New HDPLEX 200W LPS

[luisma]

I meant just be sure the DC connector fits

 

[austinpop]

Thanks for the suggestions. Please note, the issue I'm seeing is technically during self-test of the HDPlex DC-ATX converter. Yes, I'm aware of the need for the jumper if not connected to the motherboard.

 

I was able to borrow a more powerful adapter from a friend, with some interesting results. So to recap - even with no output connectors connected, the HDPlex DC-ATX adapter has an amber LED that will light up and stay lit if it successfully passes self-test.

 

The failure case I was seeing was that the amber LED would come on for a few seconds, and then go off. Here are some new results with 3 power supplies:

• 90W laptop adapter - 19.5V/4.62A. This did not work
• PowerAdd Pilot batterY - 20V/4.5A. This did not work
• 120W laptop adapter - 18.5V/6.5A. This did work.

Of course, the next step is to actually connect it to a mobo, and continue testing further, but this was a test to see if the DC-ATX converter was defective or not. 

 

The finding here - at least for now - is that the DC-ATX converter is not defective, BUT it does require a significant amount of inrush current (even without any load). At 19V, this inrush current IC is:

• 4.62A < IC < 6.5A.

 

[rickca]

15 minutes ago, austinpop said:

4.62A < IC < 6.5A

Since your 19V/6A SR4 rail didn't work, haven't you proven that 6A is inadequate for the inrush current?

[austinpop]

Just now, rickca said:

Since your 19V/6A SR4 rail didn't work, haven't you proven that 6A is inadequate for the inrush current?

 

Not necessarily, The SR7 19V/6A rail should have a hefty amount of headroom, so this data will be sent to Paul for his thoughts.

[rickca]

9 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Not necessarily, The SR7 19V/6A rail should have a hefty amount of headroom, so this data will be sent to Paul for his thoughts.

This is actually quite helpful to me.  I was considering using the 12V rail of my HDPLEX 200W LPS just for EPS12V on my motherboard.  My plan was to get a separate 19V LPS to use with a 400W DC-ATX for the 24-pin.  This could be another HDPLEX 200W, but I was considering something like a 19V/3A Farad.  Now it seems like the Farad wouldn't work with the 400W DC-ATX.

[austinpop]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

This is actually quite helpful to me.  I was considering using the 12V rail of my HDPLEX 200W LPS just for EPS12V on my motherboard.  My plan was to get a separate 19V LPS to use with a 400W DC-ATX for the 24-pin.  This could be another HDPLEX 200W, but I was considering something like a 19V/3A Farad.  Now it seems like the Farad wouldn't work with the 400W DC-ATX.

 

Yes, I think this is a key takeaway. When it comes to powering a mobo, either through ATX or EPS, even if the expected steady state power consumption is expected to be low, there are going to be current transients, especially during power on. 

 

The case I ran into was simply within the HDPlex DC-ATX converter, but I am sure once you connect this to the motherboard, there are further transients associated with all the other regulator modules in the system.

 

How this aggregates to determine the current rating for a suitable power supply is unclear. I do know someone who was able to successfully power the ATX input on his mobo, through the DC-ATX converter, using a 19V/5A rail on his SR7. I tried this experiment with another AS'er's SR7 with a 19V/6A rail and ran into an issue, but at the time I was unaware of this DC-ATX transient demand. I'm not sure what we did wrong, which is why I'm backtracking to figure it out.

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

How this aggregates to determine the current rating for a suitable power supply is unclear. I do know someone who was able to successfully power the ATX input on his mobo, through the DC-ATX converter, using a 19V/5A rail on his SR7. I tried this experiment with another AS'er's SR7 with a 19V/6A rail and ran into an issue, but at the time I was unaware of this DC-ATX transient demand. 

 

I am not not understanding the need/desire to use a 19V DC-DC switching converter board when all the mobo rails call for 12V and below.  Why not just use a picoPSU-160-XT (http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT) which passes through without converters the clean 12V from your nice power supplies, and uses DC-DC converters only for the 3.3V and 5V? 

You can be quite sure that the 19V>12V DC-DC switching converters on that DC-ATX board are nowhere near as quiet nor as low impedance as your SR7. 

 

Have you actually measured the total DC current draw of your motherboard?  How much horsepower are you running these days?

[Chopin75]

6 hours ago, austinpop said:

Looking for some advice from the experienced hands here, who have used the HDPlex DC-ATX converter.

 

I want to use it with a Paul Hynes SR-7 19V/6A rail, but in a quick test we tried, the computer didn't power up. It also seemed to trip the over-current protection, as we had to replace the fuse on the PSU before it powered on again.

