The all systems firmark stress test passed. The water did heat up a little,
but after 10 hours of dumping over 2,000
watts of heat into the loop, we are running at a cool 50° C on the hottest
GPU. Success,
or well, at least partial success. You
see, cooling the computers was just one of the multiple goals we had for this
project, and the other results are currently unknown and colossal failure.
This room, where I do all my tinkering and computer maintenance, is
uninhabitable. Because you see, while the new setup does a great job pumping
the heat from these gaming machines out of here, the old janky system with the
car radiators from before did a way better job of cooling the room itself.
So, we asked ourselves, why not both?
This time we're going to be rolling not one but two PT Cruiser radiators that
we're going to be cooling with pool water to hopefully chill this room back
to a habitable temperature like this
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the end of this video to learn more. First, a recap of how the system works.
Now, using the thermal camera to show you guys what's working well and what's
working not as well. The pool loop is
great. Those tubes that are embedded in the walls of the pool are cooling down
the water here to about 30° C. We are
then using that cool water, pumping it through this titanium heat exchanger to
cool down aha. Over here, the warm water
that is coming out of the server rack. And you can actually see the temperature
deltas in those lines. As expected, the water coming from the pool is exactly
30° and the water coming out of the heat exchanger is wow almost 34. That's
working really well considering the delta between these loops is only about
8°. Then on the hot side, we're sending out
38° water and getting back 40° water,
meaning we still got plenty of cooling capacity in here. The problem is we
can't use any of it to cool the room itself because 38° is still pretty
unpleasant for humans and for some of
the air cooled equipment that is still in here. At the back of my networking
gear, for example, I'm able to measure temperatures as high as 60° and the
exhaust coming out of the servers is as high as ooh 60° as well. We got to deal
with this. Where we do have some water that could cool our 37° room, however,
is in our pool reservoir.
I think you see where we're going with this. Now, I know what you're thinking,
Lionus. If you want to cool this room, why do you have it insulated? Why do you
have the door closed? And the answer is noise.
You hear that on the mic? Yeah. Yeah. Me, too. The whole point of having
the systems in another room is you don't have to feel the heat or hear the noise.
So, if I can't close the door, why did I even do any of this? In a typical water
cooled PC, the order of the components in the loop doesn't really matter
because the difference in temperature from the hottest point to the coldest
point is a fraction of a degree. That's
not the case here. We're looking at deltas of two or even 4° between hot and
cold sides. So, the loop order suddenly matters a lot. I'm kind of thinking,
well, the systems that are on the water cooling are running so cool that they
could afford to be on the hotter side of things. So, we take the cold pool water
that comes in, we go straight to the car radiators and we actually dump that to
the systems afterward. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They can tolerate 2°.
That's important because the bigger the temperature difference between the water
in these radiators and the air in the room, the more effective these radiators
are going to be, which raises kind of an uncomfortable point. Um, the best place
for these would be in the 40 41° air
right at the back of the rack. We can do that. Oh, I know. But then we
have four additional lines running over
here and we got to deal with like some kind of hinge system or something. I
don't know, man. Since we're in here recigging tubing today, there's a couple
of other things I wanted to investigate and maybe change. First up, I just want
to say these manifolds worked great. The
cold water comes into this one, top and bottom, heats up in the system, and then
the warm water comes out the top and the bottom of this one. But we noticed
something when we were firm marking the systems. System number one up here runs
significantly hotter, about 5°, than
system number five. And this actually makes sense. Even though we have water
coming in the top and the bottom, just because of gravity, you're going to have
more pressure towards the bottom of the manifold. So, you get more flow. That
top system, it's got the same temperature water. It's just not running
as fast, which I don't consider to be a
problem. 50° GPU, even if it was a little hotter, I wouldn't mind that if
it meant that I could get rid of these tubes and have neater management. So, I
want to see just how much hotter that system gets if I block these completely
restricting flow through the bottom of the manifolds. We should be able to
check this right away. Nada.
Yeah, that is not what I expected. I kind of figured that's about what
would happen. Well, why did you tell me I had to have the dual inlets then?
Well, cuz that should have worked, but it was already clear that it didn't.
That is awesome news. But before we turn off our stress tests and drain the
system, there's one more thing that I really, really need to know. Is it
actually putting heat into the pool, or is it just losing it all in the ground
on the way out there? What's that for?
Inside this access panel are the lines that are snaked through the concrete in
the floor of the pool, acting as a heat exchanger. If there is a delta between
the in and the out, that means we won
the game. It's about actually a little
over half a degree, almost a full degree, which means a couple of things.
