Topic: FPGA Rig Photos - page 6. (Read 43753 times)

ModMiner Quad Prototypes Hashing away Efficiently (1600 Mhash @ 80 Watts)

Mean while the Electricity Hungry BFL's Look on in Jealousy...








http://www.BTCFPGA.com

Why are you not using the fan headers supplied on the boards?

What you should get are some right angle usb and coaxial power plugs, then you can make it like conduit and it will look so boss.

Inspired by Nyana, obviously, but here are my two production FPGA rigs:

1. Semi-passive (it works without the fan, but the GPU rigs in my office make ambient air toasty, so a fan keeps the FPGAs happy):


2. Bigger rig, using Nyana's basic surface design - but with independent switchable circuits for each bank of 5 FPGAs. The two buttons on one end are the power and reset buttons for the PC board (low-power AMD Hudson integrated fanless logic board, running Linux - latest Lubuntu version - aka Ubuntu with LXDE, which is redundant since I'm not running a display... suppose I could have used a really stripped down Linux but this board used to run GPUs). The big lit-up toggle switches control power to the FPGAs - four separate circuits. The barrel connectors are connected in parallel in each row, and turned on and off by each switch. The round lit-up buttons next to the toggle switches control the power to the fans on each row of FPGAs. Why the separate circuits? Because I could... and all custom electronic kit looks cooler with lots of blinking lights









Only one out of the 20 Ztex FPGAs is broken. Not sure why it's not performing, but given the amount of unskilled electronics work performed by me (I've never done anything like this before), I'd put user error as the most likely reason, rather than any problem with Stefan's boards. If anything, I'm hugely impressed with how robust his kit is. It's expensive, but it's clear that you get what you pay for with Ztex.

If I had any more money then I'd be buying another load and building another rig like the above. It's fun, looks interesting and doesn't require monster power supplies. Even with one non-functional board, the rig averages over 4 Ghash so not too bad.

That is just sexy sexy sexy there catfish. I love the large setup, it is just so clean.

i fully agree to that   One of my singles died and i can't explain it. Maybe i did something to it while moving them; got an replacement after sending it in.


Ill stick to Ztex for a while. I like what i get for my money. Even if ETs Bitstream won't work with them!   

The temps I posted were after running a few days..2 weeks later and the temps are the same. So where you think the heat is going ..?  (perhaps another dimension) Oil transfers the heat to its container with a large surface area and dissipates. Not sure why I responded to such a dumb comment.

It wouldn't be hard to run some copper tubing in that space and run water through it and a radiator if there isn't enough surface area to disburse the heat.  Plus 6 FPGAs isn't a whole lot of power.

Sorry had to post this but it was TOO funny

Also, anybody have received a setup of yohan's Cairnsmore boards in the wild ( except glasswalker guy ) ?

They look very nice indeed !

Oil can absorb more heat then air but that's it. It may cool the rig for a day or so while the oil heats up. After that, the oil will not have any effect. I don't really know what this guy is thinking. He must think the oil traps the heat and then stores it in another dimension.

My face after reading this thread:

It is good for the amount of cards/surface area & amount of oil I have right now, however the more cards I add the more creative I will need to be to keep the temps down. Expanding to a metal lid with heatsinks on top and bottom is my first step. Doing something large scale could be more cost effective then purchasing a large number of waterblocks and it cools the whole card. IDK..If I had the money to buy a large number of FPGAs I would probably design an enclosure just large enough house all the FPGAs then run a the oil through a loop going through a 55galon drum of water with a radiator in it and then possibly cool the water if needed (or something funky). I don't think air is bad, my temps were low 30's across the board with a good copper heatsink and a single fan each.

very interesting, the oil set up... with those temps it seems like a much moe effcient way to run a rig compared to air or standard liquid cooling. unless i'm missing something obvious.

Inspector,

This oil also meets USDA requirements for H-1 lubricants for incidental food contact

I don't think it would be a good idea to take a glass of it

spiccioli.

A veterinarian uses this kind of oil to try to clear a colic (colon blockage) in a horse.
I saw a vet do that.
Thus, in other words, you could use it as a laxative, if you wanted. 

Tech grade mineral oil http://store.steoil.com/crystal-plus-tech-grade-mineral-oil-70t-5-gal/

what kind of oil is that? talk about liquid cooling...

The hub and power splitter were origionaly hot glued to the back of the removable plank of acrylic the miner cards are attached to (like a blade). The Oil does not play nice with the hot glue and has essentialy deteriorated it and I had to remove the hub from the "blade" to troublsoot an issue.   I did have wicking but I have not put much effort into getting rid of it yet since it is pretty minimal and I have been messing arround with it. I have seprate  connectors for both the power and USB and I plan to make a connetor box on the back and epoxy seal everything on the oil side to eliminate seepage.

Had that problem to but as u can see there no wire going into the oil. Its separated by the hub at the top of the miner?

I like it.  Are you getting any wicking effect of the oil seeping up the cables at all?  I had an oil cooled build (not a miner) a few years back and I found that I had to run the cables straight up about a foot and a half to stop the wicking.

Temps are (bottom to top) 33-36-36-37-38-38 @70f ambient. I will be playing with improving the cooling and adding more boards in the future.