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Computer Room Hot?
Anonymous Coward writes "Here is a cool PC ventilation product I ran across. Like many faithful on here, I have multiple computers in a small room which really heat up the place. My office is a good eight degrees warmer than the rest of the house This product called R.A.C.H.A.L (Reduce Annoying Computer Heat And Loudness) vents computer exhaust into the wall, not the room. Might cut down on the electricity bills during those hot months.." Another approach: An anonymous reader writes "If your 'puter is getting to loud, you might want to consider some silent cooling. And the gang at OverclockersClub has just that. A three page review of the Zalman VGA Heatpipe Cooler. This thing is pretty nice looking, and with no power, no noise, what else could a guy ask for? Check out the review here. How come more companies don't do the "silent" thing?" Borked link fixed.
my computer wakes up the people below me when i turn it on..well, i do have a pent 4 overclocked to 4.0 ghz, but thats not the point!
At least the war on the environment is going well
My house is freezing, and I wouldn't be able to survive in my computer room (Basement, AKA utility room) without the heat. Good for corperations, not for me. Anyone else use spare clock cycles for warmth?
So take off all your clothes!
Chicks love nekkid geeks in hot computer rooms.
How come more companies don't do the "silent" thing?
The problem is, silence is golden. So therefore, in this poor economy, companies can't pay for the gold required and consumers can't really afford it.
I would love manufacturers to start taking this issue more seriously. Choice of fans is important, but also the hard drives as well. Apple fans can look smug here I think - Apple do take this stuff seriously. The PC world? Not so much, and it's a real shame.
Cheers,
Ian
If you don't have to yell to hear over it, how do you know it's working? ...or is it just me and my Sparc?
An anonymous reader writes "If your 'puter is getting to loud, you might...
BZZZT! Sorry Sparky. You lose any geek points by using the term "'puter".
Trolling is a art,
90% of my excessive volume and heat generation comes from various rack-mount appliances (like Cisco switches), not pee-cees. It doesn't look like these things are very friendly towards that type of environment.
The basic concept might still be sound, though. Turn your rack into an enclosure, add some intake fans, and vent the entire rack's exhaust somewhere else. (I wonder what the exhaust temperature for an entire rack would reach?)
Where does the heat go once it is in the wall? Won't it eventually radiate back out into the surrounding environment? That might be ok if your goal is only to reduce the temperature gradiant between the computer room and the rest of the building but overall I don't see how this is going to reduce the amount of heat inputted into the building.
Unless we are talking about an exterior wall, in which case it SHOULD be well insulated but you never know.
Hmmm... wonder how those roaches and other critters living in the wall are going to enjoy a blast of heat from my power supply fan? KFC (Kentucky Fried Cockroach) anyone?
Like anything else, the quest for silence and coolness involves a tradeoff, or Devil's Deal.
The obvious way to keep your PC quiet is to strap pillows to the case, but this increases heat retention. Likewise, the obvious way to keep your PC cool, adding case fans, makes your PC louder.
It turns out that you can't have it both ways...a PC generates excess energy, and it is going to manifest itself either as heat or as sound. It's basic conservation of energy. So choose your poison now, and learn to live with the side effects.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
another approach to cutting down on heat in the room?
Just do the right thing to begin with. If you want silence and no heat use a Cyrix C3. I'm sure you'll say it's too slow for you. Hey, you know what the saying is:
Silent/Cold/Low-Power. Fast.
Pick 1.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The cavity at any given point in your wall, if it's to code, is about two cubic feet, surrounded by wood and plaster. Unless you had a magically powerful fan in your PC you won't be getting any circulation at all, because you're pressurizing a fixed cavity. Furthermore, the tube isn't insulated. This is a really silly idea. However, if you vented it *outside*, then you're talking something useful.
--Mike
Yeah, that's right, try to avoid Slashdotting www.computerexhaust.com by re-directing the URL to slashdot. As if we're not techy enough to figure it out.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
Dead Link? What the heck do we pay the slashdot editors for?
Of course we pay, there are ads, aren't there?
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Heat (and nosie for that matter) are only a big problem if your top priority is speed.
My latest system has a top priority of silence, with raw horsepower a second thought. The purpose is to record audio in a live setting (burn off CDs of a church service immediately following the service.) so I don't need a 2GHz P4. Once you back away from the bleeding edge, heat becomes much less of a problem.
