The original post: /r/watercooling by /u/TomatoFinancial9301 on 2024-05-13 02:38:54.
Scenario:
I work from home and have two reasonably powerful PCs, in addition to a work laptop. My home is in the northeast (upstate NY) with a crawlspace, but no air conditioning. My office room is about 158 sq. ft. on the first floor. My main goal is to manage the heat production during the summer, with minimizing sound being a secondary goal. The server can use up to 1100 watts at full power, the gaming PC can draw something similar under full power, particularly with VR titles.
The cooling layout I'm considering would use two pumps one before each of the PCs, cooling the hottest components in each. My thought would be that I could use the device temperatures from each PC to judge when more water flow would be needed (I am usually either gaming or number crunching, but occasionally I'll have a multi-day process running on the server and I'll be gaming while it is working.
After the two units, I would measure the water temps, and then either flow the water through to a MO-RA3 mounted in my crawlspace. This would move the heat out of the house and into an area that stays relatively cool year round. In the winter I am thinking I would close the shut off valve and flow the water through a MO-RA3 mounted in the office and then through the MO-RA3 in the crawlspace. That would allow me to harvest the heat for my office and then cool the water further in the crawlspace before returning it to the reservoir.
I'd need to run USB and power into the crawl to power the fans and monitor them. I'd use NF-A20s to keep noise to a minimum. I'm also planning to wire in a solenoid to drain the unit either into our sewer line or out to the drain. Given that I'm planning on running the unit with distilled water with anti-corrosion/bio additive, Or a water based coolant like Aquacomputer DP Ultra, I think I can just run into a drain.
The heat buildup is a problem and getting a window air-conditioner to just fight against the room heat seems like it would be adding more noise and a constant additional electrical expense. While I haven't added up the TCO of this kind of arrangement, I can't imagine it is more than running an A/C all summer long.
Conceptually this makes sense to me, but I'd like to get this groups opinion and ask some questions about this design. Fully expecting some roasting, but I'll take it for some sound advice from others .
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My thought is that I only need the single shut off valve given that water should take the easiest path. But I could also add shut off valves to the radiator loop in the office. Thoughts?
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Thinking I may need another pump to make its way through the other MO-RA3 as the resistance could be significant. Would love opinions on whether that's necessary.
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Would love any other suggestions or comments to consider. Thanks for any help you can provide.