Portable Air conditioning

[ataranlen]

I live in an Apartment, and custom building something to cool my rigs is sorta out of the question. I was curious if anyone had any experience with Portable AC units, such as the ones found here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_in_-2_p_4_27?rh=n%3A2619525011%2Cn%3A%212619526011%2Cn%3A510180%2Cn%3A3737671%2Cn%3A1193678%2Cp_4%3AHaier&bbn=1193678&ie=UTF8&qid=1308007563&rnid=2661602011

I was mostly wondering about how many BTU's you use, and what system you have.

My server room runs HOT

[Sideways]

I was wondering this too.. googling around i found this page:

http://www.mhi-inc.com/Converter/watt_calculator.htm

A little bit down the page there is a calculator where you can figure how many BTU's the wattage you use creates. I would imagine that would be how many BTU's of a air conditioner you would need to remove the heat the puters are putting into the room.

From the rough calculations there, looks like 1000W used is about 3,500 BTU, so if you had a 1k watt machine and a 3.5k BTU airconditioner it would stay about the same temp in the room. Although there are alot of other factors, sun shining in, refigerator kicking on, your normal air conditioner running...

[ataranlen]

Thank you very much! Looks like a 12-13k system is about what I need. And when I retire my rigs (after a longer period of time due to the energy savings from not working the central AC so much and the cooler temps in the server room) I'll have an energy efficient portable AC system!

That Calculator give a lot of interesting information! I love that type of info!

[BiggieJohn]

13000 btu = 1 ton = ~3800 watts of cooling
an efficient unit draws about 1100 watts to do this

for computers, watts in = watts out in heat forget about trying to convert to BTU's

so if your rig draws 800 watts, you need to cool 800 watts of cooling to get no temp rise in the room it's in.

[enmaku]

Keep in mind that a normal apartment circuit is fused at 15 to 20 amps. This means you can only put 1725-2300 watts of power on one circuit, which probably won't be enough to run your rigs AND a 12,000 to 13,000 BTU AC unit. I've got a 9,000 BTU unit and it eats about 1,000 watts so you can probably count on 1,300 to 1,450 watts for the range you're looking at. That's basically the entire safely sustainable power draw on an entire circuit.

It's potentially dangerous (but sometimes unavoidable) to solve this problem with extension cords. If you do, don't cheap out; get at least 14 gauge cords (lower number is better, best available is usually 12 but those are usually spendy). figure out how many watts your equipment pulls, divide that by 115 to find amps and make sure the cord you get is rated for at least that many amps. Preferably you never want to put any circuit under more than 80% of its maximum safe load.

Also, it's meant more for server rooms than living rooms, but I've found this to be a good guide in the past: http://www.openxtra.co.uk/articles/calculating-heat-load

[FlappySocks]

Portable Air conditioning units are typically noisy and very inefficient.  Even if you vent the hot air hose out the window, the unit will suck in warm are from other rooms.

Get a split system, with a compressor outside. Some of them are DIY if the pipe run is not too long.  You defiantly gets what you pay for with air-con.

[ataranlen]

Keep in mind that a normal apartment circuit is fused at 15 to 20 amps. This means you can only put 1725-2300 watts of power on one circuit, which probably won't be enough to run your rigs AND a 12,000 to 13,000 BTU AC unit. I've got a 9,000 BTU unit and it eats about 1,000 watts so you can probably count on 1,300 to 1,450 watts for the range you're looking at. That's basically the entire safely sustainable power draw on an entire circuit.

It's potentially dangerous (but sometimes unavoidable) to solve this problem with extension cords. If you do, don't cheap out; get at least 14 gauge cords (lower number is better, best available is usually 12 but those are usually spendy). figure out how many watts your equipment pulls, divide that by 115 to find amps and make sure the cord you get is rated for at least that many amps. Preferably you never want to put any circuit under more than 80% of its maximum safe load.

Also, it's meant more for server rooms than living rooms, but I've found this to be a good guide in the past: http://www.openxtra.co.uk/articles/calculating-heat-load

Thank you for the great information. Luckily this room's walls are split into three circuits, and I can split everything fairly equally across without too much trouble.

[AreYouCereal]

I was thinking the of doing something similar as I have free electricity.
My house is always way hotter inside than out in the summer so would venting the A/C out the window really be inefficient.
I'd imagine having it pointed at my two rigs would help a lot?

[Freakin]

don't do this unless you can vent the hot air out the window.

Also, running one of these set to lowest setting 24x7 will start to build up a decent amount of water from the A/C, so you'll have to drain it regularly or it may start sputtering water or drip and freeze into an ice block somewhere on teh unit.

I ran 2x of these in a small bedroom with 12x servers in it and it kept it an acceptable 70-72F.

We ended up putting them on 2x4s and pulling the drain plugs so they'd just drain into a giant tupperware.  It was stunning how much water they pulled out of the air. 

[airdata]

has anybody showed up at a Colo facility w\ a bunch of raggity mining machines ?  I'd love to see pics and lol..  great cooling, electricity included..

[Freakin]

I had a friend run two ugly ass towers in a top of the line colo. It was so ghetto that his power button didnt work, so they had to press a power button inside the case to reboot it.

I told him I would be embarrassed showing up with that thing. Some of these miners would be much worse.

[enmaku]

I had a friend run two ugly ass towers in a top of the line colo. It was so ghetto that his power button didnt work, so they had to press a power button inside the case to reboot it.

I told him I would be embarrassed showing up with that thing. Some of these miners would be much worse.

Ooooh his had one of the fancy power buttons built into the motherboard. I've had a few PCs in the past that I've had to short the pins on the front panel block with a screwdriver 

Seriously though, my rigs WERE built for cheap but they are all still in identical cases with all of the front panel controls hooked up. They look pretty slick sitting all in a row... Of course they run far too hot to cluster them all in one part of the house so they're very seldom actually sitting in a row...

[Tamerz]

You are much better off with a window A/C if you can fit it. Either that, or one of the more expensive portable ones that has separate intake and exhaust hoses. We had to use one of these for a band studio that would hit 90+ degrees Fahrenheit in the summers, and no window to put a window AC in. We ended up cutting a hole in a door to mount a window AC and vent to the hallway and it worked much better than the portable one.

[Freakin]

I had a friend run two ugly ass towers in a top of the line colo. It was so ghetto that his power button didnt work, so they had to press a power button inside the case to reboot it.

I told him I would be embarrassed showing up with that thing. Some of these miners would be much worse.

Ooooh his had one of the fancy power buttons built into the motherboard. I've had a few PCs in the past that I've had to short the pins on the front panel block with a screwdriver 

Seriously though, my rigs WERE built for cheap but they are all still in identical cases with all of the front panel controls hooked up. They look pretty slick sitting all in a row... Of course they run far too hot to cluster them all in one part of the house so they're very seldom actually sitting in a row...

haha that's what I was doing with one of my miners until I got my fancy test bench