The solution in my case is a VIA C3 650, decent copper heat sink and no CPU fan. The video needs are minimal, so no GPU fan. The thing draws less power than most, so the temp-controlled fans never turn on.
I'm still trying to decide if the liquid-bearing hard drive is worth the extra $100 though.
It sounds like the hot coolant water from powerplants being dumped into a river and affecting the local conditions.
I'm really not into C.H.U.D. evolving in my walls.
It seems to me that venting the heat into your walls could cause condensation or other moisture problems inside of your walls. It also seems like you could get some very strange noises resulting from the forced air going into an enclosed space. The backpressure from exhausting into the wall could also shorten your fan life or possibly worse. If you have fire blocking in your walls, you could be blowing hot air into a space as little as 16" x 24" or so, and once that heats up you'll be getting the heat back into your room as it radiates through the drywall.
You also couldn't effectively use this on an exterior wall because insulation should be taking up all of the available air space inside the wall cavity anyway. Also, not all of the heat your computer generates is going to be exhausted by the fan, so this may not result in a huge reduction anyway, and it becomes even more problematic if you have more than one exhaust fan. Just a few thoughts I had.
Has anyone tried using a heatpipe to move heat to the case?
Seems to me, someone should be able to use the entire case as a heatsink to dissipate the heat of the CPU and GPU and do so without a fan.
Here is the correct link: R.A.C.H.A.L..
Neat picture, though, I don't know whether it will really cool down the room. Won't the heat just build in the wall, and not dissipate as quick because of the lack of air. Then, the walls will be warm and again warm the room. Hmmmmm.
The servers running in my office drown out that crappy elevator music the company prez insists on playing...
Ummm.... it's Winter right now. My room (at college) would be positively chilly without my two computers running. It does raise the overall temp by 8-10 degrees (f), but that is welcome at this time of year. It also means I don't have to turn the heat on very high.
In summer, I'll go home and the parents have central air on all the time, and cold for summer (my mom doesn't like the heat much). My computers then keep my (slightly larger) room tolerably warm for summer. Like 70-5 instead of around 65.
What I'm saying is: GO HEAT!
Hook the tube up to a water faucet, and connect it to your computer's intake fan (rather than exhaust), you can lower the temperature of your computer with an efficient, cooling mist!
$8.95/mo web hosting
Damn false advertising!
What if I have two exhaust fans?
If you have two exhaust fans, the ideal solution would be to install two ventilation systems. If you only want to install one, install it on the power supply fan, this generates the most heat.
You mean, they don't have an option to hook two hoses up to one hole in the wall? Seems like they just want to prey on their customers and stupid people. But I repeat myself.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
In the new Emery building in downtown Portland, Or. there is no furnace. The entire building is heated with the waste heat from the computers and server rooms.
It works well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As a carpenter/electrician/plumber in my spare time, I think sending computer exhaust to a residential wall is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard of. Venting to another room, crawl space, basement, outside, etc. is OK, but a proper wall cavity with normal studs only has a few square feet of volume. For an outside wall, breaking through a vapor barrier and sending the exhaust to fiberglass insulation is very, very bad.
The only valid application I can think of is for some commercial office space, where usually cheap extruded steel studs hold up sheetrock and the wall tops are open to the space above a drop ceiling. Also, the steel studs have holes in them to allow for cables and some horizontal air movement.
The website does not have any of this information concerning checking the validity of walls. Ugh.
I have 6 pc's running daily with half running 24 hours a day. My whole bill is $60-$70/month for everything (fridge, lights, 32" TV, DVD, etc.). This includes an Athlon and a P4. No SMP at the moment though. :-(
What are you running there to generate that much of an electric bill?
..because those vents aren't made for blowing throw a pipe which is some feet long. They just can't. So you'll have to get stronger (and louder!) vents.
Moreover I have to wonder where the air is going to go. Not that walls are completely airtight but they aren't exactly open either..
Why not just jam the fan to stop the noise and keep the heat in the case?
This must have been brought to us be the same hucksters who sell those cell phone antenna boosters
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
This computer is hotter and louder than any: Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
Cheers!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
This is the exact same thing as a dryer vent, except it blows into the ever clean area between the walls. Id have to modify this thing with a fan to suck the air out of the case and blow it into the wall, and a small filter to prevent any sort of blow back into the case. Even then, at $19 a pop, i could just excess flex hose from my dryer and modify a 3 switch wall cover, and Id pay about 2 bucks... That or if the temperature in my room was really that big of an issue, id get a fan for the room...
