What you crunching with??

[Brucifer]

Yo, Vaughan! What the heck do you have devoted to this project to be getting those high daily scores?????

[vaughan]

A bunch of machines :)

I think they're mainly Gentoo boxes back in Sydney that my son is looking after, mostly a mix of Ivy and Sandybridges. I was able to manage the Linux boxes using BOINC Manager from a LogMeIn session to a Windows box but my son changed the router / IP settings and I don't know the new IP addresses of the Linux machines now; will get that info next weekend. Switched most/all(?) Windows boxes to Physicsathome last weekend until they ran out of tasks. Now running Gerasim as they finally have some more tasks. Got to watch the temps as its a humid summer and the computer room hits 36C without a/c. Just waiting for some cooler weather then I can let the other machines loose.

[Brucifer]

ah.... feast or famine I guess!! Lol. It's good to see that you are back at the crunching again after your recent bout with the alternative life style that too many of us seem to have had to endure in the past five years or so! :-) Myself, I went and invested in some more win7 and picked up a couple i5 guts to replace a couple of the higher wattage C2Q systems. Also experimenting with an i3 and some gpu's to see what I can do there wattage wise. Definitely not like the years past, but am not generating the intense heat that I was before either. :-)

[vaughan]

All my current / recent builds are water cooled using a Corsair H80 system. Sorry no AMD CPUs too weak cruncher performance per watt of electricity and too much heat output. I5 Ivy Bridge seems to be the sweet spot for price/performance they overclock to 4.6 comfortably and temps remain manageable. I routinely put 32GB low profile Corsair DDR3 in the crunchers then any BOINC project that has silly high ram requirements can be catered for. My son installs Gentoo-64 as the OS. Usually put a 256 GB SSD Samsung 830s for storage. GPUs are whatever the wallet can afford on the day.

I forgot to add that the twin Xeon server has been crunching Asteroids too. That box is more set and forget than any of the others. It role is manage the network and crunch like crazy. No overclocking on the Xeons of course but stable as anything.

[Dirk Broer]

I have no complaints about the crunching performance per watt for my A6-3500 and especially not for it's successor with me for it: my A8-3820 (both 65 Watt tdp APUs), while the A8-3870K does a pretty thing in credits per Watt too. And no problem with heat output here now: it is winter! It even freezes at night...
It's a pitty the Intel HD 2000 IGP of my i3-2100 is totally useless, the CPU itself performs quite good per watt giving it's two cores with hyperthreading -also thanks to the HD 4770 in that same system, which is my sole MilkyWay cruncher-. Comes money I'll replace it with a i7-3770, but at the moment I have more hopes for a rebuild under Linux of my ASUS F1A75 with afore mentioned A6-3500.
Rumour has it that the Ivy Bridge with their Intel HD 2500 and HD 4000 can soon be used -the IGP already being detected in BOINC >7.0.39-, if only for the OpenCL that is possible on the CPU itself.

[Brucifer]

I've also got one cruncher running with the H80 cooling and have been really happy with it. Interestingly though messing around with asteroids has impressed me with the i5's I bought as they are really decent performing for their current draw and low heat. The gpu's definitely put out the work, but they put out the heat too. Just not much way around that sadly. I still haven't made it into the watercooling gpu scene yet. It's something I want to try, but it seems like I'm just too busy with a ton of other stuff all the time to get around to it. :-(

[Terry1953]

I've still have an 8350 laying here that I haven't built yet and I'm in no hurry the one I have running is throwing as much heat as a fireplace. I cranked it down to running on 2 cores and am just letting the GPU run Moo. Those two things don't belong in the same box. I'm considering sealing the case and running a 4" dryer type vent in from outside at the bottom and a 4" out at the top with a fan assist. It should work during the winter.

[Brucifer]

hahahhaha -- I definitely hear you on that one!! :-) I have though about basically the same thing. My thoughts were to build an enclosed shelf type arrangement that I could stuff the boxes in to crunch away, and then knock a couple vent holes in the side of the house so that one would suck in the fresh air and the other would be the exhaust port. That would also provide some noise insulation for those really noisy high performing gpu's.

Of course that doesn't take into account the wife crapping in her drawers when I put the holes in the side of the house. She gets pretty touchy on my holes I drill for network wires and such! Lol

So really, the most logical way really is to look into the water cooling thing. Could still put the main heat exchanger outside the house and then just run small water pipe though the wall into the computer room. Or even put it under the house maybe...??? But at any rate that would help knock down on noise, plus keep the interior room temperatures much more easy to regulate for the A/C and help keep the power bill down.

