LGA 1366 Xeon Cooling Solution Thoughts

[Patrick]

After playing with a few LGA 1366 DP Xeons I decided to keep a mini-log of my thoughts:

Stock Cooler (W series)
Pros
Relatively Quiet
Comes with W series CPUs (note this does not include CPUs intended for multi-socket use such as the E, L and X series CPUs)

Cons
Radial airflow which is suboptimal in a server chassis where air moves from front to back.
130w CPUs under load get quite warm
Wrong mounting for Xeon boards with screw-type back plates

Intel® Thermal Solution STS100C
Pros
4-Pin PWM cooling solution
Reasonably quiet when CPUs are not under load or with low power CPUs
Can use passively (without fan) in ducted chassis with enough airflow
Fits in 2U chassis
Very solid cooling (50C @ 3.4GHz 100% load for 12 hours)

Cons
6000rpm cooling 2x 3.4GHz 32nm hexacores is uncomfortably loud unless sound is isolated

Cost
About $37

Supermicro SNK-P0040AP4
Pros
4-Pin PWM cooling solution
19.5dba cooling

Cons
Will not fit in 3U or smaller chassis

Cost
About $33

Will add more as I get them. I ordered a second set of SNK-P0040AP4's to try with the hexacores to see temperature differences.

 

[S-F]

What about water? Does nobody cool their servers with water? I'm looking for a water block for my socket 1156 board ATM.

 

[odditory]

when you think of a "Server" you think of..

1) uptime
2) stability
3) water shooting all over a motherboard

which one of these things is not like the other?

 

[Patrick]

What about water? Does nobody cool their servers with water? I'm looking for a water block for my socket 1156 board ATM.

So I do know a few corporate data centers that utilize water cooling, although it is much different than what enthusiasts do in their PCs as the solution is actually part of the data center building design.

With that being said, other than water getting everywhere, which is a concern even if using distilled water or another non-conductive liquid, one of the other major issues is what happens if a pump fails. A server chassis typically has case fans that push air though heatsinks. Server CPU heatsinks with fans help push air through the heatsinks faster. In the event of a fan failure, it is pretty easy to get redundancy using heatsinks and multiple fans. With an enthusiast watercooling setup, you can have redundant radiator fans (my main rig uses 3x 120mm fans on the radiator for example) but one also has to deal with pump failure and vibration caused by the pumps.

Furthermore, water evaporates out of most loops, and tubes need to be flushed or changed periodically. Therefore water cooling adds parts that requires service somewhat often which is not desirable.

I may take a look at a Koolance watercooling setup or something similar one of these days, but it does add complexity.

 

[S-F]

Could you please tell me more about how the water cooling is designed into the infrastructure of the buildings? I am going to begin building a house in the next several weeks and am looking for better solutions than what I'm currently using. I had been thinking geothermal in the summer and a radiator in the return ductwork to the air handler for the winter. Maybe I could just put the turbulator in the fresh air intake of the HRV. Right now I simply use a huge stack of heater cores and a giant hydronic turbulator just sitting in the basement.

As for pump failure, I have run my system for extended periods of time with no pump. For sure this was an accident, but the temperatures never got too high. Even though the radiators are much lower than the water blocks there must be some convection that moved the water. I plan to move to redundant pumps also though. If the pump failed in such a way that it was losing water you'd be screwed though. After the flood I had the other week I have put my server on a Z-Wave circuit, I have another sensor to detect the presence of water and it will kill power to the server in the event of a flood. This would also be triggered if the pump or the radiators blew up. That's probably more than the average consumer wants to get into though.

 

[Patrick]

My cousin happens to be the expert in this (builds data centers for a living) and I am probably not as good of a resource as Google here.

 

[odditory]

Furthermore, water evaporates out of most loops, and tubes need to be flushed or changed periodically. Therefore water cooling adds parts that requires service somewhat often which is not desirable.

I've had half a dozen WC systems over the last decade beginning with Innovatek, the trouble I have with the idea of building any more WC systems these days is that the delta between what you can achieve on air with the latest CPU's and what you can achieve on water just isn't what it used to be - its relatively minimal and no longer that compelling unless you have time to burn on benching and stats contests, or you're folding, or otherwise can justify the hundreds of extra dollars on the higher end WC gear.