Server PSU for Antminer S1, step by step guide.

[tzortz]

Hi all,
as I am new here I wont try to be the smart guy , I just only like to help the bitcoin community and give ideas for easier operation of your miners as also to save money.
As you know everything is so expensive related to it out there.

I will try to show you bellow how to make a PSU for your Antminer S1.

The cheapest  server PSU that could do the job for the S1s' is the : Delta DPS-835AB, Artesyn 7001138-Y000, IBM x3650 3655 835W (12.1V 69A) , which I bought (and can still buy ) for less than 10$ each on eBay.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/321306693173?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

It is a stable 12V supplier and can handle two S1s' as they both barely reach 62A , overclocked.

Lets say we got it in our hands , here how it looks like:























Here are the label details.

























We have to open the outer metal case, which can be done by unbolting 5 small screws.
























































Now carefully remove the metal case. Don't pull hard , as it needs no effort to be released.






















Now we have to release the circuit board, as we have to solder underneath of it.
There are 3 screws holding it.


One of them is not very visible, be careful.
































Here it is , take care not to lose it in the board as it may stick.























Now , lift the board carefully, but don't  break it!  Put a plastic piece, like an insulating tape, so as to make enough space for working with the soldering unit.


























Turn the unit as in the picture and try to solder the two pins as in the picture.
























Be careful not to solder and connect any other pins apart from those two! It is a little tricky, but patience can do the job.

























I bought some copper bars off a shop supplying electricity materials, like circuit breakers, fuses etc.
Those bars are used for connecting the circuit breakers together, or something like that.
They are sold 1000mm long, 10mm wide and 1,5mm thick. It would be better with 2mm thickness, but could not find at that shop.







































Mark them every 30~35mm and cut them (scissors for metals or a grinder maybe ?)


































Now you have to use a stronger soldering unit to solder on the bars.
Do it like in the pictures , but try not to cover the whole surface because a clean part is needed for connecting it to the psu connector.




































Now we need 4 wires for each bar, to supply the current.
Wires in the dimension of 2.5mm² can handle the load as it does not exceed the 16A. The 2.5mm2 can handle up to 20A.
Start by cutting 4 of them 500mm long.
























Strip them at least 20mm.
























Now twist all four together and try to hold them steady.

























Solder them with plenty of wire to become glossy.































Now heat the bar again and put the soldered wires over it, it will be very easy to understand that they are well welded.
Dont rush give it a few minutes.


































Now tape only the soldered part.





























Now, strip also the other sides of the wires.


























If you dont have any PCI -e connectors, you can cut a 24pin ATX type, which can be found at old psus' .

You can create 3 PCIe from a 24 single ATX.





























Connect the top 3 with negatives, and bottom 3 with the positives.
Be careful, don't fry your S1.



























Do the same for the 4 other wires, and your are almost done !
























Push carefully the bars, as shown in the pictures.

Take care about the polarity!!!!





























Walla!!

24 overclocked miners working for 2 weeks without issues.

I need your comments!

[bitspender]

I love your solution!!

Just to be clear, your first soldering pictures are to jump the PSU to on?

[Tikii]

Nicely done, very nice tutorial.

[wpgdeez]

Very cost effective method if you have the tools to do it and easy access to the materials.

[tzortz]

I love your solution!!

Just to be clear, your first soldering pictures are to jump the PSU to on?

Thanks for your nice words!

Yes, we need to turn on the PSU through that process, soldering those pins.

[tzortz]

Nicely done, very nice tutorial.

Thank you for your nice words!

[tzortz]

Very cost effective method if you have the tools to do it and easy access to the materials.

Yes, right, but are not special tools needed apart from a good soldering unit cost no more than 30$.
Wires are also cheap and easy to find.

It is only the copper bars maybe difficult, but with a little search can be found.

[mdopro1]

Amazing. I wonder if it can be done with HP power supply part#403781-001 & 379124-001 - They are 1000watt supplies and very good quality too. I have like 6 of them lying around with no use for them.

