 1.30, VT-x off, VT-d off, CAM on, 4GB decode ON, UEFI boot mode, just RED in slots other than the primary x16 slot.

Guess either this board was soldered with a bad chipset, the ME firmware update portion of the 1.40 BIOS update went bad somehow, or these boards are just junk.

Leaning towards "just junk".

Should have bought a Chinese BTC S37 board.

Let us know how it goes if you end up going with that S37 board, I've been eyeing that one for the RTX 3060s.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.amazon.com/Biostar-TB360-BTC-LGA1151-Support-Motherboard/dp/B08W1TBL6J

I've opted for the Biostar riserless board. Price was OK ($229 @ Amazon, $400 @ Newegg). Price of CPUs for it, though, celeron for $350 BNIB @ Newegg???

Thankfully, aaawave.com had me covered, i3-9100 for $143.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here's a start-to-finish build with the ASRock H510 BTC PRO+ riserless mobo. He ran into some BIOS issues too. But then seemed like that fixed his issues. He didn't mention disabling VT-D, VT-X, enabling "Clever Access Memory", or enabling IGD multi-monitor and defaulting to onboard video. (The reason that he got five beeps, btw, when he booted initially.)

I'm scratching my head, but I've got a pair of EVGA Platinum 750W PSUs here now, which I can power the molexes with. Maybe I'll give it another shot soon, with some of my other cards.

 

[Shivansps]

i builded one of those last week, whiout any issues, the same H510 board with 6 powercolor RX6600, i couldt find the IGD multi monitor" option so the igp was disabled, everything worked out of the box, (i connected all molex). It would not run under windows, (reset and black screen after installing the driver) but HiveOS worked perfectly.