 

This is too expensive a PSU to experiment with, so I asked Larry for ideas. He suggested I try it with a laptop adapter. The most powerful unit I had lying around is a 90W 19.5V/4.62A supply, which conveniently has a 7.4x5.0mm tip, which fits perfectly in the HDPlex-supplied 7.4x5.0 to 6-pin Molex adapter. Here's the test:

1. connect power supply like this:
   • 19V 90W laptop adapter -> 7.4x5.5 - to 6-pin adapter -> 6-pin input on the DC-ATX converter
2. Nothing else attached to the converter

Result: the amber light on the converter comes on for a few seconds, then goes off. The laptop supply seems to go into overcurrent protection, as I have to disconnect and reconnect for it to come on again (LED indicator).

 

Before you tell me this converter is rated for 400W load, and requires a hefty input supply - I know this. My plan is to only drive ATX (not EPS or any other output) for a very low power use case, where the expected power draw should be in the 20-30W range. 

 

According to Larry, the DC-ATX Converter requires a significant inrush current to "charge the capacitors." but he does not know what the requirement is. Has anyone experienced this, and do you have any experimental data that suggests what the inrush requires from the input power supply? This seems to be the limiting factor to using this converter at this point.

 

I am currently looking for a more powerful SMPS (sadly I threw away all me old adapters in my last house cleaning ) to test this on.

 

 

 

I had a similar problem when my own HDPLEX 200W smoked. So I wanted to test to make sure that I have not damaged the HDPLEX PC with the DC-ATX. I used a labptop brick DC power cord. (I think 19.5V and 4.5 A or 6.5 A) and it turned on the PC alright but cannot boot my SATA Drive (with Euphony OS).  My PC builder thinks the Amp is not adequate so I think I did separate power source 4 V to power the SATA by itself. Then it did work but only intermittently. Anyway the whole ordeal wasvso cumbersome I gave up using it until my new HDP LPS arrived months later!  Not sure if this helps u much. 

[PeterSt]

19 minutes ago, Superdad said:

Why not just use a picoPSU-160-XT (http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT) which passes through without converters the clean 12V from your nice power supplies,

 

22 minutes ago, Superdad said:

I am not not understanding the need/desire to use a 19V DC-DC switching converter board when all the mobo rails call for 12V and below.

 

Because any 12V fed to a 12V ATX system will drop to lower (like under 11V) so the ATX system (yes, "system") shuts off. It is a bit of Ohm's Law in order here. In the end the main power supply isn't powerful enough (not enough buffer capacitance and else the transformer not beefy enough).

[Chopin75]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Yes, I think this is a key takeaway. When it comes to powering a mobo, either through ATX or EPS, even if the expected steady state power consumption is expected to be low, there are going to be current transients, especially during power on. 

 

The case I ran into was simply within the HDPlex DC-ATX converter, but I am sure once you connect this to the motherboard, there are further transients associated with all the other regulator modules in the system.

 

How this aggregates to determine the current rating for a suitable power supply is unclear. I do know someone who was able to successfully power the ATX input on his mobo, through the DC-ATX converter, using a 19V/5A rail on his SR7. I tried this experiment with another AS'er's SR7 with a 19V/6A rail and ran into an issue, but at the time I was unaware of this DC-ATX transient demand. I'm not sure what we did wrong, which is why I'm backtracking to figure it out.

Ok so from your experiment 6.5 A worked, I think mine was also a laptop 6.5A Brick  but it was inadequate to run my euphony even on separate LPS on its own. My CPU is power hungry Ryzen 2700x. I think you need a 10 A LPS like the HDPLEX one. Farad is making a 12 A which should work . 

But this does answer my question about LPS for my PC, which uses DC-ATX and so the issue is not the motherboard but the design of the DC-ATX. 

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, Superdad said:

 

I am not not understanding the need/desire to use a 19V DC-DC switching converter board when all the mobo rails call for 12V and below.  

 

I am trying to replicate this:

 

On 5/24/2019 at 2:43 PM, romaz said:

but as I have figured out a way to independently power both the 8700K CPU and ATX motherboard (using a DC-ATX converter) with SR7 rails

 

Roy used an HDPlex converter driven by an SR7 rail for the ATX connection. I wanted to replicate this to see how it sounds. Even with the supposedly inferior SQ of the HDPlex DC-ATX converter, the so-called "hoarder of SR7 rails" found this a major SQ step up from the HDPlex 400 ATX.

 

There I go again - being  a messenger and proxy.

[lmitche]

I have been powering my Asus z270g motherboard and i7-6700k  with two external power supplies for over a year. At first two independent Sigma 11 LPSUs were used, one set at 12 volts, the other at 19 volts. The 19 volt LPSU connected to a Hdplex 400 watt DC to DC converter.  This adapter was later given to Rickca to say thanks for a favor. I had a second 250 watt DC to DC converter that is used here today.

