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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- We want DC power! For Neopixels, for example. Or for battery charging. Or for radio stations. Our power supply has to be strong and stable. Strong means in this case: More than 60 amperes at 12 volts or so. And, these days, it also has to be good for the environment. But it should cost less than 20 dollars. Including shipping. Unbelievable? That is what I thought, too. Till I discovered second-hand server PSUs
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Links:
My HP HSTNS-PL18 750W PSU: ebay.to/2VklriY or ebay.to/2Bp5dhs or amzn.to/3ibw69j
Connector for these PSUs: s.click.aliexpr... or ebay.to/3i999DA or ebay.to/2BIdJYS
ESP-01 with relay: s.click.aliexpr...
Tasmotize the ES=-01 relay: www.loxwiki.eu...
Near Field Probes: s.click.aliexpr...
Good information about pins: colintd.blogspo...
German video about PSU electrical noise and its removal: • Video
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Good man ..I've been doing this for many years ...I have a 4 draw filing cabinet full of used Siemens/ Fujitsu/ dell/ hp and so on server psu's all 100% free.. most companies have to pay to have these disposed of as wee waste in the UK so are most happy for me to take them... I've gotten a bit of an obsession with collecting free psu's .
Cool. It was new to me. In my profession I consume lots of CPU power, but did not think about what they do with the HW :-(
Where in UK you get these for free?
@@Arek_R. I'm an electrician I work in a lot of large factories all of them have a weee bin .. they're all happy for me to take parts as most weee waste management companies charge by weight and the psu's are quite heavy...I have loads and loads of them all of my large ws2811 projects use them ...much better than cheap unknown quanlity psu's from China... I've only ever had one ex server PSU die on me.
Problem is big IT companies have a policy of must to go to a scrap yard to be total dismantled and I have seen piles of them even offered to pay but was refused. I did have more luck while working at a factory and the IT company just used the wee skip onsite where I picked up screens and a printer. The PC's had HD removed.
@@getyerspn If I would have access to this bin I probably would end up with with few tonnes of these.
Though even if would have no purprose for these myself then could sell them on ebay for some low price so other people can have these as well.
I've had three HP 1200 watt 12V supplies for the past 5 years and use two in series to power my 24V Li-Ion battery charger. Note that if you put them in series, one must have its DC ground isolated while the other retains both its AC and DC grounds. Otherwise you'll get sparks if the metal cases come in contact with each other and possible internal damage as well. As these are SMPS supplies they can accept AC inputs anywhere from 100V to 240V, but you won't get maximum current out unless you power them with 240V.
True. I saw that people took away the cases to avoid sparks in serial combination. Maybe not a good idea... Better to use your proposal.
Lol this dude is a savage. "Film your endeavor"
It was just a tip ;-)
He just has a good sense of humor.
Yeah laughed so hard. I love electroboom :D. I think he explodes more Capacitors than anyone in youtube :D.
Well if you are going to end it all, you might as well video it and eventually become a meme to be remembered for ever LoL.
@@kalifack in eighth grade I had "physics workshop" as an optional subject, and the teacher's top two favourite things to do were to blow up capacitors and to throw bits of sodium on the ice outside in winter. Electroboom will probably have to keep going for a few more years before he passes that teacher's capacitor kaboom count 😉
Dishika is on power-saving mode 😁 and reboot can consume a lot of power.
:-)) She is quite easy to reboot if she is hungry ;-)
Great tip! Just grabbed 4 of them on eBay shipped from the UK, total 48£ shipping included.
I have a pair of these power supplies, i use one for my radios here on my shack, the HF transceiver drawn about 20A peak and the PSU dont even sweat, they are very good. I mounted one on a "aluminium" style suitcase, with space to carry my HF transceiver, so i use it for transportation and field power supply. They are very RFI quiet also, i have not detected RFI from it on the HF bands, only a little on VHF, but maybe a good ferrite on the AC input cable will filter it.
Just ordered one for my HF rig, once converted to 13.8V.
Here is the video to make them quiet (in German)
**Waits for ElectroBoom**
**EEVBlog walks in first**
And after Dave explodes a capacitor, Mehdi comes to tell you about the giant TV he found in his dumpster room.
EEVBlog has Nighttime now.
@@mullervolker9814 EEBLog is a nightmare, too much talking for me.
Server PS will also have excellent power factor.
Thank you for the addition. I did not look at it.
@Arpad Toth, please elaborate: it is not clear to me what you mean by 'domestic use' and do not understand why it would result in higher cost.
@@seanflanagan5674 It should not increase cost. Depending on the meter being used, it may well reduce cost. Bad power factor means more current flowing back and forth along the AC line in relation to actually consumed power. Power factor close to 1 means "what flows is actually used". Classic counters ("ferraris" type) measure the power used. Modern digital counters measure absolute power flowing. So let's assume we use 200 W (from a 750 W power supply, but that doesn't really matter). At power factor 0.5, there's 400 W going back and forth. At power factor 1, 200 W are going back and forth. An analog counter will only see 200W no matter the power factor. A smart meter will be able to see either 200 W at PF 1 or 400 W at PF 0.5. Depending on the utilities contract, we might get billed for the absolute or used power.
@@suromark, thank you for the explanation, for which I'm grateful. But the enlightenment leaves me upset: in my area, the consumers were required to pay for the installation of new "smart meters"-which only the power company can analyze and control. And I don't know how they calculate usage though I suspect….