Does anyone else find it horribly bad journalism/science to report with a graph where one bar is a third as long as another bar, yet the large value is less than 1% larger than the other because they start the graph at a random number instead of zero, and then just using a graph break in the scale?
If you make a bar graph and the values are 1% different, the sizes of the bars should be 1% different. Why do they not understand this?
one two three four
I've seen this at other websites, too. Does it irk anyone else?
A better idea might be to vent it into the cold air return if you have forced air heating/cooling. Otherwise the fellow who commented about the walls being relativly sealed is correct. This wouldn't do much but hurt the fan.
--Should work--
Go to mini-itx.com if you want a silent router/media computer. That _includes_ power supply - no fans at all.
If you want a powerful computer, that is a different story, but there are better solutions to the heat/noise problem that putting holes in your wall.
Besides the problems with insulation ...
...
...
....
Lets say you work somewhere that doesn't have too much insulation in the walls
Would you REALLY want to send the sound from the fans into the wall, where it is hollow and can reverbirate? That doesn't seem to make much sence either
Why not isulate your comuter box and use liquid coolong if you're looking for a "cool" box with no noise??
If you REALLY want cool and quiet, you're going to have to pay for it
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I remember, many years ago, discussing with people how one day all of our ordinary home appliances would be computerized.
Then four or five years ago, two things happened: I moved into an apartment with inadequate heating and insulation, and I bought a P2-266.
And now, my space heater runs UNIX! I just put xflame on, and it's an instant fireplace...
please fix the fix the link: it should be www.computerexhaust.com
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
I honestly don't see what the "problem" is, here. ;) We have a dozen or so computers running in our house (including monitors...21" and 25" monitors really generate much more heat than computers, actually). Because of these, we don't really need to pay to heat the house. Just close all the doors, open the curtains during the day, and you can maintain a pretty consistent temperature.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I can't see it being a problem if you were to duct the hot air from the computer into your home's cold air return. (Provided the house uses forced air heat.) After all, cold air returns typically aren't ducted and are just formed with the drywall/plaster and studs.
Then again, monitors give off plenty of heat on their own, so this may all be a moot point.
Oh, my link works. Just that there's a typo in the text that I put beside it (since for some reason the fix also seemed to get munged in the preview until I separated it) (which doesn't affect the actual link working) :-)
These crazy solutions to hot running computers show that we've reached the point of diminishing returns as far as current PC technology goes. All this active cooling nonsense and five fans per box and so on is getting silly. The upcoming NVidia cards even require external power supplies. Here's hoping that someone goes off in a different direction and breaks the trend. I'm all for faster computers, but not at any expense.
This is one of the "evils" of server consolidation. I guess.
Lasers Controlled Games!
>What are you running there to generate that much of an electric bill?
He probably lives in the US. I got flamed last time for discussing the old "is it cheaper to leave the lights on?" idea because it was so hard to believe that I only pay $0.0275 US / kwh... IIRC, a "normal" computer only costs about $2.50 USD per month to run in Canada.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
What excessive heat? I have three computers in the Master bedroom and I still have to sleep wrapped around the computers. It's fucking Cold!
I mean... I sleep with lots of blankets... really...
Black and grey are both shades of white.
than most of the fancy-pants cooling I've seen:
Take your hottest running box, upgrade it to a P4 3.06 and UNDERclock it to a 2.9 and use a nice quiet fan. Period. C'mon, it's not like you're going to miss the last 166mHz. Plus you get to upgrade (woohoo!). Problem solved.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Or you can open a window :-)
I would like to echo the "This is not a good idea." Here is why:
1. Older houses used to have shredded newspaper put between the walls and/or floors. The newspaper was sprayed with a flame retardent chemical. Only the chemical breaks down after ten years or so and the newspaper breaks down to paper dust. Ever seen what paper dust does if you throw it up and light a match?
2. Fiberglass insulation is better except it is usually sold with - guess what - a paper exterior which, like #1 above, has the same problems.
3. Our house had something called Mo-Hair. Sounds like a bad afro campaign to me, but this stuff was just terrible. After our house flooded we decided to remove all of the old insulation and put brand new R-13 insulation into place. The new insulation is protected by a microthin plastic sheath. Better than paper that's for sure. The Mo-Hair though - we took a piece out and tried burning it. It burned really well. Nice stuff.
