Heat Exchanger for cooling PC's?

I've been toying with the idea of watercooling for a long time due to:

1. High summer temperatures (100F is common)
2. Many machines make for a very hot computer room

However there are some barriers that have stopped me:

1. Seven computers in the same room that all need cooling
2. The price of water blocks
3. Design and manufacture of manifolds to distribute the water

Ok, now I'm gonna put on my flame proof suit and introduce my idea:

What if I moved all the computers into the closet and cooled the air in the closet using a large fan behind what I call "a heat exchanger". Essentially a very large fine finned radiator that would be connected to a watersupply that is cooled to about 50F by a geothermal loop.

The concept would require some airflow management to exhaust all the hot air into an area that would be carried to the cooler, then returned to the front as supply to the computer air intakes.

I know the geothermal loop is feasible (there are several on this forum), and commercial lan rooms use chilled air cooling. This idea kind of combines both of those to eliminate the need for water blocks (and it leaves my gaming rig portable).

So there you have it, a bare bones idea which is lacking the details of BTU's Watts, Pump size/brand, geothermal loop capacity/size. But other than the details how does it sound?

I like the general idea but am thinking that the air to water heat exchange may be difficult to get enough efficient cooling. You would probably want some ducting so the hot areas (hsf, pwm) get favoured air flow. I think it will be difficult to maintain high oc's on rigs. Of course many of mine are intel D's so they are furnaces anyway.
AMD's might have a better chance, esp if not OC'ed ?
/edit ... just read your sig ... intels ... oh well ... northwoods are not as hot as prescotts and D's. But they also don't tolerate heat as well at good oc's as you go from northwood->prescott->D.

By the time you do a good enuf exchanger and ducting, it might cost the same as WB's ... but i don't really know.

And you might want to think about exhausting the psu's straight outside.

I will be doing my psu exhaust very soon ... with rising temps here my closet rack room is getting hot. It is in a basement, so it will be sucking cooler basement air out.

Right after i get the WB's on my OC'ed rigs else i will be reducing the oc's

Hrmm, might need to update my sig...

Add Dual Opteron Server and Athlon 64 3200+ and Dual Core P4

Venting the computers outside will increase the cost of air conditioning my house because it will require the very hot outside air to come in and replace the cpu heated air. Thus exhausting outside is not a winning solution, although an interesting idea.


Note: I just learned that a heat exchanger is used to transfer heat from one fluid to another, so it is not exactly applicable to my proposal. Please forgive my misuse of the term in my opening post.

eaglescouter said:

Note: I just learned that a heat exchanger is used to transfer heat from one fluid to another, so it is not exactly applicable to my proposal. Please forgive my misuse of the term in my opening post.

Click to expand...

Your use is valid. A fluid is "a substance (as a liquid or gas) tending to flow or conform to the outline of its container". Hence, air is a fluid.

Have you considered making some copper endcap blocks? I think they would easily outperform the the geothermal AC solution.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=328540&highlight=copper+cap

I know that watercooling each machine using traditional methods would probably yield better temperatures, however I do not relish the thought of maintaining and monitoring 7 or more water cooling setups. I really want a set it up and nearly forget about it solution.

that is my design point for my folding farm cooling.


Water is really reliable if done right. I setup an external rad system for my sig rig a year ago ... still running strong 724 with no maintenance except once topping up the t-fill. The only other time i touched it was when i moved the WB to a 920 folding layer. And cleaned some dust out of the rad when i moved it.

The same rigs on air i would have had to clean the hsf's 3 or 4 times in the same time.

So if you set it up well, it won't leak and looking at a water line once a month is no big deal.