Room where PCs are is very warm...

[Anomaly1964]

I work from home...

I have my laptop on one desk, my tower and monitor (see signature) on another in an "L" set up.

What I am noticing is that this room is 5-10 degrees warmer than any other room in the house. I just got a room fan to move air around but still pretty warm in here. Other than getting a portable AC for the room, any other suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[ElFenix]

turn off the computer when not being used

is the insulation in the room proper?

is the room isolated from the rest of the house?

mini split a/c systems are better than portable

 

[Ken g6]

Ensure your 2500k is dropping to 1v/2GHz at idle. Use power saving features to turn off your monitor, drives, and/or sleep/hibernate your whole computer when not in use. Try undervolting/underclocking your laptop as a last resort.

Can you narrow/close a heat vent in that room? Or are you somewhere where it's hot this time of year?

 

[piasabird]

Overhead Fans can be quite useful.
Plant a tree outside and wait 10 years.
Insulated windows. Cover the windows to block sunlight.
Often corner rooms furthest from the furnace do not get much cooling or sometimes some rooms get more heat than others when the furnace is running.
place a bucket with a towel in it to help put moisture back into the air i.e. humidifier.
Install roof vents.
Install an exhaust fan just like in the bathroom. Push the heat into the attic or outside through the soffit.
Heating and cooling isnt a general computer topic.

 

[Anomaly1964]

turn off the computer when not being used

is the insulation in the room proper?

is the room isolated from the rest of the house?

mini split a/c systems are better than portable

Ensure your 2500k is dropping to 1v/2GHz at idle. Use power saving features to turn off your monitor, drives, and/or sleep/hibernate your whole computer when not in use. Try undervolting/underclocking your laptop as a last resort.

Can you narrow/close a heat vent in that room? Or are you somewhere where it's hot this time of year?

Renting, so mini split is not an option...

The room is isolated but has AC coming in and good flow when its running. Thing is, if the rest of the house is cool, the AC don't come on to cool this room. Can't leave door open cause I work and other house noise is audible...

I'm in FLA so still at 80 degrees here...

 

[wirednuts]

it just means your apartment is well insulated... great in the winter but sucks when its warm out. i have the same problem, except my whole 800sq ft apartment gets heated.... i am not kidding, its nov16th and i have not yet used any heating this year- and i live in wisconsin!!

is the a/c thats coming into the room from a central hvac system? do you have a return air duct in that room? (you said the a/c supply into the room is good, but is there a way for the hot stale air to escape?,).

if you do have a return air duct, check to see that its working... and if its not sucking much air out of the room then get a small forceful fan and put it on that vent- to force the air out of the room. most people dont realize that its not the supplies that cool or heat rooms, its the exhaust sucking the 'bad' air out that really pulls the 'good' air in.

also, if this is a central air system, then just turn on the furnace fan and leave it on. it wont cost much money and it will keep all the rooms in your house at the same temp. in fact, lots of people leave their system fans on 24/7 during the summer because it does a really good job at keeping down hotspots in a house.

 

[lsv]

Overhead Fans can be quite useful.
Plant a tree outside and wait 10 years.
Insulated windows. Cover the windows to block sunlight.
Often corner rooms furthest from the furnace do not get much cooling or sometimes some rooms get more heat than others when the furnace is running.
place a bucket with a towel in it to help put moisture back into the air i.e. humidifier.
Install roof vents.
Install an exhaust fan just like in the bathroom. Push the heat into the attic or outside through the soffit.
Heating and cooling isnt a general computer topic.

Overhead ceiling fans only help humans evaporate sweat, thus making us feel cooler. It won't make the room cooler, although it will help

 

[BurnItDwn]

Move out and rent a basement apartment instead.

 

[wirednuts]

Move out and rent a basement apartment instead.

you would think...as did i.. but mine is a lower apartment, half underground. problem is i have 4 units surrounding me and apparently everyone else runs their heat at 80deg... because like i was saying i dont need any supplemental heat. not with my pc's and my neighbors....

 

[piasabird]

Funny thing is it is hotter in my house so I tend to live in the basement. I did do some more insulation in the attic and put more roof vents on my roof when I redid it, but it only helped so much. Next is replacing windows. What I probably need is to redo the insullation in the attic again. I would like to use the spray foam stuff that expands. I still plan on living in my moldy basement.

 

[BurnItDwn]

you would think...as did i.. but mine is a lower apartment, half underground. problem is i have 4 units surrounding me and apparently everyone else runs their heat at 80deg... because like i was saying i dont need any supplemental heat. not with my pc's and my neighbors....

Well, then you're gonna have to either suffer with the heat or run fans, or simply pay more to run the AC to keep the whole place cooler ... probably not worth the cost of adding an extra AC just for the 1 room ...

I too have the same problem with my home office.... got my gaming box in there, as well as my work laptop when I work from home (usually fridays, as well as if I get support calls after hours)..... I have a den next to my living room which is my home office ....

That said, I put my master bedroom in the basement, and have another PC there, and I have now a PC plugged into my home theater as well, which is in the basement ...

That said, I'm in IL, and it's a bit cooler than FL, so I tend to run the heat these days and leave it set at 66 to 68 .... it's usually 75ish in the office ...

 

[dpodblood]

Put computers into the other rooms of you house. Then the temperature will be the same everywhere.

