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76 Comments
- Schwab, on 06/23/2009, -0/+31I don't have a super computer, and its not heating the entire university. But if you throw 2 computers and a 360 running in a 250 sq ft living space, you'll be nice and warm on the cold nights.
- BoneStamp, on 06/23/2009, -0/+29My old Pentium 4's network name is "TheFurnace".
- borez, on 06/23/2009, -1/+19I specialise in armchairs from the Victorian and post WW2 periods, especially Chesterfields and Chaise lounge. Although I am quite partial to a good Haute couture Frau.
- dsmx, on 06/23/2009, -2/+17But at least it's less retarded than you.
- geauxtig3rs, on 06/23/2009, -1/+15The water is typically not chilled. If the water is not below the ambient air temperature (which it can't be with the heat exchanger) there will never be condensation.
In the design I just saw, there was no memory-level cooling. The simple act of them flowing an inch above the memory modules would not magically wick heat away.
I've been doing water cooling for 10 years now on my personal computers, and I can guarantee you this is not a bad design, you are just ill-informed.
Wannabe computer engineer FTL...
Also, memory modules don't get hot enough to require heat-spreaders unless you are running them at insanely-high frequencies outside of their stated ranges (IE overclocking) and ECC RAM used for this application is anything but high-speed (it doesn't need to be for the type of operations it does). Heat spreaders are there to look pretty and to fool people like you into buying them because you think they are necessary.... - avengerp, on 06/23/2009, -2/+15"The water-cooled supercomputer will require a small amount, just about 2.64 gallons of water for cooling."
Is this per-processor? I don't know how much benefit they university's heating system would get out of 2.64 gallons of water, no matter how hot it is. - swmbuk, on 06/23/2009, -0/+12You know some people have been water cooling for years.
- pitdog, on 06/23/2009, -1/+12so... if it gets cold, they will have to play Crysis as much as possible :)
- camaroz06, on 06/23/2009, -0/+10A year or two ago we used to live in the coldest draftiest apartment in Boston, I used to use my desktop as a space heater. Turned that thing on, turned the exhaust ports outward and overclocked it higher than I would during the summertime get that thing folding for a good cause to get the CPU going and it worked nicely. So it was a double win, faster than normal overclock and more importantly heat! Running that computer as a heater (while folding) was cheaper than turning on the heaters.
- Mercedes383, on 06/23/2009, -1/+11Yeah, what the ***** would IBM engineers know? They are just noobs!
- Mercedes383, on 06/23/2009, -0/+8I'm guessing it's closed circuit and uses a heat exchanger. This will stop contamination that could cause corrosion.
- Chakat, on 06/23/2009, -0/+7You still need hot water for showers and cooking and cleaning and other tasks.
- ShadowFusion, on 06/23/2009, -0/+7i put a little thermometer they gave us at work behind my little piece of crap desktop they stuck me with, and it went from 77 (office temp) to 109 (behind my computer) in about 10 minutes... i can only imagine the heat those giant supercomps put off :)
- haydesigner, on 06/23/2009, -0/+7@GaltShrugged: "Since it is a university, probably going to cost a lot of ***** money."
@GaltShrugged: "As we usual see from green technology."
Since using sweeping stereotypes is *never* a sign of willful ignorance.
No wonder everyone is burying you.
@GaltShrugged: "Keep in mind that as an engineer I have designed heating systems. "
Where, Dubai? - Chakat, on 06/23/2009, -0/+6@GaltShrugged:
With a traditional chiller system, you already have to pump water, or some other coolant, which also requires energy. However, in contrast to a traditional chiller system, this process uses the waste heat to do something useful -- in this case, to provide student heating. Waste heat collection systems are used in most modern-day generators for this very purpose; people have realized that having all of that energy waft out an exhaust vent is wasteful when there are other cycles and other processes that can utilize that energy. - Chakat, on 06/23/2009, -1/+7How is saving money retarded?
- Mercedes383, on 06/23/2009, -1/+7@GaltShrugged
You can either expel the heat into the outside atmosphere or use to heat your home/office. How hard is that to understand? It's not volumes that are critical, but exchange rates. - MiDri, on 06/23/2009, -0/+5The trick is to use non conductive liquid to do your cooling, and make sure your system is set to turn it self off if it gets to hot. Fairly easy to detect a leak exists then.
