- Joined
- Jun 4, 2002
- Location
- massachusetts, USA
I decided to undertake this whole cooling problem in a relatively new way and would appreciate your critiques or suggestions regarding my design concept. While I was thinking about this problem of heat in overclocked machines (spurred on by my recent gigabyte-2000xp puchase) I decided to ask myself a simple question; What is cool around the house that I can exploit? the answers I came up with were 1: the tap water 2: a refrigerator or 3: a room air conditioner. I had thought of using cool well water to liquid cool the cpu but that would be technically challenging to filter the water and run the pump 24/7. the fridge idea was difficult as the fridge really shouldn't be running 24/7 and stripping the guts out of a full size fridge sounded difficult. so I turned to the room a/c. discharge temps were in the -5-10 c range which is nice, the unit should be designed to run near 24/7 and 5000 btu should be able to dissipate 300 watts of energy standing on its head (5000 btu=1500 watts). with this idea in mind I have designed and built "THE DOGHOUSE".
The doghouse is a 2'x2'x2' wooden enclosure which is insulated 1" thick on 4 sides (top,bottom, left, and rear) the front is a sealed/hinged lexan panel. and the right side is a female rectangular shaped hole into which docks a standard 5000 btu room a/c. since the a/c both dischrges into the box and draws from the box the air is continually cooled and dehydrated. i built the system this weekend and put the new computer system in. The system is: gigabyte ga7vrxp, xp2000,msi g4 ti4400,512 corsair 3000 cas2 2 80 gig ata 133's on raid 0, water cooled cpu/chipset with danger den stuff. pre h20 cooling temps were 60/50 (cpu/chipset), post h20 were 50/45, and now the fun part post a/c h20 hybrid, on a near 100 degree high humidity day showed a low temp of 23/17 at full load !!! there is no condensation and the bleed off air can be used to cool the room if you so desire.
I have a few glitches like that the thermostat keeps shutting the a/c compressor off after only 30 sec because the inlet temp drops to 50 f ( will just need an electronic adjustable t-stat, and the doors need to be double pane and better hinged.
but my major question is this : is anyone out there interested in this design in any of these contexts. Full plans to use commonly available parts from home depot with cad drawings and instructions to utilize something like a sears 5000 btu a/c ( sears is everywhere and has a good unit ), or a kit with all the wood precut and hardware included.or A full kit with a/c, hardware and all necesary parts, or a full rackmount 3 motherboard-12 drive system for the truly abominable machine.
this is just a one-off concept now and I am surely not looking to make money ( I am a doctor in my day job). I will include some photos but remember this is only the proto type ! appreciate any comments please
Bill H
The doghouse is a 2'x2'x2' wooden enclosure which is insulated 1" thick on 4 sides (top,bottom, left, and rear) the front is a sealed/hinged lexan panel. and the right side is a female rectangular shaped hole into which docks a standard 5000 btu room a/c. since the a/c both dischrges into the box and draws from the box the air is continually cooled and dehydrated. i built the system this weekend and put the new computer system in. The system is: gigabyte ga7vrxp, xp2000,msi g4 ti4400,512 corsair 3000 cas2 2 80 gig ata 133's on raid 0, water cooled cpu/chipset with danger den stuff. pre h20 cooling temps were 60/50 (cpu/chipset), post h20 were 50/45, and now the fun part post a/c h20 hybrid, on a near 100 degree high humidity day showed a low temp of 23/17 at full load !!! there is no condensation and the bleed off air can be used to cool the room if you so desire.
I have a few glitches like that the thermostat keeps shutting the a/c compressor off after only 30 sec because the inlet temp drops to 50 f ( will just need an electronic adjustable t-stat, and the doors need to be double pane and better hinged.
but my major question is this : is anyone out there interested in this design in any of these contexts. Full plans to use commonly available parts from home depot with cad drawings and instructions to utilize something like a sears 5000 btu a/c ( sears is everywhere and has a good unit ), or a kit with all the wood precut and hardware included.or A full kit with a/c, hardware and all necesary parts, or a full rackmount 3 motherboard-12 drive system for the truly abominable machine.
this is just a one-off concept now and I am surely not looking to make money ( I am a doctor in my day job). I will include some photos but remember this is only the proto type ! appreciate any comments please
Bill H
