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Shared power supplies or not?

D

ds123

n00b
Joined
Aug 11, 2004
Messages
29
I am getting interested in building a stack of motherboards similar to what Turmelle did awhile back. I really liked his idea of sharing power supplies between motherboards, because it seems like it would cut down on space used.

If you were going to build a something like that, would you do this or just use individual power supplies?

Possible specs: 2600 AMD with either 512mb or 1g ram, no hard drive, and a motherboard that has network, video, etc built in. 2600s seemed about the right place for the ghz/price ratio.

I was thinking about sharing two, maybe three, motherboards, depending on the size of the power supply.

Thanks for any advice.
 
Hell yeah, go ahead and share them.
Saves upfront money, more efficient, less space.

PS. We'll need pics to post on [H]ardfolding :D
 
Thanks for the quick answer. Yes, I'll post pics when it's done. I probably won't finish for a month or two, because of other stuff going on.

Those pics of Turmelle's were very inspiring. Maybe someone else can be inspired from mine...
 
ds123 said:
I am getting interested in building a stack of motherboards similar to what Turmelle did awhile back. I really liked his idea of sharing power supplies between motherboards, because it seems like it would cut down on space used.

If you were going to build a something like that, would you do this or just use individual power supplies?

Possible specs: 2600 AMD with either 512mb or 1g ram, no hard drive, and a motherboard that has network, video, etc built in. 2600s seemed about the right place for the ghz/price ratio.

I was thinking about sharing two, maybe three, motherboards, depending on the size of the power supply.

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

Your processor for the price for performance ratio seems really close to what I came up with. Sharing psus is akin to running a dually, my favorite way to fold.

Might I suggest a 380 watt to 400 watt unit for dual AMD’s, I have tried it with a smaller psu and they do get very hot and break down. A few bucks spent up front will save you in the long run I think. I did try three boards on a good 420 and they ate it in about a week.

Good luck, I love to mod stuff too :D

BillR
 
the one thing you may have problems with is erratic behavior due to having two poweron signals. you may have to look into not connecting the poweron for one motherboard so one switch turns both on... not sure how that would work out though. one of overclockers.com 's psu reviews has them hooking up two machines (decent power ones too) to a single PSU with a custom-built splitter and it worked rather well. both machines worked fine apart from the erratic poweron behavior. i'd give you a link but i'm too lazy :eek:

good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
That one is easy. Only ONE power on on one board is needed. Only ONE reset as well.

Been there, done that, gotta t-shirt too ;)

BillR
 
Thanks for your answers. I was also wondering about trying 3 with a 550, but it seems like it's stretching a bit.
 
BillR:Your processor for the price for performance ratio seems really close to what I came up with. Sharing psus is akin to running a dually, my favorite way to fold.
Click to expand...

What I was thinking about was just calculaing a ratio of cost versus performance, and picking the one that had the most ghz per dollar. So the cost of the right power supply comes into play.

Of course, it matters as far as your software, being able to properly parse up your jobs so that they are sufficiently parallel, but I guess I need to have a system to run it on before I do that part.
 
ds123 said:
What I was thinking about was just calculaing a ratio of cost versus performance, and picking the one that had the most ghz per dollar. So the cost of the right power supply comes into play.

Of course, it matters as far as your software, being able to properly parse up your jobs so that they are sufficiently parallel, but I guess I need to have a system to run it on before I do that part.
Click to expand...

Found a few links that might be helpful..

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/articles/howto/FAH_Diskless_Farm_1.html

http://home.comcast.net/~bturmelle/diskless.html

http://overclockix.octeams.com/

Hope they help

BillR
 
Got a follow-up question:

I've spec'd out the power requirements, and it looks to me like I need for each motherboard:
+3.3V: 3A
+5V: 2.2A
+12V: 6A

This is pretty small, since I'm just doing motherboard, ram and fans.

Clearly, I could power 2 motherboards with any number of power supplies. I'm also wondering if I could use one like:

Thermaltake Silent PurePower, 420W ATX power supply.UL, CSA, TUV, CE Approved. Intel Pentium 4 Compliant
Output: +3.3V@30A;+5V@40A;-5V@0.3A;+12V@18A;-12V@0.8A;+5VSB@2A

and power 3 motherboards. What do you think, is this straying from thrifty to stupid? It just hits the mark on 12 volt amps, but I've read that it is helpful to have some head room there. It occurs to me that the headroom is really because of unanticipated peripherals, however, while I have no plans to add more peripherals.

Any opinions?

Incidently, I'm intending to use MSI "KM4M-V" VIA KM400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU for the motherboard. Feel free to tell me it's horrible flaws if any.

Thanks
 
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