So who thinks my Aquaero w/ home made super powerboster will work?

[Diverge]

I recently purchased an Aquaero from sidewinders w/o the powerbooster, since they don't sell them with that option. I had PM'd Shoggy to ask him what components need to be changed on the PCB if I was to add my own heatsink, to make a powerbooster. He was nice enough to provide me with the information. Basically you just add 2 resistors in parallel to existing resistors on the PCB. Anyone who's taken basic electronics classes knows resistors in parallel are less the the lesser resistors value. 1/R1+ 1/R2 = 1/Rt. So with those changes we are just lowering the values of 2 resistors on the PCB.

My goal was to run my D5 pump off channel one, but I was figuring the I'd probably end up blowing up something on the Aquaero. So I looked up the transistor used for each channel, and sure enough, they transistors are only rated for up to 20W. http://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions...do?id=MJD45H11

So doing a little more thinking, and eventually searching, I found that the made the same exact transister in a higher power package; a TO-220 (the stock one is a DPAK). The TO-220 version is able to handle up to 70W, so it should easily be able to power my D5 pump. http://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions...t.do?id=D45H11

So my next issue was figuring out how I was gonna mount my new transistor. I haven't removed the old one yet; I'm gonna try to get that done tomorrow at work (I work at a semi-conductor manufacturer - so I just gotta ask the rework person if they can do me a favor, when they aren't too busy). I already mounted the new transistor to an old asus pwm heatsink from a board I blew up at work a couple years ago lol... so far it's looking like it should work nicely. My plan it to mount the heatsink on the exsisting standoffs that were sticking up off the back of the Aquaero.

Here's some picks of the heatsink, which should keep everything nice and cool


And a picture of the schematic that I made following traces, and ohming out things with a DMV:


So who thinks this will end in smoke?

[liguhy]

Very interesting....

There's a good thread explaining the Aquaero's (w/ Powerboost) new abilities and Shoggy replied to nearly all technical questions to boot - good read if you wanting to hook up a DDC 3.25, D5, or some other pump setup.

I personally think the Powerboost makes the Aquaero a nearly all-inclusive behemoth controller with great software - not sure of it's hardware-based saftey protocols, however. The only downside is the startup power requirements of 2 pumps exceed the max abilities of the Aquaero w/ Powerboost, even though it can handle the power requirements @ load.

Wonder how your heat sink and PCB resistors mod will change things....

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by liguhy

Wonder how your heat sink and PCB resistors mod will change things....

The change to the resistors is part of the requirements for the DIY power booster addon (if you were to buy it from them, they'd mail you the heatsink they use, and I guess the resistors, and instructions on what to change on the PCB).

The only thing I am doing is removing the DPAK transistor, and using the same transistor in a higher power package (TO-220), and the change to the resistors. The DPAK's are only really rated for 20W, but I guess adding a heatsink, they can squeeze a few more watts out of it. The TO-220 is rated for 70W. With my big pwm heatsink, it probably can dispate a lot more heat safely - not that I need to

If you click the links above, for both the DPAK and TO-220, you'll see 'safe operating area' graphs that show Vce (which is basically the voltage across your fan or pump) vs. Ic, which would be the current the pump draws. for a D5, that would be 2 amps @ 12V.

for the TO-220, at Vce of 10volts it can handle 3amps, at 15 volts it can handle 2amps, and that doesn't include power dissipation from a nice heatsink... just from the package.

I'm guessing it's gonna work nicely, if not, i just wasted like $115, but had some fun

[liguhy]

Originally Posted by Diverge

The change to the resistors is part of the requirements for the DIY power booster addon (if you were to buy it from them, they'd mail you the heatsink they use, and I guess the resistors, and instructions on what to change on the PCB).

The only thing I am doing is removing the DPAK transistor, and using the same transistor in a higher power package (TO-220), and the change to the resistors. The DPAK's are only really rated for 20W, but I guess adding a heatsink, they can squeeze a few more watts out of it. The TO-220 is rated for 70W. With my big pwm heatsink, it probably can dispate a lot more heat safely - not that I need to

If you click the links above, for both the DPAK and TO-220, you'll see 'safe operating area' graphs that show Vce (which is basically the voltage across your fan or pump) vs. Ic, which would be the current the pump draws. for a D5, that would be 2 amps @ 12V.

for the TO-220, at Vce of 10volts it can handle 3amps, at 15 volts it can handle 2amps, and that doesn't include power dissipation from a nice heatsink... just from the package.

