Outrage: cooling 10 comps with an Uber pump and a bong

[Balinju]

the pump is 0.5 hp and 50 m head, it is not that big as yours

[airspirit]

You will not be able to use a bong. If you attempt that with a 5x1 bong, you will burn your CPUs within an hour, and that is NOT speculation. It WILL happen. You need large radiators. A large car radiator will be aluminum, since there is NO SUCH THING as a copper car radiator unless you're willing to spend thousands. Keep that in mind when debating the type of radiator.

Your cheapest method is using the Lytrons. On second thought, if you are keeping it outside, you can construct the box for under $80 USD in Canada due to low wood prices, and you'll spend $120 USD on the radiators (getting a good deal at EBay on Lytrons). The PVC, if you JUST make a tall vertical tube and drill out ports for the computer lines, and use a single manifold on the bottom for the three radiator loops and the 1.5" bypass, you should spend less than $60 USD. If noise isn't an issue, you can use two cheap shop fans from WalMart or the equivalent for $40 that will provide about 3000 CFM, but at 55-65 dB. Mounting the fan cages shouldn't be difficult if you plan your frame construction right.

That would leave you at $300 USD for the entire setup, minus tubing (use braided inside the box!!! You need the strength!!!), and all you would need is tubing to the PCs and water blocks.

Building a bong of the size you're describing would cost around $100 USD (PVC of that size is extremely expensive, as it is only used by water districts, commercial enterprises, and large farming applications), and wouldn't do the job. Relatively, this isn't a large price increase when considering that this is the path of least resistance to get you the maximum gain.

Also consider that purchasing a used radiator will cost around $100 USD alone, will be damaged, and will most likely be corroded thereby limiting your cooling ability (notwithstanding the fact that it is aluminum). A new vehicle radiator will cost upwards of $280 USD for the cheapest one of the size you'd need (light truck sized).

BTW: Why the hell would you want to put 10 machines on one loop? Is this for home use (for LANs) or for business? Is it a rackmount system? Consider the length of tubing you'd need if you were populating a large area with computers. Also consider that if these are going to be added and removed regularly for lans, that you will either need blocks that are easy to remove (see my method in my article), or you will need quick disconnects on the lines. Also consider that if you ever only run a few blocks at a time (with disconnects), that you will burst your hosing due to pressure from the pump. You will need all ten blocks on to bear the pressure in parallel in order to avoid that, so I would recommend easy to install/remove blocks that are never removed from the cooling loop regardless of their installation status (it also makes maintenance SO much easier!).

BTW, 10 3/8" loops will provide about 1.5" ID of flow when combined. 3 Lytrons at 1/2" only provides about .9" ID of flow. That is why the bypass will be necessary to ensure your blocks won't be starved in that configuration.

Shoot, if you were closer to me, I'd even help you build such a beast!!!

[Balinju]

What do you think of freon cooling(phase change cooling). I think it would siute better this situation than a bong.

Neville x'illostja tahseb dwar freon cooling??? Bizzejjed tahseb?? Imma nahseb difficli biex nibnuha hux??

[airspirit]

You would need multiple phase change units to cool the coolant, or one industrial size unit. You will spend thousands to do this, either way.

[hara]

Forget phase change cooling. It will cost Lm500 for just 1 pc.

Balinju inti mimli bullshit. L-ewwel nett "Freon". U dak phase change isejhulu. Freons illegali habba z-zobb ta' cfcs. Inkunu nistghu nuzaw r134a. Il-coolant huma gasses. Daqshekk, ha noqtlok.

[hara]

It is a school experiment to determine the cost savings of having a server room such as at isps all watercooled. The advantages are that less case fans are needed. No industrial airconditioner needed and better cooling and maybe mild overclocking while retaining stability.

On a side note, I Think stealing a PCV pipe from the roads would be possible.

[Puzzdre]

Hara, pls. can u translate this for me? I really like the sound of it, just wanna know what it means? Pls?

Balinju inti mimli bullshit

ps. Yeah, I'm a weirdo...I just can't stop laughing on the sound of that written phrase. That's why I need to know the translation...
THX

[airspirit]

Ah ... school experiments.

