Cooling for Server Room located under stairs.

[gk808]

Hi Folks,

I currently have a small rack with 16 channel DVR, Router, Printer, 2x PoE network switches, UPS, Fusebox, and a Gas & Electric Meter, all located under the stairs. will share a photo later.

I am looking to also relocate my server, housed in an Antec 1200 case, with 13 HDD drives, utilising 8 Fans, + 1 in Corsair PSU, + 1 for i5 CPU.

I have already installed an air vent as high as possible, with 2 fans, pushing the warm air out, controlled by a thermostat set to 21°C, which is constantly running.

I do not want to relocate my server at the moment, at the setpoint temperature isn't ever achieved, and don't want to introduce another heat source.

I am planning to add an additional air vent with 2 fans to pull cool air in from the bottom, also wired into the thermostat as the other 2.

I am unsure if this is sufficient, and will probably be able to decipher once the setpoint temperature is achieved.

I am welcome to any ideas and thoughts, please note, I am trying to spend as little as possible, so would rather not go down the air con route.

[Dashers]

21°C is very close to average ambient room temperatures in the UK. It's unlikely you'll get a warm spot down to that.

In reality, you don't need to keep things that cool, computer components are quite happy up to much higher temperatures. The only thing you really need to worry about is keeping the air flowing over hard-disks, as they do fail when they get very hot.

Depending on what sort of work load you're doing, I'd use power-saving to get your disks to shutdown when not in use, this helps me a lot in reducing heat. I put temp folders and swap files on SSDs to avoid spinning up disks unnecessarily.

I've only got 4 HDDs in my server, but I do have a 24port switch, UPS, modem etc in my cupboard. I've just got a vent at the bottom of the door and a vent out the ceiling which is connected to my MVHR so heat is recycled into the rest of the house. It's very low throughput and the cupboard is toastie, but it doesn't overheat.

[bledd]

13 hard drives will whack out a fair bit of heat. With ventilation, I can't see this being an issue.

I've moved my NAS to the loft recently, keeping a close eye on temps.

I made a box to house the NAS, it has 2 intake and 2 exhaust fans. The hottest I've seen the drives reach is 30 degrees so far. Which is cooler than they used to reach just sat on a desk.

Install Speccy or something similar to keep an eye on temps. Speccy will make all of the drives spin up, so don't leave it running all of the time.