Hi Marek,
> However I would assume that insufficient PSU will cause just GPUs/CPU
> errors but not
> the melting of PSU connector ... but I am definitely not an expert
> here.
Yes BUT there should be no way an overloaded power supply would short out
and melt the motherboard power connector. In principal it should just trip
the power supply. However I suppose it is possible that either the current
draw through the PCI-E slots from the 4 C2070s was too high causing a
motherboard voltage regulator to fail and subsequently short out. This would
be a fundamental design flaw in the motherboard but seems unlikely.
The other possibility is the power supply was up against the limit and
shorted in some way and put too much voltage on the motherboard power
connector and that caused it to burn out.
Either way it is simply not a failure that should be possible even if the
power supply got overloaded. But then one only has to look at San Diego's
power company trying to blame some lowly technician for blacking out the
whole of southern California, Arizona and New Mexico to realize that
everybody takes short cuts not bothering to make things fail safe.
Oh well.
Let's wait to see what happens when the machine comes back.
BTW, people should note that all the 4 GPU boxes I have built, that are 2
socket with 4 C2070 or 4 x M2090 and supermicro boards ALL have dual 1.4KW
redundant power supplies. Trying to run 4 GPUs (4 GTX580s would be crazy)
off a single power supply is really pushing the envelope. Especially in the
US where the voltage is an appallingly low 110V so you can only get 2.2KW
total off a single circuit. 2 x 1.4KW independent power supplies plugged in
independent circuits (but sharing the same earth) is probably the correct
way to go for building such systems. In Europe you can plug both power
supplies in the same circuit. :-)
All the best
Ross
/\
\/
|\oss Walker
---------------------------------------------------------
| Assistant Research Professor |
| San Diego Supercomputer Center |
| Adjunct Assistant Professor |
| Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry |
| University of California San Diego |
| NVIDIA Fellow |
|
http://www.rosswalker.co.uk |
http://www.wmd-lab.org/ |
| Tel: +1 858 822 0854 | EMail:- ross.rosswalker.co.uk |
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Received on Sat Sep 17 2011 - 17:30:02 PDT
