I have 3 more case fans ordered. My idea is to keep most of the current modifications and add these 3 fans to force more air in the right places. The real issue right now is the fact that the computer vents into the room and the ambient temperature in the room is rising as summer continues. A regular box fan is now circulating air in the room and that is likely the most important change to date.

The tests will continue. For now, the system is running with temps in the mid - high 70s. Everything works fine below 82C and the goal is to keep it below 80C.

I doubt more case fans will help much if the room temp gets too high. You need to push the hot air from the GPU to the outdoors so it doesn't heat up the room. The box fan in the room will make you feel cooler because you sweat and are cooled by evaporation but your computer doesn't sweat so eventually the box fan in the room won't help either. Here's some inexpensive ideas for blowing the heat out of the house.

If you're in an older home you may have the old sash and frame style windows. If they extend down to about the height of a desk or table you're nearly done. Put a 110 volt fan in the window (the box fan you mention might be just the right size) such that it blows air from the room to the outdoors. Next, if your GPU is like mine it blows the hot air out the back of the computer case and not into the case. If so then put your computer on a table that is just the right height to line up the GPU exhaust with the window fan intake. Even if the GPU exhaust vent is 6" below the window fan and 6" behind the fan, most of the hot air will rise into the fan intake and be blown out the window. However you can run the window fan at a lower (quieter) speed and catch more of the hot exhaust if you can line up the GPU exhaust and fan intake as close as possible.

If your home is newer then you probably have smaller windows that are higher on the wall. You might be able to put the computer on a tall cabinet or shelving unit. Or go to the hardware store and buy a couple of angle brackets, find the studs in the wall, screw the brackets to the studs, screw a shelf on top of the brackets and set your computer on it. If you're worried about the computer being knocked off a high shelf then screw the case to the shelf, tie it down with some twine or a bungi cord. Put the shelf at the right height to line up the GPU exhaust with the fan intake. You can determine the proper height with a few measurements and a sketch. Or you can put the fan in the window and have someone hold the computer at the height required to line up the exhaust and intake, then put a light pencil mark on the wall at the height of the bottom of the computer. That's the height your shelf needs to be at.

With the fan in the window you'll have an open gap above or beside the fan. There's 100 ways to cover that hole. Cut a piece of plywood to fit and paint it, staple a piece of polyethylene to the wall outside or inside, stuff a big pillow in it, for a few examples. You can make it look very nice or not so nice it's up to you.

If you can put a fan in the window but there is no way you can place your computer up close behind the fan then go to the hardware store and buy a length of flexible dryer exhaust duct. I mean clothes dryer. You could leave your computer on the floor below the window or put it 20 feet away if you get a long enough duct. Fasten one end of the duct to the computer so the GPU exhaust blows into it and fasten the other end to the window fan intake. There's various way of fastening the duct to fan/computer. If you can't line up the fan and computer as mentioned above and are forced to use the duct then let me know and i'll give you some ideas for fastening the duct.

You might be tempted to just attach the duct to the computer and place the other end in the window and not attached to a fan. Bad idea. The flexible duct is rough inside and the small fan in the GPU won't push air through it very well due to turbulence and friction. You need a fan at the exhaust end of the duct to help the little fan in the GPU. Also, the longer the duct the more heat you'll lose out of the sides of the duct back into the room. That's why putting the computer right behind the fan and eliminating the duct is best.

Some of my suggestions obviously need tools. If you don't have them you can often rent them for a few hours at low cost. Also they don't cost much to buy new and an electric drill and a saw come in handy for so many jobs. Some hardware stores will cut wood for you. You can nice buy pre-finished shelves in various lengths and widths, you don't need to buy a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood just for 1 small shelf. If there's any house construction going on near you don't be afraid to ask for a few pieces out of their scrap pile. It's going to the landfill anyway. They may even cut it for you for a 1/2 dozen beers.

If you have the kind of windows that slide back and forth in tracks then it's very easy to cut a piece of 1/4" or 1/8" thick material exactly the same height as the framed glass that slides in the tacks. Your material will then be held in place by the tracks, same as the glass is held in place. Lift the glass up and pull the bottom clear of the track to get it out and on the table where you can measure the height very precisely.

Ah, Dagorath, my friend, you see? This is exactly what I try to accomplish by bringing forward my problems: others also come forward and you are presented with a platform on which you can explore the problems and try to help those of us capable of improving our technology.