 

[sm625]

Make sure that desktop is going to sleep when you arent using it. Set it for a 3 minute timer, and make sure the thing completely powers down when it goes to sleep. If it dont then get one that does. A modern PC should use no more than a few watts when sleeping. All fans should be off.

 

[ElFenix]

Renting, so mini split is not an option...

The room is isolated but has AC coming in and good flow when its running. Thing is, if the rest of the house is cool, the AC don't come on to cool this room. Can't leave door open cause I work and other house noise is audible...

I'm in FLA so still at 80 degrees here...

portable AC is going to be your only option then.

 

[Ken g6]

I personally work with both a desktop and a laptop, but I don't like lugging the laptop in here then back to another room later. So I us VNC to work on the laptop, in another room, from the desktop. Could help. Unless you're normally on the laptop most of the time.

What kind of backlight does your monitor use? Some modern LED-backlit monitors use a lot less power.

Speaking of lighting, are you still using incandescents? CFLs or LEDs put out a lot less heat.

Edit: Finally, you could always [thread=2185025]get a different desktop PC[/thread].

 

[Anomaly1964]

Lots of good info and things to think about here guys...thanks!

 

[Blain]

The room is isolated but has AC coming in and good flow when its running. Thing is, if the rest of the house is cool, the AC don't come on to cool this room.
Can't leave door open cause I work and other house noise is audible

Headphones

If the room doesn't have an air return, you really need to leave the door open to get that "good flow".

 

[wirednuts]

Put computers into the other rooms of you house. Then the temperature will be the same everywhere.

you think youre joking! half the reason i moved my 24/7 server to my bedroom... to keep me warm at night!

its not a totally ridiculous idea. not when you can use RDP for most tasks, and if need be just connect everything back to your room with a KVM switch. you could have nothing but a monitor and keyboard in your room...

 

[DominionSeraph]

Undervolt. It makes a difference.

 

[destrekor]

Overhead ceiling fans only help humans evaporate sweat, thus making us feel cooler. It won't make the room cooler, although it will help

Not entirely the case.

They also help circulate air, which means it will stir up the cooler air that has sunk and get it flowing wherever the circulation can support.
It won't actually cool the house, true (unless inside is hot, outside is cooler, and the fans are helping circulate outside air into the house), but it will help distribute the air more evenly and thus will likely lead to a more average temperature throughout the house, which should help cool down the warm spots. The warming of cold spots is more transparent, and as you noted, the increased airflow will ever so slightly increase evaporative cooling.

 

[Anomaly1964]

Undervolt. It makes a difference.

Tell me more about this undervolting?

I think its my 43" monitor that is giving off a lot of heat...

 

[DominionSeraph]

Tell me more about this undervolting?

It's like overclocking, but instead of finding the highest multiplier/bclk your system is stable at you find the lowest vcore your system is stable at. If your BIOS doesn't support it you can use something like RMClock.

I think its my 43" monitor that is giving off a lot of heat...

Those can certainly do it. I had a ~40" LCD TV that would put out a ton of heat until I put in in energy saving mode.
Turn down the backlight if you can.

 

[Ken g6]

Thing is, your 2500k is probably undervolting already, most of the time, unless you're running it hard on something like PrimeGrid. Unlike some earlier processors, it should run at 2GHz/1V at idle, 3.3 GHz on average tasks, and at whatever turbo boost speed you've set for very tough tasks. I'm able to set my Q9400 to run at 2GHz/0.97V in the summer, to save heat, but at anything much below 1V the transistors simply don't work.

Which is why I said underclock/undervolt your laptop as a last resort, because it may not have the same auto-adjusting clock/voltage features. But it's probably not putting out that much heat to begin with.

I'm sure most of the heat comes from that monitor, except when you're gaming. It's not a plasma TV, is it? Those things put out heat like nothing else.

Would that 23" monitor I linked to work in its place? Or maybe you could use the 23" monitor when working, and slide over to the 43" when gaming?

 

[DominionSeraph]

Thing is, your 2500k is probably undervolting already, most of the time, unless you're running it hard on something like PrimeGrid. Unlike some earlier processors, it should run at 2GHz/1V at idle, 3.3 GHz on average tasks, and at whatever turbo boost speed you've set for very tough tasks.

That's not undervolting, it's Speedstep. And the idle behavior is mostly irrelevant -- the OS has been able to send HLT since XP. Here's what happens when I switch from 1GHz/1.1v idle to 2.6GHz 1.35v (stock volts) also at idle:

Middle of the graph is where I change it (top chart is broken, not showing the correct frequency for the FID). Temps go up by 3 degrees with CPU fan still at its lowest setting -- so basically it's putting out just about zero additional heat.

But the difference at load between 1.35v at 2.6GHz and reducing it to 1.275v is quite large. A temp chart wouldn't really show the exact difference because my fan ramps up quite rapidly at ~60C to keep the temps in check, but at 1.275v it only takes a medium fan speed to keep it at 58C but at 1.35v the fan ramps up to high and things still shoot past 63C. (So it's blowing more heat.)

It's the load voltage that really matters.

 

[ElFenix]

It's the load voltage that really matters.

yup. i undervolted my athlon using k10stat and dropped about 30 watts off the x264 conversion. only got about 5 watts at idle.