How do you get rid of computer heat?

Question

I have to wonder how much more it is costing me in trying to cool my home, while at the same time my computer is generating heat. Does anyone make a venting system that would make it possible to bring in filter outside air to cycle through the computer, than dump the exhaust back outside? Has anyone ever tried to measure the amount of air being moved through a standard CPU and heated up? I would suspect it is significant and should be considered in trying to keep a home, or business, cool.

I'm not talking abotu the computer overheating, but the computer henerating heat, which is a benefit during the Winter, but during the Summer is a henderance to staying cool, and not having excessively high electric bills.

Computer fans do not get rid of the heat, they only transfer the heat from the CPU to the room at large, raising the room's ambient temperture.

Answer 1

Heat Question

Your PC generates as much heat as the power it consumes. i.e. A reasonable high perfomance system will be using about 300 Watts and creating about 300 Watts of heat. Your air-con unit will be about 50% efficient so will need 600 Watts of energy to remove this heat. This means you are using 0.6 KWh per hour or 14.4 KWh if running for 24 hours. In the UK this would cost 80 Pence per day (or about 1 US Dollar).

You have three options to prevent this happening:
1: Build a fully closed ventilation system to take air from outside and return it outside. This should be quite sufficient for PC cooling unless your external temperature is above 40DegC. The problem is that air is drawn into a PC case in very many places which would make the ducting somewhat difficult. I do not know anyone who makes a case for this purpose.
2: Take air from the room and vent it outside. The air from your room should be cooler and will therefore cool the PC better, this may result in quieter operation because the fans will not need to spin so fast. Warm air will be drawn intoyour room to replace the air vented through your PC and this will need to be cooled by your aircon so this option will not give as much saving.
3: Relocate the PC outside.

You should be able to make a venting system using standard flu ducting and attaching it to the power supply fan discharge with gaffer tape or similar. Lag the pipe to prevent the pipe heating up your room.

For your interest our office of 28 people generates 8KWh per hour of heat from PC's and screens, 14 KWh from the lighting resulting in 44 KWh of additional energy use by the air conditioning.

Hope this is of interest.

Answer 2

The only way to do that would require a fan operated vent system, including duct work and filters. The fan would use as much energy as you could possibly save in cooling. You also are bringing hot outside air into the computer, and then expelling the same air back outside. Unless you have the computer case insulated, the radiant heat from the case will actually cause more of a temperature rise in the home /office than does the heat from the power supply and the CPU.

Answer 3

This is a great idea for a unique kind of case for the extreme heat-reduction enthusiast. It would also be exceptional for computer performance in the winter months as the cool air would bring the CPU temperature way down. However in the summer, the extra heat could severely damage the computer. It could be done, but computers need fresh cool air in the summers which is why it isn't done. Also it would require the computer being near the outside with some sort of tubing or casing extending outside - too much of a hassle for your average user. If you intend on building this yourself, I suggest you document the process. I would be very interested in reading about such a project.

Answer 4

If you are that concerned about the minute heat produced by a PC. Liquid cooling may be for you. A cheaper method is to keep a fan near your system. I run three 24/7 and have yet to notice an increase in tempature of the environment. You can mod a PC in any way you desire. You can draw outside air and exhaust air from inside your PC using the same type of duct material a clothes dryer uses. I just cant imagine why you would to go to the trouble for something so trivial?

Answer 5

I have dozens of computers in my house and you are right, they generate a lot of heat!

A couple things I have done...

First, all of my servers are located in a separate room in the basement (which is always cool).

Second, for my main computers on other floors of the house, I use laptops with good switching power supplies that automatically go to sleep after 10 minutes of non-use.

Last, they do have "liquid cooling" solution (see tigerdirect.com and many others). You can vent these outside for very warm / constantly running computers.

Answer 6

There are Heat Sinks (metal with fins ), Fans, and your home AC.

Fans are important to move air over the heat sinks. The heat sinks are important to remove heat from hot spots (like CPU), and AC is important to keep your ambient temp in a reasonable range to begin with. The fans will take in air, which needs to be cool (like us).

Answer 7

venting your comp to the outside is not a novel idea.
bringing in air from outside would just mean another hole in the wall to lose heat in the winter and ac in the summer.
Not to mention all the crap that could get inside your computer and fry it.
I do not think the little heat that is produced from the comp is costing you money.
Power consumption is however.

Answer 8

Depending on the type of PC you have you can add additional fans to the case... If there is nothing or no one that will harm the computer you can take the case off and place it on a desk. That will allow for loads of ventilation...Just make sure you use compressed air to keep dust off of vital parts

Answer 9

hi pepa your computer is generating heat
best thing to do is turn it off take it too a pc shore A.S.A.P and have them replace the cpu fan tell them that the pc is generating heat if you keep using the pc the cpu fan will stop woking then you will have big problem's as your pc will burn out then your need too buy a new pc with out the cpu fan working 100% good you you are puting your pc in danger

Answer 10

The sustainable solution is to put this computer in the air conditioning room plus good ventilation especially the air through your CPU.