Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I just hooked up three different IBM Bladecenter H 2880W PSU's to my brand new S7's, and boy the fans on these PSU's are incredibly loud! These PSU's have a high pitched sorta whistle sound, almost kinda like the whistle you hear on a turbo. These PSU's have a pitch more noticeable than the actual miners in the room.

My question is, is there any way to make these fans quieter at all? Or a replacement for the stock fans that are quieter? Otherwise, do I have any other options? I ideally wanted to run platinum PSU's to these miners, so if there is no solution, is there a recommended replacement that you guys suggest?

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

Server PSU's are not known for being quiet.  I doubt you are able to make it what you consider "quiet".   If going for less noise I traditionally would send someone twords ATX vs server psu.   I don't know that I have seen much as far as making them quiet.  If someone can think of one please post, I could not find quickly.

I think they are just loud PSU's at end of day. They are great for their price and amount of power, not for quietness.

But the problem with this is the 10 PCIE cables the S7 want's.   That get's most ATX psu's where they are not to good for the job.

Server PSU's are not known for being quiet.  I doubt you are able to make it what you consider "quiet".   If going for less noise I traditionally would send someone twords ATX vs server psu.   I don't know that I have seen much as far as making them quiet.  If someone can think of one please post, I could not find quickly.

I think they are just loud PSU's at end of day. They are great for their price and amount of power, not for quietness.

But the problem with this is the 10 PCIE cables the S7 want's.   That get's most ATX psu's where they are not to good for the job.

Do you know of any ATX PSU's that are gold or platinum rated, that have slots for the 10 PCIe cables? Or a quieter sever grade PSU (I hear of people using Dell PSU's and other PSU's that run about 2000w max).

Or maybe Jabberwack knows of a quieter sever PSU with one of his breakout boards?

Do you know of any ATX PSU's that are gold or platinum rated, that have slots for the 10 PCIe cables? Or a quieter sever grade PSU (I hear of people using Dell PSU's and other PSU's that run about 2000w max).

Or maybe Jabberwack knows of a quieter sever PSU with one of his breakout boards?

EVGA 1600 has 9 PCIe ports, you can easily add a splitter to power S7 controller. They come in Gold, Platinum and Titanium, they are whisper quiet but expensive.

actually, EVGA 1600 has 10 cords (one is longer) with 14 connectors already there.
see here (scroll to the bottom of the page):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438033

Cheese and Rice, the EVGA 1600 is over $300! That's insanely expensive, considering one of my IBM Units power two S7's, and including the awesome Jabberwock breakout board and 20 PCIe cables per PSU, I bought them for about $260 before shipping and C20 cable, each.

Jabber, tell me more about how this fan mod works, and how to go about doing it.

Also, you said that the 2000W HP unit is quieter. If I use one of those, I'd likely have to use 1 per S7, so how much would one of those set me back overall?

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help

Cheese and Rice, the EVGA 1600 is over $300! That's insanely expensive, considering one of my IBM Units power two S7's, and including the awesome Jabberwock breakout board and 20 PCIe cables per PSU, I bought them for about $260 before shipping and C20 cable, each.

Jabber, tell me more about how this fan mod works, and how to go about doing it.

Also, you said that the 2000W HP unit is quieter. If I use one of those, I'd likely have to use 1 per S7, so how much would one of those set me back overall?

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help

evga 1600w is your best bet.  10 year warranty too.  quality cables, quality power cable.  all kinds of voltage protection.  Its not silent - but there is a reason I refuse to get server psu's for my garage....the high pitch noise is too much.  Sure If you have multiple s7 then getting atx will be expensive, but if you run one, invest in a 1600w, you can re-use it for literally anything after and its good quality.

I think that EVGA 1300 with two extra PCIe extenders is OK for S7 batches 2, 4 and 6.
For batch 1 could be OK, depending on your optimal mhz setting and without overclocking
For batch 3, 5, 7 (and especially 7), EVGA is probably insufficient.
Batch 3,5 were close to borderline w/o overclocking, but probably insufficient if overclocking to 625.
batch 7 jumped to 1345w at the wall on EVGA 1300 from the getgo without any oveclock, so 1600 is probably needed, but they are expensive.
Batch 6 is OK even when overclocked to 650-4.3Th at 1160W at the wall.
batch 8-also probably needs Bitmain's PSU or EVGA 1600 (or 2880W IBM for two, of course).

Would the 1300 run my batch 7 miners tho? I've read the actual usage can sometimes spike up to 1400w on batch 7

EVGA G2 1300w at 1345w at the wall is just fine, that is only 1224W and they can feed 100% of their rated load 24/7 for their whole MSRP and they are garanteed 10 years, so...

Anyways TLDR; that is 94% load, no problem for a EVGA G2.

