Motherboard Maker ASRock Confirms Plan to Sell Crypto Miners

ASRock is planning to sell four graphics cards (GPU) specifically geared for cryptocurrency mining.

The company unveiled its Phantom Gaming Series last week, based on AMD's RX series. An ASRock America employee confirmed to CoinDesk that four of the cards – all of which are versions of the RX570 series – are "for mining only." A fifth RX570 8G OC version, the employee added, is the gaming-oriented version of that product.

The confirmation comes after a presentation screenshot was posted on Twitter late last month by VideoCardz.com highlighting the planned products.

The move signals that ASRock – which released a mining-specific motherboard back in 2013 – is looking to capitalize on the demand for GPUs by miners, who use the tech in the energy-intensive mining process. That demand has led to companies like AMD and Nvidia to see growing sales (though both firms have said that cryptocurrency miners only form a small part of their customer base).

According to a report from PCGamer, which covered last week's reveal, the RX570 series will run AMD's Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition. That's a notable detail because just prior the announcement, AMD updated the same driver to better handle cryptocurrency mining processes, as CoinDesk previously reported.

The confirmation came the same day that Bitmain, the world's largest maker of bitcoin mining hardware, unveiled a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) dedicated to cryptocurrencies like ethereum and other ethash-based coins. The Antminer E3, which is expected to ship in July, quickly sold out after the China-based company started accepting preorders.

Cryptocurrency mining rig image via Shutterstock