Use Brocade ICX6400-EPS1500 / EPS400 as ATX PSU

[chlastakov]

Me and @luckylinux was discussing if Brocade external power source could be used as ATX power supply. I opened the unit and I have hunch that it could be doable. Maybe @fohdeesha will have some experience with this?











Thoughs are welcome.

 

[gregsachs]

It doesn't output 3.3v or 5v, so you would need a converter of some sort to get that from the 56V or 12V. Lot of work to avoid using a cheap power supply...

 

[OP_Reinfold]

A lot of work, and these are a fairly old design compared to today's tech, but still a great fun project if you have the spare time to play around, totally love retro gear reuse where it makes sense.

 

[chlastakov]

I know now there is only 12V and 56V going outside of the box. But the connector from three power sources looks exactly like ATX. Didn’t had time to inspect in depth yet.

Since I need to power up 12 ASRock mainboards I have from another thread and these EPS1500 are lying arround, would be nice if I could use them somehow At least as 12V power supply with PicoPSU. 12 ATX power supplies with decent efficiency is not cheap.

 

[OP_Reinfold]

Edit: ah that was your plan too, strange I totally missed that message! , Anyway, yup exactly what I would try as a quick way. But my only concern would be, if these are production servers, then I would personally invest in proper certified supplies, for insurance purposes primarily as using anything uncertified power-related in a business environment will pretty much instantly invalidate one's insurance and could also lead to charges being levied by the appropriate authorities too, depends where you live of course.

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Another way, quicker too, you could go about it by grabbing those cheapo mining ATX header psu's on aliexpress, they have all kinds out there with different wattage capacity etc, but if we take the 12v input variety, they do all the conversion for motherboards. So you would just need 12 of those things off aliexpress, and you could power them all via this beasty ICX DCPSU from the past.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006470619077.html

You got me all excited now, definitely a project to my liking

Needless to say, but just keep in mind that ali-x sellers have a habit of super overquoting wattage figures, so try a sample before you take the plunge with a larger order.

 

[fohdeesha]

I know now there is only 12V and 56V going outside of the box. But the connector from three power sources looks exactly like ATX. Didn’t had time to inspect in depth yet.

Since I need to power up 12 ASRock mainboards I have from another thread and these EPS1500 are lying around, would be nice if I could use them somehow At least as 12V power supply with PicoPSU. 12 ATX power supplies with decent efficiency is not cheap.

the pinout is totally different IIRC and only has half the voltage rails of an ATX PSU, the only thing they have in common is the type of molex connector used. If they're mismatched just right it could ground out the 12 or 54v rails and make quite a mess

 

[chlastakov]

Edit: ah that was your plan too, strange I totally missed that message! , Anyway, yup exactly what I would try as a quick way. But my only concern would be, if these are production servers, then I would personally invest in proper certified supplies, for insurance purposes primarily as using anything uncertified power-related in a business environment will pretty much instantly invalidate one's insurance and could also lead to charges being levied by the appropriate authorities too, depends where you live of course.

Don't worry, this is solely homelab project Would never use such a solution in production, don't make sense to save few bucks there.

Another way, quicker too, you could go about it by grabbing those cheapo mining ATX header psu's on aliexpress, they have all kinds out there with different wattage capacity etc, but if we take the 12v input variety, they do all the conversion for motherboards. So you would just need 12 of those things off aliexpress, and you could power them all via this beasty ICX DCPSU from the past.

I like your thinking What I learned from this forum, that these cheap PSU's have habbit to fail and take MB with them. Have you any experience with those?

 

[chlastakov]

the pinout is totally different IIRC and only has half the voltage rails of an ATX PSU, the only thing they have in common is the type of molex connector used. If they're mismatched just right it could ground out the 12 or 54v rails and make quite a mess

I see, thank you for your insight.

 

[OP_Reinfold]

I like your thinking What I learned from this forum, that these cheap PSU's have habbit to fail and take MB with them. Have you any experience with those?

I personally haven't used them, however one of my 'hackaday' friends is (he has a 60 odd node farm). I popped him a quick email and he said that they're being used in massive open-frame mining for a while and have little chance of frying anything downstream if they are the smd variety, apparently if they fail they tend to just short their end and modern boards tend to cut-out on ground faults the moment that happens. As long as you don't use them to power GPUs, and as long as they're coming from a dedicated mining-platform supplier rather than a 'sells everything seller' then they're already revised and QC is good enough to be safe for use. I guess you just need a keen eye and some background knowledge to look at the board and decipher the schematic for power-delivery and go from there, if that isn't possible due to little experience in typical power regulation and bucking designs, then I would advise caution indeed, and a discussion with said supplier to confirm things is your best call of action and take it from there.

ps. some of them have built-in short detection, some don't... you don't want the latter lol

 

[kapone]

If all you want is 12v out...the HP power supplies and a miner breakout board can't be beat. They have massive amounts of power, single 12v rail, platinum rated, are dead silent, and the miner breakout boards can be had for peanuts.

This is a 1500w PSU, but the 56v outputs would be useless in a typical scenario (non ICX related). You can get a 1U style HP PSU that'll do 1200w easily.

Case in point. 3-in-1 system. Two boards take direct 12v, one with a picopsu.

 

[OP_Reinfold]

Looks like one of the many monsters my team and I builtup a decade ago, though the ones we put together were filled with 6 x xeon-d industrial boards stacked in 2u cases, but had to go external power because site had a rack DC system already in place with generator switchover.