Of course there is also the nuclear option -- just quit crunching. But I tried that a couple times and it was a pretty severe withdrawal problem because computers are my main year round form of entertaining myself and keeping the brain occupied.

And thus the Raspberry Pi. That is a much cheaper way to play, of course you don't get much crunching completed and are limited in what you can crunch too for that matter. But it's something else to play with that keeps the brain cells entertained. :-)

[Terry1953]

Hummm... I really like the box idea. Since I live in a log cabin with 4X12 rough cut oak walls it would save me several holes to just drill 1 intake and one exhaust hole. The wife has made a deal with me that the master bedroom is mine to do with as I please as long as she rules the rest of the house. Right now I have an eight foot by 2 foot desk running along the west wall with a 4 foot by 2 foot "T" leg in the center. I'm thinking about a 4x2 by 6 foot tall box on one end of the desk with a shelf. I could use rough cut oak 1x12"s with 1" of foam insulation and a door down the middle 2 foot wide and 6 foot tall. A small hole for my KVM cords and I'm left with an L shaped desk. Guess I'll sketch it up and start begging. lol

[Brucifer]

Well if you went with the water cooling, then you wouldn't be space limited by the box. Plus things would be a lot quieter too. Well, except for the hum of the coolant pumps. Of course the water cooling would cost a bit more too. I haven't made up my mind yet what I'm gonna do yet. Still mulling a few ideas around in the head.

[Jason1478963]

I like the thought you guys are putting into cooling.I do like ideas to help reduce furnace run time and a/c run time as money saved could run more crunchers. Do you have any room to add storage for domestic water heating? this works well for me as I let mine get warm enough to take showers and the tankless sits idle most of the summer. the basement still sees more heat then i wold like from the GPUs and power supplies. If a guy could make an evaporative cooler for outside the house would be useful as well. Maybe some controlling done via a temp controller to dump some heat at a given temp. I currently can run 6 computers on one pump/loop. Keep the ideas and projects coming!

[Brucifer]

Jason, how about you detail out your setup/method for your cooling?

[Jason1478963]

Sorry for the slow response as this is a work in progress. I have about 10 computers on liquid cooling. I currently have 4 on one pump and 6 on another pump. These loops are dumping heat in an old water heater i had left over after the tankless water heater upgrade. I built a heat exchanger with copper pipe that uses thermal siphon via the drain port and pressure relief port on the tank. It would be nice to have a solar tank or indirect water tank with a built in heat exchanger if a guy finds a good deal. From the pump I have 4 computers in parallel on one loop. The other started out with 2 parallel loops and 2 computers in series on each parallel. Then after that mess I had to add 2 more in series before it went to the tank. The new choices in pumps may allow a person to do more in parallel then I've tried. To make things easier to change in the future we used case mounted quick disconnects from koolance for each PC. Most of my stuff ended up being koolance as there wasn't as many choices at the time. This also makes it easy to pull a system for upgrades or take it outside to blow all the dust out. Most of my current cooling is cpu water blocks and one machine with 3 water cooled 5850s that is currently down. I haven't decided what to do with the 7xxx cards yet. If I had 7970 cards i would consider a full coverage block. The worst part about full coverage is compatibility and usually can't be used on the next generation or non reference designs. it may be better to move to a block that does the GPU and cool the rest of the card with fans mounted in the door and heatsink the memory and vrms. If you cool the CPU and GPU that pulls a majority of the heat out of the case. I found it better to skip cooling hard drives with liquid as my ambient air was cooler then my loops and less mess. I ended up making my own reservoir out of pvc pipe and t's. I also started making the longer runs to the tank out of 1/2inch PVC pipe with PVC tubing connecting everything.

If i had a large budget i would consider an 80+ gallon storage tank with the heat exchanger built in. I think this would be more efficient at removing heat from the computer loop. I'm going to try a koolance tms-205 as my tms100 seems to have bit the dust recently. This should allow me to dump heat into the hydronic floor in my living room when a certain temp is reached. The TMS100 seemed to do this ok and i'm hoping for more control and longer life with the tms-205. These controllers can also ramp up fan speeds and pump speeds based on temps. This worked well until the controller had a failure and quit powering the pump. I do let my CPUs get a bit on the warm side when producing water for showers. At the computers I would use manifolds with reverse return to attempt to keep the flow rates similar at each PC. Valves could also be used to help balance the flows and temps between the computers. The quick disconnects similar to koolances line would be very useful to add to each computer case on the loop. For the waterblocks a guy would have to shop around and check the reviews as i'm not sure what i'd get today. The last ones I got for the am2+ socket was enzotech that I haven't been able to find anymore. The reservoir I would make myself again with a pressure relief like i have now. If you use an automotive radiator or heater core maybe a guy could get it outside and maybe even make it into an evaporative cooler of some sort. I'm sure a guy could figure out a way to dump into a hot tub or pool as well. I like to do something productive with the heat rather then remove it with a/c. When picking system parts try not to mix copper with aluminum and nickel with silver.