If you really want to do this you should at least talk to an electrician and possibly a plumber. They probably will suggest that you create a vent pipe leading to the outside of the house. Something along the lines of what is used for a dryer. If you go to Home Depot (or Lowe's or whereever) you can get pre-made parts for installing an exit vent for a dryer. Some of the things even come with a little trap door you can open and close so the heat recycles back into the room or to the outside of the house. Nice for those really cold days. Then you just get an appropriately sized fan, bolt it to the vent box, (be sure to get a fan with a standard ac plug) and let her rip. The fan will suck the air out of the house, and the fan on the computer will blow the air directly into the vent pipe. Sort of like below:
+---+
|...|
I hope this posts correctly - the preview cuts some of it off!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
If the excess heat is all from your monitors, then invest in a KVM switch, so you only have one Keyboard, Video (Monitor) and Mouse. While KVM's were once very expensive and seldom seen out side of computer rooms or NOC's, the prices have dropped. Also you can take the money saved on multiple monitors and invest in that nice flat screen you've been drooling over, but could not cost justify! Currently I have one very good 19" monitor, rather then 4 cheaper ones and much more "room" in the room!
>> A three page review of the Zalman VGA Heatpipe Cooler. This thing is pretty nice looking, and with no power, no noise, what else could a guy ask for? Check out the review here. How come more companies don't do the "silent" thing?
Because that VGA cooler weighs 400 grams (almost a pound). The sunflower CPU heatsinks are twice CPU mfg specs as well.
They work great, and are fine if your PC is generally stationary, but I wince thinking of the damage one of those suckers would to my machine if it broke loose while transporting.
Thats why more companies dont do the 'silent' thing.
Besides, I can hardly hear my new P4 rigs stock CPU fan and 4 7-volted 80mm's. Point being that quality fans are virtually silent anyways.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...Don't have to open up the computer case to install
Which are you more comfortable with, opening your 500 dollar computer or gouging a hole in your 20,000 dollar wall?
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
I did something similar, but much more effective. My PC is on an outside wall, and it is in enclosed cabinetry. There is a 4" hole in back of the cabinet with an AC muffin fan mounted on it. The hole opens to a 4" round pipe leading out to a dryer-style vent opening. It works wonderfully; the cabinet stays cool even in summer, and I have two original-model Cheetah X15s.
I have to agree with other posters that venting to "the wall" is unlikely to work, since you're really only venting to a single stud bay - which probably doesn't leak enough to allow much airflow, and if it does, a good portion of that is leaking right back into the room anyway. Can't win either way.
...what else could a guy ask for?
;P
Too easy.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I pulled a similar stunt over a decade ago.
Had an Altos 68000 Unix box. Made a very good space heater. Heat came out a 4" exhaust fan in the back.
So I got a couple drier vents, which use a 4" hose. Mounted one on a board that replaced a window, cut the other down to make a fan-to-hose adapter. Really cooled the room down.
Got one of those drier-heat-saver valves to switch it to exhausting into the room during the winter, too. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Now I can run my computers 24x7.
And when the wife moans about the waste of electricity I can tell her it's the "wall cavity heater" I installed to help reduce the damp.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
No doubt the various electronic paraphernalia scattered about the premises offer "free" heat, too.
We've effectively overheated his web hosting provider's box, switch, and router.
Apparently, someone decided to do two things:
1: Spoof Slashdot
2: Possibly make money due to massive advertising
So he made up this little kit, invested in some bandwidth (notice the servers are just fine?) and submitted as AC.
Disgusting. And stupid. And an example of what happens when geeks rush in where engineers fear to tread. He might as well produce a water-cooling kit that runs water from a faucet adapter, through a heatsink, and then into the wall. Hey, we have a limitless untapped void in there, right?
Only if you believe the premise behind Dexter's Laboratory.
...
I have two 17" iMacs. Very quiet machines. They have a fan, but the only way I can tell they're running is by looking at them.
It seems like the ideal solution would be a heatpipe system that dumped the heat directly to the case chassis, probably using an intermediate-stage heat spreader that could be bonded to the case. I've looked for such a thing, but never found one. Does anyone know of one?
