The 100 Degree Data Center 472
miller60 writes "Are you ready for the 100-degree data center? Rackable Systems has introduced a new enclosure that it says can run high-density racks safely in environments as hot as 104 degrees (40 degrees C), offering customers the option of saving energy in their data center. Most data centers operate in a range between 68 and 74 degrees. Raising the thermostat can lower the power bill, allowing data centers to use less power for cooling. But higher temperatures can be less forgiving in the event of a cooling failure, and not likely to be welcomed by employees working in the data center."
Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:4, Insightful)
Its better
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. Stupid sumary.
I had this image of shimmering heat, rising steam, and burning barrels inside a post apocalyptic data center.
It wasn't until line 2 that my image was ruined.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
When is this Fahrenheit unit going to die? Last time I checked, only a couple of developing countries were using it (Birma, USA).
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care about how hot it needs to be to boil water, or how many gram-degrees-Celcius are in your calorie, or anything like that. And furthermore, if you're going to be Mr. Science, why not just break out the Kelvin and be done with it?
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely fail to see how a range of 40-80 (after all, you did say "habitable temperatures" for humans), is better than a range of 5-30.
Farenheight has no basis in anything practical at *any* range. At least Celsius is based around water, which is useful for a number of reasons.
the larger degrees are nicer (Score:5, Insightful)
A single degree Celsius is qualitatively a bit too big, to the point where most European climate-control systems with digital displays have to resort to using half-degrees as the base control unit.
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Re:the larger degrees are nicer (Score:4, Insightful)
So, us fahrenheit-feet thinking people find it inconvenient to think in terms of decimal points. Measuring 7.9 cm is no easier than measuring 3 1/8th inches. I care about the difference between 72 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit. It's more of a pain to deal with the difference between 22.0 and 22.5 degrees Celsius.
Re:the larger degrees are nicer (Score:5, Insightful)
On my metric wrench set, the 8 is one next to the 7. On my American wrench set, the 5/32 is next to the.. I have no idea, I would have to go look. It's even worse if I have to add 3/32" to 5 7/8".
If you really need fractions, then 7.9 cm is 7 9/10 cm and 22.5 C is 22 1/2 C.
Re:the larger degrees are nicer (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because for wrench/socket sets, the situation is just the opposite. Metric's unit (mm) is "just right" and doesn't need fractions or decimals, imperial's unit (inch) is way too big and nearly everything is less than one unit.
It goes the other way for Celsius vs Fahrenheit. Celsius units are "too big" and require dealing with fractional units, while most Fahrenheit-based systems can use single-full-unit increments.
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Exactly right. Mod this guy up.
When you're working on your car, you don't have situations where you need an 8.5mm socket wrench. All the fasteners on a metric car are in integer mm numbers: 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19 are the most popular. If you try 14 and it's a little too big, then you know that 12mm is the correct size. It's easier than inches because the inch is simply too large, and every bolt size is a fraction of an inch.
Celcius is too large. To a typical human, there's a noticeable difference bet
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The US will never fully implement the metric system. And I mean NEVER (see my caveat below). It's an impediment to foreign companies supplying or working in our craft sector. Ever wonder why you don't see any European or Chinese sawn lumber or Chinese or European steel beams for purchase? Because they don't have factories that generate Imperial sizes. All the foreign factories are geared to the metric system. The only areas where I've seen a shift to metric was the car industry where foreign imports caused
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Farenheight has no basis in anything practical at *any* range. At least Celsius is based around water, which is useful for a number of reasons.
That's not quite true, 0*F to 100*F is pretty much the range humans can survive in without any kind of crazy technology. Makes sense to me.
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I completely fail to see how a range of 40-80 (after all, you did say "habitable temperatures" for humans), is better than a range of 5-30.
Simple. Fahrenheit is useful using two digits. A unit of Celsius is too coarse, and to be practical you have to resort to decimal figures.
I'm mostly with people who like metric, but there's no doubt that F is superior to C for human use.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:4, Informative)
I don't even know how many ml there are in a tablespoon.
5ml per teaspoon, or close enough. So 15ml in 1 TBSP.