I'm guessing it's gonna work nicely, if not, i just wasted like $115, but had some fun

I knew about the standard resistor mod needed to enable the Powerboost's full abilities, but let me see if I can comprehend what you're doing. My electronics knowledge is very basic, even though I wish I knew more.

You're not upgrading the resistors used in the standard mod, but instead installing the standard resistors and upgrading a third transistor (removing DPAK and replacing it with T0-220).

So aside from the beefier heatsink adding to the capabilities, you'll also get like 2.5ish amps @ 12V (is it linear when comparing the 10V and 15V stats?).

What about startup power requirements from 2 DDC 3.25 or 2 D5s? My current understanding from that linked thread above, while the Aquaero w/ Powerboost can handle them @ load, it can't handle the startup power requirements. What will your mod do to that limitation? What would the maximum watts and amps (per channel 1, 2-4, and overall) with your transistor and heatsink mod?

Aquaero w/ PowerBoost:

• Channel #1: 25W, Can startup and throttle 1 DDC 3.25 18W (1.46 amps) pump or 1 D5 Vario 24W (2 amps) pump.
• Channel #2-4: 15W each. 27W total available with DDC on #1.
• Total wattage drawn should not exceed 45W.

I think it would be awesome to run the Aquaero w/ Powerboost off a Meanwell S-320 auxiliary PSU. You could even get a higher wattage version if that helps anything.

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by liguhy

I think it would be awesome to run the Aquaero w/ Powerboost off a Meanwell S-320 auxiliary PSU. You could even get a higher wattage version if that helps anything.

The power limitations basically have nothing to do with the power supply of the Aquaero (which is the PSU of your computer), but more to do with the transistors used, and the amount of current the traces on the PCB can handle.

The stock, unboosted transister on the Aquaro uses the PCB as the heatsink. The main tab of the DPAK package, which happens to be the collector of the transistor, is soldered down to the PCB. So any heat generated, is dissipated by the body of the DPAK, and the back tab, which is soldered to the PCB. If it draws too much current, a lot of heat is gonna be going into the PCB.

There was a thread a couple of days ago, about a guy who had a powerboosted Aquearo, and he saw or smelled smoke coming from it after using it to power his DDC. If you look at the pics in his post, you can look at the solder connection of the tab of the DPAK, and see that some extreme heat went through that thing... almost looking like it reflowed the solder some lol.. Either his pump drew too much current, or that transistor was bad, or had a bad solder connection to the PCB.

What about startup power requirements from 2 DDC 3.25 or 2 D5s? My current understanding from that linked thread above, while the Aquaero w/ Powerboost can handle them @ load, it can't handle the startup power requirements. What will your mod do to that limitation? What would the maximum watts and amps (per channel 1, 2-4, and overall) with your transistor and heatsink mod?

if you look at the graphs I referred to in my last post, you'll see lines on the graph for DC, and various pulse widths. DC is the most demanding. A surge would be a pulse, not sure how long it would be, but my guess would be the transistor can easily handle any surge the pump throws at it. But I guess I will hopefully find out tomorrow.... that is if I ask the lady who does rework stuff.. I'm scared of her

[liguhy]

Originally Posted by Diverge

if you look at the graphs I referred to in my last post, you'll see lines on the graph for DC, and various pulse widths. DC is the most demanding. A surge would be a pulse, not sure how long it would be, but my guess would be the transistor can easily handle any surge the pump throws at it. But I guess I will hopefully find out tomorrow.... that is if I ask the lady who does rework stuff.. I'm scared of her

I now get it all - mucho gracias! So is the DPAK transistor (and whatever is used to dump its heat) the limiting factor, or are there other small parts in there that might not handle the higher requirements? What would be the theoritical limit the Aquaero w/ Powerboost and the T0-220 transistor can handle? I assume it would at least allow 2 DDC 3.25 or D5s, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, I'll let this sit for now so you can go to bed and get the courage to talk to the scary lady tomorrow

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by liguhy

I now get it all - mucho gracias! So is the DPAK transistor (and whatever is used to dump its heat) the limiting factor, or are there other small parts in there that might not handle the higher requirements? What would be the theoritical limit the Aquaero w/ Powerboost and the T0-220 transistor can handle? I assume it would at least allow 2 DDC 3.25 or D5s, but I could be wrong.

