What is "redundant" cooling?

[cwand]

not sure exactly what this is?

 

[tommyc]

"redundant cooling" could be any type of backup cooling system.
In my case (haha) my Supermicro SC760 A tower has two fans in the power supply. If one should fail the other one will turn on.

tommyc

 

[Ulysses]

I never heard of redundant cooling, but here's everything I know about redundant power supplies:

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

 

[Ulysses]

But here's what my son knows:

One advanced feature available on high-end machines (especially servers) but also available to the general public for those willing to pay for it, is a redundant power supply. In essence, this is a power supply that actually includes two units within it, each of which is capable of powering the entire system by itself. If for some reason there is a failure in one of the units, the other one will seamlessly take over to prevent the loss of power to the PC. You can usually even replace the damaged unit without taking the machine down. This is called hot swapping, and is an essential productivity backup for use in servers and other machines used by a number of people.

 

[tommyc]

Yah !, Supermicro for one, has a PS for their server units that is
hot swapable dual redundant blah blah blah @ 400+ watts & $$$$$$$$
ouch.

tommyc

 

[stash]

This is true, but you (or your son) left out some important points. A system with redundant power supplies needs a motherboard with multiple power connectors. If these are not there, then the redundancy is obviously gone .

Next, if you want to hot swap, your rig will need a backplane which the PSs will plug into. This backplane will allow the user to cut off any current between the PS and mobo when removing a PS from the computer.

In my opinion, redundant anything is pretty much unneeded for any home rig. Unless your system absolutely needs to be up 24/7/365, you dont need to waste the money. And if your system does need to be up all the time, you should buy a REAL server. I use these redundant solutions (PSs, HDDs, etc) all the time on my servers at work, and they are very nice to work with. But the cost can get pretty bad.