Yes some even have active PFC where the MCU controls the current draw to keep it in phase with voltage. Server PSUs have it all! Most good ones use MOSFETs for the bridge rectifier to save power. Great engineering in the brand names.
These are fantastic I use them for powering rc lipo battery chargers. I also have 2 of these connected in series for 24v 62A power!
is this possible without danger @Andreas Spiess
Frank Müller besides ground connection issues, they are totally fine
@@grindel80 no you have do disconnect the shell from the ground output because if the case touch each other they go bang..
@@kitecattestecke2303 Yep silly me, and a lick of flame came out of the case AND damaged the switch on the main household socket too.
@@kitecattestecke2303 Of course when the output is not floating and cannot be made floating (check the PCB), it is not enough to disconnect the shell... they will still connect via the mains safety ground.
When you want to so something like this you have to understand what you are doing.
@Andreas. I chose to use a Dell for PowerEdge, it brings a 3.3V on Standby so I can have the ESP directly, it has ~320W, what is more than enough for most of us, but what o really like about it is that it has the ATX cable, not standard, but make life way easier overall. It requires the resistor and it did cost me $10 with shipping 😎 another great point, they have excellent ability to shut down on shortages 🤫
Thanks for sharing. I also left a link to a PCB which has the edge and ATX connectors for the HP supply
Great video! I looked into doing something like this last year with a spare consumer PC PSU I had laying around. I also wanted to modify the voltage to be 13.8V for radio use and looked into tutorials on the process. However in nearly every one I found, making the modification either bypassed or otherwise removed almost all safety features such as under/over voltage and short circuit protection. That alone made me not want to make the modification, but then I took a closer look at some other parts in my particular PSU. Some had absolute maximum voltage ratings of as low as 14V, which I felt was way too close to 13.8V to have any safety margin. So instead it remains a 12V powerhouse for LEDs and charging other devices using buck/boost converters.
You are right: They are made for 12 volts. But I found many examples where they were used on 13.8 volts. So I assume they are also safe to operate at this voltage. But I have no long term experience
The RC scene has been using these server psu's for years to power lipo chargers for their cars and such :)
True. As well as the bitcoin community. But I did not know it :-(
Also popular for use on the CR-10 3D printers.
Upcycling! Really good use of the hardware, I approve.
Hey, thanks!
great sense of humor, and the cats a bonus.
I do wonder about electro-static discharges with cats.
@@ahothabeth if you run hard on their fur you can use them as a high voltage powersource
Indeed!
I can still remember the power supplies used in DEC VAX computers, they were 5V @200 A.
This was around 1990.
Damn, I could use one of those for an electrolysis project!
I never investigated it when I sold them as a DEC Account Manager;-)
@@AndreasSpiess Ah! DEC!! Love of my life.. 19 years at DEC, Milano first then Melbourne, mainly Field Service and Sales Tech Support.. Were you in Geneva? Did a few trips there for FS Support meetings. I do have a number of these PSUs, started modding them a couple of years ago, taking hints from an RC website/forum. Also recently picked up a SUN/Oracle PSU with dual 12V 240A..! Pity haven't found any info on the small connector and its many tiny pins..!
Love the stuff you're doing.
Tschuss, lm
I have an IBM blade centre PSU. Over 200A. Managed to get it to 14.2V and it can charge my dual 1000CCA starting battery AND 200AH deep cycle battery all at once. Most I have pulled is 80A. Cost 50AUD brand new. Great value.
I am not sure if my home would be able to deliver this massive power at one outlet!
@@AndreasSpiess even I'd need an upgrade in outlet to 15A. Not common domesticity here in Australia.
Thanks, now I can make a 12V oven for my 3D printer 😂
Have fun!
Instead of using the analog pin to get the output current you can use the pmbus to get all of the measurements out of the power supply like input and output voltage, current and power, fan speed temperature and a whole lot more.
That is what I thought. But I did not find a readymade Arduino project.
Done that a few years ago. The RC community also seems to like them. Great, robust PSUs. Only downside is that they do produce some RF noise, so not too great with radio transmitters.
A German HAM did the investigation and remedy of the RF noise. I put the Link in other comments.
You can also pretty easily isolate these supplies and put multiple of them in series. i did that for a Buck regulator put 5 of them in series to get 60v and than a buck modul which can do 50v at 20A and made my own Lab bench power supply works great.
This is a powerful Bench supply! Cool.
@@AndreasSpiess it also only was about 100€ with everything, the 5 psus and the buck modul (which was the most expensive part) it is a DPS5020 from RD Tech on Aliexpress these modules are very popular you can find a lot of videos about them
i think you made a video about the cheaper version DPS5005 with only 5 amps
Damn it, every time someone spreads the word, I lose more and more $5 800W psu offers
That is the problem every time someone shares a great deal on youtube. soon after it isn´t a deal anymore. Right now so many servers are being consolidated though because of Epyc that there will be millions of these. You can replace 6 or more servers with one 32-64core epyc cpu and the energy savings pays for the upgrade within 2 years so it is a no brainer.
@Philosophical Thoughts: I hope you have already bought a few of them ;-)
LOL we're all a little late to the party on this one! These have been around for some years now on the used market - i bought 4 1100w units 6 months ago for 60.00 shipped only to discover years of mention on TH-cam. These are even stackable through an inexpensive connector for 2200w 24v. They are available in droves and the frequency of units is increasing, I can only assume the designers anticipated a secondary market use and deserve a pat on the back!
