Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

at the moment I have about 100 GPUs in a basement room with only one open side (former window) that serves one half air intake, other half air output with each having one big radial fan.
Temperatures get a bit uncomfortable in summer though. The room is about 150m³ big and I did not separate into cold/hot side because I have open air rigs with 12 cards each.

Now I want to put the cards all in server cases with delta fans and solve the temperature problem once and for all.
Can you recommend some good cases? Most of my cards are 3 slot height though (and none are blower style cards). So that's a problem with some configurations. Since I am not restricted to have them fit in server racks, the cases could be custom sized. But I barely find cases that fit 10 cards or even 12.
I tried some years ago a case with Vegas but they did not ventilate enough due to the small gaps in between them.
I am looking for small footprint, stacked, maximum airflow, high service convenience. So I can stack them, connect the intake air so the cold side, the other vent to the hot side and end the struggle in summer.

Any suggestions what I should look for?

Thank you in advance!!

A server case is 48.5cm width.
A standard GPU is 4.1 cm.
Estimating 12 GPUs would be 49.2 cm without any space. So, uhm, more than critical :-).
For a typical server case, removing all unneeded stuff, and with little mods you
can put 6 GPUs in.
12 should fit, if you can place them in 2 rows.
Possible with very short GPUs like Gainward 2060 Pegasus.
You need a long case, 70cm, like Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4129-N. Its 4HEs.

I dream of having my watercooled rigs at home. Cooling would be easy,
but the electric costs are too high. This would be a huge density.
But i dont think you would change all your GPUs.

Rosewill has server cases on sale. I am using these for my vegas due to the need for dual PSUs:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rosewill-8-GPU-Mining-Case-Frame-Dual-PSU-Support-Maximum-Airflow-Crypto-Mine/382470242450

But I also use these cases from rosewill that are also on sale for the rigs I can run on one psu:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rosewill-RSV-L4000C-4U-Rackmount-Server-Case-Chassis-for-Bitcoin-Mining-Machine/173216919921

Point of caution on the 2nd case though, if you have blower style cards you'll need to mod the cases to reverse the mounting bars to get the air blowing away from the front, default mount has the cards blowing air towards the front. For the money and for new cases, I don't think you can do better than these. Have to factor shipping costs in for anything you buy, cases are heavy.

My recommendation would be to use riserless motherboards with their own cases with delta fans. If you have 3-slot GPUs, you should be able to remove the GPU fans and cool them with the case fans only (I did that with my Vega GPUs). Just make sure that the case is big enough to accommodate your GPUs and that it has delta fans at both sides.

A case with good clearance is the one sold by ITZR with its riserless motherboards (the same that Octominer rebranded). The cheapest would be to contact the manufacturer directly on Alibaba and get it imported by sea freight, although with the current world situation, transportation has become much more expensive.

Yeah, I'd second this if you're in a buying mood. A few of these running SMoS or similar mining OS will be rock solid and faff-free. Once you've tuned the fans to the right noise/temp balance you'll be golden. Top tip: you can undervolt Deltas by swapping the molex pins (google it) and make em much quieter if temps allow.

Are deltafans and server cases the better way to go thermal wise? Because I could also just put the rigs in smaller stackable open air frames and enclose them in a custom built tent with a top exhaust cap connected to the vent. Fresh air could be just blown into the room, to use the cooled down air of the basement on hot days.

The most important thing is that the heat of one GPU doesn't affect other GPUs, as long as you achieve that, you should be ok.
By using closed cases with delta fans in a hot/cold chamber configuration, you guarantee that that is the case. You also prevent a lot of problems by using riserless motherboards, since risers are pron to fail, specially in hot scenarios and/or high power draw from GPUs, therefore less maintenance is required.

I checked the recommended cases and looked a bit around. I thought of maybe combining 2 cases with one mainboard. Since I am going to stack them, I could build 12 GPU rigs with 6 in each case.
Did anybody do this? or are there maybe "two level" cases for 12 GPUs?

Routing extra long USB 3.0 cables out the back of case and a way to power up the the PSU seems like a bit much.  Probably better to just dish out the exrta $80-150 for cpu/mobo/ram and run 8GPU's each case. 

The key benefit is that you can shift some of the cooling requirements to the Delta fans, which are designed to run 200+CFM for ever, rather than GPU fans that will eventually fail (albeit after a lot of abuse). In practice this means you can throttle the GPU fans right back, moving heat away from the cards even more. This also means that if a GPU fan does fail, you have redundancy.

On the downside, they're louder than open frames, and you'll still be limited by the thermal capacity of your in-and-out fans, so you will get a denser setup, but not a bigger one (assuming you are currently maxed out).