Phil was saying on some other thread that he was running EVGA 1300 at 1320W at the wall and it was OK short term, but became weird (probably unstable or "spiky') after 1-2 month of constant load.
I would like (if possible) to set up PSU and keep it going for the duration.

You sure you guys can't put a resistor between some of the pins to regulate the fan speed?

I'm sure it's possible, but I wouldn't want to risk them overheating. Modding 120MM deltas on top of them is probably the best way to go.

Definitively do it this way.

Even my Platinum server PSU heat up with their ear-rape fan at full blast. Modding them to use big fans would make then cooler and much more quiet.

What platinum server PSU are you referring to? LOL at ear rape fan.

I love those PSUs, I'm 20 of them. There's 2 models, RA and NA. NA sounds like a cat in a bag being kicked down the street, RA is much less whiny. Inaudible at 50% load or less, while NA is still loud at 20%.

I use 2 RAs with load sharing mode enabled in my house to power a 5 cube Titan space heater.

That's what I'm looking for too. Maybe I'll end up using the 2000W PSU and be very careful about picking quiet fans? Not sure.

I'd still love to hear how to add the two fans to the top of the 2880w PSU I have right now. That might solve the problem entirely.

You sure you guys can't put a resistor between some of the pins to regulate the fan speed?

If that PSU was having issues, it's a lemon. I think Phil was running on 120V back then too. 240V is easier on the PSUs, I hope you'll be using 240V with 6 S7s?

EVGA says you can pull 1300W DC from them, IE ~1450W at the wall for 10 years. That's good enough for me! Worse case they replace the PSU for free.

That's good to know as i was getting nervous after reading what Phil had to say. Looking at graphs, efficiency is decreasing at least 5% at or above 90% load.
Yes, I was running at 110/120V, but I send them all out to hosting with sidehack-posted review in Hosting service thread.
I like his arrangements and service.

I'm pretty close to my solution for making a quieter version of the 2880w... It works really well so far, here's a picture of my almost-complete version:

http://www.analogx.com/images/2880w/DSCF3428s.jpg

I replace the front fans with a 120mm server-class fan blowing directly down - I block the front of the device to force all the airflow out the back.  Above the hottest part of the PSU I have a thermal PWM fan controller, so it varies the speed of the fan based on the units temperature, and seems to do a pretty good job.  How loud it is depends on a couple factors, such as ambient temps and which 120mm fan you use - but it is MUCH quieter than the stock option, much closer to a slightly above-normal ATX PSU (because the fan is a much higher airflow and SP fan than a normal ATX PSU would use).

I've changed the latest design to use primarily zip-ties to hold everything together - works super well, is inexpensive, and non-conductive. 

Can you post a picture of how did you connect fan wires to the Jabber board?

There's no secret sauce to it - the fans are 12v so I just made a PCIe adapter to connect it.  Just positive to positive, negative to negative - the only trick is whether or not the fan will be full speed without a PWM signal (most work like this), or use a 3 pin fan.

My first rev I hard-wired it, but I had a fan die on one of them and it was a huge PIA, so I switched to making an adapter - and finally added the thermal PWM board.

To save some time and work, you can use the original connectors 4 pins microfit, I'll dig the reference. I still have a handful of connectors and crimp pins laying somewhere.
The original fans are 4 pins, and temperature controlled.

If that PSU was having issues, it's a lemon. I think Phil was running on 120V back then too. 240V is easier on the PSUs, I hope you'll be using 240V with 6 S7s?

EVGA says you can pull 1300W DC from them, IE ~1450W at the wall for 10 years. That's good enough for me! Worse case they replace the PSU for free.

Yeah, I had considered that but wasn't sure how it would handle the different fan charactistics (ie; 1 fan instead of 3, 5000rpm instead of 12000rpm, etc).  If you could post a link to the datasheet on it, that would be great and I'd give it a shot, converting over those connectors on the board would be trivial, as I pull them out anyway.

I did it for one customer, and never got a complaint since he got it in april.

Anyway, for those interested, Molex part numbers to connect a 4 wires PWM fan in place of the fan pack are as follow:
Microfit 3.0 receptacle (4 contacts): 0430250400
Microfit 3.0 Female crimp terminals: 0430300001 (or 0430300007 if you don't want to order a full reel)

I'll try to get back the pinout from a disassembled fan pack I have laying somewhere or from the pictures I sent to my customer.

There's no secret sauce to it - the fans are 12v so I just made a PCIe adapter to connect it.  Just positive to positive, negative to negative - the only trick is whether or not the fan will be full speed without a PWM signal (most work like this), or use a 3 pin fan.

My first rev I hard-wired it, but I had a fan die on one of them and it was a huge PIA, so I switched to making an adapter - and finally added the thermal PWM board.