[jarling]

With JBcool (a misnomer for the time being) dropping his production because of heat concerns, I thought it might be good to share some ideas as to how to keep your boxes (and your homes) cool.

I have found the best way to keep my TiBook cool is not to put things underneath it and allow air to keep it cool, but rather to use water. I filled two 2 liter soda bottles with water, placed them on their side, secured them so that they wont roll around, and placed my computer on top of them. The fan has never turned on.

I'm not sure how to adapt this to desktop boxes, but placing such bottles by your air conditioner retains the cold better than air and would improve the efficiency of your air conditioner. Its not practical for everyday use, but hey have you seen some of the pictures of these farms. Practicality isnt the issue. (It is practical to do that in your refrigerator if you are leaving for a month or have a second home or something)

Other commonsensical tips, which I'm sure everyone is aware of, are put your computers (if possible) in the basement where it is cooler. Or make sure that you close your blinds to keep the sun out of whatever room you have your boxes.

[jbcool]

Originally posted by jarling:
With JBcool (a misnomer for the time being) dropping his production because of heat concerns, I thought it might be good to share some ideas as to how to keep your boxes (and your homes) cool.

Its not practical for everyday use, but hey have you seen some of the pictures of these farms. Practicality isnt the issue. (It is practical to do that in your refrigerator if you are leaving for a month or have a second home or something)

I'm glad that my mind is not the only one that thinks about building a folding farm in a old refrigerator. Basement works great especially if you have a concreet wall that draws the heat.

[Scotttheking]

Keeping the machines cool and keeping the room / house cool are two different things.

For cooling the machines, you simply need to dissipate the heat into the room, unless you have fancy ducting to get it somewhere else.

For me, I have my machines in an approximately 800 square foot room in my basement, which has some fans to circulate air. I can usually keep the air temp at 80F. The basement also has it's own AC unit, which is run at night. Other parts of the basement are 75F.

For cooling the room / house, you need to draw the heat outside. This is done with an AC unit / heat pump. That is harder to do. If your current AC unit can keep up, you are fine. If it can't, you have to add more. Luckily for me, I don't have that problem. See this thread for the pictures

Currently outside it is 109F, with it reaching 120F last week, and lows in the 90s.

--Scott

[jbcool]

Scoot are all those units at you home???
If they are that is some serious heat transfer power.
Maybe I should have tried to jack you one of the 1/2 dozen units we just installed at work. (Just kidding) Did enjoy the pictures after I quit laughing.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by jbcool:
Scoot are all those units at you home???
If they are that is some serious heat transfer power.
Maybe I should have tried to jack you one of the 1/2 dozen units we just installed at work. (Just kidding) Did enjoy the pictures after I quit laughing.

The last 4 are at my house. The other 5 are at my dad's new house.

[jbcool]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
The last 4 are at my house. The other 5 are at my dad's new house.

Well I guess that explains the partially installed units in the pictures. I understand your electric bill now. Your house is much more efficent than this dump I am renting. It only has one unit that is smaller than any of yours, which is overworked. Had a heat pump at the house in Wichita until it cost me $375 one winter month.
Change to high efficency gas heater and 2 1/2 ton a/c unit for my small 1100 sq ft house (basement is another 1100 sq ft.).

Built a 900 sq ft garage for the farm equipment when I get back home to finish the electrical, plumbing, and a/c work. That will allow me to get the 20 computers out of the house. Nothing like remote administration of computers.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by jarling:
Other commonsensical tips, which I'm sure everyone is aware of, are put your computers (if possible) in the basement where it is cooler. Or make sure that you close your blinds to keep the sun out of whatever room you have your boxes.

For the first time this summer I am having problems keeping my upstairs cooled. I have had the unit checked and he said it was OK and it is not as hot here this summer as usual. I guess it is the 9 CPU's I have running in the upstairs that is causing the overload. I think I am going to relocate my work room to the basement and see if that helps. The upstairs unit runs 24/7 right now, I am dreading my power bills coming! With a 45 year old 3200 Square Foot house and an in ground pool, my power bills in the summer have been running $600+ each month anyway.

[Shaktai]

Been too darned hot the last couple of days here in the NorthWest too. Don't have air conditioning so I shut down my boxes for a couple of days.

Supposed to be cooler tomorrow, maybe 80's then back down to the upper 70's, but without air conditioning, the 90's are just too hot. 11 PM and I still can't cool down the apartment enough. Guess I need another box fan or two to move more of the cooler night air through. Only need them a few days a year though. All goes well I'll fire the boxes back up tomorrow night.

[RealMac]

We have AC here, but my room (has a dual G4/867, 19" CRT, 20" cinema display is crazy warm.

The tower is probably the worst as far as heat goes. That's what happens when you have a dual machine at 100% cpu load though I guess.

I really haven't noticed a huge difference in operating temperature when the machine is idle however. Shrug...

