Wedo, shadow cat and anyone else who

built a yatta, how many mobos would you consider running on an Antec 550 PSU or 400 PSU? I was thinking I might be able to stretch 3 mobos and CPU's outta the 550 true power....your thoughts. It will consist of my smaller XP's: 1600, 1700 and 1700 on the 550. Put 2 2100's on the Antec 400 PSU.

i have a similar question. i plan to build one this summer if the price is right. im thinkin 5 xp 1700's though, and i plan to splice a bunch of 200/250/300w psu's together. not sure about the total wattage. estimations?

esau said:

i plan to splice a bunch of 200/250/300w psu's together. not sure about the total wattage. estimations?

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Why do you want to combine powersupplies? To me this seems like it would be very bad for the PSU. I would just stick with spliting one betreen 2 motherboards.

Axle

I'm using 350W between two mobo's and I don't know what would happen if I stretched it to three.

Theoretically, the psu only needs to pump out serious wattage when each layer powers up. So if you powered them up one at a time, you might be able to sneek three onto one psu if it was a higher wattage.

Give it a go and fill us in as to what happens. There's a small chance you could fry the psu, but it's more likely that the mobo just will not power on or the OS will dump because of the lack of power.

Also, make sure you have the least number of drives you can. If you go diskless with that system it would seem to work well. I'm using a modified Yatta and using hard drives but no cd-rom's or floppies except when I load the OS.

Try to use mobo's with onboard vid/lan too. This will cut down on the power consumption.

Wedo

Can some one do a write up on building a yatta? I had asked stymee 4 days ago for help via PM and got no reply. Also does a diskless yatta boot via the network? If so how do I set it up to boot from the network? I know about the dios setting network boot but what else do I need to do?

Thx.

BTW: My yatta will start out as 2- 1600+ systems and should grow as soon as I get a job. Summer I should have a kick @SS setup folding for TEAM 32! W00t!

I also pondered the thought,but in the end I use just one ps per node.I was worried about os corruption.Nothing kills an operating system faster than lack of power.I also removed all the drives after I installed the os.no fans ,nothing.Just my thoughts.I wish you the best of luck on your new project!

SniperXX said:

Can some one do a write up on building a yatta?

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here's the last howto guide for yatta by Gator:
yatta howto

Well Wedo I'm on the same page you are. I'm going diskless via Mandrake and plan on using at least 2 mobos, cpu's per PSU. There is absolutely no reason an Antec 400 PSU should not be able to support ONLY two mobo's and CPU's....no ROM's, 3.5's etc. I just happen to have an additional Antec 550 True power that I would like to utilize and was wondering if it would be more of a waste for two rather, and what the hey why not attempt three on it that means 183.33 per setup. If you are pulling it off with a 300 per set than I would think it might just work if I boot them one at a time as someone mentioned. I may just have to give it a shot...thanks for the replies folx.

SniperXX said:

Can some one do a write up on building a yatta? I had asked stymee 4 days ago for help via PM and got no reply. Also does a diskless yatta boot via the network? If so how do I set it up to boot from the network? I know about the dios setting network boot but what else do I need to do?

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Oops! My bad, the PM got lost in my (very cluttered) cranial inbox. Kajj has the linkage to the How-To. Just make sure your mobo's can boot via PXE. If you run into any issues on the install, let me know, I'll do what I can to help
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EC, I have every reason to believe that a 550W PSU could power 3 layers as long as you run no drives and onboard everything.

I have 2 cheapie Cogden 300W (they weigh almost nothing) running dual mobo's. When one of 'em died (during a bad power outage) I replaced it with a somewhat more substantial 300W Sparkle. The voltages on the Sparkle look good for even one mobo right at ~3.28V and ~4.95V.

I'm sure someone with a little more electrical know how than myself could estimate the draw on the particular rail (3.3V or 5V?) provided by 3 CPU's.

Best of luck, and be sure to post us some pics of the beast!

Cool, I actually have two of these so I was thinking I might swap the 400 Antec and place it in my rig and run 6 nodes on 2 Antec 550watt True powers.....Dunno, but EC may be the test bot.

Stymee! Good to see you.

back to the thread...


This whole topic solves a very interesting problem which is the on-going cost of folding on your power bill. Would it be safe to assume that three mobo's on one 550 would require less electricity than three mobo's on three 300W psu's?

Wedo

P.s. I almost have my home office space cleared and arranged. As soon as that's done, I'll start building my beast.

Wedo said:

...Would it be safe to assume that three mobo's on one 550 would require less electricity than three mobo's on three 300W psu's...

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Would be nice wouldn't it? The answer however is "NO". Machines only draw what they need, no more. If you had a 2000W PSU (silly I know, but an example) but your machine only required 250W, that is all that the 2000W PSU will put out so in essence, it would cost no more to run the 2000W vs. a 300W in that instance. 'Most' PSU's are actually designed to put out more than their rated specs. When you do this though, you thoroughly tax the PSU and most likely cause it an untimely death When I build my yatta (yeah, you know it's a comin'!) You can be sure I will NOT skimp out on teh PSU, probably use 400W Fortron's to power 2 mobo's.

i would guess it would use slightly less power, as it takes juice to run the psu too, so you would be powering 1/3 the circutry and at the least only one fan. If it works I think it would be worth it.
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