Power supply router?

[denywinarto]

Does such thing exist?
I have 3 rooms of mini itx PC totalling 60 units using traditional pc case..
The goal is to minimize power usage as much as possible using minimal amount of psu's
But i cant use mini itx cluster chassis or alike cause each unit must have keyboad, mouse and headset close by..

My idea is to place high capacity psu in the center of the room and then use some kinda backplane / router to route power to respective motherboards..
I googled but i cant find anything about this.. any idea?

 

[MiniKnight]

Is this like a gaming café? Or a customer service center?

I'd just keep each separate PSU. If one of those PSUs fails and it's centralized then you'll lose all 60 units and take a long time to replace. If a mITX PC has a PSU fail you've lost 1/60th and can get a same or next day replacement easily.

That's not the answer you want to hear but it is what you're going to want to do.

 

[denywinarto]

Kinda similar to gaming center i guess...
That makes sense.. but i wish there could be a way to cutdown the power cost,
It's increasing every year here..
And replacing broken PSUs also addup to the hidden cost as well

2-3 Centralized PSU with the other as backup would still be more cost effective wouldn't it?

 

[MiniKnight]

Between PSU and motherboard there's lots of power wires going on. Molex, SATA, ATX and that's without PCIe. Cheaper/ easier to do locally at PC's.

 

[Blinky 42]

How much power does each system draw? What you have now is probably cheaper in parts and complexity.

But if feeling adventurous, you could do a combo of picoPSU's and a 12+V bus. I would probably go with one that has a wider input voltage range and higher source voltage to help counteract conversion losses and and resistance in the distribution network.
Something like 24V supply + a fleet of M3-ATX, intelligent ATX automotive power supply, 12/24V - power your PC in a car

Not in exepensive however... but good first step in making a mega battery backed cluster or even solar + battery setup

 

[denywinarto]

Roughly 25-50 watt, i'm using kabini based boards... A68n -5200,
i tested pico psu before, not sure if my unit is defected but sometimes it's not powering the boards..

Also considering vga keyboard mouse extender but i heard bad things and it's rather expensive too to buy in large units

 

[himynameisdaniel]

my grid in tariff is $0.40 kwh and rising every year. enabling eco options on idle and 80+gold or higher power supplies makes a measurable difference.

if they are 24/7 machines correctly selecting the correct power supply is quite important. i recently purchased a 80+ titanium unit for a 24/7 server that has a quite demanding load at certain times of the day and near idle at others.
The PSU's that I buy come with 10 year warranty.
The efficiency savings do start to add up when your grid supply costs are as high as mine not only that they generate less waste heat so less air conditioning costs. In Australia the heat can be quite brutal.
the biggest help was a 6KW solar panel installation to my property which under my local feed in tariff and usage scenarios cuts my power bill in almost half. I will be extending this to the maximum capable for my property in the next year. with an initial return of investment of under 5 years. and gets better every time the power company raises the grid in tariff.

have you looked into thin clients such as DELL WYSE or VDI based solutions?
do you really need a dedicated ATX\ITX style box per PC?


There are no centralized PSU's for desktop pc's that i am aware of because physics makes it not economical.
running DC for long distances is crap and requires higher voltages\thicker cables in order to do so. the longer you go with DC power the worse it gets.
some rack mounted data center equipment does have DC inputs but this is often offered as a redundant option or specialized to the device\appliance.

go and crunch some numbers and see if a solar is worthwhile solution.

 

[denywinarto]

my grid in tariff is $0.40 kwh and rising every year. enabling eco options on idle and 80+gold or higher power supplies makes a measurable difference.

if they are 24/7 machines correctly selecting the correct power supply is quite important. i recently purchased a 80+ titanium unit for a 24/7 server that has a quite demanding load at certain times of the day and near idle at others.
The PSU's that I buy come with 10 year warranty.
The efficiency savings do start to add up when your grid supply costs are as high as mine not only that they generate less waste heat so less air conditioning costs. In Australia the heat can be quite brutal.
the biggest help was a 6KW solar panel installation to my property which under my local feed in tariff and usage scenarios cuts my power bill in almost half. I will be extending this to the maximum capable for my property in the next year. with an initial return of investment of under 5 years. and gets better every time the power company raises the grid in tariff.

have you looked into thin clients such as DELL WYSE or VDI based solutions?
do you really need a dedicated ATX\ITX style box per PC?