One, we are actually dumping heat into
the pool. And two, we have a lot more
cooling capacity here. Well, yeah. No, we did the math. While
Dan gets the plumbing started, Alex and I are going to prep the radiators, which
even with movie magic, haha,
is going to be a ton of work. Alex, why RGB?
What do you mean? Do you want this to not be RGB?
Kind of. Yeah. No, I forbid it. The other big do as we say, not as we do
element here is that the correct radiator to use for this project is a
big one that takes the place of the door of the entire server rack. The issue is
that the suppliers for those are not really that interested in selling one
rad to one guy. They sell hundreds or
thousands at a time to enterprises or educational institutions. The good news
is that our system does work. It's tried and true. This one actually sat outside
collecting outdoor shoo and working very effectively for about that was over 6
months, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. All we've got to do is get it
prepped with the new fans. Alex, why didn't we just use the box fans again?
RGB. The next thing we turn our attention to is how to attach the radiators to the
piece of aluminum extrusion that is going to attach to the hinge that allows
us to tuck them against the wall when I need to get back there. Um, you 3D
printed these? Yeah.
Okay. Heck yeah. Come to think of it,
why are we doing the RGB management now? We can do this on the wall and then we
can just stick things to the wall. Oh, maybe when we're far later in the project and
I can just convince him that we need to not bother hooking up the RGB to save
time. What? That was incredibly unsuttle and
we need the RGB. I'm just looking at these spacers
wondering if I'm the only one who can't remember how we coped without 3D
printing. Like, this is awesome.
Piece of wood.
With one side of the liftoff hinges now installed. Oh. Uh, those are big big old
button head screws. It won't quite lay flush. You know what? That's fine. With
one with one half installed,
it's time to take this into the server room. We were thinking of using
right-handed hinges here, but once we saw it in place, it didn't really work
out. So, we're just going to use left-handed ones instead. It should be You got the ones we need. And I got this
so we can level up our installation. That was actually the whole reason I had
you do this explanation, so I could do this. I am so excited to be able to
close the door to this room. I've been listening to these fans whine all out
there for the last month. Yeah, I've been listening to him whine
all the time and just as bad. Well, go for it. Oh, wow. Anytime now.
Okay, not going to lie, I'm feeling
pretty good about this.
Okay, so that's kind of my ideal spot for it right there. So, it can just blow
right over to my workbench. Yeah, this is going to take a while and be really
boring. So, fast forward.
This looks like absolute ass. I think mine's about to come together.
right now over me. How was the whole
thing powered? AC to Molex adapter. Oh, are we worried at all about the
power limits of this connector? A tiny bit. Yes.
We'll be doing two RGB controllers. Yep. Four hubs and
24 fans. 24 fans. Yeah. Oh boy. These don't have power
consumption on them, but in fans alone, that is 5.4 amps. And the connector is
rated for 4.5. Oh, it's fine.
No two ways about it. Dang it. No two
ways about it. Dan kicked our butts for productivity today. He's already got
this plumbed up, including the new filter. If you guys recall from one of
the previous videos, there's some gravel in these PVC lines out to the pool
house, and I'd love for those to not end up in our radiators. So, we have an
inline filter. Now, this takes the cold water. It goes through there. IT GOES
ALL the way up over here to where we now have
Tada. One set of inlet and outlet for our
radiators and a separate set, well not set, it's just two now for the server
rack itself. And it all goes back over here
back to the cold water reservoir where it goes into the heat exchanger. It's
going to cost us a couple degrees, but that's a price I'm willing to pay. I'm
not going to pretend your side doesn't look a little bit better, but um hey,
mine has all reusable cable ties, so I
can't do it. But yeah, that thing. Hey, look. Everything kind of Well, mine
stayed in place.
Hey, nice.
That looks acceptable.
W Oh, THAT'S AWESOME. STILL not worth it.
Oh, 100% worth it. I would spend 3 days
on this. Oh, I think these are all RPM
controlled. Yeah. So, we need to go into those. And
these top ones are easy. They are just going to come out here now instead of
where they were before. Couple little grips. Not too bad.
Now, we just need to plug these. We had one plug and we made another one.
Dingenuity. Now it's time to ever so carefully thread this in.
Yep. If you cross thread it, it's game over. Ah, so exciting. Final form, Alex.
You know it's not final form for now. Alex,
that's so clean now. Ah,
so much room for activities. With the rack hooked up, we can actually fire
this loop up. start firm marking the systems again, close the door, and then
when we fire up the second cold water loop, we'll be able to see if it
actually makes a difference. Uh, are we are we ready to do it?
