Greg's recent activity

  1. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    It's a thought that's very much crossed my mind! I don't know that there's much I can preemptively do to avoid drawing that kind of attention beyond maybe a nice reassuring sign on the door saying...

    It's a thought that's very much crossed my mind! I don't know that there's much I can preemptively do to avoid drawing that kind of attention beyond maybe a nice reassuring sign on the door saying "Lots of computers, definitely not weed, pinkie promise", but at the very least I've got offsite backups of all my data and a pretty iron clad paper trail of where all the power is going.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Absolutely will do! Might end up being a month or two before I actually get the hardware in place, but I'll make sure to show off the results and/or any particularly amusing failures along the way.

    Absolutely will do! Might end up being a month or two before I actually get the hardware in place, but I'll make sure to show off the results and/or any particularly amusing failures along the way.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Oh wow, the playlist is from a decade ago, that's a great throwback! I kind of love that their super giant mega radiator array for six top end editing PCs is a bit smaller than one of the...

    Oh wow, the playlist is from a decade ago, that's a great throwback! I kind of love that their super giant mega radiator array for six top end editing PCs is a bit smaller than one of the (admittedly absurd) commercially available radiators you can get now.

    Just watched the first couple of videos there and it's also reassuring me that even the jankiest ideas we've been floating here are a good bit more robust than what they seem to be putting together! Which is almost definitely because we've now got the luxury of all these extra commercially available bits and pieces (plus decent 3D printers, the jank levels in my setup would be so much higher if even an amateur like me couldn't just model a perfectly fitted custom part in 30 minutes when I need one), but it still made me smile.

    I'll finish watching those tomorrow, it'll be interesting to see how they get it all finished up with all the DIYing they're needing to do, it'll be well worth seeing what pitfalls they hit so I can avoid them, and I'm enjoying the earlier-days-of-YouTube vibe too - thanks for suggesting it!

    Front runner for my actual build now looks to be a swimming pool heat pump, so that'll hopefully tie in with any PC-related tips I can get from those videos and end up being a fairly neat solution.

  4. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    I appreciate the reassurance, and discomfort aside I do appreciate the sense of scale too, it's interesting to visualise! I'd certainly like to think there's some potential for real benefit from...

    I appreciate the reassurance, and discomfort aside I do appreciate the sense of scale too, it's interesting to visualise! I'd certainly like to think there's some potential for real benefit from the work I'm doing - one of the potential applications is making prediction models for things like weather and climate work a lot more compute efficient, ironically enough - I just wish I could spend more time on those meaningful applications and less on the adjacent finance-related ones that pay the majority of the bills.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Good to know and very much appreciated - now that there looks to be a viable outdoor water chiller option on the cards that doesn't involve me hacking up an AC condenser I'm strongly leaning...

    Good to know and very much appreciated - now that there looks to be a viable outdoor water chiller option on the cards that doesn't involve me hacking up an AC condenser I'm strongly leaning towards that, it looks like it'll work out best of all worlds if I haven't missed anything major, but I'm filing this away as plan B if that does fall apart for any reason.

  6. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    I think I've found the missing link: swimming pool heat pumps! They look pretty much identical to the condenser for a split AC, similarly affordable, intended for outdoor installation, but they're...

    I think I've found the missing link: swimming pool heat pumps! They look pretty much identical to the condenser for a split AC, similarly affordable, intended for outdoor installation, but they're already designed to circulate temperature controlled water rather than air.

    Turns out most of them have a cooling mode for things like spa plunge pools as well as the traditional pool heating mode, and some also have a constant temperature setting that auto switches between heating and cooling mode if required. Just need to set that a degree or two above indoor ambient and it looks like this could rather neatly solve all my problems here.

    I might even go as far as saying it'd be a fairly professional setup - similar to the water chillers for laboratory lasers I've seen a few times, except the pool version is outdoor rated and costs £500 rather than £20k for the lab version.

