Does watercooling generate heat?

[woox]

I have about 3 PC's in my small office which are all currently fan cooled...one of them is a gaming rig, but the other two are plain office ones,but all three combined obviously generate a lot of heat in my small office/room making to room feel like a sauna.

If I water cool all the computers, will this solve my heat issues? Is there a reservoir out there that can water cool up to 3-4 pc's ?

[bicostp]

No matter what cooling method you use, the heat still has to go somewhere. Water cooling won't make the room feel any cooler, it's just another way to transfer heat from the CPU to the outside of the case.

Here are three possible solutions:

1. Limit how many computers you run at once. (Easiest to implement.)
2. Put the CPUs in another room and control them with long extension cables. (Really hard, and you'll only heat the other room up.)
3. Make a window adapter out of plywood and make exhaust ducts so the hot air from the PCs goes outside. (Difficult, and you'll need some kind of butterfly valve on the exhaust outlet you can switch off to keep the heat or cold out when the computers aren't running.)

Do you have to have all three machines running at the same time? And do you even need all of them? Can you consolidate the "office" machines' tasks to the gaming machine, or (if you don't want to make the gaming machine a mess) can you run multiple virtual machines on Virtual PC?

[Chapel]

Here are three possible solutions:

1. Limit how many computers you run at once. (Easiest to implement.)
2. Put the CPUs in another room and control them with long extension cables. (Really hard, and you'll only heat the other room up.)
3. Make a window adapter out of plywood and make exhaust ducts so the hot air from the PCs goes outside. (Difficult, and you'll need some kind of butterfly valve on the exhaust outlet you can switch off to keep the heat or cold out when the computers aren't running.)

Or the really easy solution of buying an A/C. (But I assume that is not an option.)

[bicostp]

An AC would cool the air a bit, but it will run constantly in a never-ending tug-of-war against the furnace of PCs that are running. That's not good when energy costs are climbing.

Now, combining an AC with running fewer computers...

[Chapel]

An AC would cool the air a bit, but it will run constantly in a never-ending tug-of-war against the furnace of PCs that are running. That's not good when energy costs are climbing.

Now, combining an AC with running fewer computers...

Good point about the energy costs, but if the space is small enough to be significantly effected by three computers, I doubt that the AC would have to work very hard to cool the space down. As a rule microchips make poor heating devices. Otherwise lots of green energy companies would be replacing standard heating elements in hot plates and the like with microprocessors.

Really, the solution may just be to try to generate some airflow in the office if it gets unbearably hot in there. I haven't done the math, but I would be willing to believe that a single human probably puts out more heat than 3 computers. (As the volume of a human is much more than the volume of 3 computers and they both run at an average temperature of about 37.)

Wait... brilliant idea, even better than the AC. You could replace your computers with more energy efficient models like this one.

http://kara.allthingsd.com/files/2008/0 ... 1-ajhd.jpg

[FireTime]

I have seen Computer cooling systems that place the coolant radiator outside of the case, You could place the radiator for the coolant system outside of the room. This would require a larger pump though.

[Neildo_64]

Dont dig up threads this old.

[bicostp]

Now that it's winter, they might want to consider leaving that room's door open to help heat the rest of the house.

[Rekarp]

[Kurt_]

Did you know that running a computer for an hour uses the same energy as running a lightbulb for a day?