what do you all think is this iittle add a 3.3v load device on the power on your knc miner power supply really gonna help any?
or is it smoke/mirrors..?
need to get one anyway if this seems better then making my own ...what the heck I can spring 9 bucks for 2 of them
(alas I know zip about this just trying to cover my butt in that they sent me 11k of stuff with no SWITCHES.....jeez...I must be outta my frigging mind btc/asic endeavors!)
Searing
It won't do anything.
A little about how a power supply works. It has to rectify AC power into DC power and it also has to step down the voltage to a level used by computers. Namely that is 12V, 5V & 3.3V.
At one time power supplies did rectification and step down to all three voltages
So if you will excuse my horrible ASCII art
120/240VAC --------[AC to 12VDC conversion] -----> 12VDC out
|
|--[AC to 5VDC conversion] ------> 5VDC out
|
|--[AC to 3.3VDC conversion] ---> 3.3VDC out
This worked fine when load on all three rails was relatively balanced but efficiency is generally low and when the rails are out of balance efficiency suffers even more.
Two things occurs in roughly that last decade. The first is that 3.3VDC and 5VDC isn't really used for any significant load. At one time they were used to directly power CPU, memory, motherboard logic, etc. However the operating voltage of modern components (including ASICS) is <1 VDC. The power requirement for a motherboard also increased significantly. A high end CPU, memory, and motherboard can pull 200W+. On multi-CPU servers with large banks of memory this can be 500W or more. 500W @ 5VDC = 100A. You would need a cable the size that connects to your car battery to handle that safely. So motherboards contain their own DC to DC regulators. The powersupply pumps in 12VDC the motherboard converts it to whatever it needs.
The second was the "80Plus" program and it became a big marketing campaign. People began buying more efficient PSU and it became increasingly hard to design a PSU that
could deliver massive current on the 12V rail, operate with minimal or no load on 3.3V, and still remain very efficient.
Today almost all high end (500W+) PSU use a concept call direct DC conversion. Since the majority of the load is on the 12V rail ALL the power is converted to 12VDC. Then the small 3.3V and 5V loads are converted off the 12V rail.
120/240VAC -----> [AC to 12VDC conversion] -------> 12VDC out
|
|-----[12VDC to 5VDC conversion] -------> 5VDC out
|
| ----[12VDC to 3.3VDC conversion] ------> 3.3VDC out
putting an extra load on 3.3VDC rail does nothing. Absolutely nothing.