Actually the RC guys have been doing it for years and use them to charge up lithium packs so if it was going to make a difference I'd say it has already. Also best source of mods on their forums.
Nojoke I just lost three offers I was gonna get for $3 psus in a single day after this lmao. Someone bought out an entire seller’s stock of like 60 on eBay
I purchased a couple a while back one had no fan but was very clean and the 2nd was really dirty which was very surprising for the reasons you mentioned in your video. I had no luck finding any info for my specific models allowing me to increase the voltage but I have already purchased a 300w step up switch mode supply from China so that I can run my radio on 13.8 even from a deeply discharged battery (say 10v) so now I simply use the same step up for the radio if I need more than 12v from these supplies. This way has the advantage that I can create much higher voltages if I need (up to 50-60v). It costs about double this way, is a little less efficient but is more flexible too. Next time I'm going to pay attention to the specific model more closely to ensure I get one which I know is easy to mod...
True. It pays off to do the research upfront. Mine was easy to modify.
You had me in stitches with this one. Well done.
Glad you enjoyed it
Thanks for the great tip, I just ordered one for £10 including delivery here in the UK!
Hope you enjoy it!
I already found these a couple of years ago and bought a few for charging my multi kWh lipo packs.
Note the connector is heavily gold plated copper, so it's a pity to solder to it.
Would be nice to be able to collect the gold first before soldering to the copper underneath!
The film is really thin though. You'd only get a fraction of a gram. Playing with junk channel guy harvests loads of these gold PCB parts and has a video about harvesting the gold.... can be worth it if you come across loads and loads of expensive stuff with a gold finish I guess.
@Andy: I posted a link to a connector board.
@@AndreasSpiess thanks Andreas, I had a look... it creates more problems with needing more 6x2 connectors!
I would just need the edge connector itself then distribute a 10AWG cable to each of the main outputs and terminate with an XT90 or 6mm bullet connectors for series connection. No need of the other pins.
I isolated one PSU to make 24V, and it worked for a year but now won't power up. There's probably a simple fix, but I don't fancy poking around inside it to try to find out why!
I ordered those: www.aliexpress.com/item/33029711948.html But I do not know if they will work.
@@AndreasSpiess Would really need to identify the type used in the server they came from. The connector on the breakout board is 64 way or 32 pairs.
I ordered too... should make it easier to exchange psus if one fails, but tedious making a loom for it!
This looks like a great power supply for those lab bench top power supply display things you get from aliexpress. Would add adjustable voltage and amperage to the unit.
Good project!
I need a "in HP we trust" tattoo.
:-))
Wow. Great info. Didn't know about pin 37, it's a great trick to use it to drive logic to control switch of pins 33 -36.
Glad you learned something new!
Nice video.
I have a question about the psu: what is the standby power consumption with no load?
Interested in this too
I’ve got a stack of four server PSUs and on standby they generally have a low power fan running and after about 10 minutes the air being blown out the fan can be like 90° (ofc it could just be heatsinks retaining huge amounts of heat
Philosophical Thoughts wow Your house must be very warm even in the coldest winter
Mine uses 12 Watts
@@AndreasSpiess Ah thanks, I asked that in another reply too.
The one I tried was over 40 watts, I did not want to use that as a station supply that is (nearly) always on, now use one of the wellknown 13.8V/23A boxes.
Ok no 60 A :-)
i love the secondhand server market. Bought 5 240watt Dell server psu with 20 pin mobo connector for only..........yes, 3 dollars each. 3 dollars. Very dirty but i checked every component and they're still very good. I then bough dual 20 to 24 pin (2 psu(s)) to connect the psu(s) to atx mobo and made a low end gaming pc for my son.
Not to mention i also purchased 2 2TB WD black for $10 each, a huge server heatsink (twice the size of 212 evo, modify it to fit on am4 motherboard) only for $5.
Damn server market.
Fast moving electronics. Nobody wants old things anymore, I think.
love the shout out to electroboom! haha!
:-=)
Hi Andreas,
Having seen your video, I decided to get hold of a few of these supplies. Looked like really nice kit!
I wanted to mod them for 13.8v to use on my radio gear, so followed the most popular route, shorting out a resistor on the trim pot. Worked fine....or at least it did until I tried to put a decent load on the supply (20A). This caused a loud buzzing and ripple on the output. It would work fine at 13.4v (well over 20A in fact), but going above 13.5v caused this instability. I have two of them that both behaved the same, so don't think this a fault on the supplies, but a design issue.
My gut feeling was that it was due to an over-voltage protection tripping early, though without any schematics, hard to be sure. However, I tried tweaking other trim pots on the control board (marked their position first of course) one at a time and found one that influenced this behaviour. So with a slight adjustment on this pot, I now have 13.8v set and can go all the way to 30A. Nice.
Ok, I'm working blind here with no diagrams, but it does make sense. My guess is that they are specified to pretty tight tolerances and so can see that over-voltage migth be set to say 14v or 15v, in which case 13.8v is getting kind of close.
Anyhow, I know you were staying clear of advising details of this mod, but thought this might still be useful.
Br,
Ralph
You are right. They have an overvoltage protection. In your case it was very low. Usually they kick-in at 14 volts.
SOLD OUT ... looks like you had sold his 340 units today I guess.
I do not know how many you ordered. But it seems there is ample supply.
