big hdd's (not really big, though.. as big would mean 1TB+) are as cheap as smaller ones. and SSD's are always more expensive - and the older small and "cheap" SSD's are not as reliable as a small 2.5" HDD for example.

Hi everyone,

at the moment I am trying to figure out what the best PSU for my purpose would be.

I need to decide between the two following models:

Corsair AX1200
http://www.corsair.com/power-supply-units/professional-series-gold/ax1200.html

vs.

Enermax MAXREVO 1500
http://www.enermax.co.uk/maxrevo


The Corsair is well known to many of you, as it is one of the best high-class high-power PSU's out there, with a strong as hell 104A rated single 12V rail.

The Enermax MAXREVO, their new flagship PSU, is even stronger and has a superior build quality, too.

The difference is, the MAXREVO features 6x 12V rails, each rated with 30 Amps (reviews have shown more power can be drawn anyway). 4 of these rails can be used to power GPU's.

In the following tech-sheet you can see how the rails are distributed amongst the connectors:
http://www.enermax.co.uk/fileadmin/enermax/content/produkte/netzteile/maxrevo/datasheet_maxrevo_eng.pdf


The question now is, which PSU would be better for a mining rig with either 5 GPU's (like 5x 5870) (+ Corsair PSU) or 6 GPU's (+ Enermax PSU)?


Both PSU's have a 90%+ efficiency at 50%+ load.
The Enermax offers native PCI-E cables for 4 Radeon 5870 cards, the Corsair offers only connectors for 3 cards. The other 2 cards would each have to be attached with adapters from the molex cables on both PSU's.

For the connection to the Enermax and it's 4 available rails, you could attach 2 GFX cards natively to rail 12V3 and 12V5 each and 1 natively to 12V4 and 12V6 each. One more for V4 and V6 each via molex adapters (see datasheet mentioned above). Each rail has at least the power to transmit 360W (30A * 12V), + 75W more from the PCI-E slot on the mainboard (which is hopefully not needed )


So, is there an answer to the question which PSU is better, or is it just to my taste and money (as there is a nearly 100€ price difference between the two in Germany)?
Is there any real advantage of single rail over multiple rail and vice versa in a mining rig this big at all?


Btw, the PSU's offer 5 (Enermax) and 7 years (Corsair) of warranty, so you can be sure you have quality in your rig.

And test have shown that the Corsair AX1200 can easily run at a load of 1400W+ for a very long time, and the Enermax in the 1350W version can even withstand 1600W+, this one shuts down if you try to get 1750W out of it You can only imagine how much power the 1500W MAXREVO can handle.


If you need more information about single vs. multiple rail PSU's, check the following post:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3990


Not to forget, the other parts of the rig will be a Sempron 140 + Mainboard, 2-4 GB RAM, a 2.5" HDD, a couple of 120mm fans. All together not more than 100W.

get a 145 or 140 Sempron from AMD, should be around 30$.

As PSU I would recommend you the Corsair AX1200, price is probably lower than that of the Antec.

For the GPU's, try to get 5850's or 5870's if the price is lower than the one of your 6950.

a rating system will be great
can't you put it online earlier? so people can see that you (I) already have a lot of smooth transactions via bitmarket

do want! give me! :-D

what type and brand is this?

I got a small Bosch IXO for as an electric srewdriver, lots of power for such a small tool

About the metal work, it was simply learning by doing and looking at the pictures of the OP. A handy guide for using a riveting tool is this:

http://www.hansonrivet.com/w13.htm

take a look at my pictures to see what type of tool I am using. Then use steel rivets, with 3 or 4mm diameter. You need to drill a hole for those that is 0.1mm bigger than the rivet, so you need a 3.1 or 4.1 mm drill. also don't forget to look at the length of the rivet, mine are for materials of 1-3mm, 3-6mm or 6-9mm thickness (choose appropriate to the thickness of the material you want to put together (and if you have to put two 1.5mm thick alu bars together, use a 1-3mm rivet, not a 3-6mm long!)

try "sudo aticonfig --initial --adapter=all" (enter password) and then "sudo reboot" and try the "aticonfig --odgc --adapter=all" after booting again. do you get the same error?

öhm das sollte aber eigentlich gehen, wenn du catalyst 11.6 nutzt unter ubuntu 11.04 64bit
ist ja im grunde das gleiche wie ne 58xx, und bei denen geht das problemlos
(also z.b. mit "aticonfig --odsc=950,300 --adapter=all" und danach "aticonfig --odcc --adapter=all")

und lad dir nen aktuelleren client runter!

gibt es denn irgendeine Möglichkeit mal nachzumessen wieviel eine beliebige Karte nun aus den jeweiligen Quellen zieht?

(Riser-Kabel / Stromkabel abisolieren und nachmessen? Geht das?)

Ich hab in meinem Fall eh nur 5870er am Start, wenn die immer zuerst den Strom aus den PCI-E Stromkabeln ziehen und nicht aus dem Slot, und nur um auf maximale Leistung zu kommen die restlichen 35 Watt über das Mainboard saugen, dann brauche ich mir wahrscheinlich keine Gedanken machen.
Wenn ich bei jeder Karte aber 75 Watt über den Slot erwarten muss, dann sind die Kabel wirklich eine Überlegung wert.

Chefnet, die Riser funktionieren auf jedem Board auch in physischen x16 PCI-E Slots ohne weitere Modifikationen?

versteh ich immer noch nicht.