[klondike_bar]

Amazing. I wonder if it can be done with HP power supply part#403781-001 & 379124-001 - They are 1000watt supplies and very good quality too. I have like 6 of them lying around with no use for them.

They are modded similarly. pins 31&34 need to be shorted (the 2nd-from-end pin for both the top and bottom side, irectly across one another). However, Ive had terrible luck and most of the ones I mod either die early or were defective to start (got them from a recycler, so its not too surprising)

Ive done the process in this guide on 4 of these artesyn PSUs now it works great everytime. the fan can be a bit 'screaming' loud if loading it past 700W though. My method though was to solder wires into the slots rather than a bar. same result but not as nice looking as yours

[mdopro1]

Since these HP PSUs are very common because a lot of people bought it for the blade backplane, I looked up the schematics and got one working very well. On these 403781-001 PSU's voltage sensor has to be triggered as well, which then will provide 12.80V instead of 12.15V - I will post a picture tomorrow.

[tzortz]

Amazing. I wonder if it can be done with HP power supply part#403781-001 & 379124-001 - They are 1000watt supplies and very good quality too. I have like 6 of them lying around with no use for them.

It will be much better if you had the connectors for those PSUs.
Do you have them? It is a board with cables that connects with those psus'. Otherwise, you can use pci brackets from old motherboards.

I will send you pictures with solutions tomorrow.





.

[tzortz]

Amazing. I wonder if it can be done with HP power supply part#403781-001 & 379124-001 - They are 1000watt supplies and very good quality too. I have like 6 of them lying around with no use for them.

They are modded similarly. pins 31&34 need to be shorted (the 2nd-from-end pin for both the top and bottom side, irectly across one another). However, Ive had terrible luck and most of the ones I mod either die early or were defective to start (got them from a recycler, so its not too surprising)

Ive done the process in this guide on 4 of these artesyn PSUs now it works great everytime. the fan can be a bit 'screaming' loud if loading it past 700W though. My method though was to solder wires into the slots rather than a bar. same result but not as nice looking as yours

Yes you are right.
Do you have any pictures of how you have done it?
I am so curious to see the soldering on the gold plating.



.

[tzortz]

Since these HP PSUs are very common because a lot of people bought it for the blade backplane, I looked up the schematics and got one working very well. On these 403781-001 PSU's voltage sensor has to be triggered as well, which then will provide 12.80V instead of 12.15V - I will post a picture tomorrow.

Is it better to increase the voltage that high?

I have seen others doing it because they use those psus' for battery charging control.

I know S1s have DC-DC converters , but I am not sure about their characteristics and tolerance to that voltage.




.

[shaxs]

Brilliant! Not I just need to find some copper bars....anyone know of a place online that my sell them?

[klondike_bar]

Hi all,
as I am new here I wont try to be the smart guy , I just only like to help the bitcoin community and give ideas for easier operation of your miners as also to save money.
As you know everything is so expensive related to it out there.

I will try to show you bellow how to make a PSU for your Antminer S1.

The cheapest  server PSU that could do the job for the S1s' is the : Delta DPS-835AB, Artesyn 7001138-Y000, IBM x3650 3655 835W (12.1V 69A) , which I bought (and can still buy ) for less than 10$ each on eBay.
It is a stable 12V supplier and can handle two S1s' as they both barely reach 62A , overclocked.

Now , lift the board carefully, but don't  break it!  Put a plastic piece, like an insulating tape, so as to make enough space for working with the soldering unit.

Turn the unit as in the picture and try to solder the two pins as in the picture.

Be careful not to solder and connect any other pins apart from those two! It is a little tricky, but patience can do the job.

What I do, to save the time and annoyance of opening up and unmounting the PCB from the case:

PS-ON sense is the 3rd and 4th pins on the bottom row. Rather than solder thier traces together, I grab a small jeweller's flathead and pry the pins up (they are seated in the plastic by thier tips) so that they pop free. I then bend them slightly towards eachother and solder them together. 