 

My memory is that current measured on the 120 volt AC input side of the 19 volt LPSU never peaked beyond 36 watts, but that was likely not a true instantaneous peak.

 

This past winter the Sigma 11s were replaced with a single Hdplex 200 watt supply with the fixed 12 volt output directly connected to the CPU and the fixed 19 volt output connected to the 250 watt DC to DC Hdplex ATX adapter. The two lT3045 outputs are used to power a hard disk and Startech USB card via additional Lt3045 regulators.

 

The machine is set to run at a clock speed of 800mhz via Audiolinux controls. Here are the current temps with the fan disconnected and Roon server playing music. 

 

[audiolinux@audiolinux ~]$ sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +33.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +33.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +33.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +32.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +31.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

acpitz-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
temp1:       -273.2°C
temp2:        +27.8°C  (crit = +119.0°C)
temp3:        +29.8°C  (crit = +119.0°C)

iwlwifi-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +41.0°C

pch_skylake-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +35.0°C

 

The room is 80 degrees F (27 C). Six degrees above ambient is pretty good. The Hdplex supply runs close to human body temparature of around 100 degrees.

 

SQ is terrific with this server connected wirelessly to an i7 NUC.

 

This setup has been reliable and glitch free for over six months. I know of at at least three other people with an exact duplicate of this setup. Everyone is happy with the result.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dev]

5 hours ago, austinpop said:

Thanks for the suggestions. Please note, the issue I'm seeing is technically during self-test of the HDPlex DC-ATX converter. Yes, I'm aware of the need for the jumper if not connected to the motherboard.

 

I was able to borrow a more powerful adapter from a friend, with some interesting results. So to recap - even with no output connectors connected, the HDPlex DC-ATX adapter has an amber LED that will light up and stay lit if it successfully passes self-test.

 

The failure case I was seeing was that the amber LED would come on for a few seconds, and then go off. Here are some new results with 3 power supplies:

• 90W laptop adapter - 19.5V/4.62A. This did not work
• PowerAdd Pilot batterY - 20V/4.5A. This did not work
• 120W laptop adapter - 18.5V/6.5A. This did work.

Of course, the next step is to actually connect it to a mobo, and continue testing further, but this was a test to see if the DC-ATX converter was defective or not. 

 

The finding here - at least for now - is that the DC-ATX converter is not defective, BUT it does require a significant amount of inrush current (even without any load). At 19V, this inrush current IC is:

• 4.62A < IC < 6.5A.

 

 

You should look at the HDplex 200watt LPS amperage ratings on the 19V output. When I inquired, Larry said it was designed to work with their 400w DC-DC convertor. As per spec, the 19v output is rated at 10A.

 

[Dev]

15 minutes ago, lmitche said:

This past winter the Sigma 11s were replaced with a single Hdplex 200 watt supply with the fixed 12 volt output directly connected to the CPU and the fixed 19 volt output connected to the 250 watt DC to DC Hdplex ATX adapter. The two lT3045 outputs are used to power a hard disk and Startech USB card via additional Lt3045 regulators.

 

If I am not mistaken, @austinpop is using the 400w DC-DC ATX. Their requirement might be different that the 250w version but the 200w LPS should be able to power them both.

[lmitche]

8 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

If I am not mistaken, @austinpop is using the 400w DC-DC ATX. Their requirement might be different that the 250w version but the 200w LPS should be able to power them both.

Yes both work. I used the 400 watt before sending to @Rickca. Current demand is much closer to 36 watts as mentioned above so both atx converters can handle current demand from the motherboard atx connector with lots of headroom.

 

While one could power the CPU and a GPU from the same Hdplex DC to DC converters, it is easy to see how this could take the 200 linear supply above it's rated output.

[luisma]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

 

Because any 12V fed to a 12V ATX system will drop to lower (like under 11V) so the ATX system (yes, "system") shuts off. It is a bit of Ohm's Law in order here. In the end the main power supply isn't powerful enough (not enough buffer capacitance and else the transformer not beefy enough).

Hi Peter, thank you for clarifying, I'm not an EE, so the board will sense voltages and if these are below 12V let's say 11V (I'm just using round numbers) will shut off, have you or do you know if someone have tried feeding 13V from a DC LPS with good results assuming voltage will drop to 12V or so?

 

Now I realize the answer to my question is probably not possible, the voltage drop depends on the load (specific motherboard, cpu and other parts) which should be different for each system. The atx power supply has voltage regulators guaranteeing the output voltage and current based on load (ohms law) which with the LPS and the DC to DC adapter could not be achieved, you need a bridge with caps and regulators to do so and that's the DC to atx adapter that hdplex supplies and it is fed with voltage margins above 16V.