My Maingear computer actually vents all of the hot air vertically. The whole internal structure of the machine is turned 90 degrees so that heat vents upward and draws in cool air near the bottom of the machine. The best illustration of this is that all of the cabling to ports is on the top of the machine instead of the back of the machine.

My Maingear machine sits between two windows in a corner. Both windows are kept open. I do have a box fan in one window to exhaust the hot air out of the house.

My house is a masterpiece of 100 year old Craftsman architecture. I would not be tempted to do anything to disturb this architecture, so I have done what I can best get done.

You might think of starting a blog with entries based on the kind of discourse in your last reply. You could alert crunchers to the blog's existence in the various project forums. You could go way beyond the problem of heat. You could even push the benefits of Linux to your readers.

Thanks again for all of your time and all of your help.

Go NJ Devils!!

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All of your venting ideas are great. I have 2 cruncher in a basement / garage. It is a large space and below ground level on 3 sides with a block wall and concrete floor. The good news is that the floor and walls are usually cool - even in the summer but the air does not move much.

The box fan moves enough air to keep to neutralize the local hotspot around the computer. By the end of the summer we may have issues but for now, all is well.

Has anyone looked at the advantages / disadvantages of going 220V instead of 110V for AC power? Most power supplies appear to be more efficient at 220V.

Thank you

I've never compared the specs for psu efficiency on 220 vs. 110 but I'll tell you something else about 220 vs. 110 you may find interesting. Every house in North America has 220 running to the meter and the customer is charged on the basis of 220. To get the 110 they split off half of the 220 and discard it but guess what... you pay for the half you use plus the half you don't use!! That's not such a big deal when most 110 appliances don't use a lot of power anyway (light bulbs, refrigerators, etc) but you NEVER want to use 110 for a water heater, cooking, heating the home or drying clothes because those appliances draw high amps.

With the cost of electricity rising the way it is these days I think people should consider switching all appliances to 220 if they can, including computers that run 24/7, just because of the fact they use everything you pay for instead of throwing half away.

The efficiency of a power supply running on 220 is another matter with obvious positive benefits in addition to what I mention above.

Pick up a book or search the net for DIY wiring. The electrical code is pretty standard all across North America. You don't have to have an electrician run a 220 line to your computer to be legal and stay covered by insurance. In most states and provinces the law says only that the installation must meet the code. If your house burns down they won't ask who wired it, they'll look at the wiring and if it meets the code you're OK. That's MOST states and provinces, not necessarily yours.

Dagorath-

I think here you are mistaken. I believe that the 220 is split and that I have 2 110 lines serving in my electrical panel.

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The higher the Voltage the less loss there is in bringing it to your door.
The issue is really that many appliances don't need to operate at anything near 220V or even 110V. All the little power adapters are very wasteful, and prone to failure. How many 12V devices are there?
The problem is the lack of IEEE standardization in these areas; every new device now comes with a power adapter with a different Amp/Volt rating and uses one of several socket prong standards, and numerous (>10 and sometimes bespoke) power adapter connectors.
We need standards and homes to facilitate 220, 110, 12, 1.2V or 20A, 10A, 5A, 1A from the mains (or similar). Mini step-down generators at the door rather than at the gadget.
While most phones could have used a standard 1A or 5V..., the companies are more interested in fighting for market domination, and selling replacement parts, that were designed to fail within 2months of the RTM period.

To some extent even expensive PSU's are wasteful; the step down from 220/110V to 12V, 5V, 3V... An 80+ PSU wastes close to 20% of the electric. One 95+ device, for the house/street, would be much more efficient. Unfortunately there is little or no competition from electric companies, and certainly no such research into such possibilities. It's now all about greed and money. Some groups of small countries share but one supplier, and in the UK the government broke up what was a well oiled state run business into sell-able parts just to create the illusion of competition. What it did was increase electric costs beyond all reason.

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Dagorath-

I think here you are mistaken. I believe that the 220 is split and that I have 2 110 lines serving in my electrical panel.

Not sure what you mean by "2 110 lines serving". I think your home probably has more than 2 110 circuits branching out of the panel so I'm confused what you mean.

I got my info from a Master Electrician (the step up after Journeyman) and a power-grid engineer at one of our local electric utilities confirmed it. I used the word "split" which is ambiguous. 220 volt AC has a +110 component and a -110 component. The waveform alternates from 110 V above 0 (the + component) to 110 V below 0 (the - component). What they do is take the +110 component and feed it to your 110 volt circuits in the house. That's what I meant by "split".