I'm pretty positive that transistor is the limiting factor. If you look at the schematic I drew, there is a little transistor BC817-40, it's a tiny surface mount transistor in a SOT-23 package. it's basically the middle man between the processor on the Aquaero, and the output transistor (the DPAK one). It turns on the output transistor (MJD45H11). The output transistor is the one all the current passes through.

I'm no expect be any means, so I could be wrong.

[NaeKuh]

well i think your gonna pop the PCB if you run that much current though it.
Unless im thinking of the wrong product, the fan header should be soldered onto a trace on the PCB of the aquaro no?

The PCB circuit itself i think wont handle that much wattage, and your burn a trace circuit out on your PCB.



Yeah im almost 100% sure your gonna burn the PCB out.
Unless u wire each terminal directly.

Shoggy care to confirm?

I think thats why they limited it to 2Amps. So you wouldn't burn a trace out.

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by NaeKuh

well i think your gonna pop the PCB if you run that much current though it.
Unless im thinking of the wrong product, the fan header should be soldered onto a trace on the PCB of the aquaro no?

The PCB circuit itself i think wont handle that much wattage, and your burn a trace circuit out on your PCB.



Yeah im almost 100% sure your gonna burn the PCB out.
Unless u wire each terminal directly.

Shoggy care to confirm?

I think thats why they limited it to 2Amps. So you wouldn't burn a trace out.

I'm pretty sure I looked at the traces, and they are pretty thick. I can't look again, since i left it in my desk at work. I thought of just use some thick wire to bulk up the traces that power the transistor - which is pretty simple, since all the current passes from the emitter to collector. the Emitter is hooked directly to 12V, and the collector goes to ground through the pump/fan.

It's possible the traces can't carry that much current, but that is easy to fix. The limiting factor of the stock one is the transistor, and heat, which you can see by looking at the datasheet.

If you look here, this the the path current flows. I'm going to wire the emitter directly to 12v of the molex that powers the Aquaero. the Collector is going to go directly to the fans header (positive). the headers ground can be beefed up with a wire from the header ground to the molex ground.

[pby5cat]

Im a senior at cal state northridge majoring in a electrical engineering. Assuming whatever control signals from the Aquearo come in to the Q100 (BC817-40). As the schematic shows the Q100 (BC817-40) output then goes to the input of the Q101 (MJD45H11).

The Q101 (MJD45H11) is setup in a common collector amplifier config, so it will have a voltage gain of about 1 and a very high current gain. so what ever signal or voltage that comes in to the Q101 (MJD45H11), 95% to 99% of the input will come out. The input current is not used to directly feed the output, so not to burn up earlier parts. The output current is taken from the VCC power supply, make shure ur power supply can handle the peak start up currents.

Any idea what the input signal is?

[mozis]

Made this 'ghetto' booster some time ago:

Voltage drop is about 0.4-0.5 (about 100RPM) as far as i remember, made this to drive 6 fans from one channel (its 3 now but will be expanded to 6 in the future).

P.S. sorry for crappy quality and banana background, was taken with my noob mobile phone :/ The black'ish cables you see going out of the frame are connected to 12V from PSU.

[Diverge]

I made all the modifications today, and powered it up. No smoke

The true test will be testing it with a load on it (the pump). I'll try that out later tonight.

[Diverge]

Well, it powers my pump... but i cant do much cause apparently the software doesn't really want to work with windows 7 64 bit. Any way i try to load the software results in a crash... i guess that is just my luck...

[Ketzer7]

Originally Posted by Diverge

Well, it powers my pump... but i cant do much cause apparently the software doesn't really want to work with windows 7 64 bit. Any way i try to load the software results in a crash... i guess that is just my luck...

