Folding Forum

foldy wrote:It is expected that during summer upto half of FAH home PCs stop folding because of too much heat and power usage with air conditioning running. In autumn when users remember FAH again, especially cause of Corona-Virus rises again in parallel to influenza, hopefully they all return. And now can use the FAH generated heat for their home.

My workspace (where my desktop is) is in a finished attic. Due to various reasons including lack of airflow, sun exposure from all sides, and the fact that hot air rises, the attic gets so hot in the summer that the room is positively unusable without installing an A/C unit in the window.

Despite that, I still fold in the summer (though not 24/7). It is certainly more costly though, because on top of the energy used for folding, I then have to run the A/C more to move all of that energy (heat) outside the room to keep it at a livable temperature .

I'm sure there must be more efficient ways than air conditioning to remove or mitigate the waste heat from computers, though. But it would take some creative thinking.

Frogging101 wrote:My workspace (where my desktop is) is in a finished attic. Due to various reasons including lack of airflow, sun exposure from all sides, and the fact that hot air rises, the attic gets so hot in the summer that the room is positively unusable without installing an A/C unit in the window.

Despite that, I still fold in the summer (though not 24/7). It is certainly more costly though, because on top of the energy used for folding, I then have to run the A/C more to move all of that energy (heat) outside the room to keep it at a livable temperature .

I'm sure there must be more efficient ways than air conditioning to remove or mitigate the waste heat from computers, though. But it would take some creative thinking.

If the attic has a window, you can add a window fan blowing outward to move the hot air out. The negative pressure will pull air through any gaps in the room to replace that being pulled out, including air from the rest of the house depending how well the room is sealed. Assuming you aren't running the AC in that room itself and the there aren't any major gaps to the rest of the house, the cooled air pulled in should already have done it's job anyway. If the room is particularly well sealed from the rest of the house and you have another window on the opposite side you can open that to create a crossdraft.

My PCs run winter or summer cooling on outside air.
Summer I have to lower power consumption by a good 10%, because the systems tend to overheat quicker.
If you have 2 windows, it's easy to create a draft.

If you only have 1 window, try to stick a Enamel Spray Paint coated either cardboard or wood board, with some duct tape in the window, with intake and exhaust vents.

You can add a cheap 50-100W box-fan, or 25-50W Honeywell table fan they sell for $15 in Target or Home Depot; to rout outside air in, blowing it on your PC, and a duct to scoop the hottest air on the top of the ceiling, back out the window.

Would it be possible to build some pipeline from basement to attic for pulling cold air? Or the other way round push hot air to the basement if it is too cold down there? Never tried that...

psaam0001 wrote:I'd like to check out any available threads w/regards to setting up OpenMM to see if that would allow me to get the 2 ATI/AMD Mobility HD3870's I have in my Alienware Pentium 4 laptop busy w/some GPU tasks.

For F@h, not a chance from what I recall. ATI did not go to OpenCL until the HD 4000 series, and those had some issues that made them unsuitable for folding using early test cores based on OpenCL. The HD 5000 series cards are the earliest usable.

Currently all GPU folding projects require Double Precision and support for OpenCL 1.2. The only HD 5000 series cards that meet that are the HD 5800 series and the HD 5970. None of the mobile GPUs of the HD 5000 series support double precision.

As an aside, some early Fermi based GT 400 and GT 500 series cards have a sort of enhanced OpenCL 1.1, they work on some projects, not all.

foldy wrote:Would it be possible to build some pipeline from basement to attic for pulling cold air? Or the other way round push hot air to the basement if it is too cold down there? Never tried that...

It would require AC to cool the attic. A lot more AC.
But, it's entirely possible to create a vent in one of the AC duct lines that are going through the attic, causing an over-pressure, sending hot air back inside the home and through cracks in the roof/window.

In my case, actually, the attic is always too hot and the basement is always too cold. Equalizing them would be an ideal solution.

I have two kids and a wife who constantly leave the door open on the main level. The heat put out by my PC in my basement is blanketed by the continuously churning A/C. It's been folding for about 12 hours straight and my desk thermometer reads a nice 68F.

Frogging101 wrote:

foldy wrote:It is expected that during summer upto half of FAH home PCs stop folding because of too much heat and power usage with air conditioning running. In autumn when users remember FAH again, especially cause of Corona-Virus rises again in parallel to influenza, hopefully they all return. And now can use the FAH generated heat for their home.

My workspace (where my desktop is) is in a finished attic. Due to various reasons including lack of airflow, sun exposure from all sides, and the fact that hot air rises, the attic gets so hot in the summer that the room is positively unusable without installing an A/C unit in the window.

Despite that, I still fold in the summer (though not 24/7). It is certainly more costly though, because on top of the energy used for folding, I then have to run the A/C more to move all of that energy (heat) outside the room to keep it at a livable temperature .

I'm sure there must be more efficient ways than air conditioning to remove or mitigate the waste heat from computers, though. But it would take some creative thinking.

You could get some plastic or metal ducting the same diameter as the chassis fan outlets on your system and have the machine near another window if there is one. Don't attempt to feed it out the same window the AC unit is in. You may need to fashion some kind of fixing to the PC but if you cannot, duct/duck/gorilla tape would work fine. put the duct from the machine straight out the window or door but try to minimise the length of ducting in the attic space as much as possible or it will just radiate the heat back into the room. If there is only one exhaust fan obviously this will be easier but if you have two or three it's going to require some kind of header resembling something from the automotive industry to feed into a pipe without trapping the heat and feeding it back into the PC.