    Big thank you for your help on this one, the combination of the AC idea and the liquid heat exchanger below put me absolutely right on track here. Still some more research to do, but assuming no major pitfalls I'm thinking pool heat pump outside, and then still go with the dual loop and liquid heat exchanger (with water in both sides) just to make it easier to disconnect the external side in winter and deliberately dump the heat inside instead.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Argh, so many layers of consideration! You're doing a very good job of spotting the nuances I hadn't considered here... I'm in the UK nowadays, so looks to be primarily wind and natural gas - my...

    Argh, so many layers of consideration! You're doing a very good job of spotting the nuances I hadn't considered here... I'm in the UK nowadays, so looks to be primarily wind and natural gas - my gut tells me that with heat pump levels of efficiency it'd be better to just shift the heat outside that way, but I have nothing to back that up. Honestly, regardless of actual solutions I've kind of been nerd sniped here and I feel the need to figure out a back of the envelope estimate at some point now.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Interesting, I hadn't come across that video - I'll give it a look and see what I can pick up from their attempt. If it could be as easy as sticking some water resistant fans on an off the shelf...

    Interesting, I hadn't come across that video - I'll give it a look and see what I can pick up from their attempt. If it could be as easy as sticking some water resistant fans on an off the shelf radiator and building it a little birdhouse type enclosure that sounds totally doable.

    I'm still a bit concerned about the potential for condensation on the GPUs if the outdoor part of this hypothetical loop gets too cold overnight, but maybe doing it as a double loop with a heat exchanger, but using an extra set of straightforward PC radiators rather than hacking up air conditioners could solve that. Either way, I am absolutely expecting a fun project out of this and it's a big part of why I asked here! Very much hoped I'd get some good discussion like this.

  9. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    I had completely failed to think about the necessary inflow of air if I were venting hot air out of the window with a reasonably well sealed duct, that's a really good point. Probably still worth...

    I had completely failed to think about the necessary inflow of air if I were venting hot air out of the window with a reasonably well sealed duct, that's a really good point. Probably still worth it on balance assuming the computer heated air were hotter than the outside air, but it's a strong point in favour of something a bit more detailed - thanks for pointing it out!

    2 votes

  10. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    That thought had actually crossed my mind, although I don't think I could ever actually bring myself to do it (and I know you weren't seriously suggesting it)! It's probably a little silly of me...

    That thought had actually crossed my mind, although I don't think I could ever actually bring myself to do it (and I know you weren't seriously suggesting it)! It's probably a little silly of me to worry about given that my local water supplier loses hundreds of millions of litres from poorly maintained infrastructure while giving huge piles of public money to its investors instead, but hey, we draw our lines where we can.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Oof, I knew I had a pretty ridiculous setup but that really brings home the scale here. Sure, I use a renewable electricity provider, but there's some real discomfort in this being the most viable...

    Edit: As a point of reference, Germany subsidizes low-energy homes. One class of low-energy housing, called KfW40, requires at max 15kWh/a/m^2. At 100m^2 of space, that's 170Watt. To heat a home. That's it. You're dealing with 10x as much heat, no wonder you're struggling to get rid of it.

    Oof, I knew I had a pretty ridiculous setup but that really brings home the scale here. Sure, I use a renewable electricity provider, but there's some real discomfort in this being the most viable way for me to make a living that's a whole other topic of its own...

    BTW, what you're doing right now, perpetually open window in the winter? I've heard that sarcastically called "heating for the air force".

    This, however, definitely made me chuckle!

    1 vote

  12. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Funnily enough, I did see this video in my feed the other day...

    Funnily enough, I did see this video in my feed the other day...

  13. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    I know you pitched this as inherently not the right idea, but I do kind of like it! The integrated thermostat and secondary loop solve a lot of potential problems with pumping the actual computer...