Yeah. Okay. Uh, where are my where my shut offs at? So, but this one is already
Okay, so I can just fire up this pump then, right? And this is going to go
here. Okay, let's go pump. Okay, what
are the odds that it's just going to go? Oh, yeah. There we go.
Look at her go. Okay. Okay. So, right
there.
Thank you kindly.
We'll go this boy to this boy. These giant magnetic cable
arches are so freaking strong.
Okay, not the most elegant solution, but
it's not going anywhere. Here we go.
Over here. Boom. Okay, Glenn, go for it. Theoretically, the water will come
rushing through these tubes. Hey, there it is. There it is. Nice.
Oh, that's leaking a lot. It's leaking a lot. Okay, let's just try a slightly more different position for
it. I'm so glad that I crossed that acrylic sand blaster.
We haven't even seen it in the dark yet.
Oh, yeah. That's something.
Let's have a look at the results. Woo!
She's chilly, Alex. Actually, that's cooler than I expected.
Oh, yeah. That is That seems too cool. That doesn't make any sense.
This is before the reservoir. This is pre-reservoir. Oh, the reservoir
was being heated up by the room. So, we are getting Oh, man.
It's going to be downright livable in here. Wow. We are really getting some
effective heat transfer, though. Oh, yeah. We're going from 24 1/2 on the
supply side to 26 1/2 on the return
side. Then we take that 26 1/2°ree
water. Oh, that's my finger. There we go. 26 1/2° water, put it in the resz,
and blast it through the heat exchanger. And then back to the pool where we will
be dumping even more waste heat. Because
the computer systems in here aren't the only things that dump waste heat into
this room. Even though I've insulated all these lines, my in flooror heating
contributes a significant amount of
heat. We want this thing performing its best. So, we got to hook those RGB
controllers up to a system in order to um you know get them running properly.
Whoops. For those wondering, the right way to do this is to just have an
external USB to internal header adapter.
My ARM hurts so much right now. This is a really awkward angle.
Any RGB that you want particularly. Oh,
nice. Hell yeah. Success. We got this.
In all seriousness, we do need to do something about this power adapter. The
surface temperature is over 60°. Oh, that's a lot. We also have this, you
know, some strategically positioned zip ties. Our new cable management stuff is
so awesome. You basically just
decide where you want it. These are not the real plates, by the way. They are
less ugly than this. Then we've got this awesome one for hanging wall warts and
power adapters and anything else like that. Then you just put the cable ties
on. Boop. And boom, magnetic. But we're
not quite done with this one yet. You know, in a way, this is really your
fault. You're the ones who enable us. We went full smoo town on this one. Now,
all we need is a mounting solution. And I think you guys knew where this was going. Now, this will be a true test for
our magnetic power adapter holder. Whoa. Okay. Yeah. No, she can't handle that
much weight. There's also a uh plastic film here. We can lose that.
Holy. Without the plastic film, she goes, Alex.
Oh, it's RGB.
Oh god. What are you doing? The more important thing, however, is that I
think this might actually be working. Oh, no. That's still pretty hot there.
We're going to need a better long-term solution. We're done. All that remains
now is to see if it worked. Some stuff
is pretty obvious. We've got that super
chilly pool water heading out to the radiators.
and less chilly. About a degree and a half water coming back that goes into
the reservoir into the heat exchanger where it heats up and
goes back out to the pool. So, our total
delta here, 28° coming in, 33.3
going out. This is funny. You can see the temp spike when I turned off the
pump to remount the power strip. But overall, we're sitting at 52°.
Exactly within the range we'd expect given that we're running the water
through those radiators first. 2° higher.
Okay, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. 28.5 coming out of the
pool.
29.4
about a degree. Is that what we had before? Yeah, roughly. Huh. I was expecting more
somehow. Oh, 29.6. Probably just ending up in the ground.
So then the final question to answer is, did it make a difference to the room?
Moment of truth. You ready? Yep. It's what, 36 12 to beat?
Down to 31. Damn. 31 and a2.
We just dropped 5° just like that. That
is flipping awesome. And that's at a hot
point in the room. Actually standing here where I'm getting blown on a little
bit more directly. I'm sitting at a frosty 31°
which okay is still pretty hot. But this
is with the door closed. I can finally
actually run the other gear in here without worrying about it overheating
and dying. I mean, it's still hot, but
it is across the board running cooler
now. 58 under 60 now. All right,
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actually hooked up the systems to the cooling loop. It's well, it was an
adventure.