Topic: Server Power Supply Interface Board - for standalone miners and GPU rigs - page 13. (Read 120709 times)

At full fan speed they are loud, but the airflow seems way over the top for the amount of cooling required if they are ~85-90% efficient. I'm not sure if Dell designs these units so that the fans are an integral part of the airflow through the server chassis, as well as just taking out the heat from the PSU. Anyway, using sidehack's breakout board to turn the fan down is important if you want to live near these things.

Thanks Sidehack, that's perfect!

I just took one off my desk that's been running in my room since probably November. It does definitely seem quieter in here, but not enough that I really care. Maybe that's what happens when you work around loud fans every day for three years though. When the fans are turned down they're not too bad. By my standards. I'd rather have stuff that works really well than is comfortable.

Short answer is yes.

If your living around these server power supply fans, they become the ambient noise level. They are essentially about as loud as a hair dryer on low. Sitting out in the living room, in the middle of theday, with general noise around I started one up. I thought it wasn't too bad, definitely noticeable, but not too bad. Get them running for a while, and its not really that great as an example, to sleep near.

I set mine up in the basement with a bunch of vibration absorbing rubber material. With that, I cant hear them.

They are pretty loud... but max speed deltas > PSU fan

Are the fans of the PSU really that loud? I have three on the way to power 5 ANTS. I wonder what will be louder the ANTS or the PSU's ...

I don't have any DPS-800 boards for sale, we're still prototyping. All we have right now are the D750 boards. Load-balancing is pretty easy once you understand what's involved. Load-balancing and master on/off can be done with two power wires and two signal wires.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/for-sale-d750-750w-server-psu-breakout-boards-503423

FPS-800 GBA, you have a interface board for this? Don't know how to solder, and if not, I'll just buy a 1000w pus, or two 750ws load balanced (as you suggested, even though I don't know how to do that either :/) which ever is cheaper. Also where from your website do I buy? What methods do you accept? PM me with some info if you have time

External fan, the actual pot resistance doesn't matter a whole lot. I'd probably use a 10K. What really matters is a wiper voltage range that includes 0-1.8 or so.

Yes, GekkoScience is my business. Hence why all the links are to stuff on gekkoscience.com

Also 3 AntMiners at stock clock would require, if the measurements I did a while ago were accurate, about 960W. If you have a 1000W supply that you trust (like perhaps a DPS-800GBA on 220V power) or greater, it's probably possible. Two of these D750 boards load-balanced would supply 4 Ants at stock or 3 Ants overclocked without any issue. Might do 4 Ants overclocked, I don't recommend it but it has been done.

This IS gekko science.

Hows this different than what gekko science is offering? Also what would be the best option to power 3 antminers off 1 psu and run them at stock clock.

Hi Sidehack, these are great boards and work fantastically, thanks. However, I think I have a related problem to this. I get some control of the fan speed from the board, but this only varies from hurricane (unbearably loud) to stormy (annoyingly load) and it would be great to get the speed down further, as I'm sure that the PSU doesn't need that level of air movement to cool it at the loads that I'm using. Apologies for the stupid question (I'm an electronics noob), but what kind of pot (what resistance?, linear single gang or something else?) do I need to wire up to use external fan control as you describe above?

Very Impressive setup.

Can I ask what each 6950 hashes at because I will be using a few, and Leccy IS NOT cheap in the UK.

Regards.

Gotcha. They do also have different power outputs and stuff from different models, but I haven't actually messed with them. It'd probably not be too difficult to disable/hack the 12V line if necessary, but then again "difficult" is an intensely subjective qualifier.

I guess the point I was trying to make was that the PicoPSU won't cut it. There is a lot of load on the 12 volt side of a pico psu. They just can't keep up with demands from the PCI-e bus let alone current from the CPU 4 pin header.

I'll have to dig up the details of who we used to manufacture. But it has been a reliable design and supports full ATX spec currents from a 8 pin cpu style header including dedicated 4 pin CPU header.

I think I still have like 20 or 30 of those 12v->atx+4pin-cpu adapters in the pic kicking around.

Nifty. I don't have any picoPSU running around but a future project I have in mind will incorporate one running off probably a DPS-800 supply.

We're working on DPS-2000BB breakout boards now, I hope to have a final schematic tomorrow and start on the PCB design. Should be interesting. Gonna build about a 3KW adjustable dummy load to stress-test them; the board should be rated for at least 200A without issue. It'll also incorporate a PWM fan speed controller with internal and external adjustment.

We're also working on a plug-and-go board/cable kit that'll allow you to load-balance and simultaneously control 3 boards at a time. It'll be good for the current D750 boards, and the DPS-800 and DPS-2000 boards we'll be releasing soon. The ability to turn all supplies on and off as a unit, or disable specific supplies in case of problems. The ability to daisy-chain controlboards for more than 3 supplies at a time. Status LEDs for PSU standby power, PSU-on and 12V present on the bus. And unified fan speed control. Should be pretty nifty, and solve a lot of questions people have been asking about parallel/load-balance. I'm all for people learning how to do things themselves, but some folks just can't, or won't, and then if they got an extra ten bucks or whatever maybe they'll just use the it's-already-done-for-you kit.

You mean like this; This is 3 systems all connected to the same DPS-2000BB power supply. Each system has 6 x PowerColor 6950's (some unlocked) for a total of 18 GPU's. This was an undervolted setup with the memory downclocked to 150mhz through a bios mod. So overall power consumption per system was about 750 watts. The IBM PSU if properly cooled will do 200 amps before OCP trips. So you can actually get upwards of 2300+ watts reliably.



A previous client and I had these picopsu like boards made in china in bulk. They are a special design, unlike a normal picopsu that regulates the 12V line and limits it's current. This design passes the 12 volt straight through without regulation and provides a full 10 amps on 5v and another 10 amps on 3.3v. The connector and wire gauges are sized so that the current from the 3.3v and 5v do no impact the overall current available on the 2 x 12 volt atx pins. Also the CPU connector is straight pass thru. The connector was spec'd so that I could be put on powered from a standard ATX PSU from the 8 pin CPU header (only 4 pin CPU pass thru). Since most PSU's have two 8 pins (one dual 4 pin) you could power two individual systems and then yet one more from the ATX PSU's monster 24 pin cable. However it's very difficult to have enough power to power 3 systems on a ATX PSU as most are limited to 1200-1300 watts.



This is a break out board. So the PSU powers each system with a single pair of #6 copper wire. Then this break out board gives you all the pig tails in addition to the 8 pin CPU style connector to power the motherboard.



A closer look at the PSU adapter break out I made.

THANK YOU!!! That worked perfect, I will for sure be buying these from now on.  You rock!

Every supply I tested, the voltage range output by the knob worked. However, HOWEVER... someone at one of Dell's various Chinese outsource design houses decided it would be a good idea to make some with a different reference range for fan speed. I guess it doesn't matter a whole lot if you have a closed-loop regulation system, but these boards don't do that.
If you have the skills to do so, shorting around the 393 resistor on the bottom side of the board should give you the range to control the fan speed on those supplies. This problem wasn't known until recently, so a true fix won't be applied until the V0.6 boards.
The other option is to wire a potentiometer between 3.3V and GND pins on the header, tap on the FAN pin, and set the board to use external fan control.

Question about the board, is the dial suppose to control the PSU fan speed on the 0.4 version?  From what I can gather, the dial works fine, and a reading out to a pin on the psu connector, but the fan speed never changes.  Any ideas?  Otherwise works great!  Love it!