TLDR: want to cool smallish rack of kit with ambient air, air in room is hot in summer - better to bring colder air in from outside or get the hot air out?
Having a bit of a tidy up of my meagre homelab and want to revise my cooling strategy slightly.
Here is a list of the major heat-producing I have the following kit in a 36U rack (with side panels and blanking plates for front-to-back airflow:
The other 65 days of the year we actually get some decent sunshine here (SW England) and it all gets a bit too toasty up there (36° at the front of the rack, 43° at the rear!). Last summer I had a small portable aircon unit running up there on the hot days but there's a couple of issues with that: it's not automatable (i.e. I can't control it from a thermostat), exhausting the hot air involved running dryer hose down the hatch and out the window, noise and power consumption.
Plan A was to build a hot air containment box at the rear of the rack, fit an extractor fan and vent it outside. But the issue of the incoming air still being hot on a warm day is still present due to the sun beating down on the roof.
Plan B was to duct in air from the side of the house that's always in the shade and blow it at the front of the rack.
(Both A and B can be controlled by a simple £10 thermostat from screwfix.)
Which do you think will be the better approach? I suppose if I really wanted to I could duct in and out if I were careful about where the respective vents went? Any other suggestions welcome (that fit within your typical PhD student's budget!)
Having a bit of a tidy up of my meagre homelab and want to revise my cooling strategy slightly.
Here is a list of the major heat-producing I have the following kit in a 36U rack (with side panels and blanking plates for front-to-back airflow:
- Lenovo/EMC 4-bay NAS
- Netgear 4-bay NAS
- Dell C1100 /2x X5650 / 4x Seagate SSD / 128GB RAM (soon to be downgraded to L5630 as I don't need that much power in house any more)
- Dell R710 / 2x E5630 / 4x 15k 300GB + 4x S3500 / GTX750TI (now surplus to requirements too, up for sale soon)
- Ancient rackable 2U operton storage server (almost decommissioned, soon destined for the skip)
- Homebrew E3-1220v3 / GTX 970 / 32GB RAM remote workstation
- Homebrew Atom D2550 box
- couple of 3com 2916 switches
- powerdsine 9106G midspan
- draytek 2925 router
- virgin (not-so)Superhub 3
The other 65 days of the year we actually get some decent sunshine here (SW England) and it all gets a bit too toasty up there (36° at the front of the rack, 43° at the rear!). Last summer I had a small portable aircon unit running up there on the hot days but there's a couple of issues with that: it's not automatable (i.e. I can't control it from a thermostat), exhausting the hot air involved running dryer hose down the hatch and out the window, noise and power consumption.
Plan A was to build a hot air containment box at the rear of the rack, fit an extractor fan and vent it outside. But the issue of the incoming air still being hot on a warm day is still present due to the sun beating down on the roof.
Plan B was to duct in air from the side of the house that's always in the shade and blow it at the front of the rack.
(Both A and B can be controlled by a simple £10 thermostat from screwfix.)
Which do you think will be the better approach? I suppose if I really wanted to I could duct in and out if I were careful about where the respective vents went? Any other suggestions welcome (that fit within your typical PhD student's budget!)
so I just DIYed an old full-size tall fridge into a humidor and use beads to control humidity