@@AndreasSpiess none, that's why I replied cause I'd been too late
There are so many on ebay.
www.ebay.com/itm/392596821020
www.ebay.com/itm/392596822386
www.ebay.com/itm/333113936450
www.ebay.com/itm/293280214686
They have to dump their old psu's somewhere.
Been using them for high-current 12V sources for a while and glad to see such solid technology avoid the ecycle path for a while. You can drive an ESP or RP0W off the standby voltage, providing WiFi network or BT. Then a GPIO pin can bring the high-power portion to life only when needed. Funny thing: the standby fan runs louder than the running fan for most of my uses... Thank you for your video!
Fortunately I had not a big issue with the fan. It did not run during my tests. But I only went to 50% for a relative short time.
"In HP We Trust." As an HP shareholder, I approve of this message. 😁
HP or HPE? :P
Good luck then in these unsecure times.
@@luclu7_ HPQ, fortunately. Though I'd admit I was tentative in that choice at first.
@@AndreasSpiess Thanks. Fortunately the half I'm vested in has a good balance sheet.
@@McTroyd I have one of HP's first multi-meters. Still working well.
The link led me to a 2 pack for 28 dollars. They're on order now. Thanks!
I hope you will enjoy them!
Make a video "How to power up your Raspberry pi 4 cluster with cheap DC power" => Conquer TH-cam.
Thanks for the video :D
I am not too much interested in Pi clusters for the moment :-( My Pi4 is strong enough.
WOW...this was great...I just found 2 of them with dead fans only at my local second hand computer junk store. HP 750W, So I put a Noctua 40mm server fan in it. now its powerful and quiet and was only $4.00 plus the fan
This is called a bargain!
Thanks for the warning about PSU capacitors... unfortunately you're about 30 years late 😉
The one time I got a (close to) mains voltage shock was when I was troubleshooting a PSU for an Amiga 500... for a second I forgot about the cap and placed my thumb squarely across the solder points on the rear of the PCB 😂
Indeed too late. I think just about every reasonable PSU made today has a mandatory discharge resistor across the painful primary side caps. Because when you unplug a device, you are confronted with exposed power plug pins, and you could potentially touch them and have a bad time. One side of the capacitor would be effectively across both live/neutral pins and the other potentially on the ground pin. Of course depending on your amount of luck, precaution is still advised, because sometimes these discharge resistors could be missing or could delaminate from heat and become ineffective.
@
Siana Gearz: I thought this, too. But I can tell you: The depleting in mine is not very fast if you know what I mean ;-)
A few years ago I got a Buy It Now on three Dell PowerEdge A670P-00 power supplies for £12.72 delivered! They're 12v @ 54A each. The only downside is they do not come with fans so need an external case and fan. I 3D printed a case for an 80mm fan and all is good. The one has been perfect for two years. Probably only ever loaded at 5-15A. Never did the voltage change on it. It's pretty hard to get to the components on this model.
You are right: It depends on the model. Mine was on 13.8 volts in less than 10 minutes...
This seems like it would be ideal as a 3D printer power supply
Not quite. Most have switched over to 24V. 12V is still used in some printers but a vast majority of them are 24V now. Plus even with a high current PSU like this the 12V 3D printer main boards will be limited by the MOSFETs.
Isogen just connect two of them in series then. You’ll need to insulate 3 screw+stand-offs inside the psu
@@AugustoZanellato does that work with all switchers?
@@milesmccoo Unfortunately, not all. Some will do.
There are some constraints and warnings when trying to connect two PSU in series:
1. To do in-series connection you must ensure (at least one) power supply is floating (ideally both), i.e. none of the DC outputs are common to any of AC inputs PINs.
2. There is a chance for non-equal rising time, especially when the PSU's are not the same, causing ramp-up to be non-linear, sometimes this may be a problem for connected devices (it may be sorted using additional circuitry).
3. In case of short circuit (yeah ElectroBoom) effectively you have two PSU connected in reverse. Not very safe.
@@mich29sm I just decided to use dc to dc converters and a modest secondary battery bank rather than do a float.
Another quite cheap and very efficient way of getting power for your projects are ebike/scooter chargers. Most of the times they can easily be modified to put out the voltage you need, just be aware of the max voltage of the output caps
I never thought about that. Thank you!
@@AndreasSpiess be aware that the caps in this HP are only 16V. Check out this review (in Russian, but the browser's built-in translation should do) - mysku.ru/blog/china-stores/75308.html Also check out the charts - it is quite noisy (500mV ripple), which is a no-no for some applications.
Thubs up this comment to demand an electronics video with Andreas's wife. Bring her in!! Bring her in!
Andreas probably got divorced from her.
I am happily married. Bu she does her thing and let me do mine ;-)
@@AndreasSpiess haha no problem. Some other day then..
Mr Andreas, you look like super geek in this area. please make all the videos including charging a battery and how to charge a phone using 18650 batteries and so on..... Subscribing now...
Welcome aboard the channel! Maybe you go back in my videos. You should find some stuff concerning batteries.
*1 Week Later*
Price Increased :D
Maybe already today. That is why it is good to be subscribed;-)
@@AndreasSpiess Been buying the platinum version for about 8mo for $12.50 shipped, and already $28 when I looked today.
