Pc in the attic

thenightrider

Hi i was thinking for noise reasons from the fans etc of puting my pc in the attic i have a vga cale long enough to go from the attic to my pc desk all i would need is a long usb lead and have a usb hub with anything i need then in the room with me and i could wire up a cable to turn on and of the pc not a big job.


But what trouble could i run in to its grand as its cold up there most of the time but what about when it gets hot up there.

What do you think ????

ShadowHearth

thenightrider wrote: »

Hi i was thinking for noise reasons from the fans etc of puting my pc in the attic i have a vga cale long enough to go from the attic to my pc desk all i would need is a long usb lead and have a usb hub with anything i need then in the room with me and i could wire up a cable to turn on and of the pc not a big job.


But what trouble could i run in to its grand as its cold up there most of the time but what about when it gets hot up there.

What do you think ????

how damn noise it is?! i guess main problem will be dust, and lots of it. just now and then get up the attic and give a good dust cleaning to it. then i guess card readers, ethernet cable, dvd rom?

frozenfrozen

latency of running cables long enough to go there and back? annoyance of having to go in the attic to mess with the pc. If it's for a media pc you could just vnc from downstairs instead of running a monitor cable. Can you give more details about how you will do it? Heat rises so as cold as you think your attic is, it's getting all the left over heat from all of your house. And since there won't be good ventilation it will get really really hot with a pc in there.

The performance you would lose from having long cables could be matched by underclocking and using your fans on like 10%, along with not having to clean dust filters daily and all the other annoyances.

BaconZombie

What is the cable run?

USB has a max of 5M { you can get "booster" cables but they don't always work}.

Bluetooth or RF keyboard is another option but would not work if you want to play games.

You can run VGA upto 15M if you want to longer you can get a VGA to CAT5 converter.

CaSCaDe711

Buy new quieter fans? :rolleyes:

Serephucus

frozenfrozen wrote: »

latency of running cables long enough to go there and back? annoyance of having to go in the attic to mess with the pc. If it's for a media pc you could just vnc from downstairs instead of running a monitor cable. Can you give more details about how you will do it? Heat rises so as cold as you think your attic is, it's getting all the left over heat from all of your house. And since there won't be good ventilation it will get really really hot with a pc in there.

Wouldn't make any difference. We're talking an extra millisecond or two at most.

I've thought about doing something like that as well, and it might work, but you would need some sort of ventilation up there to get rid of the heat. Your attic might do well enough to dispense whatever heat convects through from the house, but if you add another 3-400W of heat from a computer, that could very well change.

I mean go for it, try it, see what happens. The worst thing that'll happen is it'll overheat and restart on you, at which point you bring it back down where it was, and maybe blow a little dust off. If you find out though that it works out fine, we can go through the finer points to keep it a bit cooler, less dusty, etc.

frozenfrozen

This thread has given me the idea to run a watercooling loop through my mains water. It's always bloody freezing which can be experienced by going for a shower at any time in my house so it's perfect! If someone was to have a pc in their attic, could you just leave something like a h100 in the water reservoir (cold one) and always have a supply of less than room temperature liquid flowing over your rad?! Be right back patenting the idea of cooling a pc using mains water

Serephucus

Good luck with that.

The reason it hasn't been done is because mains water is horribly contaminated. It's only ever filtered to between 70 and 80% purity. The rest is full of random ions, and particles of crap left over. It will absolutely ruin your blocks, and your radiator.

Now, if you could somehow filter the water, on-the-fly, without sacrificing flow rate, then yes, you could do it, otherwise, no.

What you could do, is run a small watercooling loop, and run mains water over your radiator. That would keep everything very cold, and not contaminate your loop.


Wouldn't someone in the government get pissed at you for leaving your taps on all day though?

frozenfrozen

Serephucus wrote: »

Good luck with that.

The reason it hasn't been done is because mains water is horribly contaminated. It's only ever filtered to between 70 and 80% purity. The rest is full of random ions, and particles of crap left over. It will absolutely ruin your blocks, and your radiator.

Now, if you could somehow filter the water, on-the-fly, without sacrificing flow rate, then yes, you could do it, otherwise, no.

What you could do, is run a small watercooling loop, and run mains water over your radiator. That would keep everything very cold, and not contaminate your loop.


Wouldn't someone in the government get pissed at you for leaving your taps on all day though?

I mean just running the water over a rad. Could deionize on the fly, several brita filters! :P. Someone would definitely get mad at me for doing that. But I think in my case it would be my mother not the government!

Serephucus

Ah, ok. Well then yeah, certainly that would work. You might have to watch out for condensation on your blocks though, if the water's cold enough. Your best bet might be to just route your radiator outside or something. If you can find somewhere that's always in the shade, you could bury it as well maybe.

claytonie

Just wanted to let you know my experience of having my PC in the attic. I placed my media server in the attic and it was grand for sometime but during the cold spell in winter I kept getting random reboots and the server locking up.

This threw me a little as you would expect the colder temperatures would be just perfect for keeping everything cool but with the water tanks etc up in the attic the air was more humid and the cold air caused condensation to form in the case. YMMV but that was just my experience.

monkeysnapper

ok i can talk about this, about a year ago we ( the other half) decided with the fact that we needed the computer room for another childrens bedroom , that we (the other half) would get the attic floor insulated and then put flooring in to make it into a office for us (me) and after a year of being scorched or frozen to death ive had enough!!!!!!!! aaghhh , " your very noisy with your office chair up there ,, can you make less noise,, aaagggghhghhhh feck right off !!! then it was , " your letting all the cold air into the house ........... can i shut you in and you can ring me when you need letting out ,,, im like the fecking gimp out of pulp fiction .... DO IT... MOVE INTO THE ATTIC...THEN WHILE SHES AT IT MAYBE YOU CAN SUGEST YOU CUT YOUR OWN BALLS OFF WITH A RUSTY CAN OF SPAM!!!!
update... ive since moved out of the attic and into a flat above her business and bought a laptop for home,,, all would be well but theres no heating in flat so i may aswell stayed in the gimp house !!!! anyone looking for me im stitching my leather suit

monkeysnapper

sorry about this, can i add something els, i banged my head nearly everytime i went up there because if the beams so i ended up wearing a cycling helmet while i worked on pc , ooohhh the shame

luyolo

monkeysnapper wrote: »

sorry about this, can i add something els, i banged my head nearly everytime i went up there because if the beams so i ended up wearing a cycling helmet while i worked on pc , ooohhh the shame

Thanks for the laugh bro. I had myself a good chuckle while reading that.

Cuddlesworth

Too cold in Winter, too hot in Summer. And the vibrations from a noisy pc would travel right through the joists into every room.

glynf

frozenfrozen wrote: »

This thread has given me the idea to run a watercooling loop through my mains water. It's always bloody freezing which can be experienced by going for a shower at any time in my house so it's perfect! If someone was to have a pc in their attic, could you just leave something like a h100 in the water reservoir (cold one) and always have a supply of less than room temperature liquid flowing over your rad?! Be right back patenting the idea of cooling a pc using mains water

Maybe something like a small plate heat exchanger and connect the primary side on a loop; flow from the cold water tank >> .75kw pump >> return to cold water tank. The secondary side of the plate exchanger could be a sealed loop for your waterblocks.