Custom Case Design for Bitfury Hboard/Mboard Miners

[Foofighter]

This may seem paranoid, but I would suggest removing the "Bitfury 400GH Miner" marking from the case. If you're going to host this with a third party then you may not want to advertise to the world its intended function/purpose.

If had to check anyway how expensive this label would be in production, and i thought we can alternatively use a sticker for it, so everyone can decide if he would like to use it or not ;P

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[Foofighter]

Hey guys,

here is the Rack housing design, Cover will come a bit later.
19" - 4HE - lengh is 350mm





Iam open for your feedback.

One problem that came up, is that the standoffs for the M-board are to long and they stickout by 5mm on the ground of the casing. So i just reduced the height of the casing by 5mm because this seemed easier then making a second higher floor inside the housing(+ cheaper).

But is that a problem at mounting? Does the mounting rack lie on a guidance or something or is it only mounted and holded by the lashes on the sides of the casing?
Also I noticed there is a moveable gudance system für rack units, and a few racks on the market provide pre bored mounting holes for this matter, but I dont know the distances and hole dimensions and cant find any infos on that matter. Is this a must to have these holes at the sites of the housing?

regards

Is that design 3U or 4U high?  In a datacenter every U costs you money ($50-100/mo per U for a GOOD datacenter with on-site security, etc.).

The holes in the rack are of standard spacing as well (3 per 1U), so you will need to make sure those line up on your chassis design.

I would also recommend that if you have 3 intake fans, that you have 3 exhaust fans as well.  Otherwise those cards on the end without an exhaust fan behind them will have higher average temperatures.  For now this doesn't matter, but if Bitfury enables overclocking on these boards for higher GH/s rates, this will become more important.

Thanks for the work, your design is coming along nicely.

its 4U, i wrote 4HE its called like this in EU - its not possible to go lower to 3U with the current positioning of parts and i dont know how to change the placement in a better way.

you are right ther should be 12 holes if it had a standard height of 4U.

I will try to fit a third fan in the back maybe if i leave no space between the parts it will be possible.

Could you please also check what i wrote , is it possible to reduce the height or it the rack lying on some guidance or something and do i have to make guidencae mounting holes on the sites of the housings?

thanks for the feedback

regards
 

[bkpduke]

You can do 3U if you do the following:

Rotate the setup 90 degrees so that the M-board is towards the BACK of the chassis.  This will reduce the height to 3U, and will not affect cooling at all since each H-board is in the neighborhood of 25W total heat production.

You might even be able to mount the RasPi to the back of the M-board doing this and save a little real-estate on the back side.


PSUs - server PSUs are longer and thinner, so you could use one of those instead and possibly cut some more space down.
Here is one example:
http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9B-17-377-042

In regards to mounting, you can go simple and just have "rack ears" or if you want something on slidable rails, you can set that up as well.  Rails = added cost, however.   And I don't think this will weigh enough to really matter if it is just mounted by 4 bolts through a standard cabinet retainer.

[Foofighter]

You can do 3U if you do the following:

Rotate the setup 90 degrees so that the M-board is towards the BACK of the chassis.  This will reduce the height to 3U, and will not affect cooling at all since each H-board is in the neighborhood of 25W total heat production.

You might even be able to mount the RasPi to the back of the M-board doing this and save a little real-estate on the back side.


PSUs - server PSUs are longer and thinner, so you could use one of those instead and possibly cut some more space down.
Here is one example:
http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9B-17-377-042

In regards to mounting, you can go simple and just have "rack ears" or if you want something on slidable rails, you can set that up as well.  Rails = added cost, however.   And I don't think this will weigh enough to really matter if it is just mounted by 4 bolts through a standard cabinet retainer.

Hi,
have already thought about that but there is no airflow just a heat accumulation, As i have to remove the rear Fans, and then only the front fans are left.

About the raspi, maybe in the future the raspi is directly mountet on the mboard as showed by tytus without taking more space.

Ok so i leave the rack ears as they are, there are only 10 holes because I reduced the height of the housing und so the rack ears are only 170mm in height but das shouldnt be a problem.

Iam not very comfortable with your suggestion, please correct me if i got something wrong.

regards

[Swimmer63]

My 2 bits -

I need something to house this damn thing in so it might as well be this.  I have no special requirements for space.  Have my own business and I'm just going to keep it in an empty office.

The only thing I would say is that I prefer the best ventilation / airflow possible.  I'm in Arizona, nuff said.  Also, if they do decide to replace these down the road with over clocked boards then I would like to be able to use the same case.

[klondike_bar]

my first impressions/thoughts:

1) ditch the cutout labelling. as it was mentioned, it may make these more identifiable to thieves (as if a big humming box isnt already) and may cause the airflow to be wonky, creating random circulation paths that counteract the fans and/or lead to more noisy fan rotation. A sticker/decal is equally functional and more appropriate

2) I dig the rubber feet. Without them this could be a source of vibrations from the spinning fans and sound terrible as your big hashing box vibrates against the table endlessly.

3) I like the simple design. The more basic the shape/materials, the more easily it can be replicated by anyone with connections to a CNC or laser/water cutter and generic hardware.

4) including a cutout or two for status LEDs or even a LCD would be cool. (I dont know if bitfury designed either of these into its hardware, but surely the RPi software can be modified to output status indicators)

5) A modified case that is simply a backplane might be nice for those who simply want to mount thier hardware to a surface but dont want a full case necessarily (as mentioned in #1, a simple backplane with mounting holes for the psu/Mboard/Hboards would be cheap and easy to source from local cnc/watercutting shops)

[bkpduke]

Hi,
have already thought about that but there is no airflow just a heat accumulation, As i have to remove the rear Fans, and then only the front fans are left.

