Can I use mining motherboard for normal gaming system?

[t99]

Need a new one and not trying to spend much considering I plan to build a whole new system in a year.

If they can't work then what am I missing? It looks right, has everything I need, seems like it would work fine.

Cpu is i5 4460 and having trouble cheap motherboards. Found some cheap oem boards on eBay which I'm considering

 

[Karadjgne]

No such thing as a mining motherboard. Or a gaming motherboard for that matter, regardless of what the name of the mobo is.

There's consumer grade mobo's and server grade, and thats about it. Consumer range from cheap OEM to the enthusiast, which might be aimed at gamers with gimmicks like OC ability, better usb3.1 over usb 2.0 etc, but they are still just a consumer mobo.

The i5 4460 requires a lga1150 mobo. Which one is for you is the one that has any needs and wants included, everything upto a Z97.

Just because the seller has stated it was used in a mining pc, doesn't make it a mining mobo, the seller is just being honest as to its past usage. Just like you'll see many sellers who claim their K cpu was never OC'd, that's a huge crock.

 

[larrycumming]

the specialty mining motherboards are the ones with 6-13 pcie ports. most of those ports are probably pcie2.0x1 ports as mining requires very little use of pcie bandwidth unlike graphics cards. they will have a special "mining mode" in the bios for you to enable, which saves some configuration time and more o/s compatibility. they would also have a single pcie3.0x16 slot so you can install a graphics card for gaming use.

a lot or miners go with gaming motherboards and use pcie expansion boards instead, so you can look into that. if you don't use more than 6 graphics cards, then most gaming atx motherboard will do the job because they usually have 6 usable slots plus one or two m.2 slots which can be connected to a riser board

 

[t99]

Thanks, bought the biostar h81a on eBay with shipping included on a 15$ bid. Everything looked the same. The reviews mention hooking up a gpu to each pic, but this looks like every other board

 

[Karadjgne]

Wow, if that board is good (always a possibility it isn't, with any used mobo) that's a great deal, especially since it's $50 new at newegg or $75 used on ebay (poor, poor clueless seller)

 

[t99]

Wow, if that board is good (always a possibility it isn't, with any used mobo) that's a great deal, especially since it's $50 new at newegg or $75 used on ebay (poor, poor clueless seller)

They had a few. I won this one and I was about to win from same seller for 20$, but thankfully someone outbid with 3 seconds.. Lots of good prices. I almost got a really nice name brand one that is like 90$ for 50$, but closed for 53$ brand new sealed. Seller also offers returns within 15 or 30 days and high ratings so seems Low risk

 

[Karadjgne]

Well Biostar is actually a Brand name, they've been around a long time, just never really hit it big like Asus or Gigabyte. Well known for budget boards, not so much the high-end stuff.