There are no centralized PSU's for desktop pc's that i am aware of because physics makes it not economical.
running DC for long distances is crap and requires higher voltages\thicker cables in order to do so. the longer you go with DC power the worse it gets.
some rack mounted data center equipment does have DC inputs but this is often offered as a redundant option or specialized to the device\appliance.

go and crunch some numbers and see if a solar is worthwhile solution.

Thanks for sharing your experience..
I did some research on solar panel awhile ago and came to conclusion that its still too expensive in my country... it still cant produce feasible kwh cost-wise.. probably there's some better panels that im not aware of.. but the price is out of my budgets..

Its 24/7.. im actually using diskless system with a diskless program called ccboot.. thin client is not a possible for my case unfortunately..

I guess kvm extender is the only option.. but i read some bad reviews about it

 

[Terry Kennedy]

running DC for long distances is crap and requires higher voltages\thicker cables in order to do so. the longer you go with DC power the worse it gets.
some rack mounted data center equipment does have DC inputs but this is often offered as a redundant option or specialized to the device\appliance.

The older DC power stuff was to cater to the telco market, where pretty much everything ran on 48V (actually negative 56V, but that's a technicality). I'll attach a picture at the end of a "small" (600A) battery room. The floor tile grid is 2' square, which gives you an idea of the size of those batteries.

Since motherboards have on-board converters from 12v to whatever voltage the CPU wants, it makes some sense to convert to 12V DC centrally. Some years ago, a number of manufacturers went to a 12V-only power supply design so you could have a rack full of servers with 12V-only power. That lowers the amount of cooling needed in the rack aisles since the power supplies and their heat are somewhere else, or allows you to generate more heat from the servers using the existing cooling capacity. You also don't need a traditional UPS system, since you can just use 12V batteries for backup - they'll be charged via the normal 12V supply when the power is on. That's great if you have lots of identical systems. It isn't so good if you have a variety of system types - adding any sort of graphic card to a system with a 12V-only motherboard is "interesting", to say the least.

 

[Blinky 42]

What are you using for monitors for all these workstations - are you better off spending the $ there getting something more power efficient?

I wouldn't bother trying some KVM system unless you don't have a physical person using each system and one person shares a 4 or more PCs because the costs to set it up will dwarf any savings in power. If one person is sharing multiple PCs, you can probably do a thin client or virtualization solution and combine your 3kW of mini itx boxes into 1 or 2 servers pulling < 1500W total.

A DC distribution system is going to be expensive if done well (and done safe), and the prices of all the components is probably going to be more than buying new PCs outright since the PCs involved are probably ~$100-125 US in parts total depending on how much memory.

A lot of the Mini-ITX sized boards are designed to be run with 12V power only now (ex: most of SuperMicro's Xeon-D boards - the 4 pin connector is what gets brought out to the DC jack on their mini boxes like Supermicro | Products | SuperServers | Mini 1U | SYS-E200-8D ).
You'll have to crunch some numbers, possibly just plan on rotating out the stock of computers and monitors to more efficient units over time will be better than an elaborate power supply sharing plan with such small loads involved for each computer.

 

[maze]

wont there be issues in regards to gettin proper amps on 3 and 5v in most cases?

Anyway. If I was ever to do something like this, I would look into poe powered devices. UPoE does 60w which seems to be enough for a lot of smaller systems. Not sure if you can get it to include the monitor - might be possible.

but then you'd need a switch capable of doing upoe on x number of ports.

 

[denywinarto]

Thanks for the answers guys.. yeah kvm extender is really expensive

Id love giving poe a shot, but it looks like i have to sacrifice some performance as a tradeoff for low watt..

I cant seem to find information about external nic that supports poe.. anybody tried it before?