The -110 component isn't used (except in the 220 volt circuits) but since the meter counts both the + and - halves of the waveform, you pay for the - half that is never used in the 110 circuits.

[quote]Dagorath-


The -110 component isn't used (except in the 220 volt circuits) but since the meter counts both the + and - halves of the waveform, you pay for the - half that is never used in the 110 circuits.

Really funny, electric companies would certainly love that idea.

More accurate is that AC power generation always uses a 3 phased system, or 3 lines if you want.
Nowadays, at least in Europe, each house gets a 380 V AC inlet with the 3 phases or lines. This allows to split/balance the power consumption over 3 different 220 V AC phases or lines. The 220 V AC exists between any phase and a single neutral line. Big consumers (heating devices/stoves...) are connected using 2 or 3 phases at 380 V AC, allowing to limit the amount of copper needed to transfer the required power (wattage, kWh).
In older distribution systems or houses you occasionally find only 1 or 2 phases being connected/used.

So in the USA this would then be a 220 V AC inlet with 1, 2 or 3 phases/lines. This allows for 1, 2 or 3 "lines" of 110 V AC, but also for 220 V AC between any two phases.

Enjou your day.

Alain

Alain Maes said much more accurately what I was trying to say.

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[quote]Dagorath-


The -110 component isn't used (except in the 220 volt circuits) but since the meter counts both the + and - halves of the waveform, you pay for the - half that is never used in the 110 circuits.

Really funny, electric companies would certainly love that idea.

They love it so much here in North America they're actually doing it. Like I said, a Master Electrician told me that's the way it works here and a power-grid engineer at one of our electric utilities confirmed it. I see you're from Belgium. Have you talked to any electricians or power-grid engineers from N. America lately?

More accurate is that AC power generation always uses a 3 phased system, or 3 lines if you want.
Nowadays, at least in Europe, each house gets a 380 V AC inlet with the 3 phases or lines. This allows to split/balance the power consumption over 3 different 220 V AC phases or lines. The 220 V AC exists between any phase and a single neutral line.

Here they run 2 wires plus a neutral to residences and most businesses, 3 phase to industries that need it. On residential lines there is 220 between the 2 "hot" wires and 110 between either of the 2 hot to neutral. Our 110 receptacles use one of the hots plus the neutral.

For everyone interested in watercooling, here is a part of our water cooling for nVidia GPUs. Installation is in early stage.

http://www.ha-soft.cz/watercooling

Current GPU temps are about 38°C-40°C.

Nice pics!!

But.....

Is that a stock CPU heatsink lol?

Is that a stock CPU heatsink lol?

Yes. It's i7-2600 not overclocked for rosetta@home. There is no problem with temperatures. For i7-2600K overclocked to 4.3G we have a better cooler.

Ah. Just caught me off guard from seeing that amazing gpu water cooling. Again, very nice.

I am going to solve my ambient heat problem with some low tech dollars: a simple window air conditioner for the room, maybe 6-8000BTU. The room is only about 12FT X 12FT.

The house has central air conditioning; but my digiteria is at the end of the line pressure wise. So, to cool the room, I would need to freeze everyone else out of the house.

The hardware vendor says everything is safe to 100F (38C).

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It's safe to 100C not F, what is your ambient temperature in the room?

Actually, Support at Maingear was very specific: 100F, no where near 100C.

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NVIDIA is very specific: 100C

NVIDIA, not Maingear, makes the chip so I think I'll believe NVIDIA. When you think about it 38C is a ridiculously low max. temp for a processor. I can't think of any processor or any IC that has a max. temp that low.

I think I know why Maingear told you 38C.

Here's the link to NVIDIA's website, towards the bottom of the page they actually show 98C

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-580/specifications

mitrichr, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting cool air INTO the case as well. Remember, the hot air must leave the case and have ample room to dissipate, and cool air MUST enter. The cool air entering the case, after all, is what the cards are using.

If you feel that a small AC unit will help, and TECHNICALLY, it would, than go for it. BUT those consume A LOT of electricity. As long as there is enough room for the hot air to leave the room and area around the case you should be fine. For example, since the room is 12x12, don't close the door, otherwise this traps the hot air in the room, thus raising the room's temps rise quite quickly.