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
I actually thought about this since my computer has been warming the room and there is a central vac opening very close to the computer. What you need to do is to have a flapper valve that requires a greater amount of pressure to operate than the computer fan creates. When you aren't using the central vac, the flap stays out of the way and the PC air goes into the vacuum system. In my case, out into the garage. When the vacuum kicks on, the increased pressure differential causes the flap to close so you don't suck the computer's guts into the vacuum canister. The key is to have a properly sized hole in the flap so that you get the same amount of airflow with the flap closed and the vacuum running as you do with it open and the vacuum turned off.
It never got important enough to me to mess with it, especially since I can fairly easily vent my air out into a part of the attic and still leave the vacuum port available for actual vacuuming.
Of course you could just seal up your computer and run a hose to it and fill it with water and turn it on like this guy did.
:)
Is it a joke? Yes. But it was funny.
I bought this product because my small trailer gets pretty warm with my computer running all day. When I drilled the hole in the wall I noticed that I could see outside (watch where you drill). I stuck the tube through the hole and it worked fine for about 3 days. On the fourth day when I was walking out to my car, I noticed straw coming out of the hose. When I took a closer look I noticed a small bird made a nest in the hose. I cleared out the nest and put a screen over the end of the hose and it works great. My trailer no longer gets too warm.
I might have to look into these, or a variation on the idea... I have 9 machines in a 9x10 room, along with two RAID chassis that have about 10 drives each, plus UPS, a CD tower, etc...
It gets so hot in there you can't really function without the AC running. I had to buy a window-mount air conditioner that runs 24/7 to keep the heat down, and even then it's still about 10 degrees warmer in there than the rest of the house. I can really crank the AC and get it cold- I went in there one morning and could see my breath - but that chews up a boatload of power, not to mention sometimes freezes up the AC when it's foggy outside. Oh, and it puts a strain on my residential wiring to push the AC any further than I do.
I've been trying to come up with ideas for venting the heat that didn't involve major renovations. One thought I had was putting some quiet fans in the floor and blowing the warm air under the house- no basement. Of course, I could also blow cold air up... might be better; it stays fairly consistent cool under there.
Not into the wall, at least.
They vented an old IBM System/7 into another room for cooling. Those beasts were bipolar, and really hot.
The people in the other room didn't know that they were being used as a computer cooling resource, they just knew that they were too hot. So they blocked the vent. The System/7 overheated, destructively.
Moral: When getting rid of your heat, make sure you've sent it to an acceptable and accepting place.
The criticisms of sending heat into the wall focus on pressure and humidity effects. How about a really old home where the walls are stuffed with old newspaper, corncobs, and magazines?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Yeah, I know. I'm just karma fishing, lol. :-)
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
This might be a better idea! Plus, you can sneak it past the wife more easily!
Seriously, though, if you actually ran ducts to the attic or basement or outside or wherever, this might not be such a bad idea. You could even put the fans at the remote end of the duct to cut down on the noise.
Dumping it straight into the wall cavity is about the 2nd most retarded idea I've heard all day, though.
You lose all your points for using the obnoxious
"BZZZT!" and "Sparky".
So instead of "Here is a cool PC ventilation product I ran across", he should really be saying "Here is a cool PC ventilation product that my company makes."
Sure, it's kinda neat. But I hope
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
this is woefully unimpressive, and uninspired.
...if i ever find a fridge and hook this up, i'll be sure to post pictures :)
first off, with 16" on center stud walls, constructed of 2x4s, and an average studheight of 92 and 5/8ths inches, you can see that the volume inside a stud wall "cell" is pretty piss poor - roughly 5800 cubic inches.
There are a few issues that make this "solution" stupid.
