Something Random

ddrueding said:
I find they don't rebound as quickly after a couple dozen compressions. It sounds like their deterioration levels out?
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I never really used the compression method (ie: compress, place in ear and wait for expansion, release) with the black foam Shure's. I just gently press them in my ears. Maybe that has something to do with it.
 
Howell said:
I'
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:)
Take 2. Mark! Action!

I used my original foam tips off and on for over 5 years with the compression/expansion method and the comply tips seem to be better quality. I only end up using them 3-4 times a month.

SD, you get a much better seal with the compression/expansion method.
 
The work rig got a bit of an upgrade today (see sig). Note that the bottom fan of the Noctua will not fit in either configuration using either Kingston Hyper T1 or Corsair Vengance memory modules in all 6 slots of this board.
 
Looks like a hell of a setup. You have a fun gig going on there at work. If the price wasn't so ridiculous, I would like to have one of those.

I've been temped to build my own machine for work lately (sans insane graphics). For a billion dollar tech company, they give us some really sad equipment to do our engineering on, but the lab equipment is top-notch. We're eligible for upgrades every five years and can now only have one system. That means when my laptop is up for refresh, I'll have to turn it in or make it my primary.
 
There is some justification. We run consumer-level gear in servers, so I like to have as long a burn-in time as possible. My machine is the burn-in process, so the i7-970, RAM, etc are going into our new ESXi box and I get an upgrade. Considering the money the company saves not buying Xeons and the stability we get by having me work out any issues up front, it works quite well.
 
I have two unused X58 boards here. I need additional heating for the winter and I need to put Mark in check for the FAH race. I already have two 6GB kits of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM (no need for more). I have enough hard drives and DVD burners to build two more machines. I even have the heatsink prepared for those two systems. All I miss is one PSU (I have one spare), two enclosures (40$ each), two graphic cards (40$ passively cooled cheapo ones) and 1300$ worth of CPUs.

So all I need to become an FAH monster and save on the heating bill (computers are more efficient heaters than traditional electrical heaters because of their airflow) is ~1500$ plus taxes. Too bad I don't have that kind of money right now.

And a GTX580 at work is a tremendous overkill.
 
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Spending $100 - $200 in floor heaters and then $1300 $1400 to run them for the winter sounds like a better option to me. I don't understand how a computer is more efficient than an electrical heater? A floor-based electric heater would be 100% efficient in converting the electric to heat. This of course not including how the power plant generated the electricity. You could at least set a thermostat to turn off the heater when the desired temperature is met where as your PC would continue to run and burn electric.
 
ddrueding said:
There is some justification. We run consumer-level gear in servers, so I like to have as long a burn-in time as possible. My machine is the burn-in process, so the i7-970, RAM, etc are going into our new ESXi box and I get an upgrade. Considering the money the company saves not buying Xeons and the stability we get by having me work out any issues up front, it works quite well.
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That is a very good way of doing this. We do this at my own work. Some of the storage arrays we sell are used in our labs so we iron out the flakiness before customers buy them. I think this is a great approach at selling a more-reliable and well tested system before selling it to a customer who wants a reliable system for 24x7 operation.

In the case of ESX systems, stressing out the RAM/CPU is even more important because of the number of systems being run on one server is far greater than a basic system running a single OS. It's nice in your case because you get to benefit from it until it gets deployed. I did the same with our Dell R710 before it was rolled out for production and I was crunching F@H on several VMs consuming 100% CPU and RAM for several weeks before I had to stop.
 
A computer is like a heater with fans and some lighting. In an average computer, at least in an average computer I build, there's 4 fans (PSU, CPU, GPU and enclosure). Put them at 2W each (and it's often less than that), you waste 8W to rotate the fans. The HD LED and Power LED need maybe 1 watt together, let's say 1W each to be sure. The only other power used not to produce heat is the rotational mecanism of the hard drive and of the optical drive. Put them at 8W each (and I'm very generous since the optical drive is idling +99% of the time). So that's 8W+2W+16W wasted in mecanical work and lighting. All the rest is ultimately heat dissipation. If I have a system that sip 100W, about ¾ is heat dissipation (probably more like 85%-90% because I was very cautious in my math). I'm pretty sure a 75W heater with a good airflow is better at heating a room than a 100W floor heater that only irradiate heat and therefore concentrates the heat near the heating device. Heat production of the former will be lesser, but its distribution will be much better.

