Topic: Request for Discussion: proposal for standard modular rack miner - page 8. (Read 9680 times)

I have a plat intel from pete running in my friends office  they use 110 or 220   dimensions in 1 minute or 2


40 mm by 73.5 mm by 265 mm

  1.58 inches by   2.90 inches by  10.44 inches

http://www.deltaww.com/Products/CategoryListT1.aspx?CID=010104&PID=ALL&hl=en-US

DPS-1200TB  next to bottom of the page

Just for reference sake, IBM 2880W Platinum dimensions (with fan packs mounted): 17" x 8" x 2.5"

3x DPS-1200FBA (80+ Bronze?) minimum dimensions without clearance for board: 7.75" x 4.5" x 3.5"

The IBM 2880W would require a 5U case, but allow more room for the hash boards.    What dimensions are the platinum DPS 1200 TBA's? They would be promising, but more expensive. Considering how much we rely on ASIC technology to push the efficiency envelope, I'm amazed how many people disregard the ~5-10% efficiency that can be gained by switching lower quality PSU's out as well as moving to 220/240V.

I may take you up on that. Probably got some other stuff to discuss as well, one of these days.

The community has been needing decent gear for the masses for entirely too long. I'm really hoping we can get enough support for basic standards and especially for PlanetCrypto's independent chip endeavor, which should give the tinker community bitcoin was founded on something to do for a while instead of just waiting for the tailings from various corporations to filter down to us.

I believe I may have a few intel PSU in a box some where, if you need them for sizing etc. I will donate them to the cause.  I would love to see the PSU's modular as well with only having to change maybe the PSU interface board and of course the PSU.

Good to see a decent sized miner made for the masses. 

I haven't done anything with CAD since about 2007, so don't feel too bad about not rendering.

Actually, a single C20 would be pretty handy if PSUs were internalized. Good idea.

With 3 internal DPS1200 PSU (or similar) stacked vertically and tied to a single external socket, one could get either higher power (overclocking and such, probably require cold ambient air or waterblocks) or full redundancy for stock loads as previously mentioned. This also gives an end user the option to circumvent the socket adapter and plug the PSUs in directly to 110V circuits (which would take a few minutes and a screwdriver, but not really a difficult process), still yielding well in excess of 2KW total (non-redundant) power. This reopens 110V home-use potential, and also by internalizing the PSUs provides ample room for using 3x 120mm pull fans which will surely be quieter than 8x 80mm fans.

If the PSU partition dimensions can be specified properly, it wouldn't be difficult to see making multiple interface board packs to fit the same space which opens up PSU options. I talk about the DPS1200 because it's what I have access to, but someone like pmorici has those Intel platinum PSUs (I think) which would also do the trick, or like the Emersons from SP3x gear. If the spec is done with enough consideration, it'd be fairly easy to present a variety of options that meet the same space, each with its set of pros and cons for any particular user.

As of right now I'm in favor of seven S1-sized blades with three push and three pull 120mm fans, with an internalized space for PSUs sized to fit three stacked DPS1200. If the same space can be made to accomodate a few other popular PSU models, I would like to see that done. Provision needs to be made for an externally-accessible 12VDC wiring harness but that's fairly trivial.

As for PSU's being inaccessible, I forgot that the DPS1200's use C13 to connect, Im so used to the 2880w style with AC input as well as DC output all on the same side using blade connections.  Either way, if you ran internal cabling to a bulkhead AC plug on the case, you could use a single C20 outlet to power both PSU's, cleaning up the power cabling.

Yes, I was basing my render on the dimensions of your first post but with the PSU side-layout from last page. I'll leave future renderings to Chig, they're not my strength.

Side note, what about building the case tall enough to house a vertically oriented IBM 2880? They're No wider than 2 DPS 1200's stacked sideways, completely hot swappable with the rear connections and have beastly fans already built in. Plus you could power 8 boards @ 300w each.

When you say the amount of things I have listed originally, do you mean in the first post? Because I acknowledged then that it would require tweaking of dimensions to fit. I also already had an increased height for top-mounted PSUs. If we want to shift to S1-formfactor boards (which there are good reasons to do so) we'd have to either shift to a 5U case or put PSUs on one side.

The problem with your render is, now it's impossible to plug the PSUs in. You've opted to demonstrate my PSU location suggestion #2 - PSUs recessed inside the case and no longer accessible from the outside, which has its own problems as noted. It's either difficult/impossible to plug them in, or you need additional internal mains cabling to fill the gap to a pair of sockets mounted on the case wall.

