Novak and I ironed out basic details for the control parts of a board today, and I got an initial buck design complete for a 4-chip pod miner. Parts should be inbound (hopefully here Monday) to get started prototyping the power and getting all the diggitals lined out. We've got enough BM1384 to build a few test boards to prove the design, which hopefully will be adapted directly for BM1385 and potentially mass-produced. It'd probably be just a bare board with riser feet, upon which you mount a standard CPU cooler and plug it in to power (6-24V) and USB. Looks like nominal chip dissipation of 40W with probably overclockability past 50W if you can keep the chips cool.
Hopefully there's no trouble getting temp sensors, fan speed and software voltage control integrated.
The digital controls integration is the last real hurdle in a full miner design. If we can get it working properly, the template from the pod miner would shift directly over to TypeZero boards, obviously with different power systems and a bunch more chips. I've got a bit of PSU board manufactoring to do in the next few days, but for the next month basically I'll be using all my time that isn't Compac manufacture and shipping for miner design. I may need to help Novak out on some projects after that (it's a fair trade, since he's doing all the driver code for my project right now) but for now miners are priority.
These BM138* can still move the thermal load though the PCB yes? or are they top sink dependant? also thinking you might need to get a 50mm/0.19" copper shim off the chipset for these sinks to clap onto properly, since they are designed to clamp down onto a socketed CPU.
ooor you could design it to be a socketed ASIC carrier board for quick swap of the 84/85s, just have some resistor network to change data control/ power output! Yeah, need the bm1385s to work that out..
50W load with a 75w i3 cooler (seensed one of them there sinks on a 90w i7)? Easy! $40 150W "Cooler Master TX3" on that thing, no problem.
or any AMD sink..
my main concern is the stock cpu heatsink not holding down onto the chips properly.
I'll have to find a dead board and a heatsink to match and see how much movement there is between the sink and pcb.
Also, with the fan, make sure there is a backup mode to just go full power to a fan when it cant see a RPM output.
but yes, bare bottom BM1385 pods sound nice, we'll all be waiting for your p0rn