A refrigerated case???

[talldude]

This looks REAL good, if you got he $$$ to buy it. http://www.asetek.com/default.asp?sh...n=2&menuID=309

750W heat removal capacity + it recirculates the air so you don't get any dust in there. Now, all you gotta do is duct the air from the cooler unit to outside your house and voila.

[zackbass]

Originally posted by talldude
This looks REAL good, if you got he $$$ to buy it. http://www.asetek.com/default.asp?sh...n=2&menuID=309

750W heat removal capacity + it recirculates the air so you don't get any dust in there. Now, all you gotta do is duct the air from the cooler unit to outside your house and voila.

Wow, I've never seen anything like that. That looks like one sweet system.

[V5500-StillGoing]

Originally posted by talldude
This looks REAL good, if you got he $$$ to buy it. http://www.asetek.com/default.asp?sh...n=2&menuID=309

750W heat removal capacity + it recirculates the air so you don't get any dust in there. Now, all you gotta do is duct the air from the cooler unit to outside your house and voila.

Indeed, that's the one I was talking about.

[talldude]

Originally posted by V5500-StillGoing
Indeed, that's the one I was talking about.

Yeah...you just linked to asetek's main site. A lot of people could miss the case you were talking about (or not understand exactly what you were pointing at) so I put up that link directly to the unit you were talking about.

[russ_watters]

I would think a unit like that would be worse than sealing the whole case in a refrigerated box. Since it isn't completely self-contained, you may still have a condensation problem - most likely on the outside of the case, but you don't even want condensation there.

A refrigerator might not be bad, but I'd also be wary of temperatures too low - you don't want thermal shock, nor do you want humidity too low - you get static electricity and material degredation problems.

My solution would be a sealed box with a small room A/C unit: you generally get 55F supply temperature and 55F wet bulb temp.

Also, common misconception:

Don't forget that not ALL of that 500w is going directly to heat. Your hard disks and removable storage drives draw a considerable amount of power while not producing much heat.

By the 1st law of thermodynamics, absolutely every bit of power/work has to be accounted for. Since there aren't any chemical reactions going on and no mechanical changes in potential energy, every last watt of juice your computer uses gets dissipated as heat. Friction (in bearings on the hd, and in air flowing across a fan, etc) is a bigger impact than most people realize.

FYI, I'm an HVAC engineer and I've designed computer rooms. Generally they are kept slightly below normal room temp (65F or so) at 50% humidity. Most need active humidity control - they are more often too dry than too humid.

[Isezumi]

Since there aren't any chemical reactions going on and no mechanical changes in potential energy

While you might be an HVAC engineer, you seem to have failed this little bit of thermodynamics.

If a system has a 0% thermal effeciency it isn't doing anything other then being hot. Which a computer most certainly is not doing. Pushing electrons across the surface of semiconductor IS a chemical reaction and requires the use of energy that ISN'T all expended as heat. Similar to spinning disks up/down AND moving actuator arms on optical drives and HDD. Samething goes for fans. You might not be counteracting gravity mechanically (unless your HDD is stowed vertically) but your most definately moving an object that was at rest.