Mining server room (cooling development help)

[warweed]

Images included this is a scale model of the room in development we are currently waiting on a 200 amp drop to the location to be able to feed this beast but other then that hardware is trickling in from various sources for reference sakes lets assume all gpu's are 5850's light grey are psu's black HDD's and 5th rack down light blackish is switch 1 window to room 1 door units are staggered so there is more chance of air flow 5850 are front and rear exhaust what we need to know is this

should we opt air conditioning if so how should it be routed or should we opt air exchange ?

we are leaning to air exchange as it would be simpler but we need to know how much air should be displaced and how it should be routed ?

there is about 810 ft3 in this room

we have no idea the actual heat that the cards are putting out because it is dependent on alot of factors such as the room air temp and such .. but open air with fan running 100% we sit at about 62 degrees C assuming the outside air is about 17 C so given the max temp of ~37C  and a min in the winter of -30C

roughly how much air should we be moving im sure i could setup a thermostat to regulate the fans on and off but still would be nice to know how many cfm the inline fans should move to cool the room at a max temp of 37C outside


Images oversized sorry lol and detail is lacking just so you can get a panned out view if anyone uses maya and wants the maya file let me know

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[dikidera]

I like all them GPUs, but you will increase the diff a lot dude. Think about the other users.

[TurdHurdur]

I like all them GPUs, but you will increase the diff a lot dude. Think about the other users.

That's not how Capitalism works.

[warweed]

You are right i will increase the difficulty but the difficulty will continue to increase regardless if its me or say 40 other users really doesn't matter if it is me or not the end result is a rise

[cschmitz]

we have no idea the actual heat that the cards are putting out

i would say if that is the depth of knowledge you have on the issue, dont invest in an installation of that size. the heat of each card is precisely defined and possible to even calculate quite accurately, going with the tdp seems to be a good rule of tumb and leave some buffer.
not knowing about tdp and thinking that heat output in watt is in any way related to the environmental temperature does suggest you should do some more reading rather than building your private datacenter.
you should not confuse heat output per card with the cards ability to stay within its thermal envelope inside your projected building, these are two different issues.

[cschmitz]

I like all them GPUs, but you will increase the diff a lot dude. Think about the other users.

you actually think someone with 3*16=48 pcs with say 3x 5850 each will cause a huge diff increase? dont be so naive, thats only about 46gh.

[warweed]

heat is the only issue and your right i don't know much about it the rest of the development is under control

i wouldn't ask if i didn't know

[Raulo]

I'm not sure what the wattage of your whole setup is but if I understand it correctly, it is 10kW (50 boxes about 200W each). You will not cool it without AC. Even 1kW noticeably heats a room. And you will likely not cool it with ventilation only unless it's cold winter. Specific heat of air is 1.2 kJ/(m3*K) so assuming 10 K difference between incoming and exhausting air from the room, you need to move 10000/1200/10=0.8 m3 of air per second. This is a lot. You need to exchange all the air in the room in less than 1.5 minutes. Normal ventilation is exchanging all the air in 1-2 hours. Not only that but you need to make sure, the air is removed properly from the whole room and there are no hot spots. And you'll still have a room that is at least 10 K warmer than the outside temperature which even if not make throttling of the cards, it will make them degrade quicker.

Get an AC unit that is rated for the heat removal at least equal to the heat produced by the setup. Or start with a smaller installation if you have not enough knowledge.

[warweed]

I can get a 1260 CFM inline blower that will exchange the the rooms air in under a min would that not work ? and yes i understand the hot spot issue AC is certainly a option just weighting each

[marcus_of_augustus]

How many GPUs on each shelf (and/or rig)?

Pretty hard to estimate heat without knowing that.

[jasonk]

Wow this is crazy, especially considering the massive difficulty increases.  I've only been mining for 3 weeks, I've already seen the network MORE than double!

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Bad idea to try to cool the room with only an AC, considering 10KW of heat!  Your best bet would be to run some kind of ducting to each computer to vent the air out of the room.

The idea is you don't want to cool the heat, but instead get rid of the heat ASAP then add cool air into the room.

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Either way, I think this is an insane project to attempt, and I believe we will see a bitcoin economy crash soon enough if people like you start going overboard.

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I can get a 1260 CFM inline blower that will exchange the the rooms air in under a min would that not work ? and yes i understand the hot spot issue AC is certainly a option just weighting each

If you have that kind of CFM going into the room, can you also evacuate that amount of air from the rest of the room?

[warweed]

there will be 36 by this friday and more added the following week

[marcus_of_augustus]

there will be 36 by this friday and more added the following week

36 on each shelf?

[BitterTea]

Why not put that waste heat to good use?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_heat#Electrification_of_waste_heat

[Hawkix]

Have you seen this Youtube video - custom exhaust for mining rigs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5f_e4P6gMA

[Basiley]

if you had investments for such hardware amount, you probably had money for professional air cond builder, which can design/engineer cooling for you solution.
check you local newspaper for such ads.
in case if you short on cash - pick industrial air conditioner of appropriate type/power[consult w/dealer].

[warweed]

As you see it is how it will be built 16 machines to a shelf and currently 3 shelves with possibility of 2 more shelves going in down the line

Biggest project concerns are heat and power were in the process of contracting an electrical engineer to run 150 amp drop just to this server room which by itself is proving to be a pain the inline air movers are rated to 1260 CFM each and one would be intake the other exhaust if that were the way to go there would be a arduino based temperature controller taking data from multiple sensors to figure out how high or low to adjust the fans to maintain a certain temperature


This option is still more cost effective then to have AC ATM also working within the limited power constraints exhaust fans would be more effective then AC but I do understand the issue of hotspots what about heat dispersal in the Tom setting up perimeter box fans to create a cyclone effect ? Thoughts ?

[acamus]

you should definitely close the system. Put the miners near one another and do an intake/exhaust cycle on each card. Use ducts in a closed system to get all that air OUT of that room. A few of these things might be able to get the air moving although they throw off a bunch of heat themselves

http://www.steam-brite.com/store/images/Mytee_2200_air_mover.jpg

shouldn't really be too much hotspot issues with a ducted system like this.

[w128]

From your image it looks like you're going have one row ingesting the other's exhaust. It would make sense to take some of the concepts employed in datacenters like hot/cool aisles and enclosures.

Basically, create a partition of some kind that separates and contains the hot/cool airflows so that you can handle them easier. Exhaust each of the units into a central aisle/chimney with a return in the roof. The cool aisle is then fed with whatever you decide on to provide the 6 or so tons of cooling that setup would require.

Have you considered using a colo of some kind? Given the amount of money you're spending it might make sense to plop the stuff into one and forget about the power/cooling headaches all together.

[warweed]

Yes we have considered a colo but the ones available to us in Edmonton are limited and pricing with min. Band width charges we have also considered leaseong commercial space both are not finically feasible at this time to justify it the power situation is about a 3200 dollar upgrade and it's one time were as colocation would be continuos although I do like the partition idea and hadn't even considered that that will certainly go into the design model if we opt exhaust over AC