Question about Ambient Room Temps, Air Cooling and Water Cooling

[macharborguy]

Okay, here is the deal.  I live here in Northern Michigan.  While it is not the hottest place, nor the coldest place, it freaking can feel like it sometimes.

During the hottest parts of the summer it can get to around 90F +/- indoors, and during the coldest of the winter it can get close to if not below zero.

I am planning out some ideas for how to handle both summer and winter for bitcoin mining, and part of that involves the possibility of either having a summer and a winter rig (which is kind of pointless since they should both be running irregardless of time of year), or having a rig that I convert depending on the season.  Then again it is late and hot and I may just be talking out my butt right now.

Anyway, here at my home we have a back storage/work room that has no heating what-so-ever.  Concrete floor, not really well insulated walls.  In the dead of winter it gets really cold inside that room.  The room also has plenty of power outlets, and I can get a wifi signal well enough from that room.

My question is this: if I was to take a mining rig that, in a hot summer indoor area would have the video cards hitting anywhere between 90C and 105C via air-cooling at full load, what types of temps could I expect if they were in a room that was naturally say, 10F or lower with no outer case.  What types of issues could/would I face with that type of set up.


Since this rig cannot run at full potential during the summer just being air-cooled, I am tempted to convert it to a water cooled system over the winter, slowly getting the parts I need together, letting the air-cooled rig act as a heater at times, and then once temps rise, swap over to the quiet water cooled system and hopefully not have to worry about the heat output or overheating cards.  However, would that then water cooled system be able to handle the dead cold of winter, or would that be too much for it?

I know i'm all over the place, but I just want to get a general idea of things.

Does anyone else live in an area that can get very cold at or below zero, or is anyone using water cooling for their rigs and what results in temps are you seeing on very hot days or very cold nights?

[1715551378]

1715551378

[1715551378]

1715551378

[Supercrit]

There will never be a drawback of your system going too cool during winter, so water cooling in winter is not a problem, unless it's so cold the water in the loop freezes, then you just need to make sure it's always running, so the computer's heat will never allow that to happen.

Running cards at 90C+ all the time is not recommended, even if the GPU can handle it, the soldering will eventually melt and the card will fail. If it goes too high, either AC your room, have better ventilation in your room/inside case, have after market coolers, or just down clock it, you might have less mhash/s but at least your card will live longer.

[myhoho]

Your are Jr. member already, why not to post it in "mining hardware section"? it's more appropriate...

[Beta-coiner1]

Best advice I saw someone mention is to re-solder your videocard with good old Arctic Silver 5 or any aftermarket good ceramic that has good conductivity characteristics.It should bring the temps down at least 10-15.

[macharborguy]

Best advice I saw someone mention is to re-solder your videocard with good old Arctic Silver 5 or any aftermarket good ceramic that has good conductivity characteristics.It should bring the temps down at least 10-15.

I have a tube of Arctic Silver 5.  Would you suggest I use it on the stock cooler it came with?

Your are Jr. member already, why not to post it in "mining hardware section"? it's more appropriate...

Two reasons.  1) I didn't realize I passed Newbie status until after this post
and B) the discussions seemed to be far more active here (then again I haven't been around the other boards much yet) and I just liked the atmosphere.

while my status suggests i am not a newbie, trust me when I say that I am, lol

[macharborguy]

so I reverted back to what I had before I put both 6870s in the same system.  One card in one system, the other card in a second PC.

I now have both cards basically maxed out (one is at 1GHz, the other 950MHz).  The 1GHz one has the side panel removed and a fan blowing at it, and is running at 68C with the following flags in GUIMiner: -v -f1 -w128

The 950MHz one has the same flags, but is running at 72C.  Makes sense since the case is not open, there is no large fan blowing into it, and the wall is about 4 inches from the rear of the case (its my home theater system).


I found a website that sells a PCIe x1 to x16 converter ribbon cable, 2 for $9 with free shipping.  I am thinking of grabbing those to see if I can get a card to run off of it for mining, without the hassle of cutting a PCIe x1 connector.

Once winter hits, I may move both 6870s to the open case, use the ribbon cable to allow for more distance between the two cards this second time around, and toss the PC into that back storage/work room where it can run at full tilt for the whole winter.

I still have the GeForce GTX450 for gaming, which wasn't that bad of a card for that function, though it lacked a lot in the BitCoin mining space.  Luckally i would be able to make use of it's 33 MHashes again, possibly pushing my total hash rate to 600 or slightly above.

its all trial and error right now, but luckally i got the temps down.

running two PSUs isn't a big deal right now as the guests at my motel basically are subsidizing the cost, and I mainly want to collect bitcoins for the time being.

[Beta-coiner1]

I have a tube of Arctic Silver 5.  Would you suggest I use it on the stock cooler it came with?

I would suggest doing that but VERY carefully as obviously you don't want to damage your videocard.I'm assuming you know how to use it but what you should is look at some youtube videos first to map out where you may have to apply it before trying this.