Crackheads need for crackpot solutions to frosty problem.

[Rob Stow]

I like the idea, which I had a hole in my PC room wall! ;p

It is easier than you think to make a hole like that.
Just be careful to not hit any power lines and to seal
it *very* well so you don't have moist air leaking into
the wall where it will condense on the insulation.

However, consider something else I'd like to try some day:
Use a water cooling kit but put the radiator outside. That
way you would only need two 10 mm holes for the coolant
hoses plus another small hole to provide power to fans
on the radiator during the warm weather. (Alternatively,
just move the radiator into the house for the summer.)

I'd probably add some desiccant packs (big ones) to the bottom and top
of the inside of the case to help keep moisture at a minimum, not sure
how much they'd really last or help though with constant moving air.

What sort of system do you have,

Its not mine. It belongs to a friend who does semi-pro
video editting. I just get to play around with it and
do weird experiments like this one.

I built the system for him, so I know ever little thing
inside it. It is based on the Tyan S2885, with two Opty
248's, 8 GB of PC3200, six 200 GB SATA drives, a DVD burner,
and a Radeon 9800 Pro.

He recently upgraded from Opty 240's so now I've got
his old processors as the first step towards building
my own Opty dualie.

you doing some massive over clocking or
just going for max cool and quite?

Just cool and quiet. The motherboard has no real
overclocking options.

 

[Robert Redelmeier]

it is noticeably noisier than the slower 120 mm fan while
still moving less air We figure it is about 7 cfm for 80
mm at medium speed vs 10 cfm for 120 mm at slow speed.
And the whole point of this scheme is noise reduction.
OK.

Tonight we are going to try something different. Two stacked
80 mm fans case fans with one going all the time at its
lowest speed and one hooked up to the thermostat. Hopefully

Sounds good. Preferably run the downstream fan constantly,
the upstream on t'stat.

I guess a measured hole on the cold inlet would be a little bit
noisier because the fans will run a bit more. I wouldn't worry
about humidity unless the room has a hot air duct blowing in.
The PSU exhaust should keep the room positive.

that will allow us to maintain positive pressure all the time
Good.

I have read about a cpu cooler that uses two stacked fans
spinning in opposite directions for higher airflow and

Stacked fans work (mor head, same flow). Reverse requires
blades cut just so.

Its got a pair of Opty 248's, six 200 GB SATA drives, a
Radeon 9800 Pro, eight 1 GB PC3200 DIMMs, and sundry others,
plus heat wasted by PSU inefficiency. Not hard to hit 155
W even when idle.

Measuring at the wall outlet shows a quick climb to 390
W when the system boots up, then it settles down to about
360 W under normal usage (it is primarily used for semi-pro
video editting). When idle the draw is about 210 W.

Wow! That's a pretty loaded box. My guess is that vidcard
is a pretty big draw.

-- Robert

 

[Rob Stow]

Sounds good. Preferably run the downstream fan constantly,
the upstream on t'stat.

I guess a measured hole on the cold inlet would be a little bit
noisier because the fans will run a bit more. I wouldn't worry
about humidity unless the room has a hot air duct blowing in.

It doesn't. It was originally intended to be just a laundry
room so no provision was made for heating or air conditioning.

That computer (and a dual Xeon box in the same room) made
the room is extremely warm in the summer, hence the initial
attempt to make use of the dryer vent holes for summertime
heat exhaust. Winter use of those vent holes for computer
cooling is just a fun experiment.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

Measuring at the wall outlet shows a quick climb to 390 W
when the system boots up, then it settles down to about
360 W under normal usage (it is primarily used for semi-pro
video editting). When idle the draw is about 210 W.

Taking 210W and multiplying by the typical PSU efficiency of 0.7 gives
147W, which is in the ballpark of the 155W calculated.

 

[Rob Stow]

Taking 210W and multiplying by the typical PSU efficiency of 0.7 gives
147W, which is in the ballpark of the 155W calculated.

Except the 30% PSU /ineffiency/ is turned into heat by
the PSU, which in turn helps to heat up the cold air - and
it was the amount of energy needed to heat up that air that
led Mr. Redelmeier to come up with the 155 W number.

 

[Rob Stow]

Something at a site I was just at used the phrase
"micturition to windward".

Why did I immediately start thinking that somewhere in the
Culture there simply must be a GSV with that name ? D