Soldering Station and Protoboard Power

I can't remember how long ago it was I thought of utilising a computer power supply to provide power to the the solder-less breadboard that I have, but sometime after that I realised that I could actually just utilise the power supply to provide power to the solder station fan(s) and lights as well.

I originally was going to modify an AC/DC adaptor with an AC power switch, so that I could completely shut off the unit when not in use (which is a vast majority of the time), but this idea makes that obsolete. At the moment, that AC/DC adaptor is what I'm using to power my soldering station fan and lights (with all the connections going through the breadboard).

Finding the parts wasn't too bad, after a while of searching, I stumbled upon the ATX motherboard specification, which gave me a start with the part numbers for the headers that I would need.

Eventually I found the specifications for the power supply and was able to more part numbers. Though, with the last post, I'm sure you were able to tell because of the harness I made.

I spent my 3-day weekend (3-5 September) scouring, comparing, cross-referencing all sorts of parts for the project... Needless to say, it wasn't the ideal way to spend the extended weekend, even though I had all the parts I would need.

I slowly draw the PCB patterns over the week after for all the parts I gathered, and once I had them all drawn, I placed them all in the board designer and ran into a huge roadblock - I don't have space for the all the parts within the limitations of the freeware version of eagle (100 x 80mm).

I set the project aside and began working on one of the stories I was needing to write. But recently I've returned to this project a bit.

I suppose before I continue on, I should outline a bit of the project itself.

The project will use 4 fans at minimum, but will allow me to expand that amount to 30. There will be two sets of lights (I just realised now that I didn't set up two lines for the lights), a bright set of lights (one or two of the 48-LED arrays from MPJA.com), and a set of "dim" lights, which is an LED light strip that I had used to replace the trunk light of my car with (because something broke the stock light housing and I didn't want it to just dangle around). There's also a blower fan as well, which I also haven't considered, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The power to the fans are split into three lines, so that I don't exceed the amperage load of the wire and/or connectors, and have a fuse on each line which is cheaper/easier to replace than anything else, if anything were to happen (which I highly doubt). All the other power lines will have an appropriate fuse as well.

The power supply will connect to the main distribution board, and supply the power from there to the fan/light board and to the breadboard. There will be a set of switches to control the power from the power supply (PS-ON), and the mainboard will attach to a aluminium plate that will attach to two of the mounting holes of the power supply.

There will also be indication LEDs as well, most of which won't be entirely necessary. The switch to turn the power supply will have a bi-colour LED above it, so if the switch on the power supply (which cuts the AC power into the power supply) is on, then it shows one colour, and then if the power supply is turned on, then it shows the other colour.

This is done with the 5VSB line, which always provides 5 volts, as long as the power supply is receiving AC power. When the PS-ON line is shorted to ground, then the 12 volt line engages one of the relay coils to switch the colour of that indicator LED.

The fan switch for the soldering station fans controls 3 relays, since the switch I chose would not be able to handle 10 amperes by itself (a close calculated maximum because the fans require a bit more amperes when starting up - about 10% more). I realised just now that I actually did include a switch for the blower fan which is separate from the switch to soldering station fans.

The indicator lights for the soldering station fans will show that all the fuses are fine, so if one of the fuses blows, the corresponding light would turn off - to do this, there is another relay on the other side of the fuse. I think I also did the same with the blower fan and the soldering station light... I can't remember that well right now.

I originally planned having all sorts of power-input connectors on the board, but after a realisation late last week, I've taken some out.

I realised I never thought about the rating of the solder-less breadboard, and wasn't really able to find anything definitive. I think I set the limits at about 2-3 amperes, since I probably wouldn't be working outside of that... If I was working on the breadboard anyway.

Because of the realisations, I've lowered the 7 ampere fuses for the lines to the solder station fans to 4 amperes, since it would be better for the fuse to trip much sooner. The reason why I initially chose 7 amperes was so that it would blow before the connectors/wires/traces melt, but still allowing maximum current. Though either way works, it's probably better to use something closer to the maximum load of the line.

With that realisation, I was able to change the connectors to something smaller, so that i would be able to save space as well as keep it sensible. I scoured last Friday after work (23 September) for the new connectors, and ended up with the new parts that night.

Since I realised that I forgot about the "dim" light, I'll have to replace one of those parts, but it shouldn't be all too hard, since it's just the header and the plug housing.

