I'm thinking on replacing the PSU of my MSS unit since it's fan makes a really annoying whining noice.

What do you think of Shuttles pc62 PSU? Its compatible with the pc40 and is 200W like the HiPro but the +5V has a max load of 10A compared with the HiPro's 13A and the "Total combined ouput wattage (3.3V, 5V): >= 70W".

Erail I've read that you have installed the pc40 PSU, how quiet is this compared with the other fans on the MSS? Could you also please elaborate your pinout comparison attachment. I'm a rookie on this and have no ide how to match the single yellow +12V pin on the pc40 with the three yellow +12V pins on the HiPro.

The fans on the PC40 are very quiet. There is a fan on each end of the power supply and are attached to power by standard 3 pin plugs, so very easy to change out if they are too loud. All yellows +12v come off the same point in a PC40 so just use the yellows going to the 4 pin molex connectors cut to the right length an inserted into the 20 pin connector.

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HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

I bought the supplies I needed to do the PC 40 coversion from PC Performance.com but you can get the parts at many different places.
Products
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1 x Deluxe Molex Hand Crimp Tool (CRIMPER-DX) = $24.95
2 x Minifit Pins Female - Silver - 4 Pack (MINIFIT-F) = $0.98
2 x Connectx™ ATX 20 pin Female Pins, GOLD-plated - 20 Pack (ACR-CB8133) = $7.98
1 x Molex Mini-Fit Connector Pin Extractor (MINIFITOOL) = $24.99

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

Thanks Erail.
Now I only have to find a cheep PC62 PSU somewhere.

hi there! I'm wondering: On my brandnew EX470 I am facing also issues with a "really annoying whining noice" of the psu fan...so I ask me if this is a "normal" behavior of the EX470 or if I just have a kind of "bad" unit... could anyone give me a hint? Thx

I took a close look at the PC62 and it looks like it will work but I worry a little bit about the 70 watt maximum on combined 3.3 and 5 volt output. The stock power suppy is 80 watts and the pc40 I used was 105 watts.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

jochen_81, both my mediasmarts servers were pretty quiet. It may be a bad fan. You can either call HP or replace the fan yourself but that would void your warranty big time.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

Most likely a bad unit. Mine is very quite unless the fans are running at 100% and then the sound isn't a whining noise.

I think my stock power supply died as I heard a small pop sound and then looked over at my server and it was dead and I couldn't fire it backup. So I ripped it apart and pulled the supply and jumped the green and black and tried to get some voltage measurements off some of the red/yellow/orange leads across to a black and there was nothing but a little crackle noise when I plugged it in, hence I think the power supply is dead. So now what to do as I wouldn't mind plugging in an upgraded power supply but given buying a PC40 for $80 and toss in $60 worth of tools and hardware (I'm more a software guy then hardware anyways), and I'm starting to think of just building a new server from scratch so I can finally get clear of some of the power limitations of the HP Media Server (I'm more an Intel guy then an AMD dude). I guess I can see if HP would send me out a new power supply and go from there as well. How much work was it to up your power supply and is it really worth it?

By the way thanks for all the posts as I have been reading some of the threads about CPU upgrades and all. I upped mine to a LE1640 and chucked in 2GB of ram, but the dual core thing would be a nice upgrade as well but I'm just not sure that the results have been consistent enough for me to jump into that game as well.

Steely Dan

It wasn't that big a deal to swap the power supplies, the reason I bought crimpers was you have to use some of the 12V yellow wires from the molex connectors and add them to the 20 pin power connector, so I used the pins and crimper to do that. The extractor is handy to remove the pins from the 20 pin connector because you have many to swap locations. The PC40 has 2 fans, intake ans exhaust so it does run a little cooler. Orther than that it functions well but it didn't stop the shutdowns of the 4050e CPU. I had to go with the 3800+ EE SFF which operates extremely well.

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HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

For those of you that want to change your PSU because of a whining fan, I suggest adjusting the screws around the fan while the unit is on so you can hear the difference. Just remove the front grill and do it from there. It worked on mine. I found that the stress on the fan corners caused by the tension on the screws did not allow the fan to sit properly causing the noise. Try this before you decide to replace the PSU. It could be as simple as that.

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HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

Erail and pettt, I want to thank you profusely for your power supply effort and the wiki documentation. I had no luck with HP on helping (giving me wrong part numbers and sources for their supply). It was through your excellent effort and documentation that I am now quickly back up and running.

I have a couple comments and notes I would like to add to help others:

1) On the wiki document, "Pin Configuration Reference": The MSS "Green" wire is labelled +5V DC (Always On). That wire is typically called PS_ON or something similar in ATX documentation. At first I was concerned when told to short pins 1 & 2 that I might be shorting the +5 supply, so I did some research on the pin definition, and found that it was a logic signal not a power supply.