1) the heat doesn't go anywhere. there should be a correspondingly large diameter cut out in the top plate of the wall, so that the air can escape in the attic (where it might do some good, as the attic is cold and properly ventilated, unlike the interior of a wall)
2) there may be cold water supply pipes in wall. do you want to heat your cold water ? especially if they're copper pipes with a very effective heat transfer characteristic
2a) there may be runs of NM-B (romex) electrical cable in that wall cell. The ampacity of electrical wire is a function of its rated capacity, and while most ampacity ratings are given up to 70C, if this thing were _seriously_ efficient at cooling a computer, then it would perhaps begin to cause problems with in-wall structures
3) how does the national fire code feel about stuffing heat into closed interior walls (made of flame-retardant drywall, typically)
4) if the excess heat it dispells isn't enough to cause any code violations, then it clearly isn't sucking enough heat to be worth installing
5) this does little to eliminate the overall heat+noise of _systems_
My idea for this was to find an abandoned refrigerator, or better yet, freezer, and just putting whole systems inside there, and then running flue-spec double-walled exhaust vent pipe elsewhere. Having all the PCs stuck inside a fridge/freezer (shut off, of course) that was properly vented should make things cool _AND_ quiet. Don't beleive me ? Try putting your battery powered alarm clock in your freezer, and see if you can still hear it once the door shuts. You want whole-system noise cancellation ? Then you need real insulation. Want to keep your office cool? then you'll need to do a lot more than putting a turbluent undersized vacuum hose on the back of your PC.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Running an Athlon XP, Duron 1G, K6/2 400 (server) Pentium 120 (router), and have a disconnected P233 (rebuilding). The P120 and K6/2 are always on, since the router takes awhile to load from floppy and the server is online. There are also a switch, router, stereo stuff and various other gadgets that are usually connected.
My girlfriend also has a laptop, but it hibernates nicely
We use about $50-70/mo (Canadian) including all PC's and electric heating. Hot water is supplied.
I couldn't imagine anyone running high-end PC's for server'ing though. The Duron and two linux boxes give off enough heat, so I know there is definate lossage (power to heat).
Alternately, the server room is usually cozy without needed the thermostat turned up - which I count as a plus. In the summer the big concern is o have enough fans that CPU's don't overheat, especially the inefficient duron. It often gets hotter than my Athlon XP, due to a crappy core, and will bug out when it gets too hot.
Check this out - that's just the stuff in the kitchen.
My power bill averages about $130-$180. It just depends on how stupid your local power company.
When did they start making dual-headed switchers ? If they exist, I'll buy one right now. But they're not taking my dual-head unless they pry it from my cold dead hands. :)
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
And, yes, chocolate works, doesn't give them worms, and to do any harm (it's not the chocolate that's harmful, it's the theobromide added to the chocolate) you would have to feed them enough in one dose that, if you ate it, it would harm you too. Of course, I'm talking decent-sized dogs. Animals under 100 pounds, you have to be more careful :-)
According to the website, their "Warranty" on this item is:
Warranty
Waiver: The failure of either party to require performance by the other party of any provision of this agreement shall not affect in any way the first party's right to require such performance at any time thereafter. Any waiver by either party of a breach of any provision in this agreement shall not be taken or held by the other party to be a continuing waiver of that provision unless such waiver is made in writing.
Yup. I've got my AMEX out right now and putting in an order for 10 of them!
This has so many obvious problems, it isn't funny...
First off, I've worked in PC repair for years. So many machines power supply fan is so weak, it can barely make a breeze behind the machine. The restriction of that pipe would pretty much kill off the flow. Make a straight smooth walled pipe would do better, but not that flex hose.
Next, the 4"x16"x8' space is going to be very small, and heat up quickly.. My office is roughtly 8'x12'x8'. You're dumping out the heat into roughly 3 cubic feet of space, with minimal ventalation. My 768 cubic foot, with a 24 square foot hole in it (doorway), with 4 PC's and 2 monitors running gets rather warm rather quickly, even with forced cooling (A/C ducts).
So, besides ruining the insulation in the wall, if it's an outside wall (interior walls are usually uninsulated), he's going to build up lots of heat and moisture (the heat won't be enough to really dry out the air).
I don't think the heating of the wall will be much of a factor, since the PC will overheat rather quickly and die.. I'd give it a few months, before the user wonders why it crashes several times daily, and then finally won't boot.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Room is hot. Instead of using a large external fan or airconditioner to cool room, I will attempt to use the tiny little fan in my computer to redirect the heat it creates into a small, confined area. Nevermind that the fan was probably selected for its cheapness more than the it's ability and is probably barely capable of dealing with it's normal function.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This product called R.A.C.H.A.L (Reduce Annoying Computer Heat And Loudness)
Am I the only one that wants to buy dual Berettas and get my Cleric Preston on with everyone who makes stupid-ass acronyms that are supposed to spell something clever?
Please tell me I'm not alone.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
This product is a scam, that can destroy your computer. The fan that comes with so many computers are known as axle fans. They are designed for high CFM (cubic feet per minute aka the AMOUNT of air flowing though the machine). Axle fans are not designed for high static pressure (aka air resistance). A centrifical fan (like the fan blowing cold air from an air conditioner) is designed for high static pressure (aka duct work) but typically blow less air the an axle fan. There is a trade off. More air, less pressure or less air, more pressure.
