Battery Hashin Time & a rig walk though

Yep, all over it ... be great to get it working just waiting on one more cable
 
I am curious as to how stable a DC-DC converter will be as opposed to a good brand power supply. A lot of R&D goes into making modern power supplies efficient and stable. It would concern me that a cheap DC-DC converter would not handle dynamic loads too well.

That said I could be barking up the wrong tree altogether, as unlike mains power, battery power does not fluctuate as much.
 
This is true. Plus, you put a few caps on the output to keep the ripples out. If you're concerned with big power dips, put larger caps to handle the higher spikes. But I think for computers, there won't be many spikes. It's basically just continuous draw. So you'd need to have a converter than can handle sustained amperage over long periods of time.
 
Korishan said:
This is true. Plus, you put a few caps on the output to keep the ripples out. If you're concerned with big power dips, put larger caps to handle the higher spikes. But I think for computers, there won't be many spikes. It's basically just continuous draw. So you'd need to have a converter than can handle sustained amperage over long periods of time.


Computers produce a very dynamic load, even under stress. Say a GPU finishes a task, then loads another. Power consumption will drop steeply and rise steeply when the next task begins.

Even more so, when the system starts up. Load will jump all over the place. I know components like hard drives, which have very little if any capacitors installed, really suffer if a computer has a poor power supply.

I also wonder if the efficacy gains will be worthwhile.I would say the exercise couldprove fruitless, aside of the fact that you don't need a giant inverter to run your mining rig.

I have always wanted to run my computer direct off DC poweras AC power is quite unreliable, and as spiky as a cactus. So I will be watching this project very closely.
 
I plan on getting a good idea if any of the above is true, i think the load will be nice and static - time will tell..
 
hbpowerwall said:
I plan on getting a good idea if any of the above is true, i think the load will be nice and static - time will tell..

It's great that you have some expendable hardware to trial it. I will be very interested to see your results. Many hardware review sites graph power usage during games, and they can fluctuate quite a bit. While mining should produce a more steady load, I still expect the odd spike.

Not much info on running high end computers directly off a DC power source (aside servers ect). So if you are successful, your results will interest a lot more than just the mining community.
 
On Pete's "accidental" live feed the other day, he showed the watt meter running while he was mining. When they ramped up, the watt consumed only fluctuated by a few watts, and rarely more than 10W at a time. So yeah, I think the consumption would be very linear and very few spikes. I figure the spikes will be when the cards are first starting up, and when they are being switched from one algo to another (if you do multi-algo, multi-coin, or multi-pool mining)
 
Yes spent hours watching those meters and they are pretty steady but then again I don't know how often or accurate they really are might jerry rig up my clamp meter up and watch that as well.. centrally will be doing that on the rigs when running dc
 
I think for really quick updates to see fluctuations, you need something that will update several times a second, at least 10-20 times. So using a MCU with onboard ADC and updating 100ms loop would give you really accurate results. And you can have all that functionality for about $8-$10 USD, shipped (some assembly required).
 
Guessing seems to be more my style lol
 
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