@ All - Favor to ask to keep the thread easier to follow and less repetitive. Let's use @ person for the response when possible rather than quote the entire post for the ones with pictures to keep it less bulky / more scrolling. It will be more important as this thread gets past 40-50 pages where I need to do more streamlining.
**************Design Lab brewing *************************
First I want to thank all the people who are supporting me on this project
1) Wife and daughter - Wife did all the Network cabling and prep all the GPUs. My daughter is spray painting the RIG frames
2) Hawkfish007 for supplying H81 MBs as my Racing MB are so problematic. Most importantly his AWESOME PCI RISERs!!!
3) Finksy for sending me more 4KW server PSU, Fans, cabling and PICOs for the prototypes.
4) Cryptowatcher for volunteering his time to make me custom cablings
5) MarkAZ for heating and cooling recommendations / ideas. This guy is a Genius.
I'm not sure about you guys but I get tire of the same old boring designs that haven't really improved for GPU mining over the past 5 yrs. This is why I want to continue pushing the envelope and see what other cool new designs we can come up with.
Lots of stuff! Designing with Wood is fun and easy. Hopefully 1 day I can find cheaper metal material and make custom cases.
Lots of HP PSU, Finksys Hurricane Fans and tons of Hawkfish007 risers!
I had a AHA Moment when I saw the HP PSU's compact design and said it would be perfect for the SERVER CASE!! But upon testing it, this HP 1200W PSU gets Stupidly high Pitched LOUUUUD due to it's tiny high RPM fan even when barely pushed over 50%. The only way to keep it quiet is to feed it cool air or have another FAN to blow at it. I don't know how I'm going to be able to do this with the server case design so back to the LAB to tinker on this.
Finksy's Custom PICO designed by a Miner for Miners!
It came out way better than expected so I can't wait to get my hands on them.
Heavy investment
This is a very big investment for me just to learn how different GPU type, size, air flow work best in what config etc. In a large farm, it is more practical to standardize on only a few types of GPUs. This standardization help keep operating cost low (same ROM, quickly understand issues, etc) and also make it very easy to RMA similar GPU type or always have a GPU receipt that is within 30 days for quick returns of fail ones. So needless to say after all the design work is done, I will be selling these to friends for very cheap prices as I prefer this type of standardization.
This is also over 4 rigs worth that are just idle for different configs and the only time they will be mining is during the heat and power tests. Expensive project as that's an opportunity lost of almost $1K a month at current income level. However, I think it will be worth it as we may learn more things from this rather than keep doing the SAME OLD SAME OLD. Please keep in mind, I got mostly RX470s but will also use different GPUs to test as we have a future proof solution not just an EASY Solution (470).
This is only half of the gears shown. The other half is in the garage or in transit.
Here you can see I purchased most of the different RX470 that matters. I didn't bother with the Sapphire Ref 470 as it will operate similar to the 480 in the picture. The XFX single fan is actually very tiny, this picture, somehow is not showing proper proportion but it's very tiny compare to the MSI red.
The only way I can SHUT UP the HP 1200W is to give it a beefy Hawkfish007 or FINKSY fan. I can't recommend these HP1200W for home use or even the garage unless you can use some other fans to keep it cool. The high pitch noise will travel thru my Garage door vs the white noise from the bigger fans that wont. Not as loud at Antminer S7 / S9 but almost just as annoying! You MUST feed it cool air to keep it quiet. I will try to make a custom Fan mount for it but I wonder what will happen during summer high temps. Even if your office is 70F AC, it will get hot and get stupid pitch loud. For open air, should be easy to solve this issue with box fans or a custom fan next to it. However I really wanted this to work for the Server case as the form factor is perfect!
@YSYLUNG - Does the HP 1500W have bigger fans and is maybe quieter? I need a server PSU solution for the server case and the IBM 2KW wont' fit sideways nor is there a good fan solution in that space to keep either the HP1200W or the IBM 2KW PSU cool.
Thank you everyone for following and for your valuable feedback and support.