    I know you pitched this as inherently not the right idea, but I do kind of like it! The integrated thermostat and secondary loop solve a lot of potential problems with pumping the actual computer coolant outside, it's comparatively cheap, the condenser is already designed to work outside... It has enough potential that I'm going to do some more research in this direction at the very least - I appreciate the suggestion, even if you regret me taking it seriously now!

    6 votes

  14. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    The very honest answer here is that this is hardware that's jankily been built, rebuilt, tinkered with, and upgraded over the course of a couple of years and I assumed any colo provider would...

    The very honest answer here is that this is hardware that's jankily been built, rebuilt, tinkered with, and upgraded over the course of a couple of years and I assumed any colo provider would laugh me out of the building before considering letting it anywhere near a rack with other people's machines in it.

    In reality I probably could neaten things up, get a proper rackmount case, some high flow fans, a couple of PCIe risers, decent air cooled heatsinks (I'm assuming even in the best case they don't want my DIY watercooling loop threatening to leak on things, however much confidence I have in it personally), etc. and it may actually be the right call in the end. It's absolutely an option that's still on the cards, although it'd probably cost more just to set up than your less-serious split AC idea below!

    Do you happen to know what kind of rules and restrictions there generally are on what you can put in a colo rack? I've only ever worked with nebulous cloud VMs or hands on local hardware, so I'm not at all familiar with the process for putting my own hardware in someone else's datacenter.

  15. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    I like this thinking! You wouldn't be worried about corrosion and whatever other outdoor hazards could end up befalling the radiators running it that way?

    I like this thinking! You wouldn't be worried about corrosion and whatever other outdoor hazards could end up befalling the radiators running it that way?

  16. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Very good questions, many of which envisage an awful lot more space than my tiny first floor flat in the middle of a dense city provides! I'll get back to you about those garage-based ideas if a...

    Very good questions, many of which envisage an awful lot more space than my tiny first floor flat in the middle of a dense city provides! I'll get back to you about those garage-based ideas if a lottery win comes my way, but I do have the luxury of a large balcony which is where I figure the bulk of the heat probably needs to end up one way or another in the summer.

    No hot water tank, unfortunately, although I like where your thinking was going there - water and central heating is all on-demand with a combi boiler. Cooling is a fairly cheap and fairly old mini-split AC unit that'd probably need upgrading if I want it to fight with the computer heat all summer.

    I'm running somewhere over 2kW all in, so it's more than enough to heat the whole space even if I'm not sitting next to the hardware - right now it's 7°C outside and I'm sitting comfortably warm with a window open! I do like the water heating idea in concept though, and ultimately there does need to be some kind of big heatsink even if that just ends up being the air outside, so I'll do some more investigation as if I were dumping the heat into a hot water tank and maybe that'll set me off in the right direction. I'm already thinking maybe a heat exchanger from an indoor loop to an outdoor loop where the outdoor loop only moves if it's above indoor ambient could be interesting...

    2 votes

  17. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Yup, multiple GPUs running into one giant radiator - I'm actually in the process of adding capacity and reworking things a little (some new hardware, some waterblocks still in shipping, that kind...

    Yup, multiple GPUs running into one giant radiator - I'm actually in the process of adding capacity and reworking things a little (some new hardware, some waterblocks still in shipping, that kind of thing), which is why I asked the question now, but keeping all of the heat exhaust localised in one place as far as possible is definitely part of the goal. I may end up with a second radiator, but having two side by side shouldn't dramatically change the answers, I don't think.

    To a reasonable degree I'm alright with a bit of cost and effort if there's a nice option here that wraps everything up neatly - these are the tools of my trade and I don't mind spending where it's worthwhile - but so far most of what I'm seeing in my searches is industrial equipment that's orders of magnitude above my level in capacity and in price, so perhaps keeping it simple and just getting some nicely fitted air ducting will end up being the right answer after all!