Recycle those laptop power supplies too to keep them out of landfills. I have a couple Toshiba laptop power supplies I cannot use as I don't have the old laptops anymore. They are or were at the time all made to output 19volts and about 4.7 or 5 amps. That will be about 18 amps at 5 volts or so and if you stick one of the Chinese digital buck converting power supplies on one you'll drive them to the buck converter current limit with plenty of room to spare in the laptop power supply. Mine are so old they are from another country but I have some power plug adapters for them kicking around. My Chinese digital buck converter has three separate inputs on the back and one of the three is a barrel connector that first the Toshiba laptop plug exactly. (yes I finally made it to your PC power supply video! \o/ yay)
He wanted to be like ElectroBoom xD
:-)
Thanks for the tip! Got a 187A power supply for $30. No idea what I'll need almost 200 amps at 12V for, but damn it was cheap!
Sounds like a plan! I am sure you will find a purpose!
from were?
@@riccardoz2953 ....From eBay.
Cute @2:48 "Please Subscribe!" Is it possible that you have viewers that have not YET subscribed - let alone set up a Patreon account? Hard to imagine what keeps people waiting - unless they are young students just discovering your quality/quantity.
Electroboom @ 3:16 - good warning. I'm a big fan of Mehdi and yes, I fear for his survival but am simultaneously thrilled by his videos. Ever notice the carbon burn tracings on his project boards? Those sparks are real.
Switching with an ESP-01. Perfect. I'm working on that right now using a 5V relay - Yes, 70 mA is what my 5V OMRON G2RL-14 uses. I supplied it with a 2N-3904 transistor and the base supply is GPIO00 off an ESP-01.
I may flirt with the 13.8 V idea. A 12 V lead-acid off the grid lighting system would be a really application of these power supplies. Recharging the batteries without 'the grid' would be pretty fundamentally necessary. Maybe isolating the charging station to a box outside of the building would be the safest thing to do... just in case. Same is probably true for LiOn battery charging - I saw your warning about that and now practice supervised charging only ever since.
Enough of my blather. Thanks for another fantastically timed video. I need to watch a few more times to absorb it all.
That switching on/off should be done with a transistor, not a relay, as the PSUs expect that.
Also worth a mention: Regardless of how dust-free the fans are, please consider that server PSUs (and their very loud and exceptionally fast-running cooling fans) may have been running for many, many hours under heavy loads. Time to failure, and the type of failure that eventually befalls your unit, will likely vary greatly when using used server power supplies.
Well possible. But thousands are used right now. This is not a new idea.
Wow, fantastic idea. I just checked on some local sites and there are hundreds of these!
Yes they are!
Thank you!. A very good start for identifying pinout on all HP power supplies. I suspected the pins had to have similar functions to a normal ATX power supply....and they do.
True!
Great Video! I immedeately ordered some of those beasts ;-)
While wiring up i noticed that the bottom pin numbers shown at 6:12 in the video need to be flipped to be correct.
In other words: the 'small' ground pin is the 3rd pin from the left side, that's how i noticed it...
Yep, good comment. Pin 27 is adjacent to the huge ground and pin 32 is on the edge.
I'm surprised he mixed that up on the drawing considering how careful he usually is.
Another interesting thing is that these power supplies are hot swappable in servers. Servers usually have two of these power supplies and can generally run with even just one when the other fails. You can replace the failed power supply while the other one is running. A side effect of this is that these are run at less than half the rated power in typical usage cases so the peak power efficiency would lie at 40% the rated power or less as these would be optimized for the typical use case.
Ah and hard disks, memory modules (RAM), certain PCI-E cards and even sometimes processors can be hot swapped while the system is running. This is the reason most of those connectors SATA like PCI-E also have a combination of long and short pins. This gives a predictable contact order for hot swapping.
Thank you for the additional background. Interesting!
Always a good idea to have a System Administrator as a buddy.
We have these types of power supplies by the truck load. The real high power supplies are in spinning drive storage arrays 😁😁😁
True! But also without buddy, the prices are ok.
Exactly the right topic at the right time for me. Just starting to use arduinos, esp32s and Raspberry PIs for a few project around the garden so having a quality PSU plugged in my shed is a problem solved. Thank you Andreas
You are welcome!
We have been doing this in the US for Years. We use them to run RC car chargers
That is what I learned now, too. And there are many mod instructions on those paltforms...
One short note as someone with experience building datacentres - server hardware assumes two things: High airflow from the fans at the front of the server (if two of 5 fans die the server shuts down for example) and there is an assumption that air is below ~23°c… it may be your server PSU has no fans, if that’s the case you should add one. Specifically one with a higher pressure rather than airflow
Thanks for the additional info. All my HP PSUs have built-in fans and they start to work automatically.
Thank you for sharing! You are a good man, Andreas!
You are welcome!
Server Power Supplies are controlled via the motherboard or the power distribution unit in racks.
The PDUs are easily controlled via the network.
True. They seem to communicate with the PMbus.
really nice, I've done this for a 3d printer with the exact power supply that you have, but it was way to noisy. Great work by the way, I really like what you do and like your channel. Have a nice day!
Did the fan always run?
@@AndreasSpiess yes, I still have it but I don't use it for that anymore.
@@synco1985 why not put a new quiet brushless fan on it to reduce the noise
Watched the video, bought the same PSU on Amazon Marketplace 5 minutes later for £15 :D Thanks, this is genius!
Glad it helped!
Tell Dishka I said hello. Looks happy to be with you in the lab. Greta video. Thanks! I've also used ATX power supply for PCs. They include 12, 5, and 3.3 Volt. and usually around 500W. I also switch mine on and off with ESP8266 and 5 V relay. Switch on/off with html page hosted by the ESP.