[AMDave]

WOW :shocked:

[Brucifer]

Jason................................ you brought a tear to my eye!!!!!! That is just positively awesome. Awesome. It would sure be nice to see that work of art! I'm going to have to digest this for a few days while the brain churns and burns as I'm sure there's gonna be some questions, indeed. :-) Cool, an honest to god water cooling junkie!!!!!! I'm proud of you lad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

[Jason1478963]

Thanks... I wouldn't call it art as its more of a series of small experiments. This all started out small about 9 years ago and grew slowly. I will look into getting some more pictures of a few things when I get a chance.

259 This picture is one of the reservoirs made out of PVC pipe and fittings. A few extra parts for the level indicator but well worth it as it seems evaporation takes place through the large amount of tubing. I located the return at the upper T to help eliminate air from the water coming in. I then try and fill it to around the center of that T or a bit above the T. The top is now used for filling and pressure relief (http://koolance.com/vlv-vl002k-pressure-valve) I purchased from koolance. The reservoir is mounted vertical to a leg of a shelving unit the computers are setup on. The supply and return to the storage tank come from above where the return from the tank ties into the upper T of the reservoir.

[Terry1953]

Jason,
Looks like you are doing some interesting things. I have a few friends around here that would love to see some of your work as they have cooling high on their list of interests, they use what they call thump barrels and worms. Most say that the cooling is the key to the quality of their product only second to their mash recipe.

[Brucifer]

Would be very interested in seeing pictures of your setups Jason, along with how-to's and stuff like that. Took a look at the Koolance site, good looking place with lots of good info. Thankyou!

[Jason1478963]

Terry,
I'm not sure on the amount of cooling they need as a 40 gallon tank heats up fast with a few GPU. I think a swimming pool would be an option as it would take a large amount of heat to change the pool temp. pool size, heat exchanger sizing and flow rates will need some math or experimenting. The setups they are using now may also be good ideas for us. It may be possible to add some of these copper coils to rain harvesting systems for a place to dump heat after your water preheat tank has hit your ideal temp. If they are large enough it may not increase evaporation that much or temperature. Would higher rain barrel temps cause other issues like bacteria growth? Would the copper loop in the barrel be an issue?

[Brucifer]

hmmmmmm..... you know the earth is a good heat sink. Too bad it's expensive to dig down. One could trench out a good sized reservoir down several feet and tap into the ground resources to help cool down a large water reservoir. Once it was in though, the expenses would be low. Was just a random brain fart waffling through.................... lol

[Jason1478963]

Would be very interested in seeing pictures of your setups Jason, along with how-to's and stuff like that. Took a look at the Koolance site, good looking place with lots of good info. Thankyou!

Sorry for the slow responses. I would like to redesign some of my setup and make changes when time permits. This is a hobby that doesn't get much attention with the kids keeping me busy. It would have been easier to have a series of pictures during some of the build and the ability to make a diagram of the setup. The tank is something I had and works good for me. Dad uses a 55 gallon plastic drum for his. I believe he has 2 sets of copper coils in it. One to dump heat from the computers and one to preheat water before it goes into the water tank. I'm sure this helps some as his well water comes in on the cool side.

I think i would invest in a large solar storage tank when my current one fails. They are a bit expensive but the energy savings from heating water and not running a/c should be significant over the life of the tank. It could always be used for solar when computers become to efficient to heat water

I started with a heating system like this Radiant Floor system (http://www.radiantcompany.com/system/open.shtml). Then the water heater got replaced with a tankless water heater and freed up the old tank. Then it turned into a simple variation of heating water with solar (http://www.radiantcompany.com/system/solar.shtml) with the solar being replaced by computer loops. I hope this helps with some ideas. This all started because of my Athlon 1.2ghz being to loud with the 5000 rpm 60mm fans and crunching.

[Terry1953]

Jason.

I think what these guys would like is to be able to get away from a creek or spring as that would give them a safer feeling as no one would ever think to look for them anywhere without a ready large volume of cool water.But they have been doing it the way they are for generations so they must be doing something right.

[Jason1478963]

I like the idea... maybe even make it a underground cistern for the upcoming water shortages. Also a loop around a building in PEX tubing would work very well.