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19" Rackmount Fridge

Integrated 3U Refrigeration
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Servers live in racks, sometimes these racks are great roof-scraping 42U monsters, sometimes they're project 8U sized boxes on castors that can be wheeled under a desk out of the way to hum quietly in the corner.

When you pile multiple machines on top of one another, the power/space density increases pretty quickly. Before long you're running multiple fans just trying to keep the thing operational. A stack of electronic equipment is essentially a very delicate, high-fail-probability radiator, in a box.

A Fridge has 3 components, a cooling fin, that draws heat out of an enclosed environment, a heat-sink that tries to radiate heat away from that environment, and a pump to move coolant liquid from one to t'other.

Imagine now a modular set of units each of 1U that can be embedded into a traditional rack - a cooler, a heatsink and a pump.

Place the heatsink at the top of the rack, with a separate insulated shelf beneath it, to isolate the heat-expulsion from all your lovely equipment, all of which is snugly ensconced beneath, slide the pump and cooling piece in at the bottom, 1U each. Hook up all the pressure cables and have a certified air conditioning chap fill it with noxious gasses/fluids and you're away. Your precious rack now contains an integral (and fridge-matchingly quiet) cooling unit.

zen_tom, Dec 15 2009

13U Rackmount Fridge http://www.canford....RIDGE-Rackmount-13U
[8th of 7] I'm not sure if this comes in brushed aluminium, or whether it has the UBS reporting link, but otherwise, might this meet your requirements? I'm sure it would be Cube friendly. [zen_tom, Dec 15 2009]

(?) Fark Server http://mrlegman.com/farkbeer.jpg
[Dub, Dec 15 2009]


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Annotation:







       Nice idea, but I'd rather people moved away from energy-intensive refrigeration, either by building computers which can run very hot or by making waterproof computers which can be installed in ornamental lakes.
hippo, Dec 15 2009
  

       We are disappointed. We hoped this would be a 19" wide beer cooler with a brushed aluminium front panel and USB status reporting capability so the quantity and temperature of the contents can be remotely monitored.   

       Make the unit above a pizza warmer driven by the waste heat from the cooler and you have a winning combination.   

       [neutral]
8th of 7, Dec 15 2009
  

       Rackmount chillers are available, you're going to have to use watercooled systems for this to work, however.   

       I think you'd be better off building a refrigerator that has a rack inside, so your units can be uniformly cooled and the heat is rejected outside the rack environment rather than recirculated back into it. (At the power densities of a modern server rack, simply rejecting the heat to the ceiling is not enough, the air does recirculate)
MechE, Dec 15 2009
  

       [Bigsleep] is that the link you meant to post?
zen_tom, Dec 15 2009
  

       Doh!!!!   

       Now I see, I've been hoisted very much by my own trepad.
zen_tom, Dec 15 2009
  


 

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