PC/PSU exhaust out of window

[shredisn@tdead]

I've got 3 PCs in a room, summers coming and it's starting to get hot in there...

Was thinking maybe I could run some DIY ventilation ducting (I've only seen 100mm so far in Homebase) from the exhaust fans and the PSUs and rig them up to a wood block in the window (up-down slidy type so would rest on frame for the ducts)?

Anyone done something like this? PC nearest window prolly ~2m away, furthest ~4m allowing for routing.

Presumably having a fan midway or at the end would be a good idea to keep the airflow constant and maintain pressure? But then where do I wire in the molex?

Cheers!

[TeePee]

Having such a long/wide duct means the air will be moving through it very slowly, and the heat fill likely dissipate into the room along the duct's length. Better would be a Watercooling radiator mounted on the wall of your house .

[turkster]

YEah interesting idea . Be nice if you could have inlet and outlet ducting to the window. Outside air is usually cooler than room air unless you have air con . Although you might end up sucking in lots of bugs. Prob best to mount inlet outlet fans in the window which would reduce noise.

Using 100mm vent ducting would give room for a nice bit of air flow. You could probably use a commercial window fan vent-axia or something which would increase airflow although could be a bit noisy.

[daniel_owen_uk]

How about one of those portable air con units?

[turkster]

Having such a long/wide duct means the air will be moving through it very slowly, and the heat fill likely dissipate into the room along the duct's length. Better would be a Watercooling radiator mounted on the wall of your house .

Yeah having a long length of ducting will reduce air flow in comparison with a straight fan but if you used a more powerful fan mounted in the window (or outside even) there is no reason why a perfectly acceptable airflow couldnt be achieved.

Water cooling would undoubtably be more effective but considerably more expensive. Especcially if you had to do CPU, Chipset, GPU, HDD.

[Applecrusher]

just do the pipe things and mount a vantec tornado on the outlet.. thatll give you airflow... (its the answer for everything...)
just make sure it IS outside

[TeePee]

What you need is a squirrel cage fan, mounted in a box outside...

[MD]

How about one of those portable air con units?

beleive it or not, tried it, the aircon unit pipe needs to be as short as possible otherwise the heat stays in the room. In otherwords, the portable aircon unit needs to be off the floor and directly connected to the window....

m@

[shredisn@tdead]

I've got a portable aircon unit but there's issues

• sucks electricity (3kW I think)
• noise - it's like having 2 fridges and a half a dozen tornados running
• on a scorching night it's good to have it on in the bedroom even tho' its bloody loud

I figured the cheapest solution is to simply pump out the hot air. When its cooler outside than inside the flow can be reversed to suck in cold air to the intakes.

HOWEVER the positioning is such that afternoon sun beats down on the window and the outside air gets real hot in the summer hence blow when its hot suck when its cold, and not just suck in the outside air all the time.

One of the rigs is watercooled (Koolance Exos-Al, yeah I know, but I'm a water cooling noob so easy first steps etc and to my credit I have at least changed the fans to quiten the thing down) - but 'cos of the direct sun placing a rad/heatercore outside isn't really an option.

If the heat is going to leak out of the duct then maybe aluminium ducting would be better, or the rectangular hard plastic type?


Get the feeling it's gonna look pretty industrial in that room with alu ducting tho'. Using a regular ventilation type extractor fan is going to be noisy too, no? They're specced in m3/hr not cfm...

[daniel_owen_uk]

Yeah I was assuming he didn't pay the lecy bill or you are up the proverbial creek.

[spazman]

I remember seeing on another forum about this norweigen bloke who got a massive duct and fan and ran the freezing air from outside through his computer, it helped that he lived not far from the artic circle.