Meine 5870 zieht rund 185 Watt unter Volllast, ist mit 2 PCI-E Stromkabeln verbunden.
Willst du mir jetzt sagen dass sie 150 Watt aus diesen Stromkabeln direkt vom Netzteil zieht und den Rest aus dem Mainboard (wären 35 Watt), oder zieht sie 75 Watt aus dem Mainboard und den Rest irgendwie direkt über beide Stromkabel aus dem Netzteil?

Das ein PCI-E Slot 75 Watt zur Verfügung stellen kann (denn nichts anderes wurde bisher gesagt), heißt ja nicht das die Grafikkarte auch 75 Watt aus dem Slot zieht.
Und was macht dann eine 400+ Watt 6990er? Zaubert die den Strom herbei? Schmort die jedes Mainboard durch?


(es ist nicht so, dass ich euch nicht glaube dass die teuren Riser mit Molex gut fürs Mainboard sind, dennoch sehe ich noch nicht dass sie wirklich nötig sind - durchgeschmorte Riser würde ich eher ner schlechten Verarbeitung zuschreiben! ich würde gerne einen "Beweis" sehen, also eine Techspec wo genau das geschrieben steht - dann kann ich auch rechtfertigen so teure Kabel zu kaufen)

könnt ihr mir Links zu entsprechenden Nachweisen / Techsheets zu dem Wattlimit geben?
Wieviel zieht die Karte denn wirklich über den PCI-E Slot? Zieht sie nicht vielleicht nur 5 Watt oder 20 Watt, und den Rest direkt aus dem PSU?

Hey catfish, yes I am from Germany But I am everything but an engineer, this was my very first approach to work with metal ever.

I start with the last things you mentioned, the heat:

I plan on putting this outside on my balcony (which is pretty well protected already against the weather and only open to the upper front), with a rain/snow/direct sun proof enclosure that will have enough openings (also protected against weather with these http://www.ventilator-shop.com/zubehor-fur-die-ventilatoren/rohrkrummers/rohrkrummer-90/ and some fine mesh against dust and insects) for enough fans. I will drill as many 108mm holes (with a Starrett holesaw - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starrett-Sh0414-Speed-Steel-Holesaw/dp/B0002JT6X6/ref=sr_1_2?s=diy&ie=UTF8&qid=1313349705&sr=1-2 into the enclosure as necessary and mount 120mm fans on the inside, in push pull order (from the back and side-bottom it will push air in, on the front and top front where the gpu's blast their hot air I will mount them to pull air out).

Anyway, the amount of GPU's in my rig will be determined by "how the market goes" in the next months

IF the market does what I want it to do, I will put some money into a powerful watercooling system. This is pretty expensive, as the basics cost about 150 Euro in quality parts + 60-100 Euro per GPU.. But it would cool the system and I could even put it back inside without having a terrible noise pollution but an efficient space heater (and in the end it will have wheels, so I can just shut them down, pull the plug, move it somewhere else, plug it back and so on)

Power is not a problem here, I have a 16A (3.6kW) fuse available to nearly 100% just for the rig (for whatever reason the smallest room in my apt. with the least power consumption has it's own fuse, where my living room with all the stuff shares the fuse with the floor where I put the vacuum cleaner in o.O). My building is pretty new and has good cabling, though.

In my frame is some torsion, this is simply because I didn't do exact measurements in the beginning with the first bars I put together - if I would have to build another one, I would know better what to do in which order, and I would take my time to make the edges more smooth. But I just wanted to put this thing together
I would also use a mix of wood (for the outer structure that does not come in contact with any hardware) and metal then, because the wood is easier to work with and the metal would be only used for parts that need to carry the computer stuff.

Pre-drilled lengths of metal would be nice to have, anyway  

But as soon as I get this one http://www.proxxon.com/eng/html/27100.php (for my drill stand) accuracy in drilling the holes will not be a problem anymore  

Thanks!
I will replace my corsair GS800 and HX850 with two Enermax MaxRevo 1500 PSU's for best efficiency (>90%!). (also I need only 2.4 kW for 12 GPUs, not 3 kW.)

I probably have to reduce the setup to 10-11 cards, as I made the same mistake with the height of the CPU cooler. Also it's low profile, the pci-e riser cable blocks the fan. Maybe I can fix that with some cable binder. If I want to spend that much money, I will solve that problem with a Corsair Hydro Series H70 Water Cooling System.

LOL where do you live?

Dude 

Bei mir hat der direkt den Stream runtergeladen, und das mein mediaplayer mir unter MacOS ausgespuckt hat war nur Audio
Ich werd dann mal nen passenden Codec suchen...

hab auch die Riser von Adaptere von eBay.

warum sind manche von euch so scharf auf Riser mit Molex Anschluss?

Es gehen doch so oder so max. 75 Watt über das Kabel oder nicht? Irgendwo für muss die Grafikkarte ja auch seine 2 Stromanschlüsse haben

ich hab die 16x riser und einen 1x riser von adaptere (ebay Händler, auch auf Amazon zu finden) aus Deutschland, funktionieren wie erwartet.

beim 1x riser muss man jedoch aufpassen, die können unter umständen auch am Ende geschlossen sein (so das normalerweise nur pci-e karten reinpassen die auch für 1x slots gemacht sind!).
ich musste meinen am ende öffnen, hat ne menge feingefühl und eine trennscheibe an meinem proxxon gebraucht, funktioniert jetzt aber 1a

unfinished work

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34174.msg443559#msg443559

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34174.msg444516#msg444516


more finished, but not done yet: