How important is case material?

[Ragnarok]

Let's say I fold protiens as a hobby, and find myself flush with m4d b4nk. In the interest of helping humanity and boosting my folding scores, I decide to build a farm. The idea is to stuff as many AMD mobos in there as possible. Let's assume they're being stacked flat from the ground up. (I realize that, at around 1300 watts, this is going to trip breakers like nobody's business and generate enough heat to warm a large room.:D)

A couple of minutes of simple math later, I realize how much this would weigh. To cut weight, I speculate about making the case out of wood instead of aluminum. Let's look at some thermal conductivity coeffecients.

Aluminum -- 203 W/m K
Pine -- ~0.2 W/m-K

This presents a small problem with cooling. Namely, that aluminum conducts heat really well, while wood... doesn't. Watercooling would help, but I'm envisioning 6 or 7 waterblocks connected in parallel, with meters upon meters of tubing. Hm.

The question is, how important is the case material when considering heat transfer? If the case could be made out of asbestos for all I care, then great! Just chop holes and add fans. But if the material out of which the case constructed is important, then I might want to consider watercooling, or plan nifty things with air.

Thanks for reading.
Ragnarok

[chittnp]

well honestly, none of the heat generating components actually touch the sides of the case, and even if the case is aluminum, its not going to cool the hot air inside it much, thats where god airflow comes into play. the most important thing is getting the hot air out of the case. I never bought into the whole "aluminum cases are cooler" ideal. I do own a Lian LI which is aluminum, and a cheiftec as well, and Ive had the same system set up in both, and the cheiftec actually ran cooler, I think it is because it is alot bigger than the Lian li and the wires dont dirupt the airflow as much.

in my opinion, i think you'd be fine using wood to mount your farm, as long as you can get the hot air out of the enclosure

[BaldHeadedDork]

That is a wild set up for a question. Nicely done.

In the example you gave, the scale of the difference between aluminum and pine would make the wood case run hotter (or burst into flames...) regardless of how many fans you used. Watercooling-and perhaps a round or two of shock therapy-would be adviseable if you ever decide to take this on.

But the difference between the thermal conductivity of aluminum and steel is much closer, and therefore the cooling abilities are more dependent on other factors like interior air management, the number, flow rates and placement of fans, and changes in the ambient temperature.


BHD

[Captain Slug]

And besides. If you wanted to save weight, you could instead switch to plastic, which is also easier to tool.

[Daemonfly]

Make it out of plexi :) pretty cheap, light, and can show off your farm ;)

[64Thunderbolt]

also, instead of laying the boards flat, heat rises... with the boards on their sides this will let the heat rise and this wil help the air flow cool the boards more....

Charlie

[Lt. Max]

yep.. do something like stymee... his setup is very good.. 120's and vertical boards..
good luck! and we wana see pix when u get all this up!

max

[Ragnarok]

Arg, heat DOES rise. Well, that shoots my "stack the air-cooled mobo" idea into the blue.

Sqishing them side by side takes up too much room. Watercooled it is!

[q149]

i dont think your case material matters much. i think that less heat conductin material is the best with good cooling, with not so great cooling i think more heat conducting material would be better. let me try to explain my thinking. if you dont have fans or something you may want tte heat from your drives or whatever being spread away through the materials touching it. if you have good airflow and whatever then why would you want the heat spreading all over the whole case?

just my thoughts.
maybe im just not thinking right at all but right now this sounds good to me, if it sitll does in the moring i might have to conduct an ecperiment
hmmm now i think about a heatsink it conducts heat off of the part then the heat is blown off, k now my thoughts stopped
ok the moral of this story is i dont know what fthe **** im tlaking about but maybe andn hopefully i said soemthing that made sence and will help someone........

[Paxmax]

q149, I'd recommend a spellchecker for you.

Ragnarok, wood is fine -it won't matter much if there are fans, placing all MB on top of each other is fine, just add a fan for each "floor".