[caryjames]

Hey guys, I am running a Dual Core Xeon setup and am wondering about heat transfer etc. My office has air conditioning but the heat generated from my machine is pretty frustrating in the summer.... feels like 50 degrees Celsius!!! So my questions are

How hot do your machines run?
Do the water cooled units vent less heat to your environment?
Any thoughts on cooler machines?

I would love to hear all your thoughts!!!!!!!

[wfstecko]

At home I'm running an 8 core Mac Pro and the A/C does no good on the second floor. My external Lacie hard drive gets really hot. I could probably fry an egg on it.

Walter

[Bubbaloo]

I think the only solution is cooler running hardware. Any cooling system has to transfer that heat to the surrounding air. Maybe you can hook up a dryer type venting system to your computer?

[itsallgoode9]

I think the only solution is cooler running hardware. Any cooling system has to transfer that heat to the surrounding air. Maybe you can hook up a dryer type venting system to your computer?

I have actually considered doing this to mine!! haha. the back of my computer faces a window and could be done very easily, in a custom way. setup the exhaust fans to vent the air out during the summer and bring the cold air into my computer during the winter.

[Bubbaloo]

You don't want to do that... Moisture in your computer would be very bad.

[itsallgoode9]

I think it would work fine? I looked into and found a few people in forums that have done the same thing. winter air here is very dry air so that shouldn't cause a problem? maybe the huge temp difference would condensate though?

anyways, i'm getting this thread off topic.

As was said before, even with water cooling, the radiator is depositing the heat somewhere...which is right into your room. I would just recommend not to overclock...that will help. Last winter my computer somehow picked up one of my profiles when i was testing out heavy overclocking. I didn't realize it was using this profile for a month or so and was wondering why my room was so hot. turns out my computer was ideling in the high 80s ... and the computer case was HOOOOTTT to the touch. This was right after I installed my brand new 980x hopefully no long term damage to the chip.

Overclocking will definitely heat up your room alot!!. If you have an air conditioner in your room, i recommend keeping the door closed, so the cold air isn't leaving to help cool another part of the house. If you don't have an air conditioner in your room, keep your door open, so you don't keep all the heat trapped inside. Also, if you aren't bothered by noise, keep a fan to help blow heat out of the room. That's pretty much what i do.

[caryjames]

Thanks folks... I was hoping for a different answer . Would be nice to have these machines run cooler... maybe Steve Jobs can work on it for his next project.

[polynurb]

some inspiration i found:



the image is from page 4 of this thread:

http://www.overclock.net/water-cooling/ ... house.html

[dmeyer]

You don't want to do that... Moisture in your computer would be very bad.

As long as you don't have actual precipitation coming in it would be fine. From a humidity standpoint the internal and exernal air is going to be similar unless you're running a dehumidifier for the whole house.

I'd definitely put an extra air filter in place though to prevent dust and pollen from the outside air getting in.

[dmeyer]

How hot do your machines run?

Our office gets up to 78F ambient during off-hours in the summer. Server room never above 60F or so

Do the water cooled units vent less heat to your environment?

No, they just get it out of your machine and into the surrounding air faster.

Any thoughts on cooler machines?

Newer architectures will generally be cooler for the same speed. Also consider whether your video card is the culprit as they can put out even more heat than CPUs...

[max3d]

I have the same problem and am still pondering how to resolve it. The airconditioning can't keep up, but that would be a matter of upsizing the unit. However it will send a lot of cold air in the room which I don't like. Even with all the oscillating and swivelling I still have one single point, the workstation, where the fan blows out air of about 50 degrees.

I'm considering getting the air of the top fan tunneled through the wall and put a fan there to blow it to the ouside directly. It looks like a sensible solution in the sense that hot air which was never in your room doesn't have to be cooled then. I you have a large fan (25cm f.i.) and you isolate the pipe this seems a good solution.

However I haven't tried it yet. You would need a flexible large diameter pipe like they sell with portable aircon units. Isolation and aluminium to protect the pipe as it becomes hot itself and a way to get the fan at the outside of the building to avoid noise and a blocked air flow.
Anybody ever heard of it and if so did it work?

Meanwhile I'm thinking about down clocking instead of overclocking. If I can lower the voltages for the cpu and gpu without a huge penalty in speed it could be worth it. Not sure yet. It would be my 'summer profile' just stored as a bunch of fan and voltage settings.
If people tried this I would like to hear of it.

Max.

[caryjames]

Thanks for the discussion everyone. I think that I may just have to live with the increased temp during the summer, unless I hire a contractor to create a vent fan directly from the box outside. I like the idea of the computer fans outside but I am not a fan of the DIY appearance .