Once you start doling out liquid medicine for kids, this one's easy. :-)
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:4, Funny)
My wife can tell the difference. At 71F it is "freezing" and at 73F it is "boiling."
I wish I was lying.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, yeah, except for that 98.6 thing.
You're referring to the common misconception that that's the normal body temperature, or even that body temperatures are so regular that you'd need a decimal point to express it? (The figure 98.6F is an example of false precision, being a translation of 37C, which wasn't meant to be more accurate than a degree celsius to begin with, and was a rough figure at that.)
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"look, the meridian goes right through our headquarters!". Yeah-huh.
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You're like the 5th person I've seen make this point.
If you stuck a thermometer in your mouth and it said 100 degrees, the technical term for that is "fever". If it was a mere 5 degrees higher, it would be a very serious fever.
Given clothing and such, most offices are kept below 80 degrees all the time, to maintain a comfortable working environment. This temperature gradient allows for an effective transition of heat, and keeps most people from breaking a sweat.
To keep your body at a nice 37C it needs to be
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When is this Fahrenheit unit going to die?
Not until people develop the intuition to evaluate temperature relative to a volume of water, rather than to their own bodies.
Which is a more logical numeric range for representing a perceived continuum from "cold" to "hot": 0 to 100 , or -18 to 38?
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You care about the metric system, but can't even be bothered to spell correctly.
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Fixed that for you.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Funny)
You care about the metric system, but can't even be bothered to punctuate correctly. Fixed that for you.
You care about punctuation but can't even be bothered to punctuate correctly.
You've helped maintain the old Internet tradition: All grammar flames contain at least one grammatical error. You should never separate a compound predicate from its subject with a comma.
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Otherwise known as Muphry's Law.
"Muphry's Law is an adage that states that 'if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law [wikipedia.org]
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WTF in my original comment was "trolling", BTW? Pointing out that /. is an American site or having the nerve to come out against one aspect of the metric system?
Sir, or madam, I salute you. I haven't seen a troll that artfully done in years. These days, trolling seems to be about spouting bile and filth, rather than dropping a comment precisely calculated to raise folks' hackles. If you didn't intend it as a troll, for heaven's sake, don't admit it. If I had points, I'd mod you troll as a compliment.
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No, it would be +10 deciTrolls.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
Celsius on the other hand is much easier to remember:
0 - Water freezes
10 - Cool
20 - Nice
30 - Hot
40 - Scorching hot
50 - Burn sensation
100 - Water boils
And slashdot.org is not an american-only site as it's domain name ends in
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Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Funny)
Neither Celsius nor Fahrenheit are intuitive to me.
373.15 - Water boils at 1 atmosphere
310 - Very hot
300 - Hot
290 - Nice
280 - Chilly
273.15 - Water freezes at 1 atmosphere
0 - absolute zero! how easy is that.
Kelvin ftw chumps!
Centigrade sucks! (Score:4, Funny)
373.15 - Water boils at 1 atmosphere 310 - Very hot 300 - Hot 290 - Nice 280 - Chilly 273.15 - Water freezes at 1 atmosphere 0 - absolute zero! how easy is that.
'xactly. These trolls try to go anti-US with their fancy metric system then they fuck it up with Centigrade. Try plugging centigrade temperatures into the ideal gas law and lemme know how it goes. ;)
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Try plugging centigrade temperatures into the ideal gas law and lemme know how it goes. ;)
Actually, the fun part is that there's a long history of people doing exactly that. The patent offices in the US and other countries have an ongoing problem of people attempting to patent perpetual-motion machines. In most cases, a "proof" that a particular gadget will work is produced by taking the standard equations and using Celsius/Centigrade numbers when temperature in "degrees" is needed. This seems to be some
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
Fahrenheit just makes more sense to most of us. 30s = cold, 40s = chilly, 50s = cool, 60s = decent/might need a windbreaker, 70s = nice, 80s = warm, 90s = hot, etc, etc. Celsius is no where near that intuitive and was as arbitrarily defined as Fahrenheit was.
Its not intuitive, its just what you're used to
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"The key to converting to metric is establishing new reference points"
http://xkcd.com/526/ [xkcd.com]
"-40C : spit goes 'clink'"
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Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fahrenheit just makes more sense to most of us. 30s = cold, 40s = chilly, 50s = cool, 60s = decent/might need a windbreaker, 70s = nice, 80s = warm, 90s = hot, etc, etc. Celsius is no where near that intuitive and was as arbitrarily defined as Fahrenheit was.