No, the width of the M-board is much narrower than the H-board.  (about 1/2 IIRC).  This would provide more than enough airflow to get to the exhaust fans without any back-pressure.

[cimpex]

my first impressions/thoughts:

4) including a cutout or two for status LEDs or even a LCD would be cool. (I dont know if bitfury designed either of these into its hardware, but surely the RPi software can be modified to output status indicators)

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner

[cet]

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner

Neat little display, but I think the rPI attaches to the m-board using the same plug that the display uses.

/cet

[allinvain]

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner

Neat little display, but I think the rPI attaches to the m-board using the same plug that the display uses.

/cet

Yep, you are right. It uses the GPIO connector/header.

[evilscoop]

Nice design

[KyrosKrane]

Just looking at the rackmount diagram, my first thought is that if you can find a thinner PSU, you can fit a second M-board between the exhaust fans and the first M-board.  That would make the design more space-efficient for those who have to pay for hosting/colocation by rack height.  I have no idea what that would do to heat management, though.  I also don't know if it's possible to run both mining units from a single R-Pi and PSU or if you'd need to fit two of each in there.

[Foofighter]

Just looking at the rackmount diagram, my first thought is that if you can find a thinner PSU, you can fit a second M-board between the exhaust fans and the first M-board.  That would make the design more space-efficient for those who have to pay for hosting/colocation by rack height.  I have no idea what that would do to heat management, though.  I also don't know if it's possible to run both mining units from a single R-Pi and PSU or if you'd need to fit two of each in there.

Have to check that, because we have also to consider that in the front of the mboard the power cable will be connected, so there has to be at least10-20mm of space left. Should be ok with heat because we still have our nice forced airflow, and with the thin psu I could also try to fit a 3rd fan in the back like mentioned before.

[Foofighter]

Hey guys,

the good news is i got sample pcbs to test my prototype housing.

Bad news, have decided to push the open housing today so i started with all 2d production drawings, so i can send everything to manufacturers before the weekend as Iam on holidays from Friday until next week Thursday.

Hope to finish the 2D dwgs of the open housing by tommorow and push the rack design further by tommorow.

I will take every feedback into account, so feel free to give further advise.

regards
Foofighter

[cscape]

Looks good....

[cimpex]

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner

Neat little display, but I think the rPI attaches to the m-board using the same plug that the display uses.

/cet

Yep, you are right. It uses the GPIO connector/header.

ah ok, damn.

[ultrix]

This may seem paranoid, but I would suggest removing the "Bitfury 400GH Miner" marking from the case. If you're going to host this with a third party then you may not want to advertise to the world its intended function/purpose.

Honestly, I don't know what kind of datacenters you guys are using, but if theft is a concern, you've got other problems.  Personally I have had items go missing at a data center, however they were cheap tools and I'm sure taken without malicious intent.  Even at extremely low end data centers, like Verio in SF (converted dog kennels), equipment removal (from premises) and cage access (if you have a cage) is supervised.  At SAS70 DCs this would be impossible.  Further even the most expensive bitcoin mining equipment doesn't cast a shadow on the price of 50% of the servers you'll see in racks.  My company, for example, has two racks of 40 1U's, each 1U costs more (just the CPUs in fact are more) than the 400gh/s unit and would be easier to sell on ebay or the like if stolen.

I dunno where the cancer and paranoia of the bitcoin community comes from, but alas its everywhere all the time and appears to be self-refining.

[SebastianJu]

I think datacentres will be safe too. The concerns are probably more about the private ventures for hosting. Hosting in a private home and so where security will be way less. There is already at least one case where an avalon miner was stolen from a private home. FPGA's werent touched, only the miner and nothing more. Thats why they are cautious i think. But maybe its part of bitcoin world anyway to stay a bit silent.

[allinvain]

This may seem paranoid, but I would suggest removing the "Bitfury 400GH Miner" marking from the case. If you're going to host this with a third party then you may not want to advertise to the world its intended function/purpose.

Honestly, I don't know what kind of datacenters you guys are using, but if theft is a concern, you've got other problems.  Personally I have had items go missing at a data center, however they were cheap tools and I'm sure taken without malicious intent.  Even at extremely low end data centers, like Verio in SF (converted dog kennels), equipment removal (from premises) and cage access (if you have a cage) is supervised.  At SAS70 DCs this would be impossible.  Further even the most expensive bitcoin mining equipment doesn't cast a shadow on the price of 50% of the servers you'll see in racks.  My company, for example, has two racks of 40 1U's, each 1U costs more (just the CPUs in fact are more) than the 400gh/s unit and would be easier to sell on ebay or the like if stolen.

I dunno where the cancer and paranoia of the bitcoin community comes from, but alas its everywhere all the time and appears to be self-refining.

Wait, one of your 1U servers costs more than $16,000?! Are your servers also money printing machines?

[jlsminingcorp]

Wait, one of your 1U servers costs more than $16,000?! Are your servers also money printing machines?

I don't know about 1U, but a 2U unit with 8 x E5-2670 & 256Gb ram (without infiniband, SSDs or other flashy bits) would cost a bit more than that. Throw a few Tesla GPUs into a case as well and it's easy for the costs to mount up.