Need help with a Heat Load Study

[cross6]

We've been having problems with our AC systems in our building.

I'm a network engineer - but I'm halfway done with an EE - I haven't taken any thermo.

So I need to figure roughly what is the heat load or dissipation of typical pc's, laser printers, etc etc.

Now I can measure the typical current consumption - and if I knew what % of that went to heat - then I would have a good idea...

How should I go about this?

 

[brentkiosk]

For a first estimate for the knds of devices you mention, all of the energy could be taken as showing up as heat sooner or later. In most cases, the energy in goes pretty directly to heat - thermodynamically a PC just sits there and makes heat. Even the spinning disk, fan etc energy ends up as heat pretty quickly. I don't think you would be far off taking the entire actual power input to the devices as the rate of heat input to the room.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Roger that. The only way energy gets out NOT as heat is as radiation out of a window; think how dark a computer room looks from the outside - that's how much energy is escaping. Actually, some sound would as well, but that and the light are negligible.

 

[CycloWizard]

As the others have stated, it's a very good assumption that all input power is converted to heat. Basically, the power a computer has to draw out of the wall is replacing all the power lost within the computer due to resistive heating, friction in the fans, and maybe other electric phenomena that I'm not so familiar with (current leakage?).