It took a while to find the parts, since I needed something that would be above the new fuse rating, but also priced decently, since this project won't be cheap at all (the parts total is already over 100 USD, and the PCB will be around that price as well). I remember when I was initially looking for parts, that I stumbled upon some connectors by Hirose, but couldn't use them because I wouldn't have been able to crimp them. Obviously that has changed since I've purchased a sort of general-purpose crimper.

So the "output" connectors I'll be using are all from Hirose if I remember correctly, with one of them being shared with the soundcard switchboard project that I'll post about later. (I had gotten that connector for the switchboard first, and then copied it to this project)

Because I'll be mounting the PCB to the mounting plate, I had to use some through-hole switches and SMD LEDs. I'll also be utilising some light pipes for those LEDs as well, since the LEDs will be far from the plate. I decided on the SMD LED and light pipe combination, since it would make it much easier than trying to solder LEDs at the correct height to protrude or whatever from the mounting plate.

I've actually gotten some light pipes and standoffs in the project list, but those will be replaced accordingly once I get to that point.

The mounting plate will be made with 6061-T6 aluminium alloy, which will be machined, since it will be hell trying to do it all by hand and maintain accuracy/precision. I'm debating whether to get 1.6mm or 2mm thick, since the 1.6mm is cheaper overall, but the 2mm thick has a lower price per volume. I also had 1.6mm 6061-O6 alloy in consideration because it's cheaper than the other two, but I think I will stick with the 'T6 instead.

I'm still fairly certain that the board size limitation is still a major roadblock, and hopefully I can figure something out. I'm considering splitting the main board into two boards, but I'd rather not have to.

The board for the soldering station fans and lights will be separate, but should be fit within EAGLE's limitation quite easily, so I'm not all too worried about it. Now that I think about it, I might move the appropriate fuses to this board to save some space on the main board, and then I would have to move the fuse-monitor relay to the ground line from that board, which isn't that big of a deal.

I think this is all on the project for now. It'll cost quite a bit, but it'll be quite nice to have, since it'll allow me to utilise just about any power supply and be fairly future-proof (or at least I hope it to be).

Melty Upgrade and GPU Shuffle

Not sure if I wrote about it, but when news came out about AMD's RX480 GPU, I was pretty excited about it, seeing that it was going to be about 200 USD - which was better than the R9 390X I had in my wishlist. I had been planning on upgrading Melty's video card, and because of the price, I decided to wait.

I had followed somewhat closely on the RX480 news, and almost bought one of the reference cards, but decided not to because I wouldn't had time to do so - sure enough, it was sold out when I got home that day. It was a good thing though, considering that not long after (either next day or the day after), there was a slow flurry of articles about the RX480 drawing more power from the PCIe slot than the allowable amount in the PCIe specifications.

I find it funny that AMD somewhat denied and/or brushed the issues off to the side for about a week before they did something about it, which was to release a new driver that shifted where the power draw came from. I was a bit surprised that they were able to do so with a driver update, considering the fault is based in the hardware - what works, works.

It wasn't long after the reference RX480 release that Sapphire announced their NITRO+ version of the RX480, and was even more excited, seeing that I've never had any problems with Sapphire (knock on wood). I closely followed the news and such about it, and I think it was a couple days after the release date announcement (or something similar), I put in my pre-order for the non-overclocked version of the 8GB card.

As a month slowly passed by, I was researching on when it would be released and about when I would be getting mine. Seemed like a couple people on Reddit had talked to Amazon's customer service and gotten an answer of "beginning of September" and "mid-September". I think it was the 6th when I somewhat lost it, and poked around Newegg, finding that they had stock of all three models, and I quickly ordered the overclocked 8gb version, seeing it was only a few dollars more than what I would be paying on Amazon. Sure enough, it was on its way the next day.

I also ordered some of the peripheral connectors and pins to update the 5 volt source for the soundcard switchbox, and paid extra for expedited shipping so that I would have it before the weekend, since I knew the RX480 would arrive before the weekend as well.

I received the parts on Thursday, and took what I needed with me to work on Friday, since it would be easier than taking the crimper home with me.

The parts before assembly, and after partial assembly.