Arbitrarily defined? 0C = Freezing point of water at 1 atmosphere (within 0.01C); 100C = Boiling point of water at 1 atmosphere (within 0.02C). Celsius makes more sense to everyone else who uses it - why would "30s [F] = cold" be more sensible than "0-10C = cold"?
0C = Freezing
10C = Chilly/cold
20C = Warm (around room temperature)
30C = Hot
40C = Very hot
100C = You're being cooked by cannibals
This is no less sensible than fahrenheit, the only difference being celsius has a logical and practical 0-point which ma
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:4, Informative)
Only at standard temperature and pressure...
Besides, at Zero, shouldn't there be NO thermal energy? You standard of +273K = 0C seems pretty arbitrary to me!
Real geeks use Kelvin.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
The zero of Fahrenheit -- the freezing point of saturated brine -- is no less sensible than the Celcius zero of the freezing point of water. Fahrenheit is also more precise with fewer digits in the ranges most people deal with day to day.
Yeah, because I'm always having to deal with saturated brine. I can't tell you how many times I've gone out driving in sub-zero temperatures and nearly skidded on all that saturated brine ice.
Fahrenheit is also more precise with fewer digits in the ranges most people deal with day to day
What? Nobody needs to be more accurate than 1C for day-to-day casual usage. For anything else there's this neat thing called a fraction that people can use.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:4, Informative)
Ahh yes, the sea, filled with saturated brine.
Sea water is ~26% salt. Which is why it is impossible to put any more salt in there, it'll just gently float to the bottom.
What's that?? It's only actually ~50 ppt salt? And saturated brine freezes at around -7F/-23C? And harbour sea water normaly freezes at around -2C?
Poppycock.
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this is an American site
And merka is a christian nation dagnubbit. Ya'll should be usin de proper bible units of cubits and hogs heads.
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For regular humans, maybe. For the scientific community, not so much.
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Fahrenheit just makes more sense to most of us. 30s = cold, 40s = chilly, 50s = cool, 60s = decent/might need a windbreaker, 70s = nice, 80s = warm, 90s = hot, etc, etc. Celsius is no where near that intuitive and was as arbitrarily defined as Fahrenheit was.
Celsius, however, does not rely solely on memorization to "make sense". It's based on certain scientific principals that remain as yet unwavering. 0C is the freezing point of water, 100C is the boiling point of water. It's quite simple to deduce the relative levels of comfort in between; when you know that it's 0C outside the precipitation that's falling isn't going to be rain but instead the frozen variety. When it's 40C outside you know it's pretty damn warm, and when it pushes the 50s and 60s you start t
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I posit that you've (plural) just made those definitions up and that they are only intuitive because you've defined them that way.
Furthermore, I think you'd easily come up with similar definitions using Celsius once you get used to it. For example, I have a pretty good idea how I'd feel in whatever Celsius number you care to pick...perhaps just split it into 5s...and you'd feel like it's just as intuitive.
0 freezing
05 very cold
510 cold
1015 chilly
1520 slightly chilly
2025 comfortable
2530 warm
bla bla
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oil immersion (Score:2, Funny)
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There is absolutely no advantage to Celsius over Fahrenheit. It is what you grow up with. If you argued Kelvin was better, I would agree as it has enough sense to start the scale at "zero". Is 20 Celsius twice as hot as 10 Celsius? No. Twenty Kelvin, though, is twice as hot as ten.
Other metric scales are many times more useful than imperial. Temperature is not one of them.
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So Celsius is based on on the freezing and melting point of water. At 1 atmosphere. Outside of that one case, what is the advantage?
It takes 1 joule to heat 1 cubic cm. one degree C. (Score:3, Informative)
The metric system is unified in all directions, time, mass, length, temperature, energy etc...
The system makes sense instead of relying on the length on the king's thumb, foot and arm, or the weight of a stone or the amount of work being done by a horse, all variable and inconsistent.