Same result, but instead of spending 10 minutes dissassembling and reassembling the PSU to access the traces, it can be done in about 1 minute so that you can easily solder the pins together

[tzortz]

Brilliant! Not I just need to find some copper bars....anyone know of a place online that my sell them?

I can supply you some if you dont find.

I can prepare you wires also.

Pm sent.

[tzortz]

Hi all,
as I am new here I wont try to be the smart guy , I just only like to help the bitcoin community and give ideas for easier operation of your miners as also to save money.
As you know everything is so expensive related to it out there.

I will try to show you bellow how to make a PSU for your Antminer S1.

The cheapest  server PSU that could do the job for the S1s' is the : Delta DPS-835AB, Artesyn 7001138-Y000, IBM x3650 3655 835W (12.1V 69A) , which I bought (and can still buy ) for less than 10$ each on eBay.
It is a stable 12V supplier and can handle two S1s' as they both barely reach 62A , overclocked.

Now , lift the board carefully, but don't  break it!  Put a plastic piece, like an insulating tape, so as to make enough space for working with the soldering unit.

Turn the unit as in the picture and try to solder the two pins as in the picture.

Be careful not to solder and connect any other pins apart from those two! It is a little tricky, but patience can do the job.

What I do, to save the time and annoyance of opening up and unmounting the PCB from the case:

PS-ON sense is the 3rd and 4th pins on the bottom row. Rather than solder thier traces together, I grab a small jeweller's flathead and pry the pins up (they are seated in the plastic by thier tips) so that they pop free. I then bend them slightly towards eachother and solder them together. 

Same result, but instead of spending 10 minutes dissassembling and reassembling the PSU to access the traces, it can be done in about 1 minute so that you can easily solder the pins together

Hey , can you post some pictures done?
Your method sounds interesting.





.

[shaxs]

I also noticed in the last picture you have them running in a garage? Any issues running a rack of these in a garage? I don't have a car in my garage and just use it for storage and the cats eat and use the litter box in there. It is not cooled and we get over 100 degrees outside here in Texas.

[tzortz]

I also noticed in the last picture you have them running in a garage? Any issues running a rack of these in a garage? I don't have a car in my garage and just use it for storage and the cats eat and use the litter box in there. It is not cooled and we get over 100 degrees outside here in Texas.

Yes, it is a basement garage actually, and has two opposite side exits. It makes a nice air flow and to be honest there is no temp issue so far as I keep both doors open.

It is only 70f degrees max here in Greece right now so I am confident that all 24 ants work smoothly even overclocked for many more days.

I am not quite sure about your 100f , but if you have some similar natural air flow, I believe you will have no issues either.

Just dont lock them inside.

[mdopro1]

Is it better to increase the voltage that high?

I have seen others doing it because they use those psus' for battery charging control.

I know S1s have DC-DC converters , but I am not sure about their characteristics and tolerance to that voltage.

It ends up 12.50V at the end of PCIe cable so it's all good. I have 2 S1's running on 1 PSU at 120V without any issues.

Here's a picture of what my ugly solder job looks like.

NOTE: All connections on the right side of the picture are positive regardless of black wires shown in picture. Those PCIe wires with no color coding can be a bit scary if anything gets mixed up. Use a continuity tester to be sure you're getting the correct wires.



I tapped it and it looks better.

@tzortz: Thanks for the inspiration. I have 6 of these PSUs and no longer need to buy expensive Seasonics.

Yes you are right.
Do you have any pictures of how you have done it?
I am so curious to see the soldering on the gold plating.

Soldering those connectors was very easy but needed flux before soldering. Pretty much the rest was same as your method. Put solder down on the connector, fill wire with solder, put the two together and put the solder gun down. I have a variable solder station (really nice machine) and I soldered these at 520C for fast melting and joints.