Your answer is yes, young Jedi. Watercooling a server farm is much more economical than air conditioning it.

Think about it. I can cool 4 PCs with a 95W pump and 100W of fans. That's it. If there was an effective way of importing and exporting the air (air ducting, duh), then that 195W (less than one PC's worth of consumption) cools all four units. Now, to air condition that room in order to cool them effectively, I'm looking at a minimum of a 500W air conditioner. Do you get the picture?

Better than this, though, would be cooling the system via a Stirling cryocooler, allowing for as much as 100W of cooling by using 9W of power (you'll have to wait for the article!!!) at 190 VAC. Putting this in a massively parallel system to cool 10 PCs, you'd need about a 300W pump combined with 10 units to cool the 1000W combined heat output of the CPUs, northbridges, and board mosfets and you'd be using a grand total of about 390W of power to cool 10, which would require over 1000W from air conditioning. The radiator could be passively cooled by putting it outside for cooling the hot sides of the Stirlings.

Taking the Stirling example to the next level, you could cool every component of every PC (PSU, GPU, NB, CPU, etc) for about 170W per unit for a grand total of 1700W of cooling using about 450W of power. This would keep your room at a couple of C above normal, and would require AC units of over 2000W to cool the room to the same levels.

Watercooling is effective, but there are other more effective methods that are coming down the pipe, Paco.

[airspirit]

PS: you can't use a bong in a server room. The condensation would cause a fire quicker than sh!t.

[Balinju]

Originally posted by hara
Forget phase change cooling. It will cost Lm500 for just 1 pc.

Balinju inti mimli bullshit. L-ewwel nett "Freon". U dak phase change isejhulu.

Naqalaw wiehed ta fridge oxx u jigi b'xejn mela Lm500!!!

Puzzdre, "int mimli bullshit" means the following [see the picture below]

[SonixOS]

how aboot buy meh waterchiller for $350 and use that? just an idea

[hara]

The bong will be used outside. how much water would be lost?

[SonixOS]

plenty of water that u will have to check on it frequently and it will add to ur water bill.

[SonixOS]

Another thing to add is that if u want to watercool a server room, u need to figure out how to watercool switches. Those are the main heat dissipaters.

[hara]

switches? really? how much do they dissipate? are they that powerful?

[SonixOS]

go visit a server room u'll get a better idea. Our school has a network with 3000+ items, 1000 Computers. we have only THREE SERVERS and a gazillion switches. At least 4 switch/hub rooms.

[ambient]

Here's another idea, why not build several small milk create style boxes with 3 cores, a pump, and a manifold in each box. Kind of like my crude pics below (made in 3 minutes).

[ambient]

or this one, in series. Then they could be stacked and pretty cheap to build.

[airspirit]

Switches are another component that are easy to cool with watercooling, though you'll need custom mounting equipment.

All in all, regardless of how you do it, watercooling is cheaper.

[jaydee]

Originally posted by airspirit
Switches are another component that are easy to cool with watercooling, though you'll need custom mounting equipment.

All in all, regardless of how you do it, watercooling is cheaper.

As long as nothing goes wrong. And you will still need some type of airconditioning. Or the room is just keep getting hotter and hotter. The only difference between air cooling and water cooling is the heat is being displaced somewhere else. With air cooling it is on the HS which is blown out of the case into the computer room. With water cooling it is routed to the radiator. If this radiator is in the same computer room it will also displace the heat into the computeroom. If there is no airconditioning the room will continue to get hotter and hotter either way. You have to remember water cooling doesn't change the amount of heat being displaced, it just moves it away from the source faster.

Now if the rads where placed outside on open air then you are good to go. But then you have to figure out all the tubing and what not.

[SonixOS]

Originally posted by jaydee116
As long as nothing goes wrong. And you will still need some type of airconditioning. Or the room is just keep getting hotter and hotter. The only difference between air cooling and water cooling is the heat is being displaced somewhere else. With air cooling it is on the HS which is blown out of the case into the computer room. With water cooling it is routed to the radiator. If this radiator is in the same computer room it will also displace the heat into the computeroom. If there is no airconditioning the room will continue to get hotter and hotter either way. You have to remember water cooling doesn't change the amount of heat being displaced, it just moves it away from the source faster.