 

Too bad this cannot be simplified, 

 

Let me know if I'm disparaging here 

 

Ty

 

 

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Because any 12V fed to a 12V ATX system will drop to lower (like under 11V) so the ATX system (yes, "system") shuts off. It is a bit of Ohm's Law in order here. In the end the main power supply isn't powerful enough (not enough buffer capacitance and else the transformer not beefy enough).

 

Sorry Peter, I am not following you here.  Thousands of people use the 12V-input picoPSU-160-XT ATX converter I linked to.  The wiring harness of that model (as pictured in the link) passes the 12V over to the 4-pin connector unmolested, and also to the 12V pins of the 20-pin connector.  It uses DC-DC converters only for the 3.3V and 5V.

So as long as the 12V supply feeding the convenient DC-barrel jack has a decent amount of current, the computer runs great.  Our own JS-2 7.4A 12V supply is powering hundreds of music servers this way.  As long as the machine is not loaded up with a pile of drives or a hungry graphics card, it’s plenty of current for all but the highest wattage i7 machines.  Not quite enough for 12-core Xenons or Ryzen monsters, but not everyone is running that.

[PeterSt]

2 hours ago, Superdad said:

Thousands of people use the 12V-input picoPSU-160-XT ATX converter I linked to.

 

But that doesn't make me wrong, Alex. And you wondered what you did not understand. Well, I just explained.

And my "environment" is exactly that other way: normal desktop PC's with at least 90WTDP processors and Windows behavior which is out of our control (at boot-up - and it is exactly there where it fails - once it runs it is fine).

 

And so allow me to give a reason for people not being able to use the Pico you referred to in the first place. It is not even related to the power supply behind it but that the thing *itself* does not regulate the 12V. This is just the too cheap approach ... And once it regulates, the power supply comes in order (as a possible culprit).

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, luisma said:

The atx power supply has voltage regulators guaranteeing the output voltage and current based on load (ohms law) which with the LPS and the DC to DC adapter could not be achieved, you need a bridge with caps and regulators to do so and that's the DC to atx adapter that hdplex supplies and it is fed with voltage margins above 16V.

 

100% !

 

4 hours ago, luisma said:

have you or do you know if someone have tried feeding 13V from a DC LPS with good results assuming voltage will drop to 12V or so?

 

Probably not. But this is also related to the available stuff in front of it "out of a box". 13V is not out of a box available. 15V is. 19V is (this relates to transformers and there DC output). 12V is also, but it is not enough.

It is all a matter of carefully matching (or else there will be too much heat and current draw to begin with).

 

On the latter there is also this:

When you boot from RAM (like we do with our Xenons) this is - depending on further hardware arrangements - a process of copying the OS to RAM first. This takes time, like say 2 minutes, During those two minutes there's a relative high current usage. This implies thus heat. And this implies more current because of less efficiency because of the more heat which thus implies more current which ... boom.

So this is coincidentally not the transient requirement (as it is referred to in the last posts) but to the more and more heating up of everything (regulators and such, but also the processor itself). Even the transformer when it is relatively small. And *then* you'd still need that spiky current draw (which is only at half a second moment later in the boot process).

When I start out with 105W (on the 230V mains) I may end up close to 200W when the boot process (from RAM) takes e.g. 5 minutes. This implies that it shouldn't take 5 minutes. And / or that such a 160W ATX module can't be used in the first place.

 

There's many variations in this all. And indeed there will be a largest group which uses the smallest (Atom etc.) processors in the first place.

[thyname]

Interesting stuff!

 

Is there any big difference between the new 200 Watts HDPlex and the previous generation 100W? I understand the Amperage part, but that it does not matter in my application

[PeterSt]

Off Topic - I think... 

 

Someone, I think from this thread? - told (me) that Larry was going to send me the latest incarnation of the 400W units for testing. The message carried an odeur that Larry and me arranged for this, so the consumer should wait for the outcome. But I knew of nothing and thought "oh well". 

However, a week ago the units arrived anyway. 

 

Can he who seems to be involved, step forward please? Then maybe I can learn what to do with them for real. 

 

Thanks, 

Peter 

[rickca]

3 hours ago, PeterSt said:

However, a week ago the units arrived anyway.

You're saying that you have a new version of the HDPLEX 400W ATX LPS (as opposed to the 400W DC-ATX)?

[PeterSt]

Rick, No, it is the DC-ATX module. But the 3rd version of it, IIRC what that person talked about. 

I am travelling at this moment, so it is not easy to check everything. 

 

Feels a bit stupid. 

[rickca]

1 minute ago, PeterSt said:

it is the DC-ATX module

OK thanks I had no idea Larry was working on a revised version of the 400W DC-ATX.  I do use the 400W DC-ATX in conjunction with the 200W LPS, so I'm very interested in what's different about the new one.

[PeterSt]

It should be about better ATX compatibility.