Computers are designed for free air discharge, hence the use of an axle fan. Placing a duct over the axle fan WILL reduce air flow, causing less air to flow over your CPU and that fancy video card. There will be an increase in temperature.
If you were to use this product, you are pulling air from you computer room (creating negative pressure, though very little), pushing it into a wall. Eventually that air will come out somewhere. Positive pressure "hot wall air" will go to negative pressure cooler air.
Basically you're risking your computer for something that doesn't work.
Hey read the "reviews" link. Coming Soon.....
This product is an engineering hack. If things where this simple, it would of been invented a long, long, long time ago for other things. Can't fool with physics.
But he gains back some "haphazardly clever" points for the fact that someone named "sparky" can appropriately be associated with a "bzzzzzt" sound :-)
Damn, I just lost some geek points for using the word "haphazardly"...
$8.95/mo web hosting
Here's a thought I had, but probably will never get around to building.
Lots of people go to the expense and effort of building/buying radiators or using large tanks of water as the heatsink for their water-based CPU cooler systems.
Last year, I started measuring the temperature of the water in my toilet tank. After a flush, it drops to 5-6 degrees Celsius. Between flushes, it gradually reaches room temperature, of course, but this is still no worse than a radiator or bucket. In practice, however, it never actually gets above about 10C (while room temperature is about 20C).
In other words, it's a supply of cold water which you were going to simply flush away.
Place a small bucket inside the toilet tank. Put a submersible pump in there, run the water to the CPU coolers, bring the water back and drain it over the bucket in the tank.
Everytime you flush the 6 beers you went through while flaming me for my Linux isn't ready for the desktop article, you can rest assured that the water which cools your CPU is being replaced with fresh, cold water. No mold, no mildew.
The purpose of putting the pump in the bucket is so that there's always a supply of water for the pump, even during the flush. And the purpose of draining the return line over the bucket is so that if your toilet tank doesn't refill for some reason, you'll still keep your bucket full of water and buy some time for hardware monitors to shut the system down if it's getting too warm.
I don't know how hot the water in the toilet will get, but think about this:
Of course, the only thing I'd worry about is the quality of the submersible pump. After all, if water leaked into the pump, then the water in the toilet could come into contact with one side of the AC line... the other side of which is grounded to your fusebox. If you happened to touch another grounded object while urinating (concrete floor, sink faucet, etc), then enough current could find that your stream of urine and urethral tissues are a more attractive ground path than the plastic sewer pipe. I think I'd invest in an isolation transformer (search ebay) to reduce the risk of highly ...unpleasant... damage.
Ahh... the joys of being an eccentric genius.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Ah, and don't forget:
- Enjoy your job
- Make lots of money
- Work within the law
Pick any two.
I'll pick #1 and #3.
At least I am honest. Why practice demolition for profit when I can do it for fun? There isn't that big of a market for demolition anyway...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
They seemed to do well, kept things from toasting with out any fan at all...
Mainly on the cpu.. but they did their job.
Found one during a laptop repair, never thought twice about it till now.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Whoa... this is why I should not be working until 6:30...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Welcome to California... The power went out twice last night alone, and that's while I'm paying $150 in electric bills (for two people).
I'm on a mad dash to crop the power-usage in my home, and the first casualty was my Athlon desktop and 19" CRT, in favor of a notebook.
Next, I'm thinking of replacing my lights with candles, and putting the frame of my TV around my window. I'll just tell everyone it's permanently tuned to the "Bird Watching" channel.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I took advantage of my company's downsizing auction and bought a pile of Pentium II laptops to replace the loud, hot Pentium desktops I've been running. Nice and quiet. They run pretty cool as well.
Now I'm actively trying to kick people off of projects based on whether that have laptops. Maybe by July I can upgrade my web server to a nice quiet P3-500.
Well, I live in the midwest, so at least I'm currently free from the power headaches CA is suffering. Nonetheless, I have serious power usage concerns because I live in an older home (built in the mid 1950's) that has the smallest capacity electrical service they offer.
My old fuse panel has seperate sub-panels with circuit breakers for the electric dryer and central air - but everything else in the house runs through one of 8 screw-in type fuses.
I have 6 computers running pretty much all the time (1 as a dedicated firewall/router for my DSL), and so I'm right up against the maximum power load I can use without blowing the main fuses on the panel.