I like the DPS1200 because they're not difficult to find for not expensive second-hand, and are nicely power-dense which allows more room for hashboards and such. Being as the innards would connect to PCIe for power, it wouldn't be hard to build a wiring harness with an external connection for running your own external PSU. I'd rather not design that as the defacto, because people seem to like being able to buy a box that needs no further toying-with to make it work. Included PSUs as a base default, no PSUs and wiring harness to external connections as an option.

Of course the problem is physical dimensions.  The amount of things you have listed originally do not fit in the physical dimensions you had planned for, therefore it's time to consider alternative options.  Either increase the height to accomodate upper-mounted PSU's, cut back the amount of blades to 7 and shrink the heatsinks by a small amount, or have the option to run an external PSU.  I'm a fan of individually sourcing external PSU's, as you can save a lot of money looking for used/refurb units as opposed to having to buy new over-priced PSU's from the manufacturer.  Look how much of a premium you pay for PSU's when buying SP1/3x or S2/4's, that's because brand new server PSU's are expensive and it is not feasible/practical to source used/refurb units for production volume.  When you shift that "problem" on to the customer, everyone wins IMO, and it's up to them to be as frugal/resourceful as they feel appropriate given their circumstances.

The PSU's should probably have their own partial enclosure, and I don't see having part of a 120mm fan blowing on part of that enclosure as much of a problem for airflow, especially given the potential distance between the fans and the enclosure (the DPS-1200 are only ~8" long + backplanes/cables, and there is 15" between the inside of the front and rear fans).  My render had allotted ~3.5" for two vertically oriented, side-by-side DPS1200's with clearance to mount them into a breakout board/backplane.

I think you can safely assume that 110V is on the way out even for any "home" miners, not just by your own standards.  It will be interesting to see how the S7 turns out, to see if it's still marketable to "home" miners, or if they start going larger form factors similar to S5+ for all their new models.  

Edit:  How many people really have spare 25A 110/120V circuits in their home anyways? 

you have to realize the img below is true
then you just make that 2400 watt miner be able to down clock to 1700 watts on a low/110 volt setting

I'll say this a third time. The problem is physical dimensions. There's only two ways a DPS1200 would fit in a 4U case, and it takes up either 3.25 or 3.5 inches of horizontal space. This leaves less than 14 inches of width for fans, and 3x 120mm fans are more than 14 inches long. Therefore, impossible. It's not that 1" of fan would be blowing on the PSU. It's that 1" of fan would be coexisting in space with a portion of the PSU. If you want 3x120mm fans, you cannot mount your PSUs in a way that they're accessible from the outside - hence the three alternatives I posted.

110V on the DPS1200 gets you 900W, sure. That's still 3/4 power if you only have 110V available. But if you only have 110V available, why are you buying a 2400W rack-mount miner? I'm more than willing to ignore that small percentage of potential customers.

I have 2u "server" (no external drive option) cases sitting behind me with 4 80mm fans - about an inch on either side of the outside fans of clearence, quarter inch or so between each fan, and rack handles, so ballpark 3" of horizontal clearence that's not got fan in the way.

 I don't think it would be an issue to have 1" or so of one fan blowing on the PS though, don't see why 3x 120s would be a problem.

 Getting lots of airflow out of 80s is a VERY LOUD proposition - highest airflow I know of from an 80mm is the Delta 80CFM unit, which were COMMONLY known as "screamers" (6800 rpm or some such off the top of my head, those things make the 120s on a S5 sound QUIET) back when they were commonly mounted on Swiftech 370 or Alpha 8045 heatsinks on Athlon/Athlon XP CPUs.

 I don't have any of those, but I had a couple of the "next step down" 68CFM units - which were clearly audible THROUGH internal doors and the cases they were in.

 
 I'm wondering about specifying those DPS1200 - the specs I'm finding on those come out to 750-900 watts each at 110VAC depending on manufacturer, so you'd need 3 or you'd have to go 220v to power them (where they spec 1200 watts, but at that point might as well spec *1* of the IBM Bladecenter 2880 watt units instead). Is there a different DPS1200 than the ones I've been finding?

If we go exactly S1 dimensions, we probably aren't going to be able to double-side heatsinks. Individual boards could still have chipsinks on 'em (like the S5+) but with the limited room above the heatsink and no extra room past the end of the heatsink (the original 2" extra at the front) rules out a lot of what could be done with a single-sided board and still have room for full heatsinking on both sides.

