I read the whole post,but the part about temps is what I focused on due to my experience with my own BFL Single.
Please,don't restrict your posts,I found this one to be very informative & thought provoking
Keep em coming
Thanks Unacceptable, you're like, my biggest fan lol. And I'll keep them coming, but I'll try include a TL;DR section for my longer posts. I know I'm frustrated reading a book-sized post only to not learn anything.
For me, cooling performance and noise is a big buying decision....
It's uncommon in the engineering world to sell/pre-sell hardware without providing specs like power usage, heat load/btu, rack space requirements, weight, etc. While I realize BFL might trying to maintain a competitive edge, or in some cases might not even KNOW the answer, there should at least be 'expected' values that may change with shipping product.. (IE the way everyone else pre-sells)
BFL, either provide those numbers publicly for at least the two largest devices (SC/Rig), or come up with a way to provide it to -verifed- purchasers of hardware under some sort of non-disclosure. As someone who has purchased what I suspect will be several racks of hardware, this is crucial information.
Well, BFL has not released exact power consumption numbers yet. However BFL_Josh has stated that they will not be more than their FPGA-based equivalent, which gives a solid ceiling on power consumption. I'd make an estimate of maybe 65-70 watts for the Single SC. Not sure about the minirig because I'm not familiar with the specs on the FPGA model anyway. I understand why BFL is wary about releasing their exact power numbers - as they were raked over the coals on this forum for missing the mark on their freshman product, so understandably this time they are waiting until they are sure on exact power consumption for all shipping products in the SC range. This doesn't bother me.
The noise and throttling issues however, are still up in the air - so I wanted to try and get a debate going. I didn't expect a response from BFL regarding this (but I did get one, thank you BFL-Engineer), and I've been told by BFL since that they are expecting a big improvement in the noise level. It's hard to state what "silent" is to people though, since everybody's opinion differs on this. I'll have to hear (or not hear hopefully) when I take delivery of my Single SC units.
- KIDC