Now, a floor heater with a fan next to it would be better than a computer, but that's normally not the case. But in any case, I prefer a heater that improves my FAH stats than a dumb resistor smelling funny the first few times you use it in Fall.
 
What is the difference? All of the power into the computer is dissipated as heat either directly around the case or within the room. If the computer is on anyway, that can reduce extra heating requirements, but it makes no sense to use a computer only for the purpose of heating.
 
Right, that was my point. $1500 for a 150Watts of heating is illogical. Fans or not, a floor-based heater will suffice very well for heating a room through natural convection better than you're two PCs. I know, I use them on my second floor. They're also a lot quieter.
 
Actually, two i7 980-based systems with the CPU working at 100% would produce more than 300W of heat, maybe up to 400W. I already have floor heaters in all my rooms. I would only like to use the computers instead of the floor heaters to heat the rooms. I already do it in my bedroom.

I know it makes little sense financially. It's just that stopping the floor heater and using the computers instead would mean that during winter, the computer would cost roughly nothing to operate since that electricity would be used by another device anyway.
 
One 980X system can easily reach over 300 watts without the monitor.

Why do you have to use resistive heat? Don't you have a furnace or something?
 
In my situation I have both. The house is from the 1940s and the first floor only had steam-based heat. The second floor had the roof raised up in 2004 and was changed from a single large room into three bedrooms and a full bath. No heat was added up there and none was originally there because it relied on heating the room with the heat which rose from the first floor. We added electric baseboard heating into each room last fall with individual thermostats. We mainly only use the heat in the bedroom at night and in my office when I'm in there. The other rooms we just close the door and don't heat them.
 
After our remodel, I haven't gotten around to installing a furnace yet. The only heating we have is electric resisive, which is no more efficient than a computer (looking past the obvious capital costs).

I am still seriously considering going to water cooling at home just so I can put the radiator in the bedroom and leave the equipment rack in the office. Has anyone considered a water loop of >50 ft?
 
For a small home in such a moderate climate as you mentioned, a modest heat pump would probably work fine if there is no gas utility. IME, goofy homemade systems are often not worthwhile and not so good for resale.
 
ddrueding said:
Has anyone considered a water loop of >50 ft?
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Is that a trick question? Do you think there's even a remote chance that anyone answers "yes"? A fifty feet loop for water-cooling my computer? Sure, I do that three times a year!

I think you would need a custom pump because I doubt the pump included in most retail kits will be powerful enough to push water all the 50 feet way of the loop. The cable may be thin, but there's still quite a lot of water needed to fill a thin 50 feet cable.
 
The design I've been working on includes three different loops terminating in the same reservoir.

1. Home 1
2. Home 2
3. Cooling loop

This way each of the machines gets a more traditional CPU cooling loop that just dumps into and draws from a large reservoir. I then use something more substantial (probably a pond pump) and some proper copper water pipes to plumb a 4x120mm radiator into the bedroom.

Some advantages to this design:

1. Don't have to stop/drain the whole thing to work on one machine
2. Can add additional heat to the system as needed
3. I can add a second "cooling" loop that directs the heat outside during the summer

Should be fun.
 
You are doing all that to move 100-150W (assuming 100% CPU) of heat from a CPU to another room? It won't all get there and the pump will need power too.
 
A pair of 130W i7s, a pair of GTX580s, and a dozen 3TB hard drives at max load produce closer to 800W, even if I don't go crazy and water cool the power supplies, Onkyo Receiver, PS3, or UPS ;)

That is all the heat I would need for the house, and it would be nice to get the (much lower) heat out of the building envelope in the summer.

The ceiling mounted InFocus projector would be awesome to water cool somehow; tons of heat and moderately loud. No idea how to go about that, though.
 
Yeah we got a lot and there's a bunch of damage and power outages. Likely for a week or more in some places. I'm in Maryland right now, so we missed the brunt of the snow.
 
CougTek said:
How can you have snow on the East Coast while I don't? I'm 500Km North of you and I have yet to see a snow flake. This is unfair.
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You can have the snow that I got. The snow split two trees in half from the weight. One on my car and the other on my gararge and deck.:crap:
 
You are in PA or NJ, something like that? Is your car damaged seriously?
 
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