I am working on collecting the parts presently to make a 3 blade, blade server out of the FW16 gen 2 motherboards.
Fortunately I already have the Ram (Thank god in this market), the 2230 SSD’s, some m.2->pcie adapters (the adapters are pcie gen 5.0 but FW16 only has pcie gen 4.0), the network switch & NAS I plan to put in the blade server housing and the 3D printer to print the bits and bobs (still in the box (flash forge ad5x)never used and I have never used one before - so that will be it’s own challenge).
Also I have 3 FW16 motherboards waiting for my turn to come up in the pre-order line…
As for the questions I have: that m.2-pcie adapter has a cord for power that plugs into a sata power jack. It seems that if a pcie device needs 12v then this cord must be used. If your pcie device only needs 3.3 and/or 5v then it can be omitted.
My intended device is a pcie 4x gen 3 dual rj45 10gig Nic; and I have not yet been able to determine if it needs 12v or not.
If it does I will obviously need to source that power from somewhere and I want that somewhere to be tied to the system power as I can only foresee problems if a pcie device loses power before or after the system using it.
I intend for these things to run on mains power, but they will be in the role of a server and any good server has a ups; so the batteries they were designed to use I intend to have for a ups like purpose.
Also and separate, I plan to 3d print the ‘blade server’ chassis and a good starting point for modeling that seems like it would be the 3d design of the current FW16 lower chassis/housing and I was wondering if that was available anywhere. Unfortunately I have to add places for pcie cards to go and ect so I can’t just order the bottom chassis and call it a day…
The laptop usb ports don’t do usb PD out. Which would be needed for 12v out. You could boost the voltage, but you’ll be restrained by the wattage available.
As this will be in a custom housing serving the roll of a blade server and the device that (might, not yet sure it does) need it is a pcie card that would be permanently inside the custom casing with the rest of the electronics; Would it be possible to siphon 12v from anywhere else on the mainboard? (The battery connector maybe (I do plan to have a battery but it’s roll would be that of a ups, not of mobility), or maybe the expansion bay connector?)
This is how I found out nics run when supplying 5v to the 12v rail, I have an egpu enclosure that has a built in pd trigger board for the power input (switched in parallel with a barrel jack and a 6pin pcie connector so kinda easy to blow yourself up with). I just plugged that cable into the framework and the nic worked which lead me to asume it had pd out for a while until I got a bit suspicious and measured.
Non of my nics complained about it and worked just fine for the duration of my tests but especially the x540 with it’s 14w power consumption was a bit at the edge of what I was comfortable drawing from the laptop.
There is no 12v on the mainboard unless you run it off 12v which would massively limit the max power otherwise. There is a non 0 chance of the nic working off the higher vbus voltage (I think that’s battery voltage to 19ishV on the fw16) just fine but it could also not and going higher tends to have more catastrophic outcomes than lower.
You could siphon off vbat from the mainboard (on the expansion bay connector for example) and feed that through an apropriately sized buck converter.
Also I would not consider using 19v directly, but I very much would consider feeding 19v into a step down converter or whatever they are called to lower it to 12v
Also I have a (normal) desktop, and a framework desktop mobo (in a non-framework case) both with a m.2 slot to spare I already have the m.2 to pcie 5.0 (limited to 4.0 because of the framework mainboard) adapter; I also already have the pcie 3.0 x4 to dual 10gig rj45 Nic.
Both of these adapters (in triplicate as I plan to build a 3 blade, blade server) are in a box waiting for my turn in the FW16 gen 2 pre-order to come up…
So if I get the time and space to work I can dry run the Nic in the m.2 adapter (in one of the aforementioned desktops) without using the supplementary 12v power input and see if the thing works or not…
Bloody hell; you ever live something, without realizing it is what it is???
I just realized I have the whole framework line except the framework 12 (too underpowered, but I do want that size and touchscreen…)
I have the OG FW16 that was my daily driver but it was heavy, and unwieldy and after a bit over a year tolerating that, I broke down and replaced it with the 13 and the 16 has become a desktop-replacement.