Now if the rads where placed outside on open air then you are good to go. But then you have to figure out all the tubing and what not.

agreed.
10-4.

[airspirit]

That is the idea. With server sized watercooling, you could easily break away from the piddly tubing we use except to link the individual blocks to a central piping structure just like the building's water system. Piping the water to an external heat exchanger, particularly in a corporate environment where most of these things are, is no problem at all. Why would you want this kind of system locked in one room anyway? Imagine the airflow you'd need to aspirate a server farm worth of watercooling ... it would be a cyclone in that room just to keep the radiators cool, not to mention the NOISE.

[jaydee]

With that said it starts to not make since how it will be cheaper? You will still need somekind of active cooling for that external heat exchanger as just air going through it is not going to work in warmer climate areas like Arizona. Or any other place that has warm summers. So it will still need to be airconditioned somehow. this maybe take a little less power than A/C'ing the computer room but being A/C is most likely already setup in the building for the employees of the place so ducting shouldn't be all that hard. Lot easier than running pipes and setting up pumps. I am not sure how this would be cheaper. The initial installation of water cooling something like this is going to cost a fortune, not just for the parts but the manual labor. Putting on a HSF takes seconds, putting water blocks on computers and switches will not. So if it is cheaper to run watercooling that difference is going to take a very long time to offset the initial installation. And then this is all on speculation that the roof of this server room is also the top of the building. What if it is a multi level building and the server room is on the bottom.... I think it would be cheaper to push cooled air down a duct than cool water to the computer then back up to the exchanger. Then you have all the extra maintenance in a system like this. You would have to either have trained employee's checking the system regularly or have the installation company do it. That will not be cheap and it is a requirment. I don't think anyone in their right mind would let a system like this go unchecked regularly. That is some seriuosly expensive equipment as risk. One quick leak and you just lost all the money you may have gained by going with liquid cooling. You would also have to have overheat and leak detection systems on everything, which will not be cheap. And you would want a flow sensor of somekind. And all this has to work flawlessly 24/7.

I am sceptical, but not saying it cannot be done. There are just to many variables. I think each system would have to be designed for each application. That alone could be $100,000's in engineering costs alone as it would have to be drawn up and approved by engineers. It all has to fall under building codes to boot. Non of this is needed with air cooling.

[redleader]

We'll be cooling 10 comps with a 550W pump with 50m max head.

The bong will be used outside. how much water would be lost?

Math time!

10 comps and a "550w pump" probably works out to less then 1kw IME. Don't believe the pump power ratings, typical is generally half that, if as much. (Like my 24w Eheim 1250 that uses 9w). Lets say 1000w.

Enthalpy of evaporation is 22kj/mol for water at 101.3kpa and (IIRC) 20C. That works out to one mol lost every 22 seconds. A mole of water is 18g and a liter has a mass of 1kg, so you'd loose a liter every 1222 seconds or about every 20.5 minutes. That means 70.7 liters (about 18 gal) evaporated per day.

Plus the evaporated water gets replaced with cold water from the tap, so you get some "free" cooling right there. Lets use the above figure for simplicity of 70.7 l. Thats 70700g at say 10C below bong temp so you'd get almost 50 minutes of free cooling. Of course if you want sub ambient temps you'd loose that much trying to cool incoming water . . .

Not too bad compared to AC.

Edit: Just checked and according to my dad a cubic foot of water (~7.5gal) is 10 cents or so here in Arizona. If thats correct, then you'd be looking at just 24 cents a day assuming you can run the coolant at outside airtemp. Thats way less then a tenth of what AC would cost. I think I see why swamp coolers are so popular here.

You may want to check my math though.

[Balinju]

Originally posted by ambient
Here's another idea, why not build several small milk create style boxes with 3 cores, a pump, and a manifold in each box. Kind of like my crude pics below (made in 3 minutes).

This is our idea. What do you think?

(Picture On next page)