Close up of the power take-off crimp end. I used some heatshrink tubing to cover the exposed shield "wire", I then used more heatshrink to cover the end of the cable jacket (as well as the remainder of the shield "wire"), and finally, I used more heatshrink tubing after crimping to remove future wire strain from the crimp end of the pin to the insulation and cable jacket.

The finished product. (A bit more on this later.)

Forgot to mention that the mono cable was actually another one I took home for whatever reason, and wasn't the one I spliced together.

Since the RX480 uses a 8-pin PCIe power connector, I was going to have to swap the PSU out for Lie-chan's old 750-watt. Sure I could find connectors and such, but since the 8-pin PCIe power connector on the 750-watt is not removable (like the 24-pin ATX cord), might as well use it than having to dig around for a possible adaptor (or spend almost an hour grabbing one from the "local" computer parts store.

Anyway I started working on Melty the next morning, taking out the HD 6770, the Sound Blaster card, and the 500-watt PSU. After swapping the PSU (and I think installing the RX480), I did a bunch of cable management, considering Melty is nearing her "final form".

Too bad I didn't take a picture before the clean up. I used red ties where it would be visible (or possibly visible) from the window, since I didn't have any black ties. I also realised the weird loop things in the metal were tie-down points. I found that I could swap the EPS extension cable around to make it look much nicer from the window. I ended up wasting two sticky tie-down square things, but no one's going to see that unless the open the panel.

I also found that I was able to re-route the cord for the PCIe extension thing so that it wasn't blatantly obvious, and the interior looks much nicer.

Much nicer than it used to be. I might eventually reroute the fan cord to the PSU, but we'll see.

I also had flipped the side fan again, so that it would blow air in instead of out (I decided out would be the best way with how the HD 6770 was), and decided to put a tie-down point on the door so that the wire would be more cooperative.

I used a twist-tie so that I'm not wasting zip-ties when I remove the fan for cleaning.

Oh, right. I also did a bit of deep-cleaning as well before I installed the RX480. Anyway, Melty was now ready for driver installation.

Direct window view and angled window view.

Here's where I really ran into problems. I wasn't able to boot into Manjaro or Windows, for completely separate reasons. I noticed the Sound Blaster card was flashing and thought I might have killed something when I used the vacuum cleaner on it, so I just disconnected the power and was able to get Manjaro to boot... without X.

I was about to install amdgpu-pro (or whatever the package is called), but found that it conflicted with mhwd-gpu, and after a bit of poking around on the internet with my phone, I found the correct way to install the driver I needed. Once I rebooted, I was in business, and excitedly grabbed the spare monitors to test out quad-screening.

"T" configuration (ignore the bottom left and bottom right corners), and "grid" configuration.

It was a bit wonky at first, but eventually it worked with me and I was able to experience the awesomeness of native quad-screening. With that, I rebooted into Windows, which was still giving me problems. I poked around the internet more to try to figure out an easy way to fix the driver issue without having to put the HD 6770 back into Melty.

I forgot when I started shuffling the GPUs around, but I do know after lunch, I decided the best course of action was to use the HD 6450 from Lie-chan (which was going to the Dell) instead of the HD 6770. Once I rebooted, I got mostly to Windows, enabling safe mode before rebooting into the desktop to uninstall the driver. I actually tried to install the driver I needed for the RX480, but I wasn't able to, so I gave up and shut down to re-install the RX480.

I turned Melty on afterwards and she didn't post. I was somewhat stupefied, considering the RX480 was working not long ago. I opened up the door (or maybe it was already open?) and saw that I hadn't plugged in the PCIe power cable. Derp.

After that, I was able to boot fine into Windows (with the crappy resolution). I then installed the driver (which then appeared in the AMD install manager thingy), and then proceeded to test out quad-screening again. I think Windows was also slightly wonky with the settings, but I did get it to work, and then I promptly put the extra monitors away as I transferred Phantasy Star Online 2 files from Triela (since it would be much faster than downloading from the internet). I also remembered about the updated stand-alone character creator and proceeded to download that, since I couldn't find where I had previously downloaded it to.

I'll mention here before I forget again, that GRUB2 looks much nicer, since it's able to output a higher resolution. A bit sad that I've already gotten used to the sharpness now.

