Hey guys, I need some help cooling the rack of computers that are in my dorm room. My idea to to take or construct a hood like you would see above a stove and have it pipe away all the heat. I can have the heat go out a nearby window and I wanted to use one of those window fan units and have it blow right out the window like a dryer exaust. I have a rack very similar to this and it's about 18 inches deep and 36 inches wide so I have a lot of space to work with. The Texas summers are HOT and I need to think of something quick before I die of heat stroke in my sleep! Here is my idea, anyone have any opinions? Window Unit (With Fans) <------ Exhaust Hose <------- Hood (Over Comps)
Back when I work with my old place, we had much the same on the Racks, All it was, was a Rack lid witha bunch of holes in it, each hole had a fan and that was it, it helped lift the heat away from the rack, you might have to add, The twirly metal hose, (for a dryer) to each fan to duct it away, if you could figure out a manifold system then even better only 1 pipe to the outside. MiniG
Thanks for the tip, I'm trying to catch all of the hot air and suck it out because it's just too hot in my room. I might try and put a fan in each end of the hose to help push the heat out the window
If you could enclose it (roughly, not air tight), duct the top to outside with a fan, and put the holes in the bottom/leave a gap, that should work fairly good. What do you do with the rack, crunch seti?
Haha, no I don't do any SETI crunching. I just have my main workstation (P4 3.2ghz) and my gaming server (AMD 2.2ghz), linux box (dual P!!! 750) and router (VIA C3 800mhz) on the rack along with various monitors and it gets a bit too warm in my room with all that running. We keep it about 75 degrees with the AC on and my room gets well over 85 during the night. Most of the time that's warmer than outside but with the crazy west texas weather I'm afraid to leave a window open, I'd hate to fry all that hardware. Well I'm about to move dorms and when I get it together I'll post some pics of my hood setup. I'm thinking of actually getting a second hand stove hood and dryer hose and wiring some 80mm fans up to an AC socket!