Its one of the many things we owe the French under Napoleon, like a unified system of laws, the "Code Napoleon."
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of backup do you need? ...
0 K = DAMN COLD!
10 K = DAMN COLD!
20 K = DAMN COLD!
30 K = DAMN COLD!
40 K = DAMN COLD!
50 K = DAMN COLD!
200K = Pee freezes before hitting the ground
400K = Pee evaporates before hitting the ground
"Twice as hot" only makes sense in a scientific context. It is akin to saying that one computer is twice as blue as another.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Insightful)
A mass at 20K has twice as much thermal energy as 10K. A mass at 20C has about 3.5% more thermal energy as 10C. Therefore, 20K is twice as hot as 10K, 20C is not twice as hot as 10C, if you define 'hot' as the thermal energy embodied in the mass.
Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system (Score:5, Funny)
"My belief, as an American, is that if I have to start understanding the metric system, then the terrorists have won." -- Dave Barry
Brrr... (Score:2)
I'd be happy with a 75-degree data center.
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Sure (Score:2)
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I don't know, it seems both the UK and Australia's government data centers seem to be running very well at Fahrenheit 451! Makes Censorship of the internet soo much more efficient..
Drives (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be mostly concerned about the lifespan of hard drives at these temperatures. The electronics can be easily made to tolerate heat, but drives are a weak link. The bearings and lubricants are especially vulnerable.
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Solid state drives, for the win.
Re:Drives (Score:5, Interesting)
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Here's the whitepaper [74.125.47.132] (HTML-converted).
I'm not able to open the PDF right now to see the pretty graphs, but it says "The figure shows that failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend." However, it also notes that "What stands out are the 3 and 4-year old drives, where the trend for higher failures with higher t
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It's really not so bad. Most drives are rated to about 55deg C (131F), 104F is only 40C.
The key is to design the server with sufficient airflow to try and keep the temperature of the components close to the room's temperature.
Looking at the Datasheet [rackable.com], it looks like they are running the servers on DC power. That way, each server doesn't have it's own power supply, they just hook up to a separate power unit elsewhere in the rack.
The servers don't seem to have fans either. The fans are in the cabinet door.
Th
No Problem (Score:2)
Not just no, but hell no (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize it's the trendy thing these days to target the data center as an area of concern monetarily, but this is a little ridiculous.
All it will take is one poor geek spending a 12 hour day in the data center for this to be deemed a horrible idea. (Like that never happens)
Seriously, this is retarded. If you do your cooling and power CORRECTLY, you won't have a ridiculous bill and your data center will be at a more reasonable temperature.
I hate really hot weather...you can always put on more clothes, but you reach a limit on what you can take off.
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you might as well pipe water pass the walls next to the racks and install heat collectors, you'd be able to have free hot water for the bathrooms.
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Oops, sorry, you're 0-2.
I do gotta say, I LOVE spring time in Dallas. :D
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but you reach a limit on what you can take off.
With your average geek, that limit is reached sooner than with most people!
New Dress Code. (Score:4, Funny)
"...But higher temperatures can be less forgiving in the event of a cooling failure, and not likely to be welcomed by employees working in the data center."
Not welcome? That all depends, on if I can relocate my Data Center to a topless beach in Miami. Sure beats the current scenery, and the dress code would likely change.
Of course, the fact that you probably don't want to see your average IT person running around topless wearing a thong is another matter entirely...
Yugo, Igo, Wego... (Score:2)
if I can relocate my Data Center to a topless beach in Miami.
Dude, have you ever been to a topless beach? (Car analogy time) For every Ferrari you'll see, there will be 200 rusted broken-down Yugos.
I would consider relocating to said topless beach only if you enjoy rusted broken down Yugos. ;-P
Great, now you've done it. I'll never convince Bobby to come now, he happens to drive a Yugo...
Use that waste heat! (Score:5, Insightful)
Buildings provide hot water for washing hands etc. Cold water comes in from outside and is heated using electricity or gas to make hot water which costs money and energy.
Pipe the cold water (which is usually somewhere between 0 and 20 degrees C) through heat exchangers in the hot data centre before heating it up to working temperature with gas or electricity.