My ibook used to run really warm, even without dnet running. So warm that I wouldn't call it a laptop. More like a laproaster

[mikkyo]

I had posted a big reply to this thread when it first started but my browser crashed before the post took.

I was too disturbed to rewrite everything.
I guess now I will try..

You can change out your PC power supplies on dedicated crunchers from 400W units to 250W units. Sure, they say that the supply only makes full wattage when being taxed completely, however I have electric bill proof that shows otherwise. A smaller supply being taxed close to its limit has better efficiency that a large one not being full utilized.

You can also go into the BIOS and turn off all hardware you don't use on your dedicated crunchers. You don't need modem, serial, parallel, floppy, audio, etc.
I have found this alone helps a bunch.
For macs you can unplug all the unnecessary items, CD/DVD/Zip, modem(they just unplug with maybe 1 screw holding them), all USB/FireWire devices, and use a KVM switch set up with only one display and keep it off when not in use.

For PCs, you can use one 400W supply to power 2 motherboards, if you have a case less or custom case farm.
You will need ATX splitter cables to go from the one supply to the motherboards and you probably have to make them yourself.

If you have units in enclosures, put them against a cement wall in the basement, or on a cement floor. Having them pushed right up against each other doesn't help, so spread them out along the cold wall or floor.

You can also remove all your case fans, run open case without the sides, and use one 120V desk fan or box fan to blow across all 10 of your machines lined up in a row(check the temp of the first and last machines in the BIOS to make sure everything is all cool(heh).

If you are really creative you can put all your machines in a donut shape with the backs facing each other, on a table(s) with a hole in the center about a foot or more off the ground. All the fans blowing out the machines can create a nice convection flow up the middle to help cool them. You may need to run the machines upside down depending on your case configuration(the power supply up top usually sucks, but sometimes blows, and case fans blow out the side or bottom- you want intake down low and heat out up high, in the middle for the convention to work). Adding a fan underneath helps.
I have a crazy friend with his farm this way and it is amazing. His basement has like a heat core in the center of his 20 machine donut circle round table. They guy even has a thermal imager and you can watch the crazy convection on his TV if you are bored.

By far the cheapest thing to do is build a motherboard holder farm unit that has all the motherboards separated by just the right amount and is either open or all enclosed in a big box with house fans blowing through and split power supplies running the beast.
You can save a ton of power with the single high wattage supplies split and running 2-4 mother boards.

If you do everything you can with your PCs, your electric use for the machines you have should drop around 60% over plain old enclosed units. For macs it is a bit harder, though you can definately make them use less power. You could probably make a splitter for a mac power supply as well, however I doubt many of you have dedicated mac cruchers you want to turn into caseless farms.
Some modern macs may even use PC style power supplies, so you might be able to get a smaller wattage version.

[jbcool]

Just a bit of gee wiz information to go with mikkyo's last post.
Have M7VIG Pro motherboard, AMD 2400+ processor, WD 20GB hard drive,
512 MB memory. Have four of these running and the are using approx. 126 watts each when running folding at home at 100%. So two 450w power supplies can run two setups with room to spare, one motherboard on the 450w power supply uses about 3 watts more than when on the 230w power supply.

[Scotttheking]

I need to figure out a way to cool more efficiently. *mutters very bad words at the $450 electric bill*

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
I need to figure out a way to cool more efficiently. *mutters very bad words at the $450 electric bill*

Once there was a song... "North to Alaska"

[jbcool]

OAT 98 degrees, IAT a 75 degrees.
It is amazing how much difference the A/C works when the refirgerant levels are correct and the coil outside is cleaned. I can now be referred to as the cool guy again. Eight boxes running at 100% and only 75, Ya hoo!!!! Maybe the other three kids can play

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by jbcool:
OAT 98 degrees, IAT a 75 degrees.
It is amazing how much difference the A/C works when the refirgerant levels are correct and the coil outside is cleaned. I can now be referred to as the cool guy again. Eight boxes running at 100% and only 75, Ya hoo!!!! Maybe the other three kids can play

Let's go!
Try and catch me in f@h.
Personally, I've mostly given up on quiet cooling. I need to get earplugs for my computer area, it's so darn loud. I also blew the breaker, so I need to reduce power draw, too. Maybe getting rid of the fans...

[jbcool]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Let's go!
Try and catch me in f@h.
Personally, I've mostly given up on quiet cooling. I need to get earplugs for my computer area, it's so darn loud. I also blew the breaker, so I need to reduce power draw, too. Maybe getting rid of the fans...

You turkey! You blew me away at F@H again yesterday, passed my daily total like I was standing still. I am using the tip fans, get the real name when I get a few minutes to find them. The keep the 2400+ cool, cost $25 at Fry's and don't make all that much noise.
I went to 230W power supplies until I can start running two off of one power supply. Bought a watts up pro meter so I can determine the actual power draw of each machine.