Topic: MultiPSU setup: Who is running them? (Read 1973 times)
Chris, thanks for you help. Extremely informative. Just what I wanted to hear.
I'd recommend looking over mrb's blog, particularly these entries:
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=42
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=44
It sounds like you might be drawing even more power than his setup, so overloading the motherboard's 12v lines may be a concern. If you don't want to power-mod the extender cables yourself, Cablesaurus sells them pre-modified: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6128.0
You shouldn't need to power-mod all your cables. I ran a setup with 1x 5970, 2x 5870, and 2x 5850 for a while, with all but the 5970 drawing directly from the board, and I never felt any extra warmth coming from the motherboard's 12v lines.
I was probably pulling around 1500watts from the wall with 3 PSUs. I had problems at one point with tripping the overcurrent protection on my power strip, but I solved that by splitting the PSUs between two power strips. Never managed to trip the circuit breaker, though you might get there with your setup.
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=42
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=44
It sounds like you might be drawing even more power than his setup, so overloading the motherboard's 12v lines may be a concern. If you don't want to power-mod the extender cables yourself, Cablesaurus sells them pre-modified: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6128.0
You shouldn't need to power-mod all your cables. I ran a setup with 1x 5970, 2x 5870, and 2x 5850 for a while, with all but the 5970 drawing directly from the board, and I never felt any extra warmth coming from the motherboard's 12v lines.
I was probably pulling around 1500watts from the wall with 3 PSUs. I had problems at one point with tripping the overcurrent protection on my power strip, but I solved that by splitting the PSUs between two power strips. Never managed to trip the circuit breaker, though you might get there with your setup.
Safety in what sense? I'm not running a multi-PSU setup now but used to do that when 450W~500W was the highest capacity readily available. Since you're using extenders, I assume you're not putting all 6 into a single case so heat build up shouldn't be an issue.
Safety in the sense that the cards would be drawing power from the motherboard of one PSU and the PCI-E connectors of another PSU. Additionally, I have heard there are issues with overloading the motherboard ATX header. Also, I have read there are issues with having two PSUs wired in parallel that are not grounded together. These would require between 1200 - 1700w, depending on what cards I use. That is probably enough to overload one wall socket, so they would probably have to be grounded at different points. Looking for a little reassurance that someone has done this with high wattage GPUs, it is working fine for them and what setup they are using. Starting a fire, burning up thousands of dollars worth of gear along with my place is kind of something I would like to avoid...
@bitlane - what cards are you using? Let me know how that works for you. I used the paperclip method and had a 550w as a slave powering one card.
Back to the twin PSU question.....
I am going to setup 2 systems using dual PSU's, as I just had a couple dozen PCIe x1/x2/x4/x8/x16 cables show up....so time to LOAD UP the 6+PCIe motherboards with video cards.
To make it work as easilly (and safely as I can think)....
PSU#1 as normal. A spare 12v output from a 4pin Molex connector on PSU#1 to 12v DC Relay, to ground out 'Green' and a Ground on 24pin of PSU#2 to activate.
Easy, peasy, Japanesey....
Just throw a relay fed from PSU#1 to/and split this connection on PSU#2 to activate....(fuse connection if concerned)
I am going to setup 2 systems using dual PSU's, as I just had a couple dozen PCIe x1/x2/x4/x8/x16 cables show up....so time to LOAD UP the 6+PCIe motherboards with video cards.
To make it work as easilly (and safely as I can think)....
PSU#1 as normal. A spare 12v output from a 4pin Molex connector on PSU#1 to 12v DC Relay, to ground out 'Green' and a Ground on 24pin of PSU#2 to activate.
Easy, peasy, Japanesey....
Just throw a relay fed from PSU#1 to/and split this connection on PSU#2 to activate....(fuse connection if concerned)
Ah cool, new to hardware assembly by about 2 weeks lol. So can any MB run multi GPUs with extenders as long as they have power and PCIE-16 slots available? And are they all usable with mining clients? I heard most software won't recognize extra.
The extenders make use of the PCI-E 1x slots I believe
See here for somebody selling these on the forum http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=6128.0
Bandwidth isn't an issue with mining but these would suck for gaming
As long as the software don't make assumptions about the maximum number of cards in a system, it should see all the GPUs the OS can use.
Ah cool, new to hardware assembly by about 2 weeks lol. So can any MB run multi GPUs with extenders as long as they have power and PCIE-16 slots available? And are they all usable with mining clients? I heard most software won't recognize extra.
Toying with the idea of running 6 x 6950s/5870s on a single board with PCI-E extenders w/molex and dual PSUs. Board would be powered by a ~1000w PSU and another ~1000w PSU would supply power to 3 of the video card's PCI-E power adapters + molex. I have done the math and a single PSU will not cut it.
Questioning the safety of this setup, just to save a few dollars. Is anyone else running something similar? Have not seen anyone else on the forum pushing this much power on a single board.
Questioning the safety of this setup, just to save a few dollars. Is anyone else running something similar? Have not seen anyone else on the forum pushing this much power on a single board.
Safety in what sense? I'm not running a multi-PSU setup now but used to do that when 450W~500W was the highest capacity readily available. Since you're using extenders, I assume you're not putting all 6 into a single case so heat build up shouldn't be an issue.
What kind of MB can run 6 GPUs and allow them to be usable in mining?
That's why he's using extenders.
What kind of MB can run 6 GPUs and allow them to be usable in mining?
What exactly are you asking?
The second PSU will only give power to GPU? So what would the problem be?b
The second PSU will only give power to GPU? So what would the problem be?b
Toying with the idea of running 6 x 6950s/5870s on a single board with PCI-E extenders w/molex and dual PSUs. Board would be powered by a ~1000w PSU and another ~1000w PSU would supply power to 3 of the video card's PCI-E power adapters + molex. I have done the math and a single PSU will not cut it.
Questioning the safety of this setup, just to save a few dollars. Is anyone else running something similar? Have not seen anyone else on the forum pushing this much power on a single board.
Questioning the safety of this setup, just to save a few dollars. Is anyone else running something similar? Have not seen anyone else on the forum pushing this much power on a single board.
Jump to: