Room cooling? Portable air conditioner?

[none1]

Hi all!

I've got a room. NO windows. MANY computers (well OK, 8, but hope to go higher, think big BOINC farm). Even with good air cooling on each proc, the whole room gets to hot.

What to do?

I've seen "portable air conditioners" that have dehumidifiers built in, so they generate little or no water to empty. They can be wheeled around a room, BUT, they all want to use an exhause hose to go out a window.

Will I get ANY cooling with one of these devices in my room with no window to vent it out? Or will the air conditioner simply exhaust as much heat as it cools, giving the room no benefit?

Thanks!

 

[Electron Chaser]

Well all that heat that the AC generates has to go somewhere. So if you don't exhaust it all you end up with is an overpriced dehumidifier and a higher electric bill.

 

[LandShark]

back in the days when I have 8 PC in my home farm (2 being a duallie), I've tried one of those portable a/c unit w/ the exhaust hose vent the a/c's hot air through the window. I can tell you, it doesn't really work much!! yes, it will lower the air temp a bit, but not enough to justicify the cost and extra noise it'll generate! plus if you can't exhaust the a/c's hot air outside the room, it will be useless 'cos it does generate quite a lot of heat itself!!

 

[Deathknight]

I currently use a portable ac unit in my office for this exact reason. My office is very large and I put out a large amount of heat with my pcs, so cooling the entire room would be a difficult chore, but I have aimed for myself sitting at my desk being comfortable. I have positioned the ac unit to shoot its air in my general direction and I have a ceiling fan circulating as well.

Certainly without exhausting the hot air your AC unit will not work at all. It doesn't really magically create cold air, its basically extracting the heat and humidity from the air and moving it. Maybe you want to look into an in wall ac unit? They seem to work better than the portable models since there is no tubing in the room to reheat the air and its a cleaner installation.

 

[JaY_III]

At work we are cooling out temporary server room with a portable system
Seems to work ok.
However it is a Unit that needs the water emptied (and exchast). And when i empty the water i can feel how warm it is. So it might be your best bet to get a unit that does collect water as the water seems to take some of the heat generated by the AC unit.

 

[none1]

Hmm. OK, I understand that air conditioner doesn't create cold, need to exhaust the heat somewhere .....

But it doesn't seem like a refrigerator that keeps a bunch of stuff cold generates as much heat as it does cold?

OR, alternatively, if I had a small refrigerator in the room, and water cooled all the procs and ran the water through the frig, would the frig somehow heat up the hole room the same way the hot air from the air conditioner would?

Thanks!

 

[eaglescouter]

Yes a refrigerator works on the same principal. The coils on the backside are for radiating the warmth that was pulled out of the box, that heat is radiated into the room.

 

[eaglescouter]

Another possible option is to use a swamp cooler type of system where the heat is transferred into the water, but you would need a way to constantly refresh the water with cooler water, dumping the heat elsewhere.

No matter what solution you attempt, you must find a way to move the heat elsewhere, either by exhausting hot air, or hot water. When we discuss cooling PC's we are really talking about moving the heat to where it is not damaging our equipment.

 

[JaY_III]

Energy is Neither Created nor Destroyed

It must go someplace
You just need to find out what works best for you

 

[Deathknight]

What is your primary concern first off, cooling your equipment more or making the room more comfortable? It would seem that these 2 goals would probably have different methods to to achieve them.

As for your comment regarding cooling 8 pcs with 1 fridge, I don't believe that will work as well as you would hope. There is a sticky in the water cooling section that discusses the limitations of using a minifridge to cool just 1 machine. Your fridge just isn't designed to cool that type of heat load (its not designed to cool ANY kind of heat load really, it cools room temperature food and beverages, this is why it does not expel tremendous amounts of heat and also why it does not need to constantly run).

I believe the AC units that do not have trays to remove the water cool as efficiently as the ones that you do not have to remove the water, the difference is these newer units that don't need water removed actually use the water in the cooling process and the excess is discharged through the exhaust hose.

 

[Gasoline]

Without exhausting the heat, you will ultimately raise the overall temperature of the entire room even though you may create some cooler spots within the room only where the cool air is blowing out of the unit's vent. Can you cut open a small hole in an exterior wall, and install something like a clothes dryer vent to the outside? That would work with one of those portable self-contained roll-around A/C units like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16896100128

 

[none1]

welcome
yes i am interesting about your suggestion.
How big a room does an 8000 BTU portable air conditioner cool?
I need to buy an a/c and would like to know how to figure out how many BTUs I need.

Welcome Houasdf, nice necro, this thread was from 2005. I did buy a floor unit, and vented it out a window, as I could not install a regular window unit. IMO, it did NOT cool as effectively as a full window unit, so if you can, I'd go with a window unit.

For our purposes, "how big" does the air conditioner need to be is NOT as much about room size.

1) ROOM SIZE? energystar.gov has some general recomendations on air conditioner BTU for room size, they recomend 300 to 350 sq feet room size for a 8,000 BUT air conditioner. See the chart here:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=roomac.pr_properly_sized

2) BUT THOSE MAY NOT BE VALID for our purposes ..... because really its not ROOM SIZE that determines how much air conditioner you need, but HOW MUCH HEAT do you need to get rid of. A computer generates heat. An airconditioner that works just fine for a small room and ONE computer, may be completely overwhelmed by the heat generated form 8 computers.

3) To get the "correct size" air conditioner, you would need to figure out how much heat is generated in the room. I don't have that information, but I know there are threads that talk about how much heat video cards produce, how much for an overclocked quad CPU, etc., you'd need to do some research.

4) That said, I've used an 18,000 watt in window air conditioner to cool a very large unisulated garage in 90 degree temperatures, and I've used a 14,000 BTU in window air conditioner in a 400 sq ft room with 5 overclocked computers running setiathome 24x7, and the room has stayed cool. My back of the envelope "swag feel" is that my 8000 BTU floor unit, vented out the window but I needed to change the water, cooled about the same as a much smaller 5000 or 6000 in wall unit. YMMV

Good luck!

 

[Bobnova]

Here ya go, watts:btu calculator.
http://www.heatershop.com/btu_calculator.htm

1500w of computer usage? 5120BTUs/hour.

All (or at least 99.99%, if you want to be a pedant) of the electricity consumed by the computer is turned into heat one way or another, so if you have a 1kw folding farm with a 80% efficient PSU you're drawing 1200w or so at the wall and putting that much heat into the room, an AC unit that moves less then 1200w will slow the temp rise of the room, but will not prevent it.
An AC unit that moves more then 1200w will cool the room below ambient.
You have to include your monitor and such in the calculations, and if you're going to be into the room that's another 50w or so i think (could be out to lunch on this one).

 

[trader800]

Is there anyway u can drill a little hole on the wall? like a 3 inch hole? Your best bet is to get one of those split unit a/c, where the condenser is outside and the fan unit is inside. there is a very thin pipe (or 2) connecting them. anyway it needs a hole, but much smaller then the exhaust pipe on a portable.

 

[trents]

Move to some place where you have windows and can get fresh air. It's not only better for you computers but for your health!

 

[houstonm]

Liquid cooled house?


In all seriousness, running that many pcs in one room can't be to good for your breakers in your house. I would try to find a way to make air flow through your room better, can you provide a picture of your room so I can get some ideas?

 

[Conumdrum]

Move to some place where you have windows and can get fresh air. It's not only better for you computers but for your health!

Okay last poster(S), pay attention to latest post dates. Waste of your time folks.

 

[trents]

Okay last poster(S), pay attention to latest post dates. Waste of your time folks.

Why did that show up at or near the top of the strings list this morning since the last post before mine this morning was in June? Something that old would have been buried and I wouldn't have seen it this morning.

 

[muddocktor]

Why did that show up at or near the top of the strings list this morning since the last post before mine this morning was in June? Something that old would have been buried and I wouldn't have seen it this morning.

Because some spammer drug this thread up from the grave and posted in it. Since then he has been banned and his post deleted.

Good spammer trap thread.

 

[markp1989]

I know this is an old thread.

i would be tempted to put the systems under 1 (or more) water loop, then mount the radiator out side the room. only need to make 2 small holes for the tubing.

depending on out side temperatures you might need to insulate the tubing, and boards, and use anti freeze,

could probably pick up a large truck radiator online cheap, just need to make sure you get a copper one.

somthing like this could dump alot of heat, with the right fan(s)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Peugeot-405-T...arts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item2c57c865ac