One way I freed up quite a few spare watts was swapping all my regular light-bulbs with the flourescent replacements. They typically use about 14 watts while giving off as much light as a 60 watt bulb. When you consider most of my light fixtures take 2 bulbs each, the savings really starts to add up.
Cedric C. Girouard writes: :)
When did they start making dual-headed switchers ? If they exist, I'll buy one right now. But they're not taking my dual-head unless they pry it from my cold dead hands.
Er, have you tried google? Here are some pricey dualhead KVMs. Of course, a KVM and a monitor switch would work as well.
I would recomend a UPS. That way, if you turn on something that requires extra power, the UPS will temporarily alieviate the drain on your home's lines.
If the drain is from something plugged into the UPS, the UPS will provide the extra power needed if the power lines cannot keep up... If you get the extra drain from something not on the UPS, the UPS will notice that the line current is dropping, and use it's own power rather than your house's lines.
Hopefully I don't need to say it, but the proper solution is to rewire your house. Not only are you limited in the current you can pull, but you are at risk of fire becuase the lines are so old, as well as from running your lines much closer to capacity than they should be.
While I don't know your exact situation, most people have hazardous electrical situations around their homes, and yours sounds like it's much worse than average.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Heat travels from hot areas to cold areas.
This won't work for the same reason why you can't make an airconditioner with only an inside unit (you need the outside unit as the heat sink).
Now, if your computer room/home office is in a basement, geothermal cooling could work.
Yeah, I do already own 2 UPS systems. One is a "personal" size unit on my workstation in my bedroom. There's also a large capacity unit (big marine battery inside) that my web/file server is attached to in the basement.
Upgrading the wiring in my home is obviously the proper solution - except it's also quite expensive. If I can keep my total current usage down to safe levels, I should be able to get by with what I've got - and save thousands on a new circuit breaker box, etc.
An electrical service upgrade may indeed be in my future - but I'd prefer to use less power to begin with, if it's at all possible. Fuse boxes never really were "safe" - and some insurance companies won't even write homeowner's policies on homes still using them. Nonetheless, I try to keep a close eye on things and occasionally check for problems like warm wires.
Real chocolate has theobromide. Many dogs are under 100 pounds. Even half a pound of baking chocolate might be lethal to an 80 pound dog.
:).
:(.
Typical candy-grade milk chocolate has a lot less chocolate in it (cheaper) so it is less likely to kill dogs. But it's still better not to feed dogs chocolate. Not sure if you can train them not to eat chocs - most dogs seem to be greedy gluts
As for salt, so far the health/med folks seem to think people in general take too much salt (the health/med folks have been wrong before, but they seem to have enough ammo for this).
Maybe sea salt could be better - because it has traces of other minerals as well. It could be that the dog has a mineral deficiency, but perhaps the dog's tastebuds only go salty=minerals - which worked well enough in the old days, but may not nowadays with processed foods. That said, hopefully they pick the right sea for your sea salt - you don't want concentrated pollution or heavy metals
Usually the mains supply voltage drops when the load goes up.
:).
Trouble is most decent UPSes will just maintain the output voltage and suck more supply current in order to produce the same output power.
Of course the UPS usually resorts to the battery after the main fuses blow
I figure the easter bunny is mainly milk chocolate so isn't as toxic.
:). You're probably doing something right :).
e mplate_ Process.cfm?specie=Dogs&story_no=257
Yah, I suppose could be like alcoholic beverages. A little bit can be good for health, but you can kill yourself if you OD
Though in most cases we are similar, there are exceptions. Some stuff we can tolerate but significantly more dangerous to popular pets:
Aspirin (salicylic acid): ok for dogs, toxic for cats.
Paracetamol (acetaminophen/panadol): toxic for cats
Fumes from nonstick pans: toxic to birds.
Interesting info:
http://www.petalia.com.au/Templates/StoryT
I see lots of dogs eating garbage/scraps and they sure don't look too bad. Maybe they're more experienced.
Oh yeah, my aunt used to feed her spaniel chocolate chip cookies (Amos). cookies = baking choc = should be more toxic.
And the dog lived quite long (>=14?), despite ingesting rat poison when very young (almost died, probably permanent damage to organs).
Then again, maybe the prime beef and steak cuts my aunt fed the dog helped (definitely a well treated pet too).