My No 2 rig is in my brick built garage attached to the house and runs about 8 hours / day on folding duties. Does anyone run a rig in a similar location ? Obviously at this time of year there are no problems with low temps, but what about as autumn/winter approaches ? I'm unable to run this rig 24/7, so is there a temperature below which I should not try to start it? The garage is dry and well ventilated. As always, thank you in advance for your comments.
I know a few people who do this, mine are currently in an air-con'd room but I used to keep them in a converted hay loft. The main thing to be careful is moisture & to make sure there's no condensation drips on the machine. If you're watercooling you also need to be careful of the water freezing in the look.
Is 8 hours a day any particular reason? I'm just thinking instead of running it 365 days at 8 hours, go for 120days 24/7 that will give you the same electricity use but if you could run bigadvs in that 120days your points would be alot higher. Also running it over winter would help with cooling your rig and heating your garage.
I run a server cabinet of servers/folding rigs/other stuff in my garage 24/7. No issues at all. The heat from the machines keeps the area around them at a nice level which means no moisture problems
Well with future plans on the spare room I was considering moving my machine in to the garage. Its detached and has a garage ring main in, I have also run some Cat6 cable to the garage in preparation for the move.
OK, thanks for the views, guess the main thing is to make sure there are no moisture issues, or as cdb suggested run the rig 24/7 if only through the winter months. I need to get another energenie power meter so that I've got an exact handle on electricity usage (bit of a sensitive issue in our house I'm afraid.)
I have been running 3 full time f@h rigs in my 1/2 converted garage for the last year or so. I installed 2 fans, 1 pulling fresh air in and 1 taking hot air out and this works great during the winter months but not so great in the summer. I have had to purchase an air con machine which I only use as a fan but this has certainly kept the temps at just about acceptable levels during this summer. The room is toasty with absolutley no danger of condensation as the rigs run 24/7. If they didn't I would need to think of heating it to ensure the safety of the gear. Upside is, the noise levels are low and the only place the fans can be heard is the guest room directly above it, I just make sure all guests are too drunk to hear it when they stay. Certainly a massive improvement on when I was running them upstairs! It was like an oven up there, you can imagine some of the comments I got.... Electricity bills not too bad and the wife is OK with it, it's the mother in law that now gives comments when she comes to baby sit and ventures into the forbidden room!! Must remember to keep it locked.
Have been considering putting a system out in the shop/game-hobby room behind the house. it's insulated but no heat/cooling except for a wood stove we fire up during the winter when we are out there. I was thinking the heat from the computer would keep the room from getting too cold during the winter months . It's wired for phone, cable and internet (cat5), so that wouldn't be an issue..
Good idea... Ive started folding again in my study, as it now is "cold" to some extent.. Once winter really kicks in it gets freezing up there, so at least you heat the room as well as doing good for the planet!
I just moved one of my folding rigs to the garage out back. will see how it does once he temp's start getting low.
I have had a couple of rigs under the kitchen floor for a couple of years. It is the nearest thing to a cellar I suppose, we live on a hill and there is well over a metre of space. Temperature is fairly constant. It was gonna be a wine cellar, but I stopped drinking several years ago. Had no problems at all. I totalled the garage to get a bigger garden so that was never an option!
