This PCI-Express x 1 to x 16 powered riser card with additional 6-pin PCIe power connector is the ideal accessory for bitcoin mining systems & can of course be used in accordance with the requirements set out here As well as any other riser card for other systems & application areas such as Altcoin Ethereum Ether Zcash Distributed Computing Rendering & Boinc Bitcoin is a virtual pay-as-you-go virtual payment tool launched & managed by all the participating Bitcoin network clients Like many other cryptos with proof-of-work principle bitcoins are caused by computer- Cryptographic computing tasks with a high energy expenditure which is called "mining" (mining) In principle normal computer processors (CPUs) are capable of calculating new bitcoins but they can only calculate a few (kilo) hashes per second & therefore are not suited to bitcoin mines in relation to the time & energy used for this purpose Regarding the efficiency they are clearly beaten by graphics processors (GPUs) especially graphics chips of the Radeon series from AMD have proved particularly strong Mining rigs are referred to as PC-systems from commercially available hardware components the only task of which is to calculate Bitcoins by means of several graphics cards in continuous operation In order to counter the resulting high heat development & to operate as many graphics cards as possible in parallel these GPU-Miner systems usually use very open housings (comparable to Benchtables) or in some cases adventurous self-assembled case circuits As with AMD Cross Fire or NVIDIA SLI gaming PCs not all PCI Express slots can be used on a system-based motherboard since high-performance graphics cards generally have a wide dual fan or even three-fan fan & thus the space required for further GPUs is missing or must be moved with many Mining PCs all PCIe slots due to the respective graphics card constellation This is where the practical powered Riser Card comes in & allows the installation of PCI Express slots with x 1 x 4 x 8 or x 16 connectivity on the motherboard by allowing an additional PCI Express x 16 slot to be strategic In or outside the housing This x 16 slot is electrically connected to a single PCI Express lane which corresponds to the PCIe generation of the output slot Since bitcoin mining is only performed by the GPU & in contrast to video games no textures or shader data have to be transported into the graphics memory the bandwidth available for this application is sufficient For data transfer the riser card is a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 30 cable With a length of Approx. 800 millimeters allows a great deal of room for the installation of the PCIe slot In contrast to the often used IDE flat-ribbon cables with conventional riser cards the module can be installed better & there are further advantages in the higher stability as well as the less hindrance of the airflow The power supply to the board is provided by a 6-pin PCI Express connector directly from the power supply which is capable of providing up to 75 watts of electrical power normally supplied by the motherboard&s PCIe slot Compared to Molex plugs & adapters this type of power supply ensures a lower transition resistance & is therefore particularly stable & extremely reliable The remaining energy required by the graphics card comes as usual from other PCIe connectors directly connected to the GPU With this powered riser it is thus possible to operate up to 6 graphics cards on a mainboard without overloading the power supply or the cables of the power supply Technical details Cable length approx 80 cm Connections Plug-in module PCIe with 1 lanesocket module PCIe with 16 lanes (electrical connection x 1) Power supply 1x 6-pin PCI Express socket Supplied cables 1x USB (Universal Serial Bus) 30 Supported PCI Express standards 1x 2x 30