True. If you need lots of 5V and 3.3v it is probably the better choice.
I bought one some time back the HP 441830-001 100 amp at 240v model and haven't got around to experimenting with it yet, the reason I wanted it was for an amplifier supply. But the Ameritron ALS 500m came with one so I didn't need to do the 13.8v hack. It was cheap enough that I'm not worried about it, I will simply find another use.
During my research I found a lot of HAMs using these PSUs un 13.8 volts. Hope you will find a use for it.
@@AndreasSpiess Thank you, Andreas, I will, I never want to waist good electronics gear.
Was also about to say that my lipo charger for my drones is running from the server PSU for years :) also few other projects run from a second PSU ^^
Good video! I'm glad that you've found this solution!
Cool. It was new to me and it seems, it is new to many viewers. We learn every day...
Hello, with a name like mine you probably know where I'm from instantly. Don't be put off by your accent, it's great and I don't give a rip what anyone says. Think of it as your awesome trade mark. Press on making lots of videos. I love it and I'm going to share it like crazy. Have a great day sir.
Glad you like my content. And thank you for sharing!
Hi Andreas, I followed your description now - I bought one of these (they are cheaper than 20€ incl. delivery at the moment), I soldered a switch and the 12V connectors to it - and it's working perfectly!
The special feature of the temperature sensor, which is making the fan turning in a proper speed is absolutely fantastic. It is quiet and strong. I love it :) Thank you so much for this video :)
Thanks for sharing your experience. Glad you like your purchase!
@@AndreasSpiess Yes, of course. I am a victim of the woodgas bug and need more experiences with electronics and sensors. So I found your channel so helpful and your style so excellent that I will follow you a long time in future. ;)
Perhaps you can help me with a hint? I am looking for a sensor working with Arduino, which is able to detect a level in a 10cm circle from a distance of 50cm?
Ultrasonic sensors don't fit the 10cm circle when measuring from 50cm distance and lasers are measuring only a point not 10cm. You have an idea?
I only know these two methods :-(
@@AndreasSpiess Thank you for your quick response - that's sad. I hoped you know some more possibilities which I am not aware about. But thank you anyway. :)
Nice video, the edge connector is a 'standard' too so the tips should work for a lot of server PSUs, there is a way to increase the voltage without diving into the innards as well, look up DPS800
I just googled and saw You can change voltage from the outside with the DPS800. Less dangerous. Thanks!
Nice one, Andreas. I'm currently building more parts for next Christmas' display, and I've been using PC power Supplies, 650-1000W. I just picked up 2 additional 1000W server PSUs on Ebay for under €50, including shipping to Ireland.
Sounds you have a lot of light during Christmas time ;-)
You can control the power supply with an esp8266 running tasmota without a relay! Only a 1k resistor between 36 and 37 is required, pulling 33 low turns the power supply on!
Thank you for the tip!
I plan to get one of these for programming my car, but I have to boost the voltage to 13.6, which is the float voltage for AGM batteries.
That should work. Pay attention that if does not charge too fast.
you can also get premade breakout boards for these supplies, they handle the switch on and give you some nice screw terminals to hook up your loads.
You are right. Another viewer told it to me and I added a link in the description.
Finally got around to ordering some of these. 12 volt with current to spare to do fun stuff like neopixel as you used as an example, great to have laying around in general and at 20 euro including shipping a piece there is nothing that beats them. Plus it's recycling! I've wanted to order some DIY PCB from china for a long time too this is a perfect simple project for that, I can 3d print a cover for it and it will be a proper safe to use DIY power supply. Thank you!
Sounds like a good project!
Thanks for the heads-up. I have a couple HP DPS-600PB supplies I've been using for several years.
Don't currently have need of this one but grabbed one off eBay for $17 anyway.
They are really cheap!
Best way to use server power supplies is to get a PDB (Power Distribution Board) it has all the hooks and power connectors needed to avoid the damage of the card edge connector of the power supply and also you can put more than one in parallel but be careful there are models that can push more than 100A easily. Modifying the output voltage is not so easy specially because these power supplies have Over Voltage Protection circuits in the output, so to modify one you need to have strong knowledge about power supplies and the detailed schematic and part location/layout of the PCBs.
You are right: I added a link to those PCBs. I learned it from viewers. Concerning modding: Mine was easy. But it depends on which PSU you buy.
not a big issue for a diy project but edge connectors have thick gold plating, not the extremely thin ENIG.
When soldering to it enough gold might dissolved in the solder to make it brittle
Interesting. I did not know it. Thanks.
@@AndreasSpiess www.eptac.com/j-std-001-revision-changes-regarding-the-requirements-for-gold-plating-removal/
looking at the fan that's build into this i imagine it will be quite loud when under load...i wouldn't want to have that sit on my bench sounding like a starting jet all day... a "normal" (my) PC supply with a 120mm fan delivers around 40 Amps at almost silent operation. (also you get 5 and 3.3 V right out of it, so no extra converters required)
It is not too loud (at least mine). And it did not run most of the time.
@@AndreasSpiess I see, maybe i had bad luck, the last server PSU i saw in operation was really really loud, even with no load. Maybe something to watch out for when buying ;)
I'd suggest you take a look at ESPHome. I've switched all my smarthome esp8266 projects from Tasmota to ESPHome. You can do far more with ESPHome IMO. Provides lots of easy ways to extend functionality, and has OTA out of the box. Very much worth a look.
