Topic: Server Power Supply Interface Board - for standalone miners and GPU rigs - page 12. (Read 120709 times)

Sounds good.  I'm going to get some A00 or A02 supplies from Ebay so I can just use the boards I have with those.  I'm preliminarily planning to add more machines later - so if you make the boards work with the later Rev supplies I can just order some of those boards when you have them - depending on how things work out.

Do you have any of the later rev supplies?  I have some A04 and some A06 supplies.  If you're looking for some supplies to try maybe we can arrange a swap?  I 'll send you a couple of supplies for a board or something?

I'll have to compromise on the next board since the PCBs are already delivered, change parts around a bit such that you'll have full control on the ones you currently have no control over, and have full but not as precise control over the ones that currently work fine. Probably the V0.6 boards will address the different range standards with a switch setting, but for now we'll have to make do.

That's probably the quickest solution.  Although sidehack may have has some interest in figuring out what issue is with other specific revisions in his free time after he gets other boards prototyped or produced maybe?

Yeah these supplies can get dirt cheap on eBay at least for the time being still and they're built like tanks so it was a great re-purposing of hardware sidehack and others have found. 

Kudos from us electrical n00bs would couldn't do this for ourselves we appreciate it!

Excellent - and excellent.

Thanks.  I see a number of Rev A00 and A02 supplies on Ebay - I'll just pickup some of those instead of trying to mod the board

I think bobsag said they ran a couple 400MHz Ants off a single board for a week and some without issue. I haven't tried it but apparently it works.

I wouldn't tried OC'ed.....

Does the dell PSU + gekkosciene board combo run 2 antminers OC'd to 200 GH/S ok? Or do they only have enough juice for 2 at stock clock speed?

My Rev A00 also works. 

Just a follow-up from this and the other thread.

The two supplies we have that are running two of sidehack's boards are both A02 revisions.

With that revision the knob knobulates as expected.  

Snazzy. Hopefully we'll be stress-testing the first DPS-2000BB PCB prototypes in a little over a week. It'll have a built-in controller for two 4-wire fans with full internal and external speed control, as well as the standard 5V/3.3V, current share and external-on lines.

Building the test rig is gonna be fun. 12V 200A is a lot of heat to dissipate.


Well... I'm sorta banking on that it does... but for the basics, that's a pretty slick setup.

Here's a nice picture of Sunbreak's PSU adapters.


You can run 6 antminers off each of these PSUs, the setup with the 6awg wire lets you run 3 groups of 2 antminers. 1 6awg per pair of ants is just right. Delta fans keep it nice and cool. It doesnt get any better than this.

No problem. I'm just trying to get these to work - and (unfortunately) the loud fan thing is sort of an issue for me. I'd like to keep the noise down.

If you can please post the Rev number(s) from the supplies you've used that have worked - I may just order some with the same Rev number instead of going too crazy modding the boards.  The supplies are all over the place on Ebay - cheap.  That's probably the easiest way out (for me at least)

I wasn't sure if I had explicitly explained it here or not, so if I haven't then you have no need to apologize.

So I tried grounding the FAN pin to one of the GROUND pins - and the fan definitely slows down.  It stays at a low speed. The fan speed knob on the board still has no effect - and I tried all the dip switch combinations and those have no effect either.

Out of curiosity - what's the rev number on the supply you're using?

The ones I have are Rev - 04 and Rev - 06.  

I'll do some more experimenting tomorrow, I didn't run the supply under load for any appreciable amount of time to see what happens to the fan speed when the supply heats up.


Actually - let me correct that,  one place on the PSU label it says 

 Rev (chinese): 06  and in another place it says REV A05.

the other supply says:

Rev (chinese):04  and in the other place it says REV A03

I actually work for Dell - and I can tell you that internally the "A03" and "A05" numbers are the Dell rev numbers.  The other Rev numbers may be those from whomever
the original manufacturer of the supply was for Dell.  Dell typically sources components like power supplies from at least 2 different manufacturers for every product so they don't have single source points of failure.

I'd still be curious to find out what the versioning is on the supplies that you developed and tested with.

Sorry for making your answer the question again - I looked thru the multiple threads where the boards are discussed but didn't come across the previous responses.   I've got six of these supplies - but have only tried two of them so far - I'll try some of the others and see if they perform any differently.  I can check the version numbers on the labels and see what I have.

If that doesn't work - I can try some of the other suggestions.

First thing to try - make sure it's set for internal instead of external fan speed control. If it is set for external, set it to internal and try again. If it still doesn't work, set it to external and ground the FAN pin. If it still doesn't work, I have no idea.

If it doesn't work on internal but works on grounded external, short around the 393 resistor on the backside of the board and try the knob again (on internal). If that works, either permanently short around that resistor or tie a wire from the rightmost pin on the knob to ground.

The other option if it works on external, is rig up an external pot between the 3.3V and GND pins on the header, tap on FAN,and adjust from there.



For the record, this is not a problem with the board. It's a change in internal design spec on a different variant of the power supply than I had to test with. The half-dozen supplies I used all worked, but there exist other variants that, for some reason, use a different voltage standard for fan control. It's not a problem if you have a closed-loop active controller, but that's not what we have.

And since this is the third time I've answered this question today, and at least the eighth time I've answered this question in the last week, I'm gonna start directing people here if they ever mention the word "fan speed" to me in any communications.

I got my interface boards for the Dell 750W power supplies yesterday - thanks for the fast shipping!

I finally had a chance to plug one of them into a supply and power them on - the power switch on the interface board works as advertised , but I have a question about the fan speed control .......  it doesn't seem to work on the two boards and two supplies I have tried so far.

I tried with the supply loaded by hooking it up to my cube and unloaded - same behavior in both cases.

Turning the fan speed knob doesn't seem to have any effect. 

Is there something I'm missing here?

I'm looking forward to your DPS-2000BB board because I just got one running and it's a real monster.

I'm showing a 6.3A draw at the breaker with four overclocked Ants (2@375, 2@400).  It's max draw is 13.5A so I'm guessing I could easily put 2 maybe 3 more Ants on the power supply.

Each Ant has a dedicated 14 gauge wire back to the supply.  The wires are a little warm so 12 gauge is probably the better choice.  Once the power gets to the Ant I break it out with these cheap adapters from monoprice,

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10245&cs_id=1024503&p_id=2883&seq=1&format=2

I just cut off the molex ends and use twist nuts to tie all the wires together.  Even though it's 18 gauge wire they are room temperature.

Best part of all this.  The supply only cost me $30 on Ebay 

I know when the servers fire up they run at full fan everything ever for a few seconds, until stuff is initialized and it throttles them all down to manageable levels. Two PSUs and a couple other 2U fans and those servers are effing LOUD.

Also, a consideration I'd like opinions on. The DPS-2000BB does not have internal fans, so external fans need to be provided. I'm going to put a speed controller with fan headers on the board, probably for a 4-wire fan. Does anyone have a compelling reason why I should design for a 2/3-wire fan instead?