- NJank, on 06/23/2009, -0/+5but most of those people still don't know what's actually happening in the box.
- protogenxl, on 06/23/2009, -1/+5Would you stop leaving empty soda cans on the supercomputer?
- Chakat, on 06/23/2009, -1/+5@GaltShrugged:
That three gallons per minute of water which you derisively refer to is constantly being recycled through the system, using energy that is typically wasted to better heat the building. This lowers costs because a) you don't need large, loud, and expensive, chiller units keeping the air cold, and b) you're using the waste heat elsewhere in the building, which means you don't need to run the boiler as hot. Both of which will save money - Jektal, on 06/23/2009, -0/+3I'd assume it's per rack.
- CyclonusRIP, on 06/23/2009, -1/+4Speak for yourself. I've been doing DIY water cooling since I was 15. It's a pretty simple concept to understand. Water is a better thermal conductor than air. There is limited space and fairly warm air inside a computer case. Make a copper die with a water channel in it put it on top of the processor and move the air cooled heat sink outside the case to a much larger area. You want to heat a building with it? Cool put the radiator in the duct behind a fan and blow some air through it. It's not rocket science and pretty much any engineering student has to take a thermodynamics course which covers all the physics at play in that system. Really that's kind of overkill though, the guy who fixes your refrigerator, your HVAC guy, or your car mechanic all probably understand how it works just fine too. Honestly if you don't understand what they're doing you're probably in the minority here. Water cooling isn't even remotely high tech.
- NJank, on 06/23/2009, -0/+3"If you have to remove 100KW of heat from air or remove 100KW of heat from liquid it's a similar effort"
Physics fail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer#Convect ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer_coeffic ...
q = h A (Ts-Tinf) = U (Ts-Tinf)
Total heat removal for a given temperature difference requires a fixed U (or fixed hA product).
here's a good chart:
http://electronics-cooling.com/articles/2005/2005_ ...
Air, forced looks like 20-200 W/m2K
Water, forced looks like 300-8,000 W/m2K
(both up to 4-5x more if jets included. I've seen up to ~400kW/m2K in the literature for single phase water).
So, convective potential of water is much higher. Plus, with the higher heat capacity of water, there may be balance of plant benefits with less total fluid movement, but that's highly dependent on a number of system design issues.
The total thermal resistance chain (R ~ 1/hA) from chip junction to 'ambient' has a huge bottleneck at the air interface from the low air-solid h. You make up for that with more A. Putting liquid in between gets you an efficient heat transit mechanism so that you can go from a place where large A is hard to a place where you can have an easier air-side A and likely better air-side flow as well. there's more components in between, but if it results in lower total thermal resistance, it's a win from a temperature standpoint. - yuanzhoulu, on 06/23/2009, -0/+3my university is heated mostly by the heatsinks of our campus power plant. therefore any additional heating systems here are wasteful to operate.
- HonoredMule, on 06/23/2009, -0/+2The fail rate of the hardware itself is probably already higher anyway. That doesn't mean leaks won't increase the overall fail rate, but it's not that bad, and leaks can be detected/hardware shut down before damage occurs anyway.
- deanc, on 06/23/2009, -0/+2I run 5 water cooled servers in my home office in a 42RU rack. no need to heat the 90m2 apartment in winter but we have some super insulation and a vaulted ceiling that keeps all the heat.
Only problem is summer the window has to stay open the entire time. it gets a little toasty but with most of the cooling fins on the outside of the rack works great, and silent from the outside even with all the drives/1 fan per pc inside.
Leaks are NOT the problem regardless of what people with no clue say. The real issue is 'bacteria' growing in your water loop. Nothing i've tried seems to kills it off :( - pathouston22, on 06/23/2009, -0/+2I can't even run my PS3, LCD HDTV, and computer all at the same time, it gets way too warm in my room in the summers in Houston.
- HonoredMule, on 06/23/2009, -0/+2If you're going to have the computer on all the time anyway, it can be.