Two DPS1200 stacked vertically are pretty much exactly 7" tall, so can't fit inside a case whose outer dimension is less than 7". The only real way to do it is to set them horizontally one on top of the other, or vertically side-by-side. This takes up between 3.25 and 3.5 horizontal inches depending on which option you take.

The outside width of the case should not exceed 17.5 inches to ensure it fits comfortably in and out of racks, where I believe the defined standard is 17.75 inch inside. 18AWG steel knocks off about fifty thousandths per layer. If we assume we get 3.25 inches for PSU and 5 layers of steel we have 14 inches. This gives us 2 inches of width per board and heatsink. I figure 1.5 inches for heatsink will give half an inch for PCB, components and gapping to get boards in and out.

Unfortunately, 3x 120mm fans is more than 14 inches. There's room across the front to do it since the PSUs don't go all the way up there. 4x 80mm PSUs wide covers 320mm or 12.6 inches, so there's room for play at the sides and inbetween. Two fans high is 6.3 inches, plenty of room left over in the 7-inch height (or, if we say 3 layers of steel and 2mm under 7 inches for shelf play in the rack, 6.75 inches inside) for fans to be comfortable. With that much fan on the backside you might not even need front fans to push.

Finksy's model is pretty close to what I'm thinking. Maybe tomorrow I'll run out a sketch and see if our scanner wants to work on my machine.

If we went to an S1-formfactor board, we'd probably shift the data cabling back to stock USB - no sixth wire to control link light. Sounds like software fan control is the best way to go, so the internal hub board would have 8 devices, where seven are boards and the eighth is a built-in controller that handles link lights and fans driven by cgminer integration. We'd probably design boards to have holes/pads for both USB jack and a pin header, the intention being to use the pin header for USB signals inside the rack case but populate the jack instead for boards intended for S1 use, with generic hubs and whatnot.

Omg it seems i was blind or something, just read it was 7-8 Blades, not 7-8 S1s

That gives a LOT better disposition... Will try a jab at it tomorrow

Here try this out:



Same legend as Chig.  Had to make it 18" width in order to fit 7 hash boards with the dual heat sinks as spec'd, in practicality you might be fine with 17.5".  All fans 120mm, I wouldn't personally bother with 140mm fans. Keep it simple, buy in bulk.  

The only way I'd practically see you with 8 hashing boards @ ~300W each would be to make it taller than 4U to accomodate a single 2880W PSU up top. Even with 2x DPS 1200 stood up with a breakout board/backplane at the rear of the PSU shell, you won't have enough room.  

7 Hashboards of BM 1385's @ 300W each will still be ~9.7 TH/s and around 2230W at the wall.

Edit: Don't mind the crappy render, it was my first time.

What width will have the heatsink? to render a model

The current width of the S1 heatsink doesn't matter, as we won't be using them.

The render with vertically-mounted blades is closer but still not right. Seven blades, heatsinks sized to fit, with about 3.5 inches to one side for PSUs and controller.

You could also go the shorter way, and put the blades horizontally with centered PSUs with the sturdy Dell 750w models, and one RPi on top controlling the whole affair like this:



But then, you might want to replace the 80mm fans with with two badass 140mm fans to end up with something like this:

Btw, i'm assuming 19in rack width and 4U height (which seems like the minimum for the S1 form factor vertical mounted blades).

IMHO a side-mounted-hack of the blades would be better spacewise for the case, however, it is yet to be seen if that much heat can be handled efficiently by the case.

I think vertically you cannot fit 7, as the default heatsink of the S1 takes effin 3.5cm

Here's a model with vertical mounted blades



Also, i corrected the default heatsink width a bit, as i used 3cm off the top of my head, but just measured it and it is 3.5cm

I was thinking something like a 2U with pairs of DPS2K would be good for someone wanting to run dual-sided waterblocks. With BM1385 boards you could push about 30TH from 11U like that. I'd like to insist on internal supplies the default option but it shouldn't be difficult to circumvent them for a slightly more custom setup like that.

Chig, I can honestly say there's not a single thing about your 3D model that is correct. Either I suck at describing things or your English needs work - probably both.

The boards are mounted vertically. Their heatsinks are screwed to the bottom and stand up with their fins horizontal. This gives room for potentially 8 blades but seven is a bit better for power and space. These blades would take up approximately 14 inches of the 17.5 inch width of the inside of the case; the remaining space would have PSUs at the back and controller at the front. That's the current plan.

The original description from the first post had 8 blades spanning the full width of the case and occupying the bottom 5.5 inches. The top 1.5 inches had a pan across it with PSUs, controller and all cabling on this pan.