Thank you for the tip!
I often get these free at electronic recycling centers and in fairly large quantities.
Good idea!
You can also find 24v and 48v server PSUs. A desktop power supply just needs a 5 or 10w resistor hooked to the 5v line and to ground so adding a power switch is easy. A server psu usually needs a resistor too but usually has a power enable pin. You can also get a whole server for very cheap and use it for a project like a cnc, automation control server or a media center. I have seen 12core servers with multiple TB of storage for 100-200.
Cool. I have to watch out for that.
48V PSUs are more commonly known as "telecom rectifiers" and are of particular interest to those building large audio amplifiers. Then there are hybrid car inverters for truly large amounts of power.
god damn that finger wand is magical
:-)
I use server psu since always, very good stuff.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
It is my first time to know the technique on PCB traces to delay signal lines. So nice. Thanks for sharing ;)
Glad it was helpful!
I got myself one of those HP blade server PSU's, you can see them around 1:16 on the bottom right. Just as cheap and I get 150A off mine no problems. Only downside is its shape, its quite thin and long. A bit awkward to house in some projects. Also a big fan of the fan units of the blade system, just as cheap.
Cool. 150A!
I will never buy an ATX powersupply for my PC again. These HP server PSU are a masterpiece of engineering. I have the 1500W version. Such a small form factor and almost no heat. Just amazing.
You are right. One drives my Amateur radio station without any problems so far...
will you please investigate the PMBus (i2c I think?) interface and/or show us how to use the current pin? I think it shows the amp load as volts on the pin with [V x 10 = A], so a voltage of +0.1v on that pin would mean it's supplying a 1 amp load. Also, that function and others (power on/off) are available over the i2c (pmbus) link. That could eliminate the need for your relay board. I've been wanting to try this stuff for a while but, I had better leave it to the professionals.
I have no plans for that, because I do not see a need for me. Maybe somebody else does it?
I would check if one pin of the switch on feature is just GND ( or + ) then you can omit the relay. pull down the short one just with the MOSFET. If you need to connect it to + then you need a second transistor.
I tried it, of course. These pins did not react to logic levels
@@AndreasSpiess What does this mean? What is the voltage level on each of the two pins in open state and in connected state?
I know "pins that do not react to logic levels" from a Mercedes truck Engine control unit: For safety reasons you had a square wave on one pin and the had to be connected together with less than 3k ohm. But that was to start the engine. I can not expect this in a PSU even from a server.
And it is possible that it still can be switched with an analog switch or a FET with sufficient margin for the gate voltage: An NMOS FET with +12V at the gate (you have that available) switches any voltage between 0V and 12V - V_gth.
I am not convinced, that a relay is really the only working solution. :-) It's the easiest solution but with the highest power loss. What of course, is not the most important thing in this application.
The ESP only has 3.3 volts. Maybe with two FETs and 12 volts it would work. It was easier for me to just take a relay
Thanks for the heads up, never thought of looking at these power supplies. I have used a 12V computer power supply(linear) 15A which is very heavy but was built to last at full load.
I expect theses are the same, built to provide 60A 24/7, Just got a 100W HF rig, so ordered one to free up the 30V 30A variable supply i'm currently using. Now to try and not do an electroboom and convert it to 13.8V
I had less than 10 minutes for the 13.8 volts conversion. Pay attention. It can hurt ;-)
@@AndreasSpiess I can see it's just a mater of finding the correct resistor in the feed back path to adjust the output. Might also be a mater of finding the overvoltage trip circuit to stop it tripping if 13.8V is too close.
My linear supply had a trip that would trip at 13.9V and crowbar the output, before I found this out, the supply would trip once a day at 23:00hr when the heating turned off next door. increase the trip to 14V and it never tripped again. I hope these turn out to be as stable.
A HF Rig that that I'm working on has 900V DC on the Anodes so I'm used to keeping one hand in a pocket when the PA screen in off :)
One hand in the pocket is very good advice!
I would be really cautious with switch-mode power supplies, even of server quality. For HF use, if you're unlucky and hit some harmonics and intermodulations, your signal can get pretty ugly.
I wish you luck with your PA and HF endeavours. Hope you'll report back with the results! I subscribed to your channel.
73 de OM2AGC.
I've been using several old laptop power supplies ~20V/8A. It's nice and quiet, and no fan to fail. The server power supplies, or even network gear, aren't as reliable as before. They don't even have protected metal covers anymore. Many of them are just piece of cardboard. Also they don't need to be as reliable as before because there can be more than 2+ of them now. So we have them failure every wk. Meanwhile hardly a PC ATX power supply fails or laptop.
I did not find a lot of complaints about failing PSUs. And thousands are used for years by the RC community. Laptop PS are also a good choice for lower power applications. I use one for my mobile PS.
Haha yeah... i've been using server PSU's for years. Salvaged some HP DPS-800GB (12V 82A) and some HP DPS-600PB (12V 47A, but i've put two in series for 24V 47A) for free. :)
So you are a lucky guy...
Thank you so much Andreas!!! I just got mine... this thing is a beast! I will try to adjust mine to put out 13.8 volts ;)
Should be possible if you go the right one...
I have a Dell L1100A 12V 90A power supply that has remote volt sense terminals. It doesn't appear to have any internal volt sense. By connecting a 1k pot in series with 6k8 across the output and connecting the wiper to the remote volt sense input I get an adjustment range of 12V to 13.6V. By changing the 6k8 the output range can be altered, but protection circuits switch off the power supply as the output approaches 14V. This approach may work for other power suppliers.