    2 votes

  18. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Machine learning research work - I do also run some stuff in the cloud, but I've been expanding the amount of things I'm running locally in the last few months specifically because of how much it...

    Machine learning research work - I do also run some stuff in the cloud, but I've been expanding the amount of things I'm running locally in the last few months specifically because of how much it was costing me.

    If you compare what a datacenter-grade GPU would cost to own vs rent in the cloud, and you're running it consistently 24/7, it's favourable to own within a couple of years (makes sense, cloud providers need to make their margins too, and a lot of times the ability to quickly scale capacity up and down is worth that premium). If you can get away with running your dev work on consumer GPUs rather than datacenter ones, which are often 10x cheaper for effectively identical silicon, that payback period gets much, much quicker and suddenly breaking out the power drill looks like a very attractive option!

    8 votes

  19. Comment on How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven? in ~comp

    Greg
    Link Parent
    Thanks for that, I definitely wouldn't have found the conversation in that giant thread otherwise! Seems like the consensus there leans towards the hot air out the window idea, which is certainly...

    Thanks for that, I definitely wouldn't have found the conversation in that giant thread otherwise! Seems like the consensus there leans towards the hot air out the window idea, which is certainly the lowest overhead option too, so I may end up trying that as a first and easiest path - although I'm definitely still wondering if there's a more robust answer we haven't found yet.

    Totally reasonable question about undervolting, but it comes back to the scale issue: saving a few hundred watts here is good, but it leaves a couple of kW still to deal with one way or another. It's a lot to be running at home, to the point I feel a bit silly for having this kind of setup at all, but the wonderful incentives of modern capitalism mean this is by a pretty wide margin my best option right now...

    5 votes

  20. How can I prevent my work computers turning my home into an oven?

    ~comp Ask (advice)
    Looking for advice before the weather starts to warm up! I'm running multiple GPUs for dev work in my small home office, and it's pretty much equivalent to having a fan heater running all day....

    Looking for advice before the weather starts to warm up! I'm running multiple GPUs for dev work in my small home office, and it's pretty much equivalent to having a fan heater running all day. Right now that's actually a bonus, but it really won't be in a couple of months.

    The big heat generating components are all water cooled - partly just to fit them in a sensible amount of space, and partly because I figured I'd end up with exactly this problem and being able to physically pipe the heat elsewhere (ideally outside) would probably be necessary. The bit I'm trying to figure out now is how to actually make that happen...

    Ideas so far:

    • Stick an air duct on the back of the radiator and hang the duct out of the window: straightforward but messy, may be counterproductive depending how hot it is outside and how well I can rig up some kind of baffle between the open window and the duct.

    • Put the whole radiator outside and drill a couple of small holes in the wall for the pipes: this was my first thought, but PC radiators and fans definitely aren't rated for outdoor use, and I'm not sure where to start looking for something that would be designed for that while still being suitable to hook up to the computer waterblocks. I'm also concerned about condensation on the electronics if the coolant gets below indoor ambient temperature overnight.

    • Set up some kind of actual exterior radiator (or heat pump?) outside, and use a heat exchanger between that and the PC cooling loop: seems more like the "proper" way to be doing this, but it's well outside my area of expertise and feels like there would be a lot of potentially expensive stumbling blocks. Also still has the condensation problem, I think.

    • Just crank up the air conditioning: I'm not actually sure if the unit I've got has enough capacity, and it definitely seems wasteful to heat up the air and then use more energy cooling it again rather than dumping the heat directly outside, but maybe I'm wrong there!

    I'm in a kind of awkward middle ground: I'm running enough hardware that this is getting to be an issue beyond what you'd get with normal end user setups, and I'm willing to put some money into fixing it (it's affecting my job and my home, after all!), but I'm self employed and nowhere close to the industrial or datacenter scale that tends to come up when searching for solutions.

    Has anyone dealt with this themselves, or come across small office/homelab scale solutions that might work?

    16 votes