Once I was done installing and whatnot, I ran the benchmark within the character creator and got 21000 something as a score on max settings. I realised I should've ran the benchmark with the HD 6770 to get a point of reference, but it was obviously too late. I also updated and logged into Mabinogi to maximise all the graphical effects, but I think I didn't do much else with Windows before I went back to Manjaro.

At some point while in Windows, I set the LED colour to red to match Melty's theme (I used the onboard button to turn it off, since none of the presets matched the theme), and luckily, it stayed when I rebooted.

It was a mixed day. I was happy about the awesomeness of Melty, but was kinda upset with the loss of the soundcard, especially considering all the money/effort I put into the switchbox. (I was also kinda upset that it was kinda dark in Melty's case.

Sometime while winding down, I remembered that I was going to check the voltage going into the switchbox earlier in the day, but I had forgotten completely. I pulled the plug out and measured it to be 12 something volts. There's the reason why the soundcard wasn't working properly, because it was being under-volted. I debated whether I wanted to shower or poke around and fix the problem, and I figured I might as well.

I pulled Melty out again (she's pretty heavy, and the space she's under is awkward, so it's no joke), and poked around with the connectors, grabbing something to compare my custom harness to. Sure enough, I had flopped the pin order on the housing side (the side with the male pins), so instead of 12v - ground - ground - 5v, I had 5v - ground - ground -12v. I double checked the plug side (the ones with the female contacts) to ensure that it was correct, and it was. After swapping the pin order of the housing, I re-connected the harness, re-routed the PCIe extension cable thingy (I removed it since I had thought the soundcard was dead), and then put Melty back.

After I booted her up, the LED was steady and I booted into Windows to reinstall the driver and software thingy. I also checked the voltage with my bad multimeter (something happened to it and it gives a reading of roughly 25% more) and got 6 something volts, which was correct (so 5 something volts). I was quite happy that I didn't kill the soundcard and that the case glows like it used to.

Poor shot of the glow because of the phone's camera.

Oh, right. I was debating on staying up to fix it or not since there was going to be the usual birthday party gathering the next day, which usually means that I relax with my younger niece and nephew playing video games. While it only took about 30 minutes to fix, I would've been able to fix it the next day, since my nephew wasn't over.

The only "damage" was that the relays got over-volted a couple times (according to the datasheet, it can only handle an over-volt of 125% or maybe 150%), but it was only twice for a brief moment, so they still work just fine (if anything, I have extras).

As usual, learned a couple things:

• Check housing/plug orientation on top of pin/wire sequence
• Check hunches immediately, regardless of situation.

I have thought of a soundcard switchboard that would allow me to put it inside Melty, and allow me to utilise much shorter cables. It's slightly upsetting that I've cable managed the power take-off harness I made, but it won't be that big of a deal. I have also purchased a crimper to allow me to crimp the pins/sockets of common computer wire harnesses, so I'm much less restricted on what I can do (more on this later with the PSU power take-off board project).

Melty's HD 6770 went to Lie-chan, Lie-chan's HD 6450 went to the Dell, and the Dell's X1950 Pro (or whatever it was) went to the 820 (which I still need to name and such). Since the Dell is a BTX motherboard, the heatsink of the HD 6450 is facing upward, so I decided to go with the intended passive cooling design (there's also the Wi-Fi card plugged into the PCIe x1 port above it, so I can't put a cooling fan there anyway).

Melty's much quieter now that I don't have to listen to the Vantec fan card thing, and it took me a while to get used to, since if I came back after the screen turned off, I couldn't tell if she was on or not.

The Dell's a lot more quiet as well, mostly at boot, where it would spin all fans at 100% momentarily before the actual boot (or for a minute if the PSU needed to "catch up"... I really should replace the PSU at some point...).

Beside the soundcard switchboard, Melty will have one final upgrade. Well, not entirely an upgrade, more of a downgrade. Anyway, Melty will probably get a RX460 whenever I build something to replace her, since I'm not going to buy another RX480 for the new build.

The AM4 Zen-series FX CPUs are very tempting for numerous reasons (DDR4, PCIe 3.0 support, 14nm manufacture processes), but I'm not ready to spend the needed money, considering Melty does all that I need her to do. I'm thinking the soonest I might replace Melty is AM4+, but we'll have to see.

Whenever that does happen, Melty will stay in her case, considering the modifications I did to mount the PCIe extension thingy. That's it for now, since I'm up past my bedtime...