That way, you reduce the data centre's temperature to more like 20-25C, and you heat the water up by 10C (say) saving on gas or electricity bills since there is less of a temperature difference to get it up to the required temperature.
I eagerly await my Nobel Prize for Common Sense.
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Can't a Sterling engine be used to turn the hot water into power to feed back to the data center?
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And once your cold water reaches the same temperature as the data center, what then?
You heat it up more to become hot water.
The water you want to be cold, you don't pipe through the data centre.
Water has a very high specific heat capacity [wikipedia.org] compared to air. You don't need a lot of it to absorb a lot of heat energy. That equates to a cooler data centre.
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heat exchangers in the data centre (Score:2)
And since heat exchangers never leak, there's no problem putting them in the data center with all the electrical devices...
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And since heat exchangers never leak, there's no problem putting them in the data center with all the electrical devices...
Apparently not. We've managed with air conditioners for 40+ years, with drip trays and drains. My old Nucular(TM) power station used to have them in the Temperature Monitoring Room to keep the PDP-11s cool.
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That would work great until the moisture buildup from the water kills all the electronic equipment in the room. ;)
Dad, is that you?
Blimey, people are so negative. Someone once said that if you have a good idea, don't worry about people trying to steal it: you'll have to ram it down their throats.
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So if no one is washing their hands in the office, the water will not flow and the servers will overheat...
So you radiate it away.
you ask the wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
The proper question is "Are our coworkers ready to deal with how we'll smell like after spending time in that server room?" It'll smell like a monkey house, but probably with less feces. Unless we're working with that superstar bastard programmer a few articles back who poo'd in the lobby.
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Sweatier sysadmins.
Sweaty sysadmins (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new sweaty sysadmins.
What are you going to do with the old ones?
80 degrees (Score:3, Interesting)
We have an 80 degree data center. It's not particularly pleasant to be in (as you get buffeted by hotter winds coming off of power supplies), but we haven't seen any more failures than normal.
Resistance (Score:2)
Don't conductors generally get more resistive when they heat up?
Is there a cost to data centers when their computers' circuits become more resistive?
I wouldn't mind... (Score:2)
But this would mean that we'd need a new law, banning any manager from trying to enforce any sort of dress code above and beyond "please wear clothing" for the IT department. If I'm going to be working in a warm data center, there's no way in hell that I'm dressing in 'business casual.' Management can kiss my ass. :)
A little warmer would be nice. (Score:2)
Northern data centers (Score:2)
I have never understood why data centers located in colder climates need cooling systems. Surely the only thing they need is access to as much outside temperature as possible and humidity filters? The other solution is to design data centers to use things like Windcatchers [wikipedia.org] to use natural physical processes.
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Bad idea... (Score:2)
...not likely to be welcomed by employees working in the data center.
Especially big fat sweaty BOFHs ;-)
Really bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes there saving money on cooling cost, or at least they seem to believe that and I am sure when they fail to take everything into account this is true.
The reality it the server room still has to pull that heat out. Increased Delta T is just lost energy.
Here is really why it's a terrible idea.
1.) Component failures. Of all parts from bearing in the drives, and fans to the silicon itself has a much higher failure rate.
2.) The components use more power at higher temperatures! This is from increased leakage currents in the silicon.
Below is a graph from Research My Startup company did!
http://www.silentcomputing.com/tech/market2.gif [silentcomputing.com]
They really need to used ducted air or any other technology to reduce the Delta T! By this I mean bring the cooling as close to the components as possible.
Right now server rooms need to run internally at 10C to 15C to keep the CPU chips below 60C.
If they just brought the cooling directly to the cpu's and let that cool spread from there they could use out door passive radiators! 0 air conditioning cost and the most power savings.
This is what my start was doing till someone tried to steal the who damb thing and sunk the company.
Let's run the numbers (Score:3, Informative)
May I point out the obvious: not only the higher power consumption comes from increased leakage currents in the silicon, but it also comes from the fact that power supplies are less efficient at higher temperatures, so they need to pull more current from the wall socket to maintain the same ou
Sure, the servers can run at a higher temp... (Score:3, Insightful)
...but the servers aren't the only thing in a data center. If the switches and routers can't take the higher heat, then you aren't going to get much use out of those servers.
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