Wow, that blows. I was planning on using an Aquaero with Win 7 64-bit in my new build, but sounds like that is a no-go.

I hope Shoggy will see this and comment. Maybe they are working on a new aquasuite that does support Win 7? Hopefully?

[mozis]

Originally Posted by Diverge

Well, it powers my pump... but i cant do much cause apparently the software doesn't really want to work with windows 7 64 bit. Any way i try to load the software results in a crash... i guess that is just my luck...

Latest version of the software? Its working like a charm here... Win7 64bit too.

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by mozis

Latest version of the software? Its working like a charm here... Win7 64bit too.

I woke up this morning and realized I didn't have the latest version. I guess I shouldn't play with my computer late at night after coming home from a bar lol

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by mozis

Latest version of the software? Its working like a charm here... Win7 64bit too.

I woke up this morning and realized I didn't have the latest version. I guess I shouldn't play with my computer late at night after coming home from a bar.

Now I just have to figure out the best way to adjust the software to control my pump. It's probably best I wait till my hangover is gone lol

[Diverge]

I just made some brackets for attaching the heatsink

[liguhy]

Originally Posted by Diverge

I just made some brackets for attaching the heatsink

Depending on where that's installed, I bet a 50mm or 60mm fan set on top (to blow across all the PCBs and heatsink) would really help cooling as well. What case are you putting it in and where?

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by liguhy

Depending on where that's installed, I bet a 50mm or 60mm fan set on top (to blow across all the PCBs and heatsink) would really help cooling as well. What case are you putting it in and where?

I won't need any fans for it for a few reasons:

1) It only gets warm when running my pump at 8.3V. The lower the voltage, the more it heats up since the voltage drop across the transistor increases.

2) I'm not sure how low a voltage the pump is okay to run at, but I was playing around with it a little bit, and at lower voltages it become more noisey.. kinda whinny.

3) It's gonna be mounted in the top bay of my case, Lian Li PC-A06FB, which has 3 x 1850 GT's exhausting out the top:


(the top is just sitting on top of the case... I still have to wire up all the fans and temp sensors.)

On the bottom is a TFC 360 rad, with 3 x 1850 GT's pulling air through the rad, and into the case.

[Diverge]

I think I got my pump settings dialed in.

I have it set so the lowest voltage the pump gets is 7.1V, on the aquaero lcd (DMV reading is 7 volts). The highest voltage when the aquaero lcd reads 12V, is 11.7V on the DMV, since there is voltage drop from the transistor (VCEsat).

I vary pump voltage based on the reading from the water temp sensor. Here's some graphs of my pumps voltage vs. time vs. temp.

1st one is from idle, to fully loaded (all 4 cores, and GPU). The beginning portion of the graph is from trying adjust stuff


2nd one is after turning off the loads on the CPU and GPU, so the water temp is slowly cooling, and the pump is slowing down too.


3rd one is when the pump has reached it lowest voltage setting.


The heatsink on my transistor never gets hot enough where I have to pull my finger off, if i press a finger on it. so far I'm happy with my mod

[liguhy]

Originally Posted by Diverge

The heatsink on my transistor never gets hot enough where I have to pull my finger off, if i press a finger on it. so far I'm happy with my mod

Congratulations on the successful mod! Have you tried hooking up two pumps?

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by liguhy

Congratulations on the successful mod! Have you tried hooking up two pumps?

Thanks!

I only have 1 pump, so that is all i've tried. I think with any more of a load, it would need active cooling. I put a thermal probe on the heatsink, and with no air movement near it it gets to like 62 deg C when the pump is at 7 volts (the lower the pump voltage, the more load on the transistor, since the other 5 volts is pretty much converted to heat).

But depending on your low voltage setting, you might be able to pull off 2 pumps. It would probably be best to mod another channel and put a pump on each channel though.

[Vapor]

Did you use any TIM between the heatsink and the transistor? Just curious

Looks like a fun project, glad it's working out so far

[Diverge]

Originally Posted by Vapor

Did you use any TIM between the heatsink and the transistor? Just curious

Looks like a fun project, glad it's working out so far

Yeah, I put some MX-2 on it. It works good... I even ohmed out the heatsink afterward, and it's not electrically connected to the transistors tab or anything else