Radeon VII, gpuowl @ 12V?

[mrh]

I have enough Radeon VII cards now that I would like to deploy one to a site where I have an a few hundred watts of excess of 12V power. Any ideas for a small 12V PC that would support this? Running at sclk=1 or 2, would be ok, maybe 150W.

thanks!

[DrobinsonPE]

A power inverter would add some inefficiency to the system but would allow you to use any computer you like at the location.

[LaurV]

You can search Aliexpress (or equivalent) for a "12V industrial PC", and pick from there. You can get quite a good stuff for below 500 bucks. Mostly, they work at 24V and they only have mini-PCIe, and if they have WiFi, one is taken, so you need to look for one with two (hehe, I like how this sentence turned on ). Bad news is than in such case you also need to adapt the Rvii to use mini-PCI unless you want to spend some more money to get one with classic PCIe.

Anyhow, what you need, is not a PC. And neither an inverter, those are quite inefficient, especially if you run an Rvii in it, you suck something like 30-50 amps or more from the 12V (depending on what else you have in the box beside the Rvii), so you need a serious inverter, which will cost more. But with an inverter, you will be free to connect other home appliances to it, like that new ice-cream machine you just bought

What you need is just a suitable power supply. DC-to-ATX more exactly. Your computer only uses 3.3V, 5V and 12V, your (ATX, etc) power supply inside of the computer takes the 220V AC (or 110V if you live on the wrong side of the pool) and it makes all the DC voltages needed by the (rest of the) computer, in a quite inefficient way (about 80% efficiency). Unless of course, you paid a lot of money for a very good power supply (like Titanium, whatever, with 90% efficiency ).

So, if you already have a lot of 12V available, you can search for "12V DC to ATX power supply" (or adapter). A cheap one on Shopee costs 12 bucks (120W only) but a good one (for example those from PowerStream - this is not an endorsement, I didn't use them, only read the tech specs) can cost close to 1200 or 1500 bucks (American). But those go up to 96% efficiency, saving a lot of power (and copper wires) on your 12V side (obviously, there are only 2 buck-converters inside, one for 5V and one for 3.3V, and some cheap electronics to make the power-good signal and the "-12V", which is not used much by your PC anyhow, and buck conversion is very efficient, more efficient than boost-converters, and more efficient than the AC-to-DC stuff). Probably your solution would be something in between, for around 600W and lower price.

Then, you can put any PC you like at the other end of the DC-to-ATX power supply. Again, be sure it works at 12V (most of them use 24V, due to that's what is available in industrial lines, and also because if the voltage is double this makes the current half, you save on mosfets, but the price stays the same, because you add costs with a third buck-converter to make 12V from 24).

[mrh]

Originally Posted by LaurV

You can search Aliexpress (or equivalent) for a "12V industrial PC", and pick from there. You can get quite a good stuff for below 500 bucks. Mostly, they work at 24V and they only have mini-PCIe, and if they have WiFi, one is taken, so you need to look for one with two (hehe, I like how this sentence turned on ). Bad news is than in such case you also need to adapt the Rvii to use mini-PCI unless you want to spend some more money to get one with classic PCIe.

Anyhow, what you need, is not a PC. And neither an inverter, those are quite inefficient, especially if you run an Rvii in it, you suck something like 30-50 amps or more from the 12V (depending on what else you have in the box beside the Rvii), so you need a serious inverter, which will cost more. But with an inverter, you will be free to connect other home appliances to it, like that new ice-cream machine you just bought

What you need is just a suitable power supply. DC-to-ATX more exactly. Your computer only uses 3.3V, 5V and 12V, your (ATX, etc) power supply inside of the computer takes the 220V AC (or 110V if you live on the wrong side of the pool) and it makes all the DC voltages needed by the (rest of the) computer, in a quite inefficient way (about 80% efficiency). Unless of course, you paid a lot of money for a very good power supply (like Titanium, whatever, with 90% efficiency ).

So, if you already have a lot of 12V available, you can search for "12V DC to ATX power supply" (or adapter). A cheap one on Shopee costs 12 bucks (120W only) but a good one (for example those from PowerStream - this is not an endorsement, I didn't use them, only read the tech specs) can cost close to 1200 or 1500 bucks (American). But those go up to 96% efficiency, saving a lot of power (and copper wires) on your 12V side (obviously, there are only 2 buck-converters inside, one for 5V and one for 3.3V, and some cheap electronics to make the power-good signal and the "-12V", which is not used much by your PC anyhow, and buck conversion is very efficient, more efficient than boost-converters, and more efficient than the AC-to-DC stuff). Probably your solution would be something in between, for around 600W and lower price.

Then, you can put any PC you like at the other end of the DC-to-ATX power supply. Again, be sure it works at 12V (most of them use 24V, due to that's what is available in industrial lines, and also because if the voltage is double this makes the current half, you save on mosfets, but the price stays the same, because you add costs with a third buck-converter to make 12V from 24).

Thanks! I was looking at the various DC-ATX supplies, and I may even have an old (low power) one around here somewhere. I'll probably go that route. Maybe I'll be lazy convert one of my existing PCs to 12V.

-mike