XMT 300 PC Main Power Unit
The XMT 300 PC power supply features a bright blue enclosure that highlights Miller’s The Power of Blue slogan. Did I mention this thing is huge! The unit is designed to sit on the floor and that is where most people will leave it.
The fiberglass case is divided into an upper and lower half that bolts together in the middle. Miller thoughtfully included two industrial-grade carrying handles on top. I was able to move the unit around by myself and set it up on the desk for our photo shoot but since it weighs a full 80 lbs you might want to ask for help when moving this bad-boy.
The main power On-Off switch is located in the upper right corner on the front panel for easy access. The front panel contains several controls not normally seen on a PC power supply. The two dials in the middle allow tweaking the power supply’s output voltage and adjusting the current limiter circuit. The main +12V rail voltage can be adjusted from 10 to 16 volts using the smaller of the two dials on the left. That is a huge span! I strongly suggest you set the output voltage between 12.0V and 12.5V. Anything below 11.0V or above 13.0V could potentially damage your PC. The extreme adjustments are for advanced users only and are normally only used in conjunction with cryogenic cooling (liquid Nitrogen or dry ice/acetone).
The larger dial in the middle allows setting an upper current limit for the power supply. This is a safety feature, which can help minimize property loss and casualties should something go wrong in the wiring or components inside your PC. Since the Miller PSU incorporates a single, monster +12V rail, there is no 240 VA limit as there are with many of the typical high capacity PC power supplies that have multiple +12V outputs. The original idea behind having multiple +12V outputs was to limit the potential energy available on any user accessible components to 240 VA (12V x 20A). Doing so will minimize the size of the fireball and the amount of molten material that could be ejected from an arc-flash event if a short circuit happened to occur. I wouldn’t want to be in the immediate area if the Miller XMT 300 PC’s full 375A output were somehow discharged instantaneously across a dead short!
I have to admit, some of these new high-output power supplies make me a little nervous when I’m testing them at their full rated capacity. I had a 1kW unit blow up on me several months ago at full load. Now I wear safety glasses and keep a fire extinguisher close at hand during testing – I’m serious.
Looking around to the back of the big Miller XMT 300 PC power supply we see a very heavy duty power cord and numerous louvers for air cooling the internal components. The XMT 300 PC is designed to operate from either 3-phase or 1-phase AC power. This is good as very few if any residential customers will have 3-phase power in their homes or small offices. I used a 1-phase dryer outlet in my basement that is rated for 30A at 240 VAC for testing.
Awesome April fools joke
Awesome April fools joke
I find the article very well
I find the article very well written. Hope to see more tests like this in the near future 😉 I just hope we won’t have to wait a year before the next one 🙂
I’ve been using one of these
I’ve been using one of these to satisfy the insatiable power hungry needs of my home server. Here are the spec’s:
-MSI Z97 PC Mate motherboard
-Intel Pentium G3258 (undervolted)
-2×4 GB Corsair Ram
-3×2 TB WD green HD running in RAID 5
-No video
-No keyboard
-No mouse
-Miller XMT 300 PC Power Supply
For cooling I run everything in an industrial walk-in freezer. So far the Miller XMT 300 has been doing an ok job supplying power but I’m afraid if I add anymore hard drives (I’m thinking about an ssd), I’ll need to upgrade. Maybe tap into those high power lines running near my property.
Good joke, 8 years old
Good joke, 8 years old though.
Excellent memory! Glad you
Excellent memory! Glad you have been with us all these years.
Didn’t have time to read the
Didn’t have time to read the interview, but I’d imagine you’re trying to run a Titan X in that rig?
Ask Allyn if he can arc weld
Ask Allyn if he can arc weld with this.
Awesome, whack 2 of those
Awesome, whack 2 of those into a large computer case, and you will have enough power to run the next gen AMD FX CPU.
That actually would make a
That actually would make a cool case, I am a welder, to buy the case alone from Miller would be costly, but it does have the wheels spinning in my head to fab something like this.
1994 era 220V ARC welder. I
1994 era 220V ARC welder. I remember seeing this April Fools joke quite a few years ago.
Now I know what I’ll get to
Now I know what I’ll get to power my future 300W APU.
Moar power than what my house
Moar power than what my house can bring in lulz.
All kidding aside, a lot of
All kidding aside, a lot of datacentres are moving to semi-centralised LVDC distribution, with each machine only having a basic DC-DC converter to provide the small amount of 3.3V & 5V needed. Some custom boards (e.g. Open Compute) even have the buck converters on the motherboard itself.
So while it’s a welding supply, very similar designs 9without the variable voltage) are already in use pwoering multiple PCs through 12VDC distribution.
heck 80 lb? not much more
heck 80 lb? not much more than a bag of feed!
i just wonder if it;s enough power for a NUC ?
and will it run CRYSIS???!!
Had me going until the flux
Had me going until the flux capacitor bit.
Still I imagine something like this would be quite useful in a dense datacenter environment. There’s really no need for each node to do its own AC->DC conversion there, so long as the DC leads don’t extend very far. Would at least simplify cooling.