Cooling Question - Exhaust Hot or Intake Cool?

airdata

hero member

Activity: 1148

Merit: 501

I'm in the same situation. I have my meager mining operation set up in my office.

It's probably 90f in my office. I have a box fan going and a ceiling fan going as well as a single AC vent, but the room stays really hot.

I've considered splitting the stuff up so that everything isn't just sitting in one room. With the hot weather, there's no point in opening the windows really... Sad

Litt

sr. member

Activity: 350

Merit: 250

You should get a wall ac unit and run it into the room. If the whole house is hot anyways, you should exhaust your hot air from elsewhere and not draw it in to exhaust out from your room. It just heats it up even more it hink

Meatball

sr. member

Activity: 378

Merit: 250

I'm in the midst of moving stuff around. I'll snap a few pics when I get a chance and post them up.

kirby9058

newbie

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Merit: 0

Do you have any pictures of your setup? That sounds awesome. I'm a more humble miner, working off my gaming rig. But I'd really consider pouring some of my earnings into another rig.

Meatball

sr. member

Activity: 378

Merit: 250

Room is somewhat sealed off. Has a door I can shut that really blocks it off from the house. There are two central AC drops in the room, but I can close those off as well. Opening the window will probably be fine come fall/winter, but right now it's mid to high 90's during the day and dropping down to 80 or so at night.

I did put the small AC unit I had in the window to test it out and it works great, but started causing power issues

That little unit drew 4 AMP's and almost 450 watts while running. The spike during startup was enough to trip the breaker once so I ran an extension from a neighboring room that's on another circuit.

I think I might just need to split some of the machines up due to power/cooling issues of having it all in one room. Which is a shame because I had a nice setup where I mounted mobo risers into a 2 x 4 sheet of plywood and have 3 motherboards running on it on a good sized table.

I guess I could just run some extensions from other circuits, but as it stands, I'm gonna have 4 machines with 15 GPU's running in that room :p

bcpokey

hero member

Activity: 602

Merit: 500

If you are you cooling the rest of the house it doesn't make sense to open a window. Because really the rig room will need to be a higher airflow mirror of the rest of the house. If you have AC running it will not behoove you to whip open a bunch of windows and cause an equillibrium attempt. If you rely on fans or are just tough enough to take the heat then opening windows is by all means a good idea, but if not you are wasting all the energy used by the AC to dump heat outside.

The best thing would be if you could create an in-room circulation effect. Blow in cool air (on the low side for a 1 opening room) and blow out hot air (on the high side). General air mixing would be fine too though, you really just want that room to try to equalize with the rest of the house (since that is cool already). If electricity bill isn't a concern though, another AC would be spot on.

kirby9058

newbie

Activity: 50

Merit: 0

Is the room sealed off from the rest of the house? I wouldn't want my windows open when it's 90 degrees or hotter outside! But if it's sealed off, the fans could be quite effective.

Ruxum

newbie

Activity: 39

Merit: 0

do both. get the hot air out and get cool air coming in from the AC.. that should solve this. especially if it is only a few rigs.

Uzza

newbie

Activity: 35

Merit: 0

Quote from: inh on June 09, 2011, 03:22:31 PM

Exhaust the hot air, that way you arent using a second AC to cool the entire room, you're just getting rid of the hot air and drawing in cool air from the rest of the house.

If the AC is of portable kind, where you have a hose that expels hot air through the window, it will be a win-win since this also creates a negative pressure, pulling cool air from the rest of the house.

Otherwise if the house is cool, then it's actually any way that's good. The question would be if you want to be able to control the temperature in the room yourself, or want to rely on the temperature of the rest of the house.

inh

full member

Activity: 155

Merit: 100

Exhaust the hot air, that way you arent using a second AC to cool the entire room, you're just getting rid of the hot air and drawing in cool air from the rest of the house.

RobertRibbeck

full member

Activity: 221

Merit: 100

Creature comfort is the big factor

you will benefit from the ac too

as a general rule it is better to exaust hot air

Meatball

sr. member

Activity: 378

Merit: 250

Yeah, it's not sauna hot in there, but like I said, it gets up in the high 80's in that room. Rest of the house has central air and has been staying pretty close to 76-78 where I put the thermostats. I have an AC unit lying around, I might just try that because I can put it pretty close to where the cards are all located and I it'll regulate itself with it's thermostat instead of just staying on 24x7 like the fans would.

LegitBit

full member

Activity: 140

Merit: 100

Quote from: Uzza on June 09, 2011, 03:16:30 PM

The fans would create a lower pressure in the room blowing the air out, resulting in air being sucked in from somewhere. Most likely it'll be from other parts of the house that's also hot.

An AC would be the best bet, since it actually cools the air and blowing it in, not merely shuffles air around.

+1

grue

legendary

Activity: 2058

Merit: 1452

if the air is REALLY hot, blow it out. otherwise, spot cool the cards.

Uzza

newbie

Activity: 35

Merit: 0

The fans would create a lower pressure in the room blowing the air out, resulting in air being sucked in from somewhere. Most likely it'll be from other parts of the house that's also hot.

An AC would be the best bet, since it actually cools the air and blowing it in, not merely shuffles air around.

Meatball

sr. member

Activity: 378

Merit: 250

So I've got a few mining rigs set up in one room and it's starting to got hot as balls in there with temps fluctuating from 80 to 88 F throughout the day. Doesn't help we've been mid to high 90's every day for weeks. The room is decent sized and has two big windows. So my question is, would it be better to stick a window AC unit in one of the windows and have it pump cool air into the room, or would it be better to get 1 or 2 window fans and have it trying to pull the hot air from inside and exhaust it outside?

Even though it's hot, I'm not seeing any of the cards go over 75c, and those are usually the ones in the middle of other cards.

Topic: Cooling Question - Exhaust Hot or Intake Cool? (Read 6703 times)