I got the framework desktop (motherboard only to save$ )as I had a project in mind and was thinking of getting a few more and putting them all in 1 case but the price made my eyes water, then Framework announced the FW16 gen 2 which had 12 cores instead of 16, and a maxed out at 96gig ram instead of 128 but for being in spitting distance was dramatically cheaper and so I pivoted my project plans…
The names of internal power rails, vbat is the battery voltage and vbus is the intenal voltage for bulk power inside the laptop. When the laptop is running on battery vbus is vbat, when charging vbus is a little above vbat and when fully charged and in bypass mode vbus can be a bit under 20V.
They almost certainly won’t, manufacturers usually don’t integrate power muxing into pcie cards expecting you to just not connect some power rails. While they seem to cope quite well with being fed less voltage (it’s internally stepped down anyway) it likely won’t cope as well with being fed nothing.
Do you have any example of a pcie device that does not use 12V (outside of pcie to m.2 adapters)? The power available on the 3.3V rail isn’t even 10W and there is no 5v.
Taking your input at face value (this is outside my current knowledge set, and without testing I cannot say anything) it is safe to assume I will need to source power from the system.
From your description of vbus vs vbat, vbat seems like it would have the more stable and predictable voltage between the 2.
Can you either describe and/or point to some documentation on where vbatt can be tapped into short of sticking some metal fingers in the battery contacts (which I suppose is an option)?
I would go with vbus, stability doesn’t matter but vbus is available when the system is on whereas vbat doesn’t have to, also vbus is available on the expansion bay connector.
Vbat is not available if there is no battery and not really that cleanly to tap into, probably easiest somewhere around the battery connector.
You say it doesn’t matter but I am afraid of frying things if that voltage goes to high, though if I do this ill be using a buck converter to down volt it to 12v (been looking up prospective buck converters on amazon).
That said do you have any knowledge or links/manuals/guid/resources that tell me which pins where?
The voltage of vbus is guaranteed to stay under 20v.
Check frameworks github, there are pinouts for among other things the expansion bay connector and a simplified block diagram of the whole mainboard.
On another note are you married to the x550 nic or could you also use ones that natively work on m.2? They do make aquantia and realtek 10gbit nics that are m.2 natively (you could even use the wifi card slot instead of a full nvme one). They tend to be a bit pricier due to being niche but would save you the hassle of dealing with the whole pcie power situation.
In principle I am not married to it but in practice I am married to it as they (three of them)have already been bought and are sitting in a box in my living room, a box that also holds the m.2 adapters, nvme drives (x3), ram kits (x3), 240watt usb c cables(x3), and various other bits for this project.
It was chosen as 10g was a must have, dual port was not quite a must but was an extreme want, and that chipset (maybe others too, not sure) could manage the dual 10g connection over a x4 connection.
Whilst the m.2 adapter in use will fit x16 cards the connection and thus the speed of m.2 slot is max 4 pcie lanes; and I wasn’t trying to leave performance on the table die to unused pins/lanes
All items are in their return window so if you have a compelling enough suggestion, I may do that (at the very least I absolutely do want to see what such a suggestion might be). That said, returns are a hassle so that raises the proverbial bar a bit.
10g is required by the project.
Dual port(or more) is a 9.99999/10 want, but the project technically survives without it.
There are no dual port 10Gbit nics that are natively m.2 so that’s out. Getting 2 relatively expensive m.2 nics (you need 1 lane of pcie4 for a 10Gbit nic so one in the wifi card slot and one in one of the ssd slots) per node is also kind of cost prohibitive.
Getting a pcie3 nic is leaving performance on the table XD
Guess either check how well the x550 copes with getting fed 5V or feed it 12V from somewhere. Just make sure you don’t have a loose 12V wire flapping around in the breeze and accidentally frying a mainboard (definitely never happened to me before XD).
I am aware and I spent more time then I care to admit looking for a pcie4 card be it a 4x(lane) quad port, or a 1x dual port (just a little bit short the required bandwidth for 2 ports but close enough to fudge it) or a 2x dual port (a 2x pcie card/slot for all intents and purposes doesn’t exist)
I was mostly joking. You probably need to at least look at 25Gbit nics to find pcie4 stuff (outside the consumer exclusively single port aquantia and realtek ones)
Electrically 2 lane nics exist (the aquantia aqc107 and aqc113 for example) while there is no such thing as a physical pcie x2 slot there are pcie slots wired for 2 lanes and it is quite handy for onboard application where pcie is hard wired. M.2 e-key can also be wired with 2 lanes even if it usually only gets one.