- andy16666, on 06/23/2009, -0/+2I also think people are missing the point here. The best argument is that it's not simply the cost of moving air...it's the cost of pumping heat, which is what ends up happening. The rooms are air-conditioned to keep them at optimal operating temp without having a move and filter huge quantities of air through these centres (and without air-conditioning we'd be talking collosal amounts of air). That is the big cost...not just moving air but pumping heat.
Passive water cooling (mostly) removes the need for any heat pumps (air conditioners), because you can pump the water to external radiators efficiently. If air had better heat carrying capacity it would not have to be air conditioned...you could just pump the air outside and new air in, but because of air's poor heat carrying capacity it is not feasible to do this, which is why water saves a lot of energy.
The other edge of the sword is that heating (in some places) is the biggest user of energy. Where I live the average home owner's power bill triples (or more) in the winter. The kind of heat they're talking about would save tens of thousands of dollars a month for a large building if it could be used efficiently. - Cojafoji, on 06/23/2009, -0/+2Adding a small amount of undiluted anti freeze to the system should stop any kind of bacteria from growing.
- haydesigner, on 06/23/2009, -1/+3@GaltShrugged: "Very original."
Says the boy who used a second-grade insult in his own comment. - SummerofGeorge, on 06/23/2009, -5/+7here we go with the digg armchair experts again
- lylemackinnon, on 07/02/2009, -0/+1
Also, if you are using clear tubing, or light colored tubing, try putting some tape over it to block the light. If you make the tubing dark it should solve the fungi issue. - sjbdallas, on 06/28/2009, -0/+1Correction: I DIGG from bed.
- lilrabbit129, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1Sorry thumbs down for saying Green.
- lilrabbit129, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1Right now have a PS3 (folding), an Athlon64 and an Athlon Tbird with 4HDs as a RAID in my tiny apt. Its mighty toasty in there. I've had all the windows open in the dead of night ( 30something F outside) and the inside was still in the 60-70's.
I'm adding 2 Quad-Cores soon. =) - DeadBabyFloat, on 07/08/2009, -0/+1pshh, like that hunk of junk can run Crysis.
- UniversalGuy, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1I have a 360 and two PCs in my room, and on cold nights, whenever I fire up the 360, and have my PC's running, the room gets pretty toasty.
lol
Who needs a heater? - SummerofGeorge, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1so you guys are all doubting the very people who are working on this project simply because you've never heard a similar idea proposed before?
give me a ***** break, it's not like you guys don't design the water cooling systems, all you do is buy the *****, bring it home and make some modifications before putting it in - topcat5, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1Who said their would be leaks? IBM has been using water cooling in computers for decades with absolutely no problems. It's old stuff for them. Go google "Thermal Conduction Module" that used helium and water for cooling.
- dafragsta, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1That kind of water pump is going to use a nominal amount of electricity compared to what the CPU actually uses or what is used for heating.
- explodingzebras, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1fair point
- dafragsta, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1Using a PC as a space heater? I've been doing this for years.
I always thought it would be interesting to see how well a regenerative system built upon a good sterling machine would work. - CyclonusRIP, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1Who is doubting anything? Most of the posts in this thread are supporting the idea or asking for explanation. No one really said anything against it. I think it's a great idea. You already are making the heat, might as well use it. Every car heater ever uses the same principle.
- HonoredMule, on 06/24/2009, -0/+1Wow, you've really got talent for talking out your ass. Hardly seems worth the effort of debunking your prized red herring.
- Cojafoji, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1LOL My old computer works as my heater in the winter, though it's definitely not water cooled.
- HonoredMule, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1We should stop trying to make longer lasting/higher capacity/lighter batteries too...I mean we've no chance of succeeding, because "there is no free lunch."
That mantra cannot be applied to technological advancement of any kind, and it doesn't really apply to the development of infrastructure, either. Free or not, *something* by process of elimination has to have the best overall economical/effective/profitable/green outcome, and there's no reason it has to be the incumbent solution. If greater long-term savings/profits could not be achieved, no one would ever invest in or develop anything new. - plastiqmanb, on 06/24/2009, -0/+1Thats a lovely picture of IBM's QS21 blade.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/xbc/cog/bc_qs21_0792 ... - geauxtig3rs, on 06/23/2009, -0/+1You, Iron Donut, have obviously never watercooled...
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