Dehumidifier/waterchiller questions.
 

Hey all,

I have been looking into some more extreme cooling for my dual Xeon rig... reading through these forums I see a lot of mention of using a dehumidifier as a waterchiller... my question is how much heat can your avearge sears/walmart bought dehumidifier cope with?

Currently the Xeon's are running @ 3.82 Ghz overvolted to 1.65v, they are being cooled by a Swiftech Quietpower rig now... but I want to break the 4 Ghz mark.... I figure each chip is using around 140-145 watts... The one catch is these chips must run 24/7 under 100% load of Folding @ home.

Any input on using a dehumidifier for this task would be very helpful.

Thanks!

In short, take the power draw of the unit, substract the fan, and multiply it by 3: that'll give you a very rough estimate of the cooling capacity.

I'd guess, a 1 HP compressor will get you roughly 10000 BTUs of cooling power across a maybe 20C difference. Very rough estimate, but thats what my AC unit does.

Another way to figure dehumidifier capacity is to look at it's 'pints/day' rating. To condense water the dehumidifier has to absorb the water's 'latent heat of vaporization' (2257 Joule/gram).

1 pint/day = 0.00525 grams/second; multiply by 2257 J/g = 11.85 W

That 11.85 W is at dewpoint temperature, which is generally 5 to 10 C below ambient. If you want to cool colder than that, buy more capacity (say, 1.5 to 2 times your expected heat load).