Edit : some seller from alibaba offered me a POE module, can this be paired with my mobo?
黑色POE供电转接头 POE供电模块 供电分离器 支持网络监控摄像头-tmall.com天猫

 

[Tecchie]

Does such thing exist?
I have 3 rooms of mini itx PC totalling 60 units using traditional pc case..
The goal is to minimize power usage as much as possible using minimal amount of psu's
But i cant use mini itx cluster chassis or alike cause each unit must have keyboad, mouse and headset close by..

My idea is to place high capacity psu in the center of the room and then use some kinda backplane / router to route power to respective motherboards..
I googled but i cant find anything about this.. any idea?

I've seen a project where Linus from Linus Tech Tips built his and his wifes machines and used Thunderbolt cards, Fiber Optic cables and thunderbolt Docks to run their desktops while the machines themselves were located in another room behind a wall.

The docks had USB ports, Display/HDMI ports and audio jacks. Totally solving your problem and they only use a few watts each.



Check this video, he specifically shows the Thunderbolt HUB.::

 

[denywinarto]

I've seen a project where Linus from Linus Tech Tips built his and his wifes machines and used Thunderbolt cards, Fiber Optic cables and thunderbolt Docks to run their desktops while the machines themselves were located in another room behind a wall.

The docks had USB ports, Display/HDMI ports and audio jacks. Totally solving your problem and they only use a few watts each.



Check this video, he specifically shows the Thunderbolt HUB.::

Thanks, Thats pretty cool actually, thing is TB3 is still very expensive, FO cables is $6 per ft..
I'm also gonna need 60 mobo with TB port no? since for my case each client needs its own board.
Maybe someday when FO becomes as cheap as gigabit technology i can afford this

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I've seen a project where Linus from Linus Tech Tips built his and his wifes machines and used Thunderbolt cards, Fiber Optic cables and thunderbolt Docks to run their desktops while the machines themselves were located in another room behind a wall.

The docks had USB ports, Display/HDMI ports and audio jacks. Totally solving your problem and they only use a few watts each.

I believe the OP wants to reduce power consumption, not noise. This solution would only work if they could put the servers somewhere they're powered by somebody else's electricity. Otherwise, it is the same power usage for the computers + 60 * "a few watts each". Or am I missing something?

 

[denywinarto]

I think the best solution for now is multiseat

They said it supports up to 12 PC

But probably there will be program compatibility issues since this is basically distributing profiles

 

[denywinarto]

Hmm after some testing, multiseat-ing isn't really effective, still too buggy....
they still cant truly 100% separate the sessions between profiles

I just remembered something similar to my case, cctv power box..

central power supply box | eBay

cctv camera typically draws 10 watts each,
assuming mini itx PC uses adapters, and each board draws less than 20 watts

Wouldn't it be possible to have a bigger version of this PSU box intended for mini itx cluster?
If the mobo's are all the same there shouldn't be any compatibilty problem

 

[wiretap]

I would probably consolidate everything to virtual machines on a central server or two with PCoIP at the client stations.
- You'll likely have a lower overall power bill if you choose your servers wisely. (and PCoIP clients run around 5-10 watts)
- Hardware upgrades/migration is easier and cheaper since you only have to upgrade server components.
- Each client has its own VM, and can be deployed or changed easily via templates.
- Ability to use full 3D graphics for gaming/rendering/modeling/encoding/etc.
- Ability to power PCoIP clients via PoE.

 

[Aluminum]

ATX was not designed for multi-system power, don't try it. As others said look into DC-DC and VM consolidation, especially if you are not running GPU-intensive stuff (you mentioned a pretty low power apu) though those enterprise oriented things have a certain minimum entry cost.

 

[denywinarto]

I would probably consolidate everything to virtual machines on a central server or two with PCoIP at the client stations.
- You'll likely have a lower overall power bill if you choose your servers wisely. (and PCoIP clients run around 5-10 watts)
- Hardware upgrades/migration is easier and cheaper since you only have to upgrade server components.
- Each client has its own VM, and can be deployed or changed easily via templates.
- Ability to use full 3D graphics for gaming/rendering/modeling/encoding/etc.
- Ability to power PCoIP clients via PoE.

Googled a bit about this.. it leads me to vmware horizon view.. kinda expensive though...
I'm using a similar PXE boot software called ccboot.
Is there another alternative to vmware horizon?