I’m trying to make a PSU cable that will allow the installation of consumer grade GPUs on my Dell server.
The reason for this is that Dell cables ( at least the 04VPD3) are made for enterprise grade GPUs like the Tesla V100. The one that I bought is short and it cost me 15€.
Coming back to topic, I would like to make my custom cable but I can’t seem to find the part number of the connector, on the motherboard side.
Does anyone knows what kind of connector this is and where I can buy it? Or is it a proprietary connector from Dell?
I attached a photo of the connector.
I noticed this kind of connector also on other server motherboards from other manufactors.
I think this is some connector for hi-power coming from the Open Compute Project specification.
The other option is the 4VPD3 which is for double wide GPU’s.
However any GPU that uses fans for cooling is not going to work well in a server and the GPU enablement kit for an R740 is way more complicated than the R730. You need high performance heatsinks, high performance fans, a different memory/CPU cooling baffle and a random bit of mylar foam for airflow purposes. Oh and if you want to go above 250W on the card then you need riser option 16 which is riser 2E and 3B.
Thanks for the precious tip on the connector, @gysi !
I will order some and test.
@jabuzzard that’s the kind of challenge I love. If needed, I will try to design some ducts, adapters, etc. for the intended purpose.
I ordered and tried the 4VPD3 cable but it’s connector doesn’t match the connectors on the consumer grade GPUs.
As I’m aiming for the GPUs with the biggest VRAM, accessible to the mere mortals, I considered the Tesla V100 and that cable will fit those GPUs.
As I wasn’t being successful on the hunt for the connector and before reading the reply from @gysi , I found and ordered a breakout board for server PSUs that, in theory, will allow me to use GPUs with higher power rating.
This kind of breakout boards owe their existence to the cryptominers. They created these kind of boards to supply multiple GPUs and their startup can be synced with the server’s PSU.
