I am working on building a new server in my apartment that will have a reasonably beefy GPU and CPU so I can get PCIE pass-through working and get a gaming VM set up.
Trouble is, my apartment is in the attic in the south. With the AC on I had one or two really bad days last year that it got up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit inside with high humidity.
Any cooling suggestions for something like that? Is 90 degrees Fahrenheit still cool enough to reduce the temperature of my components? I would really like to avoid buying a phase change cooler, but that is the only thing I can think of if the ambient is too high.
90F should be fine. A lowish CPU temp is like 40C (104F) and that’s typically the hottest component. CPUs are often made to go up to around 90C under load.
Thanks, I am thinking I need to build it with good air cooling and pay attention to the airflow and then see if I actually am having throttling problems in the summer. I am at work during the hottest parts of the day anyway so I won’t be gaming for the most part until it is already cooling down. My other workloads are not GPU intensive.
I’d be more concerned about your computer making the room even hotter personally. To put it in AC terms, 500W of component power draw is 1700 BTU. May want to err on the side of more power efficient components.
But yeah, should run fine as long as you have good air cooling even if it’s not ideal. Data centers are often run hot these days.
A phase change cooler would probably generate a lot of condensation in a hot & humid environment.
Maybe see if you can pipe the heat from the pc directly outside?
Good point on the condensation. I wonder how piping the outgoing air could work, but that is a good idea