2) I liked erail's recommendation for a PC40. However I couldn't find a Shuttle PC40 supply - they're discontinued. I was directed to a PC50, and found those very hard to get a hold of or discontinued. I finally ordered a Shuttle PC60, which has equal or better current specs on all the supply voltages. It seems to work just fine. It only has one fan, but it is on the backside versus the front on the HP Power Supply.

3) Mounting the PC60: One of the 3 mounting holes are slightly off, so I ended up using only 2. Otherwise had no problem mounting it.

4) Wiring the PC60:

a) All wire color matches with the Pin Configuration section in the wiki.

b) There are a lot of extra cable/connector outputs. To get rid of all the unused "bulk" I opened the power supply and cut most of the wires there at the PC board.

c) The PC60 has two 12V supplies. One supply feeds as a yellow wire. The second supply feeds as a yellow wire with a black stripe. I assumed they couldn't be wired together, so I only used the yellow wires. There were only two wires that were yellow-black, so there weren't enough wires to support the MSS connector in any case. I removed the yellow-black wires.

d) The wiki wire hookup doc says that an additional two black and two yellow feeds are necessary for the MSS 24 pin connector. It turns out there is an additional cable and connector coming out of the PC60 that has two yellow and two black wires, so it was very easy to co-op those four wires and I had all I needed.

e) I could use almost all the wire lengths with Molex connectors as-is from the PC60 existing 24 pin connector. So in the end I only needed to crimp about 8 female Molex pins (so I only needed to buy 8 Molex pins - could use ATX gold pins or silver pins as recommended in the wiki). Four crimps were for the additional 4 wires (2 black and 2 yellow) and the remaining 4 because I broke some pins (green and purple wires because they were so thin) removing them from the original connector. So it was a relatively simple matter of popping most of the wires out of the old connector and stuffing them into the new connector.

f) The crimping tool did an adequate job on crimping the Molex, although it required very careful handling. I realize that an official Molex crimping tool can cost over $300, so for $25 it wasn't a bad deal. I found with the thinner wires on the Green and Purple pins didn't crimp well so I ended up needing to solder those joints to guarantee a good connection.

g) Using the Molex extractor tool was not easy. I used a needle nose pliers in conjunction with the tool to help pull the wire/pin out. But it works, so stick with it.

5) I found that Performance-PCs (http://www.performance-pcs.com) gave great service and were very helpful on the phone. Very responsive on shipping too. I purchased the Molex pins and tools there.

6) I ordered the Shuttle PC60 from Circo Technologies (http://www.circotech.com/) and found them also extremely helpful on the phone and also very responsive on shipping. They seemed to have very good prices.

Erail and pettt - thanks again!

- Bob

Bob, thanks a bunch for your documentation of using the PC 60. I've added this to the Wiki article in the Compatible Power Suppplies section with a link back to your post. I've also fixed the labeling of pin 2 on the MSS connector to be Power On.



This is the P4 connection mentioned in the "Rewiring the connector" section.

Do you by chance try the "alterntive" method of removing the pins from the Molex connector? I'm just curious how it worked for you since it sounds like the molex tool was a little tricky to use.

Thanks again for sharing your results!
Alex

_________________
Alex Kuretz
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Alex,

Glad to help. It's nice to have the information from this site when your system dies and you have no where to go....



Good point, I missed that...



For 18 of the 24 pins from the SFX connector, I used the Molex removal tool, took the pins out of the SFX connector and popped them into the MSS connector. Other than a little difficulty getting them out of the SFX connector the rest was easy and the existing length worked out well. So no cutting or crimping involved there.

On 2 of the 24 wires from the SFX connector, I broke (pulled out of the crimp) the wires (the thinner green and purple wires) when trying to remove those pins from the connector, so I had to re-crimp those before I put them into the MSS connector. They broke because of the force I seemed to need to use to remove the pins (even with the tool). I must have been not using that removal tool correctly. There should have been no crimping involved with these pins.

The final 4 pins were the new additions to the MSS connector. The P4 connection, as you noted, was much longer than needed (although I suppose in retrospect I could have looped it around in the WHS housing), so I cut those wires and re-crimped those lines.

In hindsight, if I was skillful with the removal tool, didn't break any wires and was willing to loop the longer P4 wires, I suppose I could have gotten by without needing to purchase the crimping tool and new pins. I'll leave that to another adventurous soul....

All the best,

Bob

Looks like my EX470's PSU died, so I get to swap out the PSU. Unfortunately, my warranty had expired 3 months ago.

I figure I would also upgrade the CPU (I had upgraded the RAM already) I could not find a wiki page for the CPU replacement. Is the following link the definitive CPU upgrade thread? Is there a more concise thread since it may take me a while to go through 71 pages on postings?
Saw a EX470 post with a Amd X2

Thanks.