I worked in a data center some years ago. These power supplies were installed in server racks with constant strong airflow of about 15-20 C. I am not sure they can withstand an environment of 30-35C in summer without any additional airflow. Be carefull and disconnect the power fast when your house is burning. Or find another maker (not your neighbour, fire can spread out!) to test it for you! ;-)
The ones I've checked will accept inlet temps up to 40-45 degrees C even. My newest dell has options for targeting max output temps and the selection goes up to 70-80 degrees C! Obviously the expected life time and long term reliability will be reduced.
From what I see, thousands are already used. This is not a "secret" anymore. Most of the people probably do not use them to the max.
I have an old Dell server in wich both power supply were performing bad. After opening them I found four capacitors slightly swollen. I changed them with other parts coming from a thrown away PC PSU and they are now good again. So if you buy second hand PSU from eBay my suggestion is to open them and check all of the capacitors with your eyes, no need for a special and expensive instrument... But do it in a safely way!!
Good tip. I did not find a "manufacturing year on it. So I do not know how old it is.
Do we know what functions are available over the PMBus I2C? Whenever I see an I2C on a product I get all excited ; )
At home I run Dell M1000E bladeservers and each of the 6x 2280W PSUs in a chassis is monitored for all kinds of metrics from power, stability, heat and fan speed. You can also limit their power. Also, the fans seem to be capable of being run up to 100% and then backed off again - which is a great way to make sure they're unobstructed and working fine - long before you actually need them : )
Interestingly, the Dell PSUs also measure voltage and current at the input and output! So, you know when they (or your mains supply) is in poor condition.
So, I wonder if there are any documents out there that describe the management features that exist on the HP PSU's PMBus and how to access them? Or, maybe I could acquire an older HP server (only about £75 here, complete with 2x PSUs) and debug the I2C for clues.
The I2C might be the very simplest way to put a nice digital front-end UI on the PSU - with various graphs, measurements and health status. Perhaps set various limits and even a manual or power-on fan-test.
It may be quite rewarding to poke a little deeper into these units.
Thanks for sharing !
The older specs for PMBus are here :
pmbus.org/Specifications/OlderSpecifications
Lots of documentation here :
www.pmbus.org/Specifications/CurrentSpecifications
I think there's enough information out there to really start getting the most out of these PSUs - and to build our own pretty management Interfaces and some graphical monitoring/instrumentation for them. There may even be some open source PMBus code out there for common microcontrollers that we could embed : )
The following is from Wikipedia entry on: _"Power Management Bus"_
*implementations*
_As of summer 2007, PMBus is relatively new so not many products yet advertise support for it. Given the richness of the specification, firmware based implementations running in microcontrollers are probably easiest to provide, although several of the current products do not involve microcontrollers. One firmware-based example is the Texas Instruments UCD9112. Another uses about 2Kbytes of code on an Atmel AVR 8-bit microcontroller on the NGW100 board controller_
_In fall 2009 more products are available. The NXP PIP8000 and Maxim MAX16064 are two recently announced chips, which have vendor-supplied graphical user interfaces_
_As PMBus systems are deployed, tools to manage those systems should become significant. Some of them may just be used during manufacturing, to set up system-specific parameters used with reconfigurable power subsystems. Others will be useful for runtime optimization, for example with server farms._
I think we could do more with these : )
You do have to be a little careful buying used server power supplies. The server room at my work runs hot because there's no separation of hot aisle and cold aisle airflow, so when I put my hand on the back of the servers near the power supply outputs, the metal is almost too hot to keep touching. And I can actually smell a faint odour of something in the exhaust air which I assume is the capacitor electrolyte. I'm guessing in a couple more years they're going to start seeing power supplies failing.
Of course, they wouldn't have been in this situation if they listened to me when they were planning on installing the servers, and left a 1RU gap between them. That would allow airflow between the servers, which would reduce their temperature considerably. They argued it's a small server room so they have to save space, but there's literally no more power outlets in the racks, so they couldn't put any more equipment in those racks if they wanted to!
You are right. You do not know where these supplies come from. I assume they come from larger installations because they sell hundreds of PSUs, but I do not know.
I also thought it was cool, I like your sense of humor and the summarized at the end. Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
What is needed is to modify its control strategy to CC/CV for charging lithium batteries...
I think you need a proper charger for that. These PSUs have no current limiter other than the 62 Amps.
Nice.👍 Unfortunayely shipping cost to me is more than the cost of each item. Well, maybe I can find some used in my scrap box. Thanks for the detailed explanations.
Shipping is always something we have to consider. Same here :-(
Tnx Andreas. Nice video. I recently removed a couple of those power supplies from old servers. They are on my shelf waiting to be modified. I will keep it a bit simpeler ;-)
That is ok for me. I just wanted to spark the imagination...
Most server PSU have load sharing pins so you can run them in parallel and some have current sense lines so there is no drop of voltage under higher loads. Also newer ones are even smaller. You can get a 2KW unit in same or smaller form factor.
Interesting. I did not find information on load sharing, only the output pin for the actual current value.
@@AndreasSpiess I guess it depends on the model and the documentation that you can find for them. If I remember correctly HP ESP113 had all that but the fan was on all the time and I wasn't able to bypass it so not the best for a lab power supply.