New system build for hot climate

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 2:23 am

I actually live in a shed, a large shed, but a shed nevertheless (shed living is quite common in the Australian bush).

I have used all of my willpower to refrain from making any Crocodile Dundee jokes. Can we call you "Mick" from now on?

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:52 am

SoftLanding wrote:I'm concerned about what you said about the hard disk. I suppose I'd have to buy a temperature sensor and attach it to the HD to see exactly how hot it is. I think the limit for my HD is 55C. Perhaps I'll get an automatic fan control with sensors and attach one to the HD.

No need. All modern disks have sensors built in. Use SpeedFan to display the temperature. If the disk has modest airflow it will be 10-15*C warmer than ambient. With good air flow it will be less.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:24 pm

cmthomson wrote:
SoftLanding wrote:I'm concerned about what you said about the hard disk. I suppose I'd have to buy a temperature sensor and attach it to the HD to see exactly how hot it is. I think the limit for my HD is 55C. Perhaps I'll get an automatic fan control with sensors and attach one to the HD.
No need. All modern disks have sensors built in. Use SpeedFan to display the temperature. If the disk has modest airflow it will be 10-15*C warmer than ambient. With good air flow it will be less.

Yes, i was just going to point that out--all modern disks have temp monitoring built-in.

Yours is definitely an interesting case, as everything will be starting from 40C as a baseline *off* temperature. My hard drives usually run at 35-40C, with the air getting pulled through the lower chamber by the PSU. The ambient here is probably 25C or so.

My graphics card and CPU...both idle at 40C.

Thus the need for you to have a little bit more "direct" cooling of components than some here who can afford to passive or use just 1 or 2 slow fans to optimize convection patterns and whatnot.

Sounds like a fan controller would be ideal to get rigged up now in the quiet season then so you can sleep.

I LOL'ed at the shed comment.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:51 pm

SoftLanding wrote:I'm concerned about what you said about the hard disk. I suppose I'd have to buy a temperature sensor and attach it to the HD to see exactly how hot it is. I think the limit for my HD is 55C. Perhaps I'll get an automatic fan control with sensors and attach one to the HD.

Rereading this quote I realize that I misinterpreted what you intended. Yes, you could tape a sensor to the disk and use it to run a fan controller, but that is unnecessarily complex. Two simpler approaches would work well:

1. Use an NMT-3 attached to a Nexus fan in the lower chamber of the P180. I used this approach, and it automatically ramps up the fan as the air flowing off the disks warms up. It starts to ramp up as my disks go above about 35*C.

2. Use SpeedFan to control the speed of the lower chamber fan based on the disks' SMART temperature reading. I haven't tried this, but it should work.

SoftLanding · Post by **SoftLanding** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:25 am

jaganath wrote: I have used all of my willpower to refrain from making any Crocodile Dundee jokes. Can we call you "Mick" from now on?

Sorry to dissapoint you, but I'm about as far from a true blue ocker aussie as you can get! I've only lived in Australia for a few years, though I really love it - the bush is my paradise.

Thanks all for replying. I'll look into all these fan control options after I've built my system (still waiting for the CPU).

I have a small question. I'm getting a Seasonic S12 600W PSU and an Antec P180B case. Given this combo, do I need to get any extension cords? I seem to remember something about needing to do this - if so, I'd like to order any parts before my CPU arrives.

jb_ · Post by **jb_** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 5:45 am

jaganath wrote:I have used all of my willpower to refrain from making any Crocodile Dundee jokes. Can we call you "Mick" from now on?

Most Australians cringe whenever Crocodile Dundee is mentioned by a foreigner

Spod · Post by **Spod** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 9:10 am

SoftLanding - the latest revision of the S12 has longer cables, so you should be fine.

SoftLanding · Post by **SoftLanding** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 1:02 pm

Spod wrote:SoftLanding - the latest revision of the S12 has longer cables, so you should be fine.

Thanks Spod - that's good to know.

I'm still waiting for all my gear to arrive - I'll post once I've built it.

fastturtle · Post by **fastturtle** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:51 pm

SoftLanding:

I've got a suggestion on cooling your home that works pretty well for me but it does have a single Caveat: It needs low Humidity since it's simply an evaporative cooler.

Basically it's a small tank that draws air through a pad of material that's saturated with water and as long as the Relitive Humidty is less then 50 percent works well. Of course the dryer the outside air, the better it works as I know, since I do live in the desert. We're now into our summer here and temps are climbing above 40 celsius during the day and yet I rarely see temps above 30 in the house unless we've recently had rain and the humidity is above 70 percent.

One intersting thing about evaporative cooling, lots of air leakage is a good thing. In order to get maximum cooling from the setup, you need to allow air to escape and carry the heat outside, otherwise all that happens is you increase the internal humidity quickly.

Hope you can find a small window unit that's fairly efficient as it should offer some relief not only from the heat but static conditions.

SoftLanding · Post by **SoftLanding** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 3:22 pm

fastturtle wrote:SoftLanding:

I've got a suggestion on cooling your home that works pretty well for me but it does have a single Caveat: It needs low Humidity since it's simply an evaporative cooler.

That sounds like an excellent suggestion fastturtle. Have you got a URL to an example of these?

I don't know what our humidity normally is, but here's a graph of a nearby town which we're probably similar to, which shows it gets above 80% at 9am (when it's not so hot) to around 60% at 3pm (the hot months are Oct-March here and our summers are wetter than our winters). Is it too humid for this device?

SoftLanding · Post by **SoftLanding** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 3:42 pm

The final component of my system arrived yesterday and I finally got to build my system!

I'd really like to thank all of you for posting.

I salute you all. I humbly prostrate myself at your feet and offer my obeisance to your respective deities. May your progenies be strong and great in number. May you each be granted a boon of 10,000 kine.

If it wasn't for this site and your posts my system would have just been another annoyingly noisy machine. As it is, it's amazingly quiet, even with the AMD stock cooler.

Thank you!

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 5:58 pm

SoftLanding wrote:
fastturtle wrote:SoftLanding:

I've got a suggestion on cooling your home that works pretty well for me but it does have a single Caveat: It needs low Humidity since it's simply an evaporative cooler.
That sounds like an excellent suggestion fastturtle. Have you got a URL to an example of these?

I don't know what our humidity normally is, but here's a graph of a nearby town which we're probably similar to, which shows it gets above 80% at 9am (when it's not so hot) to around 60% at 3pm (the hot months are Oct-March here and our summers are wetter than our winters). Is it too humid for this device?

Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_cooler

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 1:38 am

I salute you all. I humbly prostrate myself at your feet and offer my obeisance to your respective deities. May your progenies be strong and